VIII
Tommy had hurried back to Esther, and found her just as he had left her—a model of patience and propriety, with her little bag beside her. Though she was pale and heavy-eyed with sleep, she was as neat and fresh as ever. He told her his plan.
“Come on,” he said. “Hurry up! Alison said she’d wait for you.”
“I’m not going there,” she said. “I can’t, Tommy.”
“You’ll have to, dear!”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I can’t! I can’t! I just couldn’t face a strange woman now. What would she think of me, running away with you like this?”
“But what can I do with you, Esther?”
She clasped his arm and looked up into his face with streaming eyes.
“Oh, Tommy! Please don’t leave me! I’m so frightened and so lonely! Don’t send me away!”
“But you must be reasonable, sweetheart,” he implored. He began to realize how terribly he had mismanaged this affair. He cursed himself. Why hadn’t he made plans? “You know we’ve got to consider your reputation,” he said.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter!” she cried. “No one’ll ever know about it. Only don’t go away from me, Tommy! I couldn’t bear it!”
He yielded. He was so distressed, so confused, so alarmed, that he had no moral strength to withstand her. He took her to the Tressillon, a quiet, dingy place where he had once or twice had dinner. He took two rooms for them, on different floors, and he registered as “Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ellinger, Jr.” What else could he have done?
He slept soundly, although he hadn’t expected to close an eye. The first thing he thought of upon waking was to telephone to Esther’s room. He was told that she wasn’t there.
He dressed and hurried down to look for her everywhere—in the dining room, the[Pg 38] grill, the lounge; but he couldn’t find her. He was seized with panic.
When he found that her bag was still in her room, he resigned himself to wait; but he was angry—more angry than he had ever been in his life.
She came back at lunch time, composed and smiling. He was sitting on the lounge when she entered. He got up, took her arm with a nervous grip, and led her into a quiet corner.
“Look here, Esther!” he said. “You mustn’t act like this! Where have you been?”
“Oh, nowhere special—just for a walk.”
“I’d planned for us to go to the City Hall and get the license this morning, and get married.”
“Oh, Tommy!” she said, with a pout. “I don’t want to get married. I’m too young!”
“Don’t be silly!” he said impatiently. “We’ll have a bite of lunch and then we’ll hurry down town.”
“I think it’s silly to get married. We’re too young. What could we live on?”
“You needn’t worry about that,” he said, wounded. “I dare say I can manage to take care of you.”
“I don’t think you could, Tommy. We’d only be miserable. No, let’s not be married.”
“Esther!” he cried, appalled. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I think we’ve made a mistake. Let’s not be silly and make it any worse. The best thing would be for us to part. I can look out for myself perfectly well. I know a man here in the city—I dropped in to see him this morning, and he said he’d get me an engagement to go on the stage. He’s an advance agent, or something. I met him out in Millersburg. He has lots of pull.”
“Don’t talk that way!” he thundered. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? Haven’t you enough sense to see that you’re compromised?”
“No one knows anything about it, and there’s no harm done. I’ll write to mommer and tell her I ran away to go on the stage.”
“No, you won’t!” said Tommy. “I sent them a telegram this morning to say that we were married. I thought we would really be by the time they got the message.”
She looked at him in silence.
“Well!” she said at last. “You are a fool!”
“I suppose I am,” he replied bitterly. “However, it’s done now. They know you’re here with me, and they think you’re my wife, so you’ll have to see it through.”
“Not I!” she said cheerfully. “I’m not going to marry a kid like you!”
“For God’s sake, why did you come away with me?” he cried.
She smiled.
“I guess I liked you,” she said.
“Don’t you like me now?”
“Don’t be silly!” she said. “Of course I do; but I think we’re too young to think of marriage. It was a mistake.”
She was absolutely incomprehensible to him; but she could read him through and through, and the better she knew him, the greater grew her contempt.
“It was only a joke,” she said.
“Is that your idea of a joke? It’s a pretty dangerous one.”
She shook her head.
“No, it isn’t. I knew you were a nice boy. I knew I could trust you. I’ll always remember you, Tommy—always. You’re the nicest—”
“What do you propose to tell your parents? They’ll write to you here, or they may come.”
“They won’t find me. I’ll leave to-morrow morning. Mr. Syles told me of a nice boarding house. You’ll go back to your uncle. He’ll never know about it, and we’ll both forget the whole thing, won’t we?”
They went up into her room, and they argued all afternoon. Tommy tried to show her the enormity of her conduct, but she insisted upon regarding it as an escapade. She emphasized her sixteen years. She behaved with an airy childishness which she had never shown before, and which he knew to be false.
He had played the part she had determined he should play, and there was an end to him. Her modest little pocketbook was well stuffed with his money. She was in the city where she wished to be.
Sixteen? Esther sixteen? Preposterous idea! She was as old as the earth.
At last she said she was hungry, and reluctantly he took her downstairs to the dining room, crowded and noisy, with dancing going on to the music of a fiendish orchestra. Gone was his pride, gone was his kindly protectiveness. He was overwhelmed with shame; he saw himself a dupe, when he had fancied himself a hero.[Pg 39]
He couldn’t eat. He sat there across the table, in sullen wretchedness, keeping his eyes off her detestable face, listening to her calm voice, telling him that it was “better for them both to part now.” She was affable, but she made no effort to be kind. She had nothing to say about love, about grief at parting. She placidly ignored their romance. She urged him to be “sensible,” and a “good boy.” And with every word she made a fresh wound in his quivering, childish soul—scars never to be healed.
He was sitting with his back to the door, and he hadn’t seen old Van Brink enter. He had looked up in alarm at a shriek from Esther, and there was that face, convulsed with hatred—hatred for him! Then the shot, the crowd, the atrocious sense of unreality, of insane confusion, the pain in his wrist.
Some one had hurried him off in a taxi. He had looked back blankly from the doorway at the brightly lighted room, at an old man held by force from following him. It wasn’t, it couldn’t be real!
Once again he picked up the newspaper and looked at that shameful headline:
TRAGEDY NARROWLY AVERTED AT
HOTEL TRESSILLON
It occurred to young Thomas Ellinger that perhaps the tragedy had not, after all, been averted.