The excitement of the game still kept Elsie Bennett employed. Only the adventure of it was brought home to her mind. In the morning what would people say when they knew that she had married Blondy Loring? And she herself— how strange it would be to know that she was bound for life to him!
She began what she felt was to prove a life of obedience to her husband by letting him lay all the plans; and he made those plans with a cunning which delighted and surprised her. The license had to be obtained, and that was no easy matter to arrange secretly. And after the license had been obtained, there was the necessity of getting the doctor out of the room long enough to permit her friend, the minister, to come in and perform the ceremony.
To accomplish these desirable ends the outlaw gave full directions, going into every detail, and at noon she issued from the hotel to get the license. It entailed a brief and exciting interview with a boy who had gone to the same village school with her, but who assumed a tremendously judicial air when he heard of her business. Finally he was persuaded to move the sanctity of his office to the hotel during the noon hour, and there in the bedroom the necessary questions were asked and answered, and the license was issued.
After that she went in search of the minister. She found the good man walking in his garden, which was in the rear of his house. For the Reverend Philip Walt on had brought back from England this purely English taste. The back of his house was turned to the street in Twin Springs, and the front of it faced on a little garden which he had laid out, planted, and cared for in all its growth with his own hands. It was not big enough, to be sure, for a man of any length of stride to pace up and down in with much comfort. But Philip Walton was a very little man, with a very little withered body and legs in proportion, and a stride which had never been very long or very elastic, was now shortened still more by an advancing age. Two things about him remained young: his quick glance and the crispness with which he spoke. But though his accent and enunciation were as brisk as ever, the voice was sadly inclined to crack, and the glance, no matter though it were as quick as ever in its birdlike suddenness of movement, was filmed over.
He was a tremendously cheerful little man. Nothing could dull and diminish his good humor. His family history was one of continued tragedy. A poverty-stricken and work-laden childhood had passed into an early manhood of heartbreaking study, and this was lightened by only the briefest of romances which terminated, a month after his wedding, in the death of his wife. But from that moment on a curse seemed to hang over his relations, until eventually he was left the last of his clan. Yet, when he heard the quick step of the girl, he turned to face her with a smile as gay as her own and an impulsive movement of his hand in greeting.
Under the shade of the arbor she sat down beside him. It was hardly large enough to accommodate them both, and there she told him her great news. He listened gravely, eagerly; and when she had concluded, he shook his head.
"When I was a boy," he began, unheeding the sigh with which she greeted this introduction to a story, "I had an uncle who was fond of saying: 'That which begins in the shadow is apt to end in the shadow: if you want your plants to live and flourish, put them in the sun!' And that, Elsie, is what I have done in my garden. And that, child, is what I strongly advise that you do with your life. Keep in the sun. Never do things in the shadow."
"You've heard so many evil things about him," said Elsie, "that you're prejudiced against poor Charlie. Confess that that's it!"
But still he shook his head, smiling at her.
"I don't listen to evil gossip," he said. "Such stuff doesn't stay in my mind. Because, you see, I have hardly sufficient space to crowd in all the pleasant things I know. But aside from all that— and I'm afraid it's a rather foolish reason— I'm standing against you here simply because you wish to do this thing in such secrecy. That is all! You don't want any one to know. I must come to you and marