# The Golden Rule Dollivers (collection)/Aid to the Injured

pp. 106–133. First published in Harper's Magazine in March 1913, as Dolliver's Aid to the Injured

### V
#### AID TO THE INJURED

NOTWITHSTANDING the philosophy with which he had seemed to dismiss the Cheever-Spencer episode on the day of its occurrence, the annoyance of it rankled more deeply in Dolliver's mind than in Marjorie's; perhaps because he was worried about business affairs and his mind was in condition to rankle; perhaps because, owing to the delay caused by Mrs. Cheever's machinations, his carefully planned little tour had to be abandoned, and they went, instead, down the length of Staten Island, returning the next day through New Jersey. The night was hot and breathless, the breakfast was not very good, they made a late start, and had first a puncture and then a blowout, and finally their faithful engine gasped and stopped, and Page had to work over it for an hour in sweltering heat.
Between times he explained to Marjorie with great particularity that this automobile game they had invented was too dangerously liable to misinterpretation to be continued indiscriminately, and that in future they positively must confine its activities to persons of their acquaintance, who, presumably, would know how it should be played. And Marjorie tactfully refrained from asking, "Like Mrs. Cheever, for example?"
Late in the afternoon they had put up the cover of the car, buttoned down the side curtains, and were scudding toward New York, while occasional hurrying pedestrians cast envious glances at them as they whirred past, for the air had grown even more sultry, the sky was obscured by a heavy, sweeping curtain of cloud, and the landscape had taken on a grotesque aspect in the weird, greenish light that frequently precedes a thunder-storm.
"Lots of these people are going to be drenched, aren't they?" said Marjorie, at last, in a carefully casual tone.
"They are," succinctly returned her husband. "We're not playing the automobile game any more, you remember."
"Oh, I'll remember," she promised, drolly.
"Well, don't you imagine for one fleeting instant that I'm going to forget it," he advised. "Hereafter the pathetic, perspiring pedestrians panting along the way may continue to pant, as far as we're concerned, and those who are so ill-advised as to be overtaken by a flood may swim out. This ark's full."
"Woof!" barked Marjorie. "Woof! woof!"
"That's all right, but this time you beware of the dog. His bite's going to be worse than his bark," warned Page, whereat his wife laughed outright. "Well, what manner of worms are we, that we should never turn?" he demanded, whimsically argumentative. "Haven't we been smitten on both cheeks and yet again just because we're always asking people to fill up our empty seats?"
"I know, but—in spite of it all it does seem selfish not to, doesn't it?"
"Sure it does! That's where the fun comes in. I like to be selfish."
"You?" Marjorie laughed again, with a quick little glow in her eyes. "You're exactly like Susie Damn."
"Susie who?"
"Damn. Don't you remember her? She was one of those tippy dolls with a weight in the bottom, so she always came up smiling, however hard and often she was knocked down. You can't help it, Page. You're made that way."
"Oh, I am, am I?" he retorted. "Well, I'm going to help it this time. You see those two women just ahead? Yesterday we'd have insisted upon taking them home, but you watch us discreetly and consistently mind our own business to-day!"
"Oh, Page, see what lovely clothes they have!" commented Marjorie, as they passed the two women in question. "But if we should pick them up, I suppose one or the other of them would prove to be an adventuress," she added, sighing.
"Or take you for one," he supplemented.
They ran along for a few minutes in silence, and then he added: "Here it comes! Now we'll catch it!"
A cloud of dust swept toward them on a blustering wind, and following that came the first big, pattering drops of rain, accompanied by increasingly brilliant lightning and an almost continuous rumble of thunder. Dolliver, who had diminished his speed before meeting the blinding dust-cloud, now slowed still more and glanced at Marjorie, who was staring unheedingly out into the rain; then, with a smothered, impatient ejaculation he opened the throttle so sharply that the automobile sprang forward like a live thing under spur. A moment later, frowning and without comment, he swung the car abruptly to the left and stopped it, with the fore wheels in the grass by the side of the road.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"I'm going back," he doggedly returned, reversing the engine.
"Oh, dearest! You mean—no, of course you don't mean—"
"Yes, I do. I'm going back to get those two women."
"Oh, you jewel! I was just going to beg you to. They had on such lovely clothes! And perhaps they are nice people, after all. There must be some, you know."
"Now, none of that!" he expostulated. The car was racing with the storm. "This is not the automobile game at all. This is first aid to the injured—no social amenities attached. We'll pick up those ladies out of the wet, and we'll put them down again at the nearest possible dry spot, but we will not concern ourselves as to who they are or where they came from, nor yet as to their ultimate destination; and as to permitting ourselves to be drawn into their affairs to the slightest degree, we shall po-litely but positively refuse. Agreed?"
"Agreed," she responded, happily, "I'll sit here beside you, and we'll sternly discourage conversation—but, oh, I'm so glad we're going back, and I do hope we get there before their things are ruined!"
"Well, I hope this isn't the time we get into a scrape we can't get out of," he grimly retorted.
A moment later they discovered the women they sought, who were trying to supplement the thin shelter of a small tree by huddling under a beautiful but wholly inadequate lace parasol, for by this time it was raining smartly. One of them was elderly, although very erect and alert, with a firm, well-modulated voice and an unhurried manner, and the other was young and strikingly beautiful. They accepted at once, very gratefully, Dolliver's offer to carry them on to a dry spot.
"This is wonderful of you!" exclaimed the girl, as she followed the other into the tonneau. "Imagine turning back in a storm like this to pick up two strangers!"
"We couldn't bear to think of your being soaked through," said Marjorie. "Are you very wet?"
"Nothing has suffered as yet except my granddaughter's parasol," replied the older woman, "but in five minutes more—" The remainder of the sentance was lost in a crash of thunder. Meanwhile, after hastily refastening the side curtain, Dolliver had decided to light his lamps, for daylight was ending prematurely in the storm; and as he slipped past Marjorie and into his seat again, shaking the water from his arms and shoulders, their elderly guest concluded, "It is most kind—most thoughtful of you to come to our rescue."
"Not at all," returned Page, deliberately trite. "It gives us great pleasure. Where may we take you?"
"To Meadowvale, Mr. Latham's country place over on the Short Hills road, if you chance to be going that way," was the reply. "Otherwise to the nearest place where we can find shelter and a conveyance or a telephone. But on no account let us take you out of your way in this storm," she urged, whereupon Marjorie stole a triumphant glance at her husband, but found him unresponsive and apparently unmoved by this evidence of consideration on the part of their passengers.
"It will be quite simple to leave you at Meadowvale," he said. "Either road is convenient for us. It's the second turn to the right, isn't it?"
"I think so. At any rate, you turn just beyond the Stanfords', that large place with the stone wall and the wrought-iron gates. Meadowvale is less than a mile beyond."
"And please don't think I deliberately brought my grandmother out for a four-mile walk in this weather," added the girl, with a little laugh. "We've been taking tea with some friends near here, and the Lathams, whom we're visiting, were to send their car back for us in an hour. It didn't come, and as we knew our hostess had another engagement we decided to set out on foot. Our friends protested, but we had no idea it would rain so soon, and we expected to meet the car any minute, and—so here we are, thanks to you, when otherwise we might be drowning under that leaky little tree back there. You ought to be given a life-saving medal."
"Oh, we like to!" eagerly began Marjorie, and then, remembering that the automobile game was over, she finished, politely: "I mean, one is glad, of course, to do what one can. I dare say had the circumstances been reversed you would have done no less for us."
"Which does not in the least diminish our gratitude to you," smiled the elder of their guests, graciously. "I'm afraid, though I can't see out, that a good many people less fortunate than we are being drenched. Have we passed many?"
"Several," said Dolliver. Just then, by one of the coincidences in which life abounds, he leaned forward, attracted perhaps by some vague familiarity of outline or attitude, to look more sharply at a man standing in the comparative protection of the high hedge surrounding a country place, at the same time exclaiming: "Why, that looks like—no, it isn't. Yes," as a brilliant flash of lightning made everything distinct for an instant, "by George, it is!" He stopped the car, hastily explaining to the ladies in the tonneau: "Here's a man I know. Would you mind—I'm afraid he may be a little wet, but would you mind if I asked him to join us?"
"Certainly not," cordially returned the grandmother. "Surely, we should be very ungrateful indeed to deny your friend the shelter you have so generously given to two strangers."
Page accordingly backed the car toward the figure crushed into the hedge, and called:
"Come in out of the wet, won't you? This is Dolliver—Page Dolliver," he added, as the other peered through the darkness of the storm, apparently questioning that this invitation could be meant for him. "Hurry up, man! You'll melt!"
"By Christopher, this is luck!" responded a pleasant masculine voice, at the sound of which, Marjorie afterward remembered, the girl gave a little gasp. "I thought I'd have to swim for it. I'm already pretty wet, you know," he warned, pausing in the act of unbuttoning the curtain-flap.
"Never mind. There are plenty of rugs and things. I think you can manage. There are two ladies back there whom we picked up down the road a bit, but they say you may come in."
"I'm deeply grateful to them—and to you." The young man stepped quickly into the dusky tonneau, turning as he did so to refasten the flap against driving gusts of rain. "And I'll try to do as little damage as possible. As the moving figures in a flood, you people certainly do outclass the Noah family, and, thanks to you, I'm not really so very wet yet, except on the surface. There, I think that's all tight. Now, is there a heavy rug in which I can insulate myself, so to speak, before I sit down? Ah, thank you," as the girl, who had drawn nearer her grandmother to make room for him, silently thrust into his hands a rug she had already pulled from the rack, which he wrapped around him before slipping into the seat beside her. "It's very generous of you to let me share—" He broke off sharply, and Dolliver, who had been waiting for an opportunity to introduce his friend, unobservantly seized the moment.
"Marjorie, this is Mr. Karr," he said. "My wife—here beside me. These other ladies, like yourself, we have just—"
Marjorie, who had twisted in her seat in an effort to help Karr with the rug, had seen him look for the first time at his companions in the tonneau, and now she clutched her husband's arm. Dolliver turned to see in the lightning's flickering glare the two young people staring into each other's agitated faces, while the grandmother's expression was one of stern rigidity. For a few seconds the only sound was of the pouring rain and the crashing thunder. Then the grandmother spoke.
"We already know Mr. Karr—rather well," she said. "Now if you'll be kind enough to drive to Meadowvale as rapidly as possible, please?"
"Certainly," said Dolliver. As he started the car he leaned toward Marjorie, muttering, "Great Scott, what have we got into now?"
"I beg your pardon," young Karr was saying at the same time, in the tense tone of one who suffers. "I didn't know—of course, I couldn't dream that—that it would be you—here."
In talking it over afterward the Dollivers agreed that if the lady had accepted this statement at its face value and held her peace, nothing more would have happened, but they differed concerning the reasons for her subsequent course. Marjorie contended that she was too angry, believing herself outwitted and ensnared, to permit Karr to carry off unchallenged his apparent assumption that she was unaware of the superior strategy through which she fancied he had brought about the present situation; while Page argued that in her startled perception of the dangers of this swift crisis, the grandmother simply committed the immemorial error of conspirators and intrigantes at crucial moments and overplayed her part. At any rate, to young Karr's somewhat broken explanation she returned, with cold if somewhat precipitate severity:
"That is scarcely worth while, is it? Surely you do not expect me to accept this as coincidence."
"This—meeting, you mean? Certainly it's coincidence, Mrs. Toland. What else could it be?"
"The trap was skilfully arranged, I admit," she continued. "We stepped into it without suspicion. But you must see that it is all quite obvious now."
"Gran, dear!" the girl expostulated, faintly.
"What's obvious?" puzzled the man. "I don't understand."
"Please don't be childish, Mr. Karr, nor assume that I am," was the cold response. "When your friends, having passed us, return after some time to pick us up, selecting us from among the scores whom they must have seen hurrying for cover, and when within five minutes after this you are discovered waiting under a hedge by the wayside, surely the inference is too obvious to admit of discussion."
"Page!" ejaculated Marjorie, in an indignant undertone. "Did you hear that? Does she think that we—" Dolliver lifted a silencing hand and half turned toward the group in the tonneau, his lips parted to speak but Karr had already taken up the charge.
"Nevertheless, you're mistaken, Mrs. Toland," he said, firmly. "And whatever you prefer to believe of me, you must not misunderstand the motives of Mr. and Mrs. Dolliver. If they returned to pick you up after passing you, it was solely in response to their own kindly impulse and had no connection whatever with me or my affairs, of which they know nothing. My later advent upon the scene was entirely accidental and unpremeditated, and this encounter was as great a surprise to me as it could possibly have been to you. You must believe this in justice to Mr. and Mrs. Dolliver."
"And also in justice to Mr. Karr," began Page.
But the girl interrupted, in a tone as distinct and cold as Mrs. Toland's:
"I think you forget, grandmother, that Mr. Karr has made it perfectly clear that he has as little desire to meet us as—as we have to meet him."
"Why do you say that?" demanded the young man. "How can you say that?"
"Never mind now," interposed Mrs. Toland. "This is neither the time nor the place to discuss it. Can't you drive faster, Mr. Dolliver? Haven't we passed the Stanford gate yet?"
"I think we're not far from it," Page replied. "It's impossible to make much speed in this downpour. The road's too slippery. Is the rain driving in at all back there?"
"Make all the haste you can, please," she bade him, heedless of his question, and turned again toward Karr, who meanwhile was urging the girl to speech.
"Why do you say I haven't wanted to see you?" he persisted. "What could I have done that I haven't done?"
"Nothing, I suppose—since you couldn't explain it," she returned, bitterly.
"Natalie, I positively forbid you to talk about this matter here," sternly interposed her grandmother again, raising her voice to make it heard over the beating of the rain, and then waited for a terrific crash of thunder to subside before continuing: "And if this contretemps is as accidental as you would have us believe, Mr. Karr, you will not take advantage of it to force upon my granddaughter a situation from which she would otherwise have been protected."
"I have already assured you," he told her, clearly, that the encounter is wholly accidental, and I was about to remove myself and so terminate this very painful scene, when Natalie said something that—well, that must be explained, that's all! I want to know what you expected that I didn't do?" he continued, doggedly.
"But you didn't do anything," exclaimed the girl, with a little catch in her voice. "You just accepted it—tacitly acknowledged everything—"
"Accepted it! Good Lord!" he cried. "Didn't you make it sufficiently clear that I must? Did you expect me to go on indefinitely being turned away from your door and having my letters sent back unopened? A man doesn't do that, you know."
"But you never even tried!" she retorted, sharply. "You never came—never telephoned—"
"Never tried! Never camel What do you mean?" Both were talking at once, and neither paid the slightest attention to Mrs. Toland, who was vainly trying to check their impetuous utterances. "Don't you know—"
"You never even answered my letter!" charged the girl, concluding her accusation.
"Letter?" Karr caught at the word. "What letter? I've had no letter from you! Natalie, did you write to me—after—?"
"Certainly not!" Mrs. Toland seized the opportunity, but was unable to hold it. The girl was not to be restrained.
"Yes, I did. I can't help it, Gran, I did! What's the use of denying that I wrote to him? He knows I did!"
"Natalie, control yourself!" Mrs. Toland's voice was incisive, and for a moment her granddaughter yielded to the habit of submission to authority. It was here that Majorie leaned nearer her husband, softly protesting:
"Page, we've no right to hear this. It's too intimate! We must talk—and keep talking!"
"Greatness isn't the only thing that's thrust upon one," he retorted. "Besides, this begins to look like a battle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Don't distract their attention."
Meanwhile, Mrs. Toland had continued: "I have already pointed out, Mr. Karr, that you have us at a disadvantage. I can neither alight, with my granddaughter, in this storm, nor can I insist, under the circumstances, upon your doing so. But I assure you this affair has been settled once for all, and it will be perfectly useless to reopen it. Moreover, you force me to remind you that we are not alone, and that this is essentially a family matter."
"It is essentially a matter concerning Natalie and me, Mrs. Toland," asserted the young man. "I begin to suspect that the family has already assumed a much larger part in it than is just to either of us—and I'm going to find out, here and now."
"Bully for you!" muttered Dolliver, but only Marjorie heard. "More power to your elbow!"
"Natalie, didn't any of my messages reach you?" asked Karr.
"What messages? There were no messages. Days and days went by—and you never came—never made a sign—nor sent any word at all—and then I wrote, begging for some explanation—"
"But I did! Dearest, dearest, I besieged your house! I called, I wrote—telephoned—telegraphed—the answer was always the same: 'Miss Brainard is not at home.' The letters came back unopened, the telegrams were never answered, and at last, naturally—I didn't want to annoy you—and I gave it up. I realized, of course, that the thing had shocked you—hurt you cruelly—and that you had every right to demand of me an explanation; but I did not expect you to deny me all opportunity to make it. I did not expect to be condemned without any hearing whatever."
"But—but I don't understand," faltered Natalie.
"Perhaps Mrs. Toland can explain," grimly suggested her lover.
"I can." The grandmother's tone was crisp and clear and full of dignity. "And it is quite characteristic of you, Mr. Karr, that you should first place me at a disadvantage and then force this explanation."
"I am at least giving you an opportunity to explain," he submitted. "That's more than you did for me."
Here Marjorie and Page exchanged furtive glances of delight. When Mrs. Toland spoke again, the increased frigidity of her tone indicated that the shot had taken effect.
"You are entirely aware, I think, Mr. Karr," she began, "that although Miss Brainard's family had at first no active objection to you personally, we have at no time considered the proposed marriage between you and my granddaughter as at all desirable or even suitable."
"I have been given to understand as much," he mentioned, dryly.
"And for that reason—as well as because she is so young—we declined to announce the engagement formally."
"Hoping that something would occur to break it off," he translated.
"Believing that my granddaughter herself would perceive with experience that she would be much wiser to marry a man of her own circle, who could give her the social position to which she is accustomed and for which she has been rather brilliantly equipped, as well as the means to enjoy it."
"In other words, you felt that she would be throwing herself away on a nobody," he observed.
"The phrase is yours, Mr. Karr."
"But correctly conveys your meaning, nevertheless. May I suggest that we have been over this ground rather exhaustively before, Mrs. Toland?"
"And, anyway, in the end you did consent, you know," Natalie reminded her.
"In the end we—acquiesced reluctantly," discriminated the grandmother, "because Mr. Karr was importunate and you were headstrong, and the situation—which would never have been permitted to reach that point had I been at home—seemed to call for tact and discretion. We hoped and believed, however, that the arrangement would prove to be only temporary. But we also believed—and upon this I cannot place too strong an emphasis—we also believed, Mr. Karr, that you were at least an honorable man, of unimpeachable morals and exemplary life. When this belief proved to be unfounded, the tentative engagement between you—"
"It was not tentative! Why do you all persist in belittling it?" contended Natalie. "Whatever may have happened since, we were formally and definitely engaged, with the full consent of the family!"
"I repeat, the tentative engagement ended at once, automatically," continued Mrs. Toland, unmoved. "Under no circumstances would Miss Brainard's family permit her to associate with—much less to marry—a man of lax morals and dissipated habits."
"And you find it convenient to assume that I have both." Karr was evidently holding himself in strong restraint.
"The facts speak for themselves," she returned, with cold finality. "The men of our circle do not figure in gambling-house scandals, Mr. Karr."
Marjorie shot a quick glance at Dolliver, who winked reassuringly, shrugged a shoulder ever so slightly, and brushed away an imaginary cobweb with a little movement of his fingers.
"Oh, Rob, why were you there?" appealed the girl. "There must be some explanation!"
"Mr. Karr's reasons for visiting places of that character cannot concern us in the least, Natalie," admonished her grandmother. "It is indisputable that he was arrested there by the police, like any other common gambler, which is quite sufficient to exclude him from our horizon."
"Natalie, on my word of honor I was never in a gambling-house before in my life," said Karr, very earnestly. "Will you believe that?"
"Y-yes, if you say so, Rob; but why—"
"I went this time solely out of curiosity, and because George Holmes asked me to. He was a classmate of mine at college and lives in Denver. He's a mighty good sort, but he has one weakness—he will gamble. He told me that he was going to Gildersleeve's that night, and invited me to go with him."
"And you went, of course, for his sake," swiftly interpreted the girl. "Don't you see, Gran? He went to be with this Mr.—with his friend—hoping that he might influence him not to—"
No, I didn't, Natalie," disclaimed her lover. "Don't make any mistake about this. There aren't any missionary motives mixed up in it at all. Holmes has a conscience of his own, in perfectly good working order. He doesn't need mine. He has also a lot of money, and it is distinctly none of my business what he does with it. I have already told you that I went solely out of curiosity."
