CHAPTER VII

NOT IN THE PLAN

As she rolled northward behind the miraculously erect and rigid William, the emotion which had been so mildly exciting when she had left her door grew in potency like a swiftly fermenting liquor. It was both fearful and delightful. She was all a-flutter. This was a daring thing that she was doing—the nearest to a real adventure that she had engaged in since her girlhood. Suppose, just suppose, that some one should recognize her from the sidewalk!

The thought sent a series of pricking shivers up and down her usually tranquil spine.

Just as that fear thrummed through her, she saw, a few doors ahead, a man come out of a residence hotel. He sighted the De Peyster carriage, and paused. Mrs. De Peyster's heart stood still, for the man was Judge Harvey. If he should try to stop her and speak to her—!

But Judge Harvey merely bowed, and the carriage rolled on past him.

Mrs. De Peyster's heart palpitated wildly for a block. Then she began to regain her courage. Judge Harvey had, of course, thought her Matilda. A few blocks, and she had completely reassured herself. There was no danger of her discovery. None. Almost every one she knew was out of town; she herself was known to be upon the high seas bound for Europe; Matilda's gown and veil were a most unsuspicious disguise; and William, her paragon of a William, so rigidly upright on the seat before her—William's statuesque, unapproachable figure diffused about her a sense of absolute security. She relaxed, sank back into the upholstery of the carriage, and began fully to enjoy the rare May night.

But a surprise was lying in wait for her as she came into a comparatively secluded drive of Central Park. In itself the surprise was the most trifling of events—so slight a matter as a person twisting his vertebrae some hundred-odd degrees, and silently smiling. But that person was William!

For a moment she gasped with amazed indignation. To think of William daring to smile at her! But quickly she recognized that William, of course, supposed her to be Matilda, and that the smile was no more than the friendly courtesy that would naturally pass between two fellow-servants. Her indignation subsided, but her wonderment remained. To think that William could smile, William in whose thoroughly ironed dignity she had never before detected a wrinkle!

Just as she had re-composed herself, they rolled into another unpeopled stretch of the drive. Again William's vertebrae performed a semicircle and again William smiled.

"Fine night, Matilda," he remarked in a pleasant voice.

Mrs. De Peyster shrank back into the cushions. She had the presence of mind to nod her head, and William faced about. To put it temperately, the situation was becoming very trying. Mrs. De Peyster now realized that she had been guilty of a lack of forethought. It had not occurred to her, in working out this plan of hers, that her frigidly proper William could entertain a friendliness toward any one. What she should have done was to have given William a vacation and secured an entirely strange coachman for the summer who would have had no friendly sentiments to give play to.

But her desire was now all to escape from William's amiable attentions.

"Take me home," she said presently, muffling her voice behind her hand and veil, and withdrawing from it its accustomed tone of authority.

Half an hour later, to her great relief, the carriage turned again into Washington Square and drew up before her house. She stepped quickly out.

"Good-night—thank you," she said in a smothered imitation of Matilda's voice, and hurried up her steps.

She had unlocked the door in the boarding and had stepped into the dark entry, when she became aware that William had deserted his horses and was stepping in just behind her. As though it were a matter of long custom, William slipped an arm about her waist and imprinted a kiss upon her veil.

Mrs. De Peyster let out a little gasping cry, and struggled to free herself.

"Don't be scared, Matilda," William reassured her. "Nobody can see us in here." And he patted her on the shoulder with middle-aged affection.

Mrs. De Peyster, after her first outburst, realized that she dared not cry out, or rebuff William. To do so would reveal her identity. And horrified as she was, she realized that there must have long existed between William and Matilda a carefully concealed affair of the heart.

"It's all right, dear," William again reassured her, with his staid ardor. "It's mighty good to be with you like this, Matilda!" He heaved a love-laden sigh. "We've had it mighty hard, haven't we, with only being able to steal a minute with each other now and then—always afraid of Mrs. De Peyster. It's been mighty hard for me. Hasn't it been hard for you?"

Mrs. De Peyster remained silent.

"Hasn't it been hard for you, dear?" William insisted tenderly.

"Ye—yes," very huskily.

"Why, what's the matter, Matilda? I know; you're tired, dear; your nerves are all worn out with the strain of getting Mrs. De Peyster off." Again his voice became tenderly indignant. "Just see how she treated that Miss Gardner; and wouldn't she have done the same to us, if she'd found us out? To think, dear, that but for her attitude you and me might have been married and happy! I know you are devoted to her, and wouldn't leave her, and I know she's kind enough in her way, but I tell you, Matilda,"—William's voice, so superbly without expression when on duty, was alive with conviction,—"I tell you, Matilda, she's a regular female tyrant!"

There was a mighty surging within Mrs. De Peyster, a premonition of eruption. But she choked it down. William, launched upon the placid sea of his elderly affection, did not heed that his supposed inamorata was making no replies.

"She's a regular tyrant!" he repeated. "But now that she's away," he added in a tender tone, "and left just us two here, Matilda dear, we'll have a lot of nice little times together." And urged by his welling love he again embraced her and again pressed a loverly kiss upon Matilda's veil.

This was too much. The crater could be choked no longer. The eruption came.

"Let me go!" Mrs. De Peyster cried, struggling; and her right hand, striking wildly out, fell full upon William's sacred cheek.

He drew back amazed.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

Mrs. De Peyster searched frantically for the keyhole to the inner door.

"Matilda, I'm not the man to take that!" he declared irefully. "What do you mean?"

"Go! Go!" she gasped.

