The Everlasting Whisper Part 16

Spalding gave them a key and they went to the house. It was Gloria who unlocked the door; Gratton, his white face looking more than ever bloodless, saw her hand tremble. She hurried in, excused herself, and ran upstairs. She knew that the time had come when she would have to listen to what Gratton was going to say; she knew what the burden of his plea would be--she knew everything, she thought wildly, except what her answer would be.

She heard Gratton stirring restlessly downstairs. He walked up and down, snapping his fingers incessantly, a habit which in the man bespoke nervousness. He sat at the piano and the keys jangled under his touch; he got up and walked again. He was waiting for her to come down; he was shaping in mind the words which would greet her before she had come fairly to the bottom of the stairs.

Gloria turned into her own room, locking the door behind her. She looked at herself in her gla.s.s; she was pale, her eyes looked unnaturally big and brilliant. She bit her lips and turned away. From her blouse she brought out the parcel her father had entrusted to her, slipping it under her mattress, smoothing the counterpane when she had done. Then, with but one clear thought in the world, that of getting into immediate touch with her mother, she went to the telephone.

On this floor, in a cosy little room opening upon the upstairs sun-porch, was an extension telephone, installed for the convenience of Gloria and her mother. Gloria went tiptoeing to it rather than go down where Gratton was. She rang the necessary bell for the operator in Truckee and put in her long-distance call in low tones which demanded a repet.i.tion before the operator got it right. Then she sat with the instrument in her hand, waiting. Once she heard Gratton's step close to the stairs and jumped to her feet, thinking that he was coming up. But he pa.s.sed by and the house grew silent again.

She wondered when Mark King would come! This afternoon--to-night--to-morrow? Spalding had said nothing; she had not mentioned King to Spalding, since she had not mentioned him to Gratton during the long ride----

Her telephone bell rang. After the irritating way of telephones, she was put presently into communication with Mrs. Gaynor.

"Gloria! Gloria! Is that you?" Her mother's voice sounded strange in Gloria's ears--shaken with emotion.

"Yes, mamma. I----"

"What has happened, child? Tell me, quick! I am nearly dead with worry.

Are you all right?"

"Of course, mamma. I----"

"But _where_ are you? Where were you all night? Are you sure everything is all right?"

Never had Gloria known her extremely clear-headed mother to be so wildly disturbed, so nervously incoherent.

"I have told you I am all right. I am up in the mountains, at our log house. Didn't Mr. Gratton tell you----?"

"Mr. Gratton?" Mrs. Gaynor was only more mystified. "He has told me nothing; I haven't seen him. I tried to phone him--oh, I have phoned everybody we know!--and he is out of town, and----"

But Gloria, panic-stricken by something her mother had said, cried:

"You have phoned _everybody!_ Oh, mamma! What--_what_ do you mean?"

"When you didn't come in last night--I have been crazy with worry! I thought you might be spending the night with one of your friends; I thought that maybe something had happened and it was being kept from me.

I rang up Georgia Stark and Mildred Carter and the Farrilees--and even the emergency hospitals. I thought----"

The rest was only a meaningless buzzing in Gloria's ears; she sat speechless herself, bereft of all reason for a dull moment, then harbouring quick, clear thoughts, as swift, as vivid as lightning, and in the end as blinding by their very quality of blazing light. _The newspapers!_

Still, dominated subconsciously by the thought which had brought her to the telephone, Gloria managed before the connection was broken to beg her mother to come immediately to her at the log house; to tell every one that Gloria was with her father. Her mother promised; began asking questions, and Gloria said a bleak "good-bye" and hung up.

_The newspapers_. She sat there staring into s.p.a.ce and seeing the San Francisco _Chronicle_ and _Examiner_, hawked by newsboys, on stands, thrust under doors, going like spreading snowflakes of a big storm into post-offices, to racing trains, all over the land. Her mother had telephoned the emergency hospitals! Gloria could have wept in rage, screamed, thrown herself down and given over to paroxysms of weeping.

But she only sat on, her face whiter and whiter, looking into emptiness and seeing headlines that towered as high as immense black cliffs. Her mother had telephoned Mildred Carter, that hateful, hateful, thrice-hateful Mildred Carter; had confessed that Gloria had gone out with Mr. Gratton; was gone all night, no one knew where; Mildred Carter who was as good as married to Bob Dwight of the _Chronicle_! And the emergency hospitals--Gloria with never a tear coming in her hour of greatest distress sat rocking back and forth on her chair, crying: "Oh, I wish I were dead!"

As one hears noises through a dream, long powerless to connect them logically with familiar happenings, so now did Gloria absently hearken to Gratton calling from the foot of the stairs. She jumped up only when she heard him start to mount them. Then, galvanized, she sprang to her feet, cried to him, "I'll be down in just a second," and ran to her room. She stood again looking at herself in her gla.s.s.

"Gloria Gaynor," she heard her own pale lips say, "you have gotten yourself into a nasty, nasty mess." The lips began to tremble; then, with a great struggle for will-power, they steadied. "And," said Gloria in a cold, harsh little voice, "it's up to you, and no one else, to get out the best you can this time."

She bathed her face and hands; she rubbed her cheeks with a towel, determined to bring some vestige of colour back; she took down her hair.

Only then, so distrait to-day was Gloria, did she think of changing from her boyish suit into a house dress. Her eyes, which had harboured only bewilderment and terror, now grew speculative. She brought from her closet half a dozen dresses; chose a certain pink one without a.n.a.lysing the reasons of her selection, found silk stockings and pumps, and dressed from top to toe. She would have to have it out with Gratton, one way or the other--she began to know which way it would be. But always a girl should be at her best. Also, she decided, by the time that she was becomingly gowned and her hair arranged tastefully, it was as well to let Gratton wait for her a while; waiting always, to some extent, brought to the one cooling his heels a sense of disadvantage. In short, Gloria had gone through the most panicky of her moments and was getting a grip on herself again. When, after Gratton had waited and fumed for upward of an hour, she went downstairs she looked cool and pretty, and quite unembarra.s.sed. He flashed a look at her that was eloquent of nervous excitement.

"I want to explain everything to you, Gloria----"

"It will take a good deal of explaining, won't it, Mr. Gratton?"

They went into the living-room and Gloria sat in a big chair while he stood before her, his fingers tapping and tapping at his cigarette-case.

"You listened-in while I talked with mamma, didn't you?" she said carelessly.

"No!" said Gratton, but so promptly that she knew he lied.

"Well?" she said indifferently. "Suppose we have the explanations now? I am sure that they will prove interesting."

"I am afraid," he began, talking swiftly, "that I have been instrumental in placing you in a false position. Last night I told you I had telephoned to your mother. I did try; they reported the line out of order. What could I do? I didn't want to alarm you. It was only a lark; I meant innocently, you know that, don't you, Gloria?"

"Did you?" she said, and managed to keep her lips smiling.

"It is only since coming here that I have realized how things will look; what people will think--and say, curse them. Our being out so long together; my buying clothing for you----"

"Our being registered as Mr. and Mrs. Gratton----"

His eyes burned, his lips clamped tight.

"Forgive me, Gloria! It was the mad impulse of a moment. I thought as we went in that it would look strange--a young, unmarried couple; that if I put down man and wife no one would think anything at all. And we'd be gone in a few hours; and probably you'd never go back there; and no one would know who you were."

"I see." Gloria's tone, devoid of expression, gave no clue to her racing thoughts. "You did that for my sake!"

"Yes," he said eagerly. "As I would do anything on earth for your sake.

You know that, Gloria; you know, and have known for a long time--always--that I love you. I was going to ask you soon to--to marry me, Gloria. And now, now you will marry me, won't you?"

"Yes." But Gloria did not say it aloud; not yet. She merely made it perfectly clear to Miss Gloria Gaynor that she was going to marry Gratton, and that there was to be no further question of it. And, oh, G.o.d! at this fateful moment, how she hated him! How she loathed and detested him! While a week ago--yesterday--she had wondered, dreamily, if she were in love with him! But that was when he was in the city, at home in his own wilderness. But now! She was in a trap. This man had made it, cunningly using in his work all that he knew of Gloria Gaynor.

There was no way out, save through the gate of matrimony. And--in her heart she laughed at him--through that other wider gate beyond, the gate of divorce. She would accept his name; the name of Gratton stood high in San Francisco. Then she would tell him how she loathed him; she would laugh at him, for physically she had no fear of him. And he would never have her for his own, despite all of his money and his position and his hideous trickery. Gratton, with all of his shrewdness, had not taken into consideration one thing: how in the city, on his native heath, he attracted Gloria; how in the woods he impressed her, in his unbecoming outdoor togs, as contemptible.

"You know how I love you," he was repeating. And he was sincere; she saw that in his eyes, in the unaccustomed colour in his face. He loved her as such an unclean animal could love. Oh, how he sickened her! "Will you marry me, Gloria? Will you forgive me for having, however unintentionally, placed you in a wrong light? Will you give me the right to protect you, to defend your good name? Oh, Gloria----"

Strange that the man had never revolted her as he did now! She wanted to get up and run from him. Meantime she was telling herself, almost calmly: "Yes, you'll marry him. The little beast!" She did get to her feet; he followed her into the hall.

"Let me be alone for a little while," she said quietly. She went to the stairway. "I am going upstairs; wait here for me----"

"You will come to me? You will marry me?"

"I--think--so. Don't!" she cried sharply as he moved to come to her.

"Wait----"

He swallowed nervously. "I--I hoped you would. And I saw how terribly the events of the last few hours might be misconstrued. So, Gloria, daring to hope, I sent word for a justice of the peace. He will be here this afternoon or this evening----"

"Justice of the peace!" Gloria's nerves jangled loose in her irrepressible laughter.

"We'll have a priest later, of course," he ran on hurriedly. "But I couldn't arrange for one so soon."

Gloria went slowly upstairs, walking backward, looking down on him with unfathomable eyes.