“I must continue to blame it all on the nice old ladies,” he told himself, smiling at the shamed zest he was finding in this hunt. “But I hope this knight-errantry will not grow to be a habit with me. I mustn't forget that I have another job on hand for nine o'clock--also knight-errantry!”
He paused under the dim light where his men had disappeared and looked at his cheap watch.
Twenty-five minutes of nine!
Then he heard a woman's protesting voice. She cried “No, _no_, NO!” in crescendo.
He gazed at the house from which the voice seemed to come. It was near at hand, a shabby little cottage with a thin slice of yard closed in by a dilapidated picket fence. He perceived no observers in the alley, and he stepped into the yard. The front windows were open, for the evening was warm, but no lights were visible in the house.
He heard the protesting cry again. It was more earnest.
He head the rumble of a man's voice, but could not catch the words. Whatever was happening was taking place in some rear room.
“No, I say, no! Unlock that door,” cried the voice, passionately.
Farr troubled his mind no longer with quixotic considerations about intrusion. He hoisted himself over the window-sill into the darkened front room, passed down a short corridor and, when he heard the voice once again on the inside of a door which he found locked, he immediately kicked the door open. He appeared to those in the room, heralded by an amazing crash and flying splinters.
First of all, he was astonished to find two women there; one was Miss Kilgour and the other was her mother. And there were the two men whom he had followed.
Farr swept off his hat and addressed the girl.
“I happened to be passing and heard your voice,” he said. “If you are--” He hesitated, a bit confused, realizing all at once that knight-errantry in modern days is not quite as free and easy a matter as it used to be when damsels were in distress in the ruder times of yore. “I am at your service,” he added, a bit curtly.
But she did not reply. Her attitude was tense, her cheeks were flaming, her eyes were like glowing coals.
“You lunatic, you have come slamming in here, disturbing a private wedding,” announced the man in the white tie, slapping his palm upon the book he carried.
“Get out of here!” shouted Dodd. He had dodged into a corner of the room, his face whitening, when Farr had burst in. He remained in the corner now, brandishing his cane.
The uninvited guest surveyed the young man with more composure than he had been able to command when he looked at the girl.
Etienne Provancher had fortified him with some valuable information.
“Mr. Richard Dodd, I'll apologize and walk out of here after you have explained to me why you have faked up into a parson one Dennis Burke, late of the state prison, to officiate at weddings.”
Upon the silence that followed the girl thrust an “Oh!” into which she put grief, protest, anger, consternation.
“Mother!” she cried. “Did you know? How could you allow--how did you come to do such a terrible thing?”
Her mother put her hands to her face and sat down and began to sob with hysterical display of emotion. Farr scowled a bit as he looked at her. She was overdressed. There was an artificial air about her whole appearance--even her hysterics seemed artificial.
The girl turned from her with a gesture of angry despair as if she realized, from experience, that she could expect, at that juncture, only emotion without explanation.
“Hold on here,” cried Dodd, “hold on here, everybody! This is all right. You just let me inform you, Mr. Butter-in, that Mr. Burke has full authority to solemnize a marriage. He is a notary and was commissioned at the last meeting of the governor and council. And I know that,” he added, attempting a bit of a swagger, “for I secured the commission for him myself.” He came out of his corner and shook his cane at Farr. “I want you to understand that I have political power in this state!”
“I wouldn't brag about that kind of political power, when you can use it to make notaries out of jailbirds. That must be a nice bunch you have up at your State House!”
“On your way!” Again the cane swished in front of Farr's face.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” apologized Farr, bowing to the girl. “You seem to be the only one in this room entitled to that courtesy,” he added, with a touch of his cynicism. “Am I intruding on your personal business?”
“You are not,” she answered, her eyes flashing. “I am glad you came in here. I could have stopped the wretched folly myself, but you have helped me, and I thank you.” She delivered that little speech with vigor.
“Kate!” pleaded Dodd. “This isn't fair. I meant it all right. Here's your mother here! You wouldn't be reasonable the other way. We had to do something. For the love of Heaven, be good. You know I--”
She had turned her back on him. Now she whirled and spat furious words at him, commanding him to be silent.
“Do you want to spread all this miserable business before this gentleman?” she demanded. “I am ashamed--ashamed! My mother to consent to such a thing!”
She turned her back on him again and walked to and fro, beating her hands together in her passion. And now ire boiled in Dodd. He directed it all at the man who had interfered.
“This is no business of yours, you loafer. I don't know who you are, but you--”
Farr grabbed the switching cane as he would have swept into his palm an annoying insect. He broke it into many pieces between his sinewy fingers and tossed the bits into Dodd's convulsed face.
“You'll know me better later on--you and your uncle, too. Ask him what I advised him to do about having his weapon loose on his hip--take the same advice for yourself.”
Then his expression altered suddenly. A disquieting jog of memory prompted him to yank out the cheap watch.
Twelve minutes to nine.
It was a long way to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club! And Union Hall was filled with men who were patiently waiting for him to keep his pledged word!
“I hope you'll be all right now,” he said to the girl, haste in his tones. “I'm sorry--I must go--I have an important engagement.”
Her eyes met his in level gaze, turned scornful glance at the others in the room, and then came back to his.
“Are you going in the direction of the Boulevard?” she asked him.
“Straight there.”
“Will you bother with me as far as the Boulevard?”
“If you are a good walker,” he informed her. There was strict business in her tone and cool civility in his.
“I'm going along with this gentleman, mother.”
Farr ushered her ahead of him through the shattered door.
“But I want to walk home with you, my child,” wailed the sobbing woman.
“You'd better ask Mr. Dodd to escort you. And I trust that the talk you and he will have will bring both of you to your senses.”
She hurried away up the alley with Farr, after he had unlocked the front door, finding the key on the inside.
“I am sorry I must hurry you,” he apologized, “and if you cannot keep up I must desert you when we get to a well-lighted street.”
She drove a sharp side glance at him and did not reply. Probably for the first time in her life she heard a young man declare with determination that he was in a hurry to leave her. Even a sensible young woman who is pretty must feel some sort of momentary pique because a young man can have engagements so summary and so engrossing.
He offered her his arm that they might walk faster. Her touch thrilled him. He was far from feeling the outward calm that he displayed to her.
They did not speak as they hurried.
Both were nearly breathless when they came out on the Boulevard. He saw the big clock--its hands were nearly at the right angle.
“Good night!” she gasped, and she put out her hand to him. “I thank you!”
“It was nothing,” he assured her.
When their palms met they looked into each other's eyes. It was a momentary flash which they exchanged, but in that instant both of them were thrilled with the strange, sweet knowledge that no human soul may analyze: it is the mystic conviction which makes this man or that woman different from all the rest of humankind to the one whose heart is touched.
She gave him a smile. “Are you a knight-errant?”
She hurried away before he could reply--and, though all his yearning nature strove against his man's resolution to do his duty, it could not prevail: he did not follow her as he wanted to--running after her, crying his love. But duty won out by a mere hazard of a margin because her face, as she had shown it to him at the moment of parting, possessed not merely the wonderful beauty which had so impressed him when he had first seen her--it shone with a sudden flash of emotion that glorified it.
He turned away and hurried to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club.
He had no time to ponder on the nature of that mystery which he had uncovered in the shabby cottage in Rose Alley nor to wonder what sort of persecution it was that could enlist a mother's aid in that grotesque fashion against her own daughter.
He had not time even to frame a plan of campaign against the man whom the patient waiters in Union Hall were expecting him to capture.