The Best Man (10 page)

He had walked close enough to the bridegroom in the station to be almost sure that mustache and those heavy eyebrows were false; and yet he could not make it out. How could it be possible that a man who was going to be married in a great church full of fashionable people would dare to flirt with chance as to accept an invitation to a dinner where he might not be able to get away for hours? What would have happened if he had not got there in time? Was it in the least possible that these two men could be identical? Everything but the likeness and the fact that he had followed the man so closely pointed out the impossibility.

The thick-set man was accustomed to trust his inner impressions thoroughly, and in this case his inner impression was that he must watch this peculiar bridegroom and be sure he was not the right man before he forever got away from him – and yet – and yet, he might be missing the right man by doing it. However, he had come so far, he risked a good deal already in following and in throwing himself on that fast moving train. He would stay a little longer and find out for sure. He would try and get a seat where he could watch him and in an hour he ought to be able to tell if he were really the man who had stolen the code-writing. If he could avoid the conductor for a time he would simply profess to taken the wrong train by mistake, and maybe could get off somewhere near home, in case he discovered that he was barking up the wrong tree. He would stick to the train for a little yet, inasmuch as there seemed no safe way of getting off at present.

Having decided so much, he gave one last glance toward the twinkling lights of the city hurrying past, and getting up sauntered into the train, keeping a weather eye out for the conductor. He meant to burn no bridges behind him. He was well provided with money for any kind of a tip and mileage books and passes. He knew where to send a telegram that would bring him instant assistant in case of need, and even now he knew the officer on the motor-cycle had reported to his employer that he had boarded this train. There was really no immediate need for him to worry. It was a big game he was after and one must take some risks in a case of that sort. Thus he entered the sleeper to make good the impression of his inner senses.

Gordon had never held anything so precious, so sweet and beautiful and frail-looking, in his arms. He had a feeling that he ought to lay her down, yet there was a longing to draw her closer to himself and shield her from everything that could trouble her.

But she was not his – only a precious trust to be guarded and cared for as vigilantly as the message he carried hidden about his neck; she belonged to another, somewhere, and was a sacred trust until circumstances made it possible for him to return her to her rightful husband. Just what all this might mean to himself, to the woman in his arms, and to the man who she was to be married, Gordon had not as yet had time to think. It was as if he had been watching a moving picture and suddenly a lot of circumstances had fallen in a heap and become all jumbled up together, the result of his own rash but unsuspecting steps, the way whole families have in moving pictures of falling through a sky-scraper from floor to floor, carrying furniture and inhabitants with them as they descend.

He had not as yet been able to disentangle himself from the debris and find out what had been his fault and what he ought to do about it.

He laid her gently on the couch of the drawing-room and opened the little door of the private dressing-room. There would be cold water in there.

He knew very little about caring for sick people – he had always been well and strong himself – but cold water was what they used for people who had fainted, he was sure. He would not call in anyone to help, unless it was absolutely necessary. He pulled the door of the stateroom shut, and went after the water. As he passed the mirror, he started at the curious version of himself. One false eyebrow had come loose and was hanging over his eye, and his goatee was crooked. Had it been so all the time? He snatched the eyebrow off, and then the other; but the mustache and goatee were more tightly affixed, and it was very painful to remove them. He glanced back, and the white limp look of the girl on the couch frightened him. What was he about, to stop over his appearance when she might be dying, and as for pain – he tore the false hair roughly from him, and stuffing it into his pocket, filled a glass with water and went back to the couch. His chin and upper lip smarted, but he did not notice it, nor know that the mark of the plaster was all about his face. He only knew that she lay there apparently lifeless before him, and he must bring the soul back into those dear eyes. It was strange, wonderful, how his feeling had grown for the girl whom he had never seen till three hours before.

He held the glass to her white lips and tried to make her drink, then poured water on his handkerchief and awkwardly bathed her forehead. Some hairpins slipped loose and a great wealth of golden-brown hair fell across his knees as he half knelt beside her. One little hand drooped over the side of the couch and touched this. He started! It seemed so soft and cold and lifeless.

He blamed himself that he had no remedies in his suitcase. Why had he never thought to carry something – a simple restorative? Other people might need it though he did not. No man ought to travel without something for the saving of life in an emergency. He might have needed it himself even, in case of a railroad accident or something.

He slipped his arm tenderly under her head and tried to raise it so that she could drink, but the white lips did not move nor attempt to swallow.

Then a panic seized him. Suppose she was dying? Not until later, when he had quiet and opportunity for thought, did it occur to him what a terrible responsibility he had dared to take upon himself in letting her people leave her with him; what a fearful position he would have been in if she had really died. At the moment his whole thought was one of anguish at the idea of losing her; anxiety to save her precious life; and not for himself.

Forgetting his own need of quiet and obscurity, he laid her gently back upon the couch again, and rushed from the stateroom out into the aisle of the sleeper. The conductor was just making his rounds and he hurried to him with a white face.

“Is there a doctor on board, or have you any restoratives?” There is a lady –” He hesitated and the color rolled freshly into his anxious face. “That is – my wife.” He spoke the word unwillingly, having at the instant of speaking realized that he must say this to protect her good name. It seemed like uttering a falsehood, or stealing another man’s property; and yet, technically, it was true, and for her sake at least he must acknowledge it.

“My wife,” he began again more connectedly, “is ill – unconscious.”

The conductor looked at him sharply. He had sized them up as a wedding party when they came down the platform toward the train. The young man’s blush confirmed his supposition.

“I’ll see!” he said briefly. “Go back to her and I’ll bring some one.”

It was just as Gordon turned back that the thick-set man entered the car from the other end and met him face to face, but Gordon was too distraught at that moment to notice him, for his mind was at rest about his pursuer as soon as the train started.