"Page, I like that man!" impulsively breathed Marjorie.
Dolliver nodded, smiling, and bent over the wheel, trying to see the road ahead. The rain still fell heavily, but the lightning had almost ceased and the thunder was dying away in distant rumbles.
"And does that seem to you a very lofty or a very adequate motive, Mr. Karr?" inquired Mrs. Toland.
"It seems to me a very natural one," he returned, simply. "In the first place, Gildersleeve's house is celebrated in every club in town for the beauty of its decorations. It was done by Sutphen Brown and is called one of his masterpieces, which in itself is enough to make a man want to see it. Then we've been hearing a good deal lately about the frankness with which these gambling-places are conducted under the very noses of the police, and of the numbers of well-known men who frequent them—notably Gildersleeve's—and when Holmes offered to take me there it occurred to me that it would be interesting to see how much of all this was true and what a gambling-house was like, anyway—and I found out. We'd been there just half an hour when the place was raided, and for some reason—perhaps because they knew we were not habitués of the house—the police chose Holmes and me, with three or four others, as scapegoats, and let the rest go. Of course, we gave assumed names and had comparatively little difficulty in getting off, but somebody recognized us—"
"And the next day we learned from the morning paper that the man whose attentions to my granddaughter we had countenanced and for whom we had, therefore, to a certain extent, made ourselves social sponsors, had figured in the vulgar, sensational, disgraceful expose of a notorious gambling-house."
"And does that seem to you a sufficient reason for denying me all opportunity to explain how my presence there came about?" he demanded.
"That it came about at all, Mr. Karr, makes any explanation futile," was her sharp retort. "A man may step from my drawing-room into the police court, if his inclinations lead him that way—but he cannot return to my drawing-room."
"Score one for grandmother," murmured Dolliver in his wife's ear.
Marjorie's hands were clenched, her eyes brilliant and her cheeks pink with excitement.
"But is that all?" cried Natalie.
"All?" echoed her grandmother. "What do you mean?"
"Why—there must have been something more—something worse—than that! Rob, on your word of honor, was that all that happened?"
"On my word of honor, Natalie, that was the extent of my transgression. I've told you the whole truth. You believe that, don't you? The whole truth!"
"Without altering the situation by a hair's breadth," Mrs. Toland hastened to supply, "since you have not been able to deny the essential facts in the matter."
"But he has, Gran! Don't you see? The essential thing is his reason—his motive in being there. That makes all the difference."
"I have already said, Natalie, that we are not concerned with Mr. Karr's reasons, plausible or otherwise, for indulging his somewhat questionable tastes, nor with the arguments with which he seeks to justify his conduct. The situation should not have been possible under any circumstances, and that it was possible has eliminated him, as far as we are concerned, from any future consideration."
"Apropos of reasons, we are forgetting the other wing of the situation," said Karr, "and, unlike you, Mrs. Toland, we are very much interested, Natalie and I, in the arguments her family can offer in justification of their own conduct in this affair."
"Well, I wondered how long it was going to take them to get to that!" whispered Marjorie, with a catch of her breath. "I almost asked her myself!"
"Yes, you didn't finish telling us about that." The girl quickly caught up the thread. "You very deftly shifted the burden of defense to Rob's shoulders, didn't you?"
"I do not recognize the necessity of any defense, Natalie, and I have explained very fully, it seems to me."
"You've not explained why I was told that no message had come from Rob."
"My dear child, you had already had a very painful shock in this wretched affair and we thought it best to spare you every possible additional strain. We knew that as soon as you were able to see all this rationally—in perspective, as it were—you would inevitably come to feel as the rest of us did about it."
"'We thought,' 'we knew.' You mean you thought and told mamma what to do, as usual," keenly charged Natalie.
"And did it never occur to you, Mrs. Toland," pressed the young man, "that as Natalie's fiancé it was my right to explain this thing to her, and her right to hear me if she wished? Has it occurred to you that we are individuals, living our own lives?"
"It occurred to us not only that we had the right, but that it was our duty to safeguard a very young and inexperienced girl against the continued advances of a man who had already proved himself unworthy of her," stated Mrs. Toland, with great dignity.
