“It may be,” Dick said, “I dunno. I’ve reached an impasse. Still there is a great deal in your proposition.”
They turned in at the portico that extended out over the big oak doors of their club. An attendant in white turned the knob for them, with the grin of enthusiastic welcome that was 99 the usual tribute to these two good-looking, well set up young men from those who served them.
“I’ll think it over,” Dick added, as he gave up his hat and stick, “and let you know what decision I come to.”
In another five minutes they were deep in a game of Kelly-pool from which Dick emerged triumphantly richer by the sum of a dollar and ninety cents, and Billy the poorer by the loss of a quarter.
There is a town in Connecticut, within a reasonable motoring distance from New York that has been called the Gretna Green of America. Here well-informed young couples are able to expedite the business of matrimony with a phenomenal neatness and despatch. Licenses can be procured by special dispensation, and the nuptial knot tied as solemnly and solidly as if a premeditated train of bridesmaids and flower girls and loving relatives had been rehearsed for days in advance.
Dick and his Rolls-Royce had assisted at a hymeneal celebration or two, where a successful rush had been made for the temporary altars 100 of this beneficent town with the most felicitous results, and he knew the procedure. When he and Billy organized an afternoon excursion into Connecticut, they tacitly avoided all mention of the consummation they hoped to bring about, but they both understood the nature and significance of the expedition. Dick,—who was used to the easy accomplishment of his designs and purposes, for most obstacles gave way before his magnetic onslaught,—had only sketchily outlined his scheme of proceedings, but he trusted to the magic of that inspiration that seldom or never failed him. He was the sort of young man that the last century novelists always referred to as “fortune’s favorite,” and his luck so rarely betrayed him that he had almost come to believe it to be invincible.
His general idea was to get Nancy and Caroline to drive into the country, through the cool rush of the freer purer air of the suburbs, give them lunch at some smart road-house, soothingly restful and dim, where the temperature was artificially lowered, and they could powder their noses at will; and from thence go on until they were within the radius of the charmed circle 101 where modern miracles were performed while the expectant bridegroom waited.
“Nancy, my dear, we are going to be married,”—that he had formulated, “we’re going to be done with all this nonsense of waiting and doubting the evidence of our own senses and our own hearts. We’re going to put an end to the folly of trying to do without each other,—your folly of trying to feed all itinerant New York; my folly of standing by and letting you do it, or any other fool thing that your fancy happens to dictate. You’re mine and I’m yours, and I’m going to take you—take you to-day and prove it to you.” This was to be timed to be delivered at just about the moment when they drew up in front of the office of the justice of the peace, who was Dick’s friend of old. “Hold up your head, my dear, and put your hat on straight; we’re going into that building to be made man and wife, and we’re not coming out of it until the deed has been done.” In some such fashion, he meant to carry it through. Many a time in the years gone by he had steered Nancy through some high-handed escapade that she would only have consented to on the spur of the moment. She was one of 102 these women who responded automatically to the voice of a master. He had failed in mastery this last year or so. That was the secret of his failure with her, but the days of that failure were numbered now. He was going to succeed.
On the back seat of the big car he expected Billy and Caroline to be going through much the same sort of scene.