It is probable that he got the truth
out of her, perhaps all of it. That will remain
a matter of doubt; Cora’s evidence, if she gave
it, not being wholly trustworthy in cases touching
herself. But she felt no need of mentioning to
any one that she had seen her former lover that day.
He had gone before the return of Enfield, Mr. Trumble’s
assistant, who was a little later than usual, it happened;
and the extreme nervousness and preoccupation exhibited
by Cora in telling Enfield of his employer’s
new plans were attributed by the cashier to the natural
agitation of a lady about to wed in a somewhat unusual
(though sensible) manner.
It is the more probable that she told
Ray the whole truth, because he already knew something
of Corliss’s record abroad. On the dusty
desk in Ray’s own office lay a letter, received
that morning from the American Consul at Naples, which
was luminous upon that subject, and upon the probabilities
of financial returns for the investment of a thousand
dollars in the alleged oil-fields of Basilicata.
In addition, Cora had always found
it very difficult to deceive Vilas: he had an
almost perfect understanding of a part of her nature;
she could never far mislead him about herself.
With her, he was intuitive and jumped to strange,
inconsistent, true conclusions, as women do.
He had the art of reading her face, her gestures;
he had learned to listen to the tone of her voice more
than to what she said. In his cups, too, he had
fitful but almost demoniac inspirations for hidden
truth.
And, remembering that Cora always
“got even,” it remains finally to wonder
if she might not have told him everything at the instance
of some shadowy impulse in that direction. There
may have been a luxury in whatever confession she
made; perhaps it was not entirely forced from her,
and heaven knows how she may have coloured it.
There was an elusive, quiet satisfaction somewhere
in her subsequent expression; it lurked deep under
the surface of the excitement with which she talked
to Enfield of her imminent marital abduction of his
small boss.
Her agitation, a relic of the unknown
interview just past, simmered down soon, leaving her
in a becoming glow of colour, with slender threads
of moisture brilliantly outlining her eyelids.
Mr. Enfield, a young, well-favoured and recent importation
from another town, was deliciously impressed by the
charm of the waiting lady. They had not met;
and Enfield wondered how Trumble had compassed such
an enormous success as this; and he wished that he
had seen her before matters had gone so far. He
thought he might have had a chance. She seemed
pleasantly interested in him, even as it was and
her eyes were wonderful, with their swift, warm, direct
little plunges into those of a chance comrade of the
moment. She went to the window, in her restlessness,
looking down upon the swarming street below, and the
young man, standing beside her, felt her shoulder
most pleasantly though very lightly in
contact with his own, as they leaned forward, the better
to see some curiosity of advertising that passed.
She turned her face to his just then, and told him
that he must come to see her: the wedding journey
would be long, she said, but it would not be forever.
Trumble bounded in, shouting that
everything was attended to, except instructions to
Enfield, whom he pounded wildly upon the back.
He began signing papers; a stenographer was called
from another room of his offices; and there was half
an hour of rapid-fire. Cora’s bag came,
and she gave the bearer the note for Laura; another
bag was brought for Wade; and both bags were carried
down to the automobile the bridegroom had left waiting
in the street. Last, came a splendid cluster
of orchids for the bride to wear, and then Wade, with
his arm about her, swept her into the corridor, and
the stirred Enfield was left to his own beating heart,
and the fresh, radiant vision of this startling new
acquaintance: the sweet mystery of the look she
had thrown back at him over his employer’s shoulder
at the very last. “Do not forget me!”
it had seemed to say. “We shall come back some
day.”
The closed car bore the pair to the
little grim marriage-shop quickly enough, though they
were nearly run down by a furious police patrol automobile,
at a corner near the Richfield Hotel. Their escape
was by a very narrow margin of safety, and Cora closed
her eyes. Then she was cross, because she had
been frightened, and commanded Wade cavalierly to
bid the driver be more careful.
Wade obeyed sympathetically.
“Of course, though, it wasn’t altogether
his fault,” he said, settling back, his arm round
his lady’s waist. “It’s an
outrage for the police to break their own rules that
way. I guess they don’t need to be in a
hurry any more than we do!”
The Justice made short work of it.
As they stood so briefly before him,
there swept across her vision the memory of what she
had always prophesied as her wedding: a
crowded church, “The Light That Breathed O’er
Eden” from an unseen singer; then the warm air
trembling to the Lohengrin march; all heads turning;
the procession down the aisle; herself appearing climax
of everything a delicious and brilliant
figure: graceful, rosy, shy, an imperial prize
for the groom, who in these foreshadowings had always
been very indistinct. The picture had always
failed in outline there: the bridegroom’s
nearest approach to definition had never been clearer
than a composite photograph. The truth is, Cora
never in her life wished to be married.
But she was.