"Even to the extent of intercepting letters, telegrams, and telephone messages intended for her?" he thrust, and instantly the grandmother parried:
"Certainly to the extent of protecting her from her own foolish impulses, resulting from the blind, sentimental infatuation which had led her into this unfortunate situation in the first place, and from which she could hardly be expected to free herself at once."
"And do you mean to tell me"—the girl's voice shook—"that you all—all of you—lied to me—"
"Natalie! You forget yourself, my child!"
"Yes, lied to me—and lied about me—all that time? That you let me sit there hour after hour—day after day—watching—waiting—praying for just one little word from Rob—just one little sign—"
"My dear love!" Karr's voice was husky.
"You let me think that he was disgraced—and ashamed—and a coward—that he was afraid even to come and see me again—and all the time you were lying to me about him and to him about me! You even— Where's the letter I wrote him? What have you done with that?"
"Your mother has it."
"Where did she get it?"
"The servants had instructions to take all outgoing mail to her."
"Oh! Oh! How—how dared you!"
"My poor child, all this just shows how necessary it was. Even yet you are unreasoning and irresponsible in this matter—a victim of the strange sort of infatuation a young girl occasionally conceives for a man entirely unworthy of her. Some day, Natalie, you will understand and be grateful—"
"You had no right to assume that he had 'proved himself unworthy,' as you say. He hadn't!"
"Well, at any rate, he has now," observed Mrs. Toland.
"Now?" Both challenged her at the same instant.
"By your own confession, Mr. Karr, whatever your real motive in visiting that gambling-house may have been, you were entirely unrestrained by any sense of the impropriety of visiting an establishment the very existence of which was a defiance of law and order and an open flaunting of one of the most pernicious forms of vice. By your own confession you choose your friends from among persons whose habit it is to frequent resorts of that character, and you regard the whole matter so lightly that, even accepting your defense at its face value, your unprincipled curiosity led you to countenance and encourage by your presence a practice universally condemned by all right-thinking people. I need scarcely add that my granddaughter is not accustomed to the atmosphere which you seem to find it so easy to enter, and I assure you her family will think no price too high to rescue her from such association and such a future as life with you promises. The very fact that you were willing, under all the circumstances, to force yourself upon us at a moment like this and to compel discussion of a question already closed only proves again that—" She stopped short, caught her breath, paused for a tense moment, and demanded: "Where are we? Why haven't we arrived at Meadowvale? We should have been there long ago! Mr. Dolliver, where are you taking us?"
"I don't think I can tell you exactly," replied Page, leaning forward to peer out into the darkness. "I must have taken the wrong turn somewhere, and I've been running around a little, trying various roads, thinking I might strike the right one somehow. We can't be very far from it now, I think."
"Why, Page, are we lost?" cried Marjorie. "How funny! How can we be?"
"This is very strange, indeed—very extraordinary, Mr. Dolliver," sternly said Mrs. Toland. "It was a perfectly straight road—and a very short distance, if you had turned at the Stanford place."
"Yes, but you see I didn't," answered Page, mildly. "I must have run past it somehow in the storm."
"Impossible!" Mrs. Toland seemed dangerously near losing her temper. "This whole situation is intolerable, and your pretense of coincidence and accident is preposterous! Mr. Dolliver, I insist upon knowing where you are taking us!"
"In view of your own practices, as revealed by your conversation—which you will understand I couldn't avoid overhearing," he imperturbably returned, "it is not surprising, madam, that you should suspect conspiracy and intrigue back of every unexpected situation; but you will perhaps pardon me if, under all the circumstances, I don't care to defend myself. Moreover, I have just got my eye on a familiar landmark, and, as I thought, we're not far from Meadowvale. I'll deposit you there in about five minutes."
"Now, you see, dear, it all comes to this in the end," said Karr. "This whole thing was very evidently a conspiracy on the part of your family to separate us. They were looking for a peg upon which to hang a case against me, and they found it in this Gildersleeve incident—in which connection, by the way, I want to say that Mrs. Toland was quite right about one thing. I had no business to go to the place at all."
"Ah!" observed Mrs. Toland.