Not so with the pursuer however. His keen little eyes took in the white, anxious face, the smear of sticking plaster about the mouth and eyebrows, and instantly knew his man. His instincts had not failed him after all.

He put out a pair of brawny fists to catch at him, but a lurch of the train and Gordon’s swift stride out-purposed him, and by the time the little man had righted his footing Gordon was disappearing into the stateroom, and the conductor with another man was in the aisle behind him waiting to pass. He stepped back and watched. At least he had driven his prey to quarry and there was no possible escape now until the train stopped. He would watch that door as a cat watched a mouse, and perhaps be able to send a telegram for help before he made any move at all. It was as well that his impulse to take the man then and there had come to naught. What would the other passengers have thought of him? He must of course move cautiously. What a blunder he had almost made. It was not part of his purpose to make public his errand. The men who were behind him did not wish to be known, nor to have their business known.

With narrowing eyes he watched the door of the stateroom as the conductor and doctor came and went. He gathered from a few questions asked by one of the passengers that there was some one sick, probably the lady he had seen faint as the train started. It occurred to him that this might be his opportunity, and when the conductor came out of the drawing-room the second time he inquired if any assistance was needed, and implied that doctoring was his profession, though it would be a sorry patient that had only his attention. However, if he had one accomplishment it was bluffing, and he never stopped at any profession that suited his needs.

The conductor was annoyed at the interruptions that had already occurred and he answered him brusquely that they had all the necessary and there wasn’t anything the matter anyway.

There was nothing left for the man to do but wait.

He subsided with his eye on the stateroom door, and later secured a berth in plain sight of that door, but gave no order to have it made up until every other passenger in the car was gone to what rest a sleeping car provides. He kept his vigil well, but was rewarded with no sight of his prey that night, and at last with a sense of duty well done and the comfortable promise from the conductor that his deftly worded telegraphic message to Mr. Holman should be sent from a station they passed a little after midnight, he crept to his well-earned rest. He was not at home in a dress shirt and collar, being of the walks of life where a collar is mostly accounted superfluous, and he was glad to be relieved of it for a few hours. It had not yet occurred to him that his appearance in that evening suit would be a trifle out of place when morning came. It is doubtful if he had ever considered matters of dress. His profession was that of a human ferret of the lower order, and there were many things he did not know. It might have been the way he held his fork at dinner that had made Gordon decide that he was but a henchman of the other.

Having put his mind and his body at rest he proceeded to sleep, and the train thundered on its way into the night.

Gordon meanwhile had hurried back from his appeal to the conductor, and stood looking helplessly down at the delicate girl as she lay there so white and seemingly lifeless. Her pretty travelling gown set off the exquisite face finely; her glorious hair seemed to crown her. A handsome hat had fallen unheeded to the floor, and lay rolling back and forth in the aisle with the motion of the train. He picked it up reverently; as though it had been a part of her. His face in the few minutes had gone haggard.

The conductor hurried in presently; followed by a grave elderly man with a professional air. He touched a practiced finger to the limp wrist, looked closely into the face, and then taking a little bottle from a case he carried called for a glass.

The liquid was poured between the closed lips, the white throat reluctantly swallowed it, the eyelids presently fluttered a long breath that was scarcely more than a sigh hovered between the lips, and then the blue eyes opened.

She looked about, bewildered, looking longest at Gordon, then closed her eyes wearily, as if she wished they had not brought her back, and lay still.

The physician still knelt beside her, and Gordon, with time now to think, began to reflect on the possible consequences of his deeds. With anxious face, he stood watching, reflecting bitterly that he might not claim even a look of recognition from those sweet eyes, and wishing with all his heart that his marriage had been genuine. A passing memory of his morning ride to New York in company with Miss Bentley’s conjured vision brought wonder to his eyes. It all seemed so long ago, and so strange that he ever could have entertained for a moment the thought of marrying Julia. She was a good girl of course, fine and handsome and all that, - but – and here his eyes sought the sweet sad face on the couch, and his heart suffered in a real agony for the trouble he saw; and for the trouble he must yet give her when he told her who he was, or rather who he was not; for he must tell her and that soon. It would not do to go in her company – nor to Chicago! And yet, how was he possibly to leave her in this condition?

But no revelations were to be given that night.

The physician administered another draught, and ordered the porter to make up the berth immediately. Then with skillful hands and strong arms he laid the young girl upon the pillows and made her comfortable, Gordon meanwhile standing awkwardly by with averted eyes and troubled mien.

“She’d better not be disturbed any more than is necessary to-night,” said the doctor, as he pulled the pretty cloth travelling-gown smoothly down about the girl’s ankles and patted it with professional hands. “Don’t let her yield to any nonsense about putting up her hair, or taking off that frock for fear she’ll rumple it. She needs to lie perfectly quiet. It’s a case of utter exhaustion, and I should say a long strain of some kind – anxiety, worry perhaps.” He looked keenly at the sheepish bridegroom. “Has she had any trouble?”

Gordon lifted honest eyes.

“I’m afraid so,” he answer contritely, as if it must have been his fault some way.

“Well, don’t let her have any more,” said the elder man briskly. “She’s a very fragile bit of womanhood, young man, and you’ll have to handle her carefully or she’ll blow away. Make her happy, young man! People can’t have too much happiness in this world. It’s the best thing, after all, to keep them well. Don’t be afraid to give her plenty.

“Thank you!” said Gordon, fervently, wishing it were in his power to do what the physician ordered.

The kindly physician, the assiduous porter, and the brusque but good-hearted conductor went away at last, and Gordon was left with his precious charge, who to all appearances was sleeping quietly. The light was turned low and the curtains of the berth were a little apart. He could see the deem outline of drapery about her, and one shadowy hand lying limp at the edge of the couch, in weary relaxation.