He drew back wrathfully, but with an awful dignity.

"Very well, Miss Simpson. But I'm not a man that forgives. You'll be sorry for this!"

As he started stiffly away Mrs. De Peyster found the keyhole. She turned her key, opened the door, and closed it quickly behind her. Gasping, shivering, she groped in the dusky hall until she found a chair. Into this she sank, half fainting, and sat shaking with astoundment, with horror, with wrath.

Wrath swiftly became the ruling emotion. It began to fulminate. She would discharge William! She would send him flying the very next morning, bag and baggage!

Then an appalling thought shot through her. She could not discharge William!

She could not discharge William, because she was not there to discharge him! She was upon the Atlantic highroad, speeding for Europe, and would not be home for many a month! And during all those months, whenever she dared appear, she would be subject to William's loverly attention!

She sat rigid with the horror of this new development. But she had not yet had time to realize its full possibilities—for hardly a minute had passed since she had entered—when she heard a key slide into the lock of the front door and saw a vague figure enter the unlighted hall. She arose in added terror. Had that William come back to—

"Oh, there you are, Matilda," softly called a voice, and the vague figure came toward her.

Mrs. De Peyster's terror took suddenly a new turn. For the voice was not the voice of her coachman.

"J-a-c-k!" she breathed wildly.

Jack threw an arm about Mrs. De Peyster's shoulders.

"Ho, ho, that's the time I caught you, Matilda," said he, in teasing reproof. "U'm, I saw those tender little love passages between you and William!"

Mrs. De Peyster stood a pillar of ice.

"Better not let mother find it out," he advised. "If she got on to this! But I'll never tell on you, Matilda." He patted her shoulder assuringly. "So don't worry."

Mrs. De Peyster's lips opened. If her voice sounded unlike Matilda's voice, the difference was unconsciously attributed by Jack to agitation due to his discovery.

"How—how do you come here?" she asked.

"With an almighty lot of trouble!" grumbled he. "Came around the corner an hour ago just in time to see you drive off with William. I've got a key to the inside door, but none to the door in the boarding; and as I knew there was nobody in the house I could rouse up, there was nothing for it but to wait till you and William came back. So we've been sitting out there on a park bench ever since."

There was one particular word of Jack's explanation that drummed against Mrs. De Peyster's ear.

"We?" she ejaculated. "We?" Then she noticed that another shadowy figure had drawn nearer in the dark. "Who—who's that?"

"Mary," was Jack's prompt and joyous answer.

"Mary! Not that—that Mary Morgan?"

"She used to be. She's Mary de Peyster now."

"You're not—not married?"

"To-day," he cried in exultation. "We slipped out to Stamford; everything was done secretly there, and it's to be kept strictly on the quiet for a time." He bent down close to Mrs. De Peyster's ear. "Don't let Mary know how mother objected to her; I have n't told her, and she doesn't guess it. And oh, Matilda," he bubbled out enthusiastically, "she's the kind of a little sport that will stick by a chap through anything, and she's clever and full of fun, and a regular little dear!"

He turned. "Come here, Mary," he called softly. "This is Matilda."

The next instant a slight figure threw its arms about Mrs. De Peyster and kissed her warmly.

"I'm so glad to meet you at last, Matilda!" exclaimed a low, clear voice. "Jack has told me how good you have been to him ever since he was a baby. I know we shall be the very, very best of friends!"

"And so—you're—you're married!" mumbled Mrs. De Peyster.

Jack was too excited by his happiness to have noticed Mrs. De Peyster's voice had it been a dozen-fold more unlike Matilda's than it was. "Yes!" he cried. "And wouldn't it surprise mother if she knew! Mother, sailing so unsuspiciously along on the Plutonia!" He gave a chortle of delight. "But oh, I say, Matilda," he cried suddenly, "you mustn't write her!"

Mrs. De Peyster did not answer.

"We don't want her to know yet," Jack insisted; "that's one reason we've done the whole thing so quietly." Then he added jocosely: "If you tell, there's a thing I might tell her about you. About—u'm—about you and William. Want me to do that—eh? Better promise not to tell."

"I won't," whispered Mrs. De Peyster.

"It's a bargain, then. But there's something else that would surprise her, too. I'm going to work."

"But not at once," put in Mary de Peyster, née Mary Morgan, in her soft contralto voice, that seemed to effervesce with mischief. "Tell Matilda what you're doing to do."

"I've already told you, Matilda, about my little experiment in the pick-and-shovel line. I decided that I didn't care for that profession. I've saved a few hundred out of my allowance. Monday I'm going to enter the School of Mines at Columbia—am going to study straight through the summer—night and day till the money gives out. By that time I ought to be able to get a job that will support us. And then I'll study hard of nights till I become a real mining engineer!"

"But we've got to live close! Oh, but we've got to live close!" exclaimed Mary joyously, as though living close were one of the chiefest pleasures of life.

"Yes, we've certainly got to live close!" emphasized Jack. "That's why we're here."

"Why you're here?" repeated Mrs. De Peyster in a low, dazed tone.

"Yes." Jack gave a gleeful, excited laugh. "I had an inspiration how to economize. Says I to Mary, 'Mary, since mother is away, and this big house is empty except for you, Matilda, why pay rent?' So here we are, and here we're going to live all summer—on the ' q t ,' of course." He slipped an arm about Mary and one about Mrs. De Peyster, and again laughed his gleeful, excited laugh. "Just you, and Mary, and me—and, oh, say, Matilda, won't it be a lark!"