Lo, Michael! Part 36

"D'ye promus you will?"

"Certainly," said Starr with dignity.

"Will ye do it right off straight?"

"Yes, if you will go at once."

"Cross yer heart?"

"What?"

"Cross yer heart ye will? Thet's a sort o' oath t' make yer keep yer promus," explained Lizzie.

"A lady needs no such thing to make her keep her promise. Don't you know that ladies always keep their promises?"

"I wasn't so sure!" said Lizzie, "You can't most allus tell, 't's bes' to be on the safe side. Will yer promus me yer won't marry him ef ye find out he's my husband?"

"Most certainly I will not marry him if he is already married. Now go, please, at once. I haven't a minute to spare. If you don't go at once I cannot have time to call him up."

"You sure I kin trust you?"

Starr turned on the girl such a gaze of mingled dignity and indignation that her eye quailed before it.

"Well, I s'pose I gotta," she said, dropping her eyes before Starr's righteous wrath. "But 'no weddin' bells' fer you to-night ef yeh keep yer promus. So long!"

Starr shuddered as the girl pa.s.sed her. The whiff of unwashed garments, stale cooking, and undefinable tenement odor that reached her nostrils sickened her. Was it possible that she must let this creature have a hold even momentarily upon her last few hours? Yet she knew she must. She knew she would not rest until she had been rea.s.sured by Carter's voice and the explanation that he would surely give her. She rushed upstairs to her own private 'phone, locking the door on even her old nurse, and called up the 'phone in Carter's private apartments.

Without owning it to herself she had been a little troubled all the afternoon because she had not heard from Carter. Her flowers had come,--magnificent in their costliness and arrangement, and everything he was to attend to was done, she knew, but no word had come from himself. It was unlike him.

She knew that he had given a dinner the evening before to his old friends who were to be his ushers, and that the festivities would have lasted late.

He had not probably arisen very early, of course, but it was drawing on toward the hour of the wedding now. She intended to begin to dress at once after she had 'phoned him. It was strange she had not heard from him.

After much delay an unknown voice answered the 'phone, and told her Mr.

Carter could not come now. She asked who it was but got no response, except that Mr. Carter couldn't come now. The voice had a m.u.f.fled, thick sound.

"Tell him to call me then as soon as possible," she said, and the voice answered, "Awright!"

Reluctantly she hung up the receiver and called Morton to help her dress.

She would have liked to get the matter out of the way before she went about the pretty ceremony, and submitted herself to her nurse's hands with an ill grace and troubled thoughts. The coa.r.s.e beauty of Lizzie's face haunted her. It reminded her of an actress that Carter had once openly admired, and she had secretly disliked. She found herself shuddering inwardly every time she recalled Lizzie's harsh voice, and uncouth sentences.

She paid little heed to the dressing process after all and let Morton have her way in everything, starting nervously when the 'phone bell rang, or anyone tapped at her door.

A message came from her father finally. He hoped to be with her in less than an hour now, and as yet no word had come from Carter! Why did he not know she would be anxious? What could have kept him from his usual greeting of her, and on their wedding day!

Suddenly, in the midst of Morton's careful draping of the wedding veil which she was trying in various ways to see just how it should be put on at the last minute, Starr started up from her chair.

"I cannot stand this, Mortie. That will do for now. I must telephone Mr.

Carter. I can't understand why he doesn't call me."

"Oh, but the poor man is that busy!" murmured Morton excusingly as she hurried obediently out of the room. "Now, mind you don't muss that beautiful veil."

But after a half hour of futile attempt to get into communication with Carter, Starr suddenly appeared in her door calling for her faithful nurse again.

"Mortie!" she called excitedly. "Come here quick! I've ordered the electric. It's at the door now. Put on your big cloak and come with me!

I've got to see Mr. Carter at once and I can't get him on the 'phone."

"But Miss Starr!" protested Morton. "You've no time to go anywhere now, and look at your pretty veil!"

"Never mind the veil, Mortie, I'm going. Hurry. I can't stop to explain.

I'll tell you on the way. We'll be back before anyone has missed us."

"But your mamma, Miss Starr! She will be very angry with me!"

"Mamma must not know. And anyway I must go. Come, if you won't come with me I'm going alone."

Starr with these words grasped a great cloak of dark green velvet, soft and pliable as a skin of fur, threw it over her white bridal robes, and hurried down the stairs.

"Oh, Miss Starr, darlin'," moaned Morton looking hurriedly around for a cloak with which to follow. "You'll spoil yer veil sure! Wait till I take it off'n ye."

But Starr had opened the front door and was already getting into the great luxurious car that stood outside.

CHAPTER XXIII

Michael, as he went about on his search kept crying over and over again in his heart: "Oh, G.o.d! Do something to save her! Do something to save my little Starr!"

Over and over the prayer prayed itself without seeming thought or volition on his part, as he went from place to place, faithfully, keenly, step by step, searching out what he needed to know. At last toward six o'clock, his chain of evidence led him to the door of Stuyvesant Carter's apartments.

After some delay the door was opened reluctantly a little way by a servant with an immobile mask of a face who stared at him stupidly, but finally admitted that the three men whose names he mentioned were inside.

He also said that Mr. Carter was in, but could not be seen.

He closed the door on the visitor and went inside again to see if any of the others would come out. There ensued an altercation in loud and somewhat unsteady tones, and at last the door opened again and a fast looking young man who admitted himself to be Theodore Brooks slid out and closed it carefully behind him. The air that came with him was thick with tobacco smoke and heavy with liquor, and the one glimpse Michael got of the room showed a strange radiance of some peculiar light that glowed into the dusky hall weirdly.

The heavy-eyed youth who stood braced against the wall uncertainly looked into Michael's face with an impudent laugh.

"Well, parson, what's the grouch? Are you the devil or an angel sent to bring retribution?" He ended with a silly laugh that told the experienced ear of the young lawyer that the young man had been drinking heavily. And this was the man whose name was signed as Rev. Theodore Brooks, D.D., on the tawdry little marriage certificate that Michael held in his hand. His heart sank at the futility of the task before him.

"Are you a minister?" asked Michael briefly.

"Am I a minister?" drawled young Brooks. "M-my-m-m-mnster! Well now that get's my goat! Say, boys, he wants t' kno' 'f I'm a m-min'ster! Min-ster of what? Min-ster plen-p'ten'sherry?"

"Did you ever perform a marriage?" asked Michael sharply to stop the loud guffaw that was re-echoing through the polished corridors of the apartment.

"P'form a m'riage, d'ye say? No, but I'm goin' perform 't a marriage to-night 'f the dead wakes up in time. Goin' t' be bes' man. Say, boys! Got 'im 'wake yet? Gettin' late!"

Michael in despair took hold of the other's arm and tried to explain what he wanted to know. Finally he succeeded in bringing the matter into the fellow's comprehension.