"However, I've told you how and why I went," he resumed, without heeding the interruption, "and I told you in all my letters how deeply and sincerely sorry I am for the whole affair. Now, you're not going to let this part us, are you, Natalie?"
"You know I'm not!"
"Then the next question is, what are we going to do?"
"Do?"
"Because I have an idea that you're not going to have a very happy time at home from now on, dearest. They're never going to approve of your marrying me, you know, and they may even try— Natalie, are you sure you trust me now?"
"Perfectly, perfectly sure!"
"Then will you—would you—would you be willing to come to me—to marry me, Natalie—soon? Very soon?"
"Certainly not!" Again Mrs. Toland took up her cudgels. "Don't be preposterous as well as impertinent, Mr. Karr! Natalie is only a child."
"Natalie is a woman—and is to be my wife," he told her, distinctly. "It may be easier for you in the end, Mrs. Toland, if you will remember that now. Natalie, will you marry me—soon?"
"Yes—if—if you think best, Rob."
"My dear! Then—this is the twenty-fifth—will you marry me a month from to-day?—the twenty-fifth of September?"
"Y-yes, Rob."
"Natalie, I warn you now that you will never marry Robert Karr with either your mothers or my consent."
"Then I shall marry him without it, grandmother, but I am going to marry him—I am—on the twenty-fifth—of September." The reply began ringingly and ended in a happy little sob. Then, as Page turned in at the Meadowvale gate, she cried, brokenly: "Oh, you dear Dolliver people! I hope you realize—for I can never tell you— But you'll come to our wedding, won't you? You will, won't you?"
"Indeed we will, you sweet child!" cried Marjorie, winking the tears out of her eyes.
"Be-because," finished the other, unsteadily, "there never would have been any wedding if it hadn't been for you!"
A moment later they left Mrs. Toland and Natalie at the Lathams' door, after conventional farewells for the benefit of the servants, and drove away, with Karr still in the tonneau. For a few minutes they were all silent. Then the car jolted a little, and Page said, hastily, as if he had just been shaken out of a dream:
"By the way, where do you want to go now?"
"I? Oh—I don't know." Karr, too, came back to the realities of the moment with a start. "It doesn't matter. Drop me anywhere. Here, if you like. But first I want to tell you—to thank you— Oh, well, I can't! I hope you understand."
"We do," said Dolliver, gripping the hand the other had arisen to lay on his shoulder. "We're in love ourselves!"
"And I want to apologize to you both for thrusting my personal affairs on you as I have, but you see—"
"You don't owe us any apology," interrupted Dolliver. "If anybody apologizes it should be I."
"You? Why?" asked his friend.
"And I, too. Because we listened," supplied Marjorie. "I knew I oughtn't to—it was very rude indeed—but I just couldn't help it!"
"Well—that wasn't what I was going to say—though it's true enough," said her husband.
"What then?" asked Karr. "What have you to do penance for?"
"For getting lost." Page's tone sounded almost sheepish.
"But, man alive, that was the luckiest thing for me that ever happened! Where should I have been if you hadn't?"
"That's it," said Dolliver. "It was sheer, brazen, officious effrontery on my part—but that's what I thought. So I did it."
"Wha—what?" gasped the other.
"Page Dolliver!" cried Marjorie "You didn't—you don't mean—"
"My dearest girl," her husband expostulated, still somewhat embarrassed, "you didn't think I was really lost, did you? I could drive a car through this neighborhood blindfolded!"
"Well, I thought it was funny," she began, but Karr fell to laughing and stood stooping over them, clinging to the rug-rod with one hand and ecstatically beating his host about the shoulders with the other, incoherently praising him the while. When they had grown a little used to the idea, Marjorie exclaimed:
"But, Page, how could you?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I felt like the god in the machine for a while there, and I guess it went to my head a little."
"But—dearest—it was almost a trick, wasn't it?" she asked.
"Quite. But we already had the name, and it occurred to me all at once that we might as well enjoy a little of the game, so I just made the most of it."
"I thought you weren't going to play any more games," she reminded him, drolly. "I thought this was going to be strictly—"
"First aid to the injured?" he interrupted. "Well, wasn't it? Besides—this automobile game is a good game, after all, isn't it, girlie? Let's play it some more—shall we?"