The Light that Lies

by George Barr McCutcheon

“They're like good-looking nurses,” said Sampson's friend. “They make a chap forget everything else.”

“Same principle,” said Wilks. “Patients and juries are much the same. They require careful nursing.”

Sampson was like a lost soul during the weeks that followed the trial. The hundred and one distractions he sought in the feverish effort to drive Alexandra Hildebrand out of his thoughts failed of their purpose. They only left him more eager than before. He longed for a glimpse of her adorable face, for a single look into her eyes, for the smile she had promised as she rode away from him, for the sheer fragrance of her unapproachable beauty. She filled his heart and brain, and she was lost to him.

The most depressing fits of jealousy overtook him. He tried to reason with himself. Why shouldn't she have a sweetheart? Why shouldn't she be in love with some one? What else could he expect—in heaven's name, what else? Of course there was one among all the hundreds who adored her that she could adore in return. Still he was sick with jealousy. He hated even the possibility that there was a man living who could claim her as his own.

At the end of a month of resolute inactivity, he threw off all restraint and inaugurated a determined though innocuous search for her. He made it his business to stroll up and down Fifth Avenue during the fashionable hours of the day, and so frantic were his efforts to discover her in the shifting throngs that he always went home with a headache, bone-weary and appetiteless. His alert, all-enveloping gaze swept the avenue from Thirty-fourth Street to Fiftieth at least twice a day, and by night it raked the theatres and restaurants with an assiduity that rendered him an impossible companion for friends who were so unfortunate as to be involved in his prowlings. His lack of concentration, except in one pursuit, was woful. His friends were annoyed, and justly. No one likes inattention. Half the time he didn't hear a word they were saying to him, and the other half they were resentfully silent.

He invaded Altman's, McCreery's, Lord & Taylor's and the other big shops, buying things that he did not want, and he entered no end of fashionable millinery establishments—and once a prominent corset concern—not for the sake of purchasing, of course, but always with the manner of an irritated gentleman looking for an inconsiderate wife.

This determined effort to ferret out Miss Hildebrand was due to a report from No. 7, on whom he called one day in regard to an electrical disturbance in his apartment. No. 7 told him that No. 4, who was the proprietor of a plumbing establishment in Amsterdam Avenue, had seen Miss Hildebrand on top of a passing Fifth Avenue stage. By means of some remarkable sprinting No. 4, fortunately an unmarried man, overtook the stage at the corner above (Forty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue), and climbed aboard. Just as he sat down, all out of breath, two seats behind the young lady, she got off and entered Sloane's. No. 4 had a short argument with the conductor about paying fare for a ride of two blocks, but it was long enough to carry him to the corner above Sloane's, so that when he got back to the big shop she was lost.

He was not discouraged. Saying that he was waiting for his wife he continued to invest the approach to the elevators with such success that after nearly an hour (and an hour as computed by plumbers is no small matter) he was rewarded by the appearance of Miss Hildebrand.

Without notifying the floorwalkers that he couldn't wait any longer for his wife, he made off after the young lady, leaving them to think, if they thought at all, that his wife was a very beautiful person who had married considerably beneath her station. Miss Hildebrand waited at the corner for a stage. No. 4 already had squandered ten cents, but he didn't allow that to stand in the way of further adventure. He had his dime ready when the 'bus came along—in fact, he had two dimes ready, for it was his secret hope that she would recognise him. But alas! There was room for but one more passenger, and he was left standing on the curb, while she went rattling up the avenue in what he reckoned to be the swiftest 'bus in the service.

Sampson's deductions were clear. She wouldn't be shopping at Sloane's unless she was buying furnishings of some sort for a house, and it was reasonable to suppose that the house was somewhere within reach of the stage line route. No. 4 had failed to note, however, whether she took a Riverside Drive or a Fifth Avenue stage. Although Sampson was not in need of a plumber's services, he looked up No. 4 and had him send men around to inspect the drain in the kitchen sink. It cost him nearly twelve dollars to have a five minutes' profitless interview with the master-plumber.