It was with a feeling of exultation that Flint found himself again on the street. "How grewsome it would have been," he thought, "to be carried off in a job lot like that! I can imagine nothing worse, except perhaps to be killed in a crush at a bargain-counter."

CHAPTER XX

THE UNFORESEEN

"C'est toujours l'imprevu qui arrive."

The ruling thought in Flint's mind as he emerged from the crowded room and made his way down the shaky stairs to the outer door, was of the physical delight of inhaling fresh air. He drew in two or three deep, lung-filling breaths, then he opened his coat and shook it to the air as he had seen doctors do after coming out of a sick-room.

"Decidedly," he said to himself, "slumming is not my vocation. If I were drafted into the Salvation Army, I should plead to be permitted to join the open-air brigade. My sympathy with the poor in general, and drunkards in particular, is in inverse proportion to the nearness.

Poor Brady! I wonder how he will endure being unequally yoked together with a believer. Suppose Nora Costello refuses him. No, he is safe enough, if it is being safe to have her return his love. I saw her look up as we came in, and though she never glanced in our direction again till the cry of 'Fire!' came, I saw her look of appeal then, and his response. Oh, there is no doubt about her accepting him; but the question is, not how does she feel now, but how will she feel a year or two years from now? As I grow older, I grow more conservative on these things. There is such an amount of wear and tear in the ordinary strain of married life that I hate to see cruel and unusual ones added. If Winifred Anstice should ever or could ever-- There, I will not allow myself even to think about it, for it would be so much harder to give it up afterward if I am compelled to, and, after all, what chance is there that a girl like Winifred would be willing to spend her whole life with a man whose nature and character are so different from hers!"

Flint had been walking rapidly, and his musings had so filled his mind that he saw with surprise that he had reached the corner where the Sixth Avenue elevated and surface cars curve together for their straight-away race to the Park at the end of the course. He was conscious of a certain added rush of spirits at finding himself once more on the edge of a familiar world,--a world where the sin was at least conventionalized and the misery went about well dressed. Already the scene at the slum post had taken on in his mind a distance which enabled him to regard it humorously, and he amused himself in rehearsing the scene as he would set it forth to Brooke when he reached "The Chancellor."

As he turned a corner, he noticed just in front of him in the side street leading toward Fifth Avenue a young woman carrying a paper parcel, and looking up a little nervously at one number after another.

She wore a Canada seal jacket, and a wide felt hat topped with nodding plumes which made a large effect for the investment. Over the jacket hung a gilt chain holding a coin purse, the latest fad of the fashionable world.

As Flint's footsteps quickened behind her, she turned her head a little timorously. At last she stopped, and as he caught up with her she began, "Could you tell me--" Then she stopped short.

"Miss Marsden!" exclaimed Flint, in amazement. "What in the world brings you here?"

"To see New York," the girl began a little flippantly, but ended more tremulously, "and to see you."

"But where are you staying?"

"Nowhere--that is, I came down on the train this afternoon, and I thought I'd go to a hotel, and then I meant to write you a note to-morrow and ask you to come and see me; but a lady I met on the cars, she was real kind, and she said she guessed I'd find it cost more 'n I reckoned on to go to a hotel, and so she gave me this address where a friend of hers lived. She said she was a perfect lady, and would take good care of me. Not that I need anybody to do that!"

This last with that curious mixture of innocence, ignorance, and sophistication, incredible outside America, where the self-dependent girl so early becomes sufficient for herself and too much for every one else.

Flint took the address from her hand, and studied it for a minute.

"That will not do at all," he said quietly, as he threw the bit of paper into the gutter. Then he took out his watch. "Half-past nine.

You have just time to catch the night train for South East."

The girl's face fell. "I'm not going to South East," she said sullenly. "I wrote Pa that I was going off for Thanksgiving, with a friend from Boxbury."

"Then why not go back to Boxbury? That's still an easier trip, and I can let you have the money."

Flint's tone, which was always low, had dropped still deeper; but the earnestness of his manner made itself felt, and a casual pa.s.ser-by, catching the word "money," slowed up his walk, and turned his head for an instant's inspection of the couple. Flint raged inwardly at the vulgarity of the situation thus thrust upon him. To his companion, however, the glance of the pa.s.ser-by conveyed nothing more than a recognition of her good looks, to which she was not averse. She stood still a moment, rubbing her ringed and ungloved hand back and forward over the sanded iron imitation brownstone fence by which she had paused. Then, as Flint, feeling the conspicuousness of their stationary att.i.tude, made a movement to walk on, she broke out with a note of genuine feeling,--

"It's no question of money. I came away because I couldn't stand it any longer. I wanted so to see you and to tell you what a lot I cared about you, and I thought perhaps--"

"Don't go on!" said Flint, a trifle sternly. "You are a silly little fool; but you ought to know better than to say things like that to a man who never did and never could care anything for you."

"Then you despise me and my love!" said Tilly, with pa.s.sion half real, half premeditated for effect. She had rehea.r.s.ed this scene many times in her own mind.

"Despise you? Not I," Flint answered; "and as for your love, a real, genuine affection is about the last thing in the world to be despised.

Whether it is returned or not, it does not matter; and besides," here Flint paused a minute and then went on, "in that I have much sympathy with you, for I too love some one who has refused to marry me."

It was with a sense of inward surprise that Flint heard himself revealing the secrets of his inmost heart to this tawdry young girl; but Brady's words were ringing in his ears: "I think I would try to help save a soul, if I had to take off my kid gloves or even go down in the gutter to do it."

Tilly Marsden had not enough n.o.bleness of nature to take in the spirit of his confidence. To her his words implied some hope for herself.

"Perhaps," she said brokenly, "if you couldn't get her you might take me." As she looked up at him pleadingly, with real tears standing on her long eyelashes and the flush of a genuine emotion on her cheeks, Flint was conscious that she was very, very pretty.

Her prettiness would not at any time have held any temptation for him.

The inherited austerity of his blood and a fastidiousness of temperament beyond the appeal of this chromo beauty would have prevented it in any case, but just now he was under the spell of an exaltation which lifted him above even the possibility of such danger.

He had stood on the Mount of Transfiguration and looked into the eyes of spiritual love. Its light still shone above and around him, and shed its influence over the whole world. All dark thoughts, all basilar instincts shrank back abashed before that white light. The old monogamous instinct of the Anglo-Saxon race, which has kept it sound at the core in spite of a thousand vices, held this man as true to the woman whom he wished to marry as if she were indeed his wife.

Tempted he was not, but most wofully disturbed in mind he certainly was. Having destroyed the dubious address, he felt himself to have a.s.sumed in a measure a responsibility for this foolish girl's future, her immediate future at least. His mind traversed rapidly all the possible courses open to him. He must take her somewhere. Hotels and boarding-houses were alike impossible. He thought of Nora Costello; but he could not bring himself to ask her to share the narrow limits of her one room with this be-furbelowed young person, and then it would involve so many awkward explanations. There was only one person who would understand. By a process of exclusion, his thoughts were driven more and more insistently toward seeking aid from Winifred Anstice.

He felt to the full the delicacy and difficulty, not to say the absurdity, of his position, in seeking to place the woman who loved him under the protection of the woman he loved, but it was the only course which seemed even possible.

"Come," he said suddenly to Tilly, with an authority which the girl's will was powerless to resist. "Since you will not go home, you must be cared for here. I will take you to a friend of mine, and you must do as she tells you."

"And what if I won't go?" said the girl, with a feeble effort at self-a.s.sertion.

"Then I will leave you here. Only never hold me responsible for the ruin that lies before you clear as h.e.l.l."

The girl quailed before the energy of his words.

"Cab, sir?" called the driver of a hansom the lights of which had twinkled from a judicious distance for some time past.

Flint raised his finger in acquiescence, and the hansom rattled up to the curbstone. Flint handed Tilly Marsden into it with his habitual deference, gave a street and number to the driver, and, jumping in himself, slammed to the half doors with a clang which echoed along the silent street. The driver cracked his whip over the horse's head as if he were about to drive him at a desperate pace; but the animal, familiar with the noisy demonstration and recognizing it as intended for the encouragement of the pa.s.sengers within the vehicle and not conveying any special warning to himself, set off at his customary jog-trot.

A man who had been standing in the shadow of a house moved out and stood a moment under the quivering nimbus of the electric light. His brow darkened as he looked after the retreating cab.

"Curse him!" he muttered.

Flint and his companion drove on unwitting of the vengeance-breeding wrath behind them. For a time they kept silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Flint was unpleasantly conscious that the girl was crying behind her veil, but realizing that he had no consolation to offer, he wisely let her alone, and before many minutes the novelty of her surroundings began to tell upon Tilly's grief.

"Whose house is that?" she asked in a broken voice, as they pa.s.sed a brilliantly lighted hotel. She had read so much of the palaces of the millionnaires that a fourteen-story private dwelling did not strike her as at all unexpected.

"She will recover," Flint murmured cynically to himself. His mind was working rapidly now. Like many contemplative men, once roused to definite action he was capable of great energy and direct executive ability. He planned every detail of the coming interview, met every emergency, was prepared for every event.

As the cab drew up before the Anstice door, he noted with relief that the lights above were bright and those on the parlor floor subdued.

"No company, thank Heaven! and the family upstairs," was his comment.

What he most dreaded now was Winifred's being out. He wondered if in that event he should have courage to ask for Miss Standish, and had almost persuaded himself that he would, when McGregor, to the comfort of his soul, admitted that Miss Anstice was at home and without visitors. Flint felt a little cut by McGregor's glance of suspicion at his companion. It seemed to connote the opinion of the world, and to make his position more difficult than ever. He determined, however, to carry things with a high hand.

"Show this young woman into the dining-room, McGregor, and close the doors. Then take this card to Miss Anstice, and ask if I may see her for a moment on important business."

The old butler stumbled upstairs, murmuring, "Well, it's a queer business, and I can't make it out; but he's the right sort, he is."

As Flint waited in the drawing-room, he was dimly conscious of the perfume from the roses in the jar on the piano, conscious too that he was standing on the very spot where he had kissed Winifred's hand yesterday. Was it really only yesterday? It seemed an age ago.

The spell was broken by the sound of a light step on the stair, and the appearance of Winifred herself in the doorway,--Winifred in her gown of soft gray silk, with a bunch of his roses at her belt,--Winifred as he had never seen her before, with the gladness of unrestrained welcome in her eyes, with shy words of love almost trembling on her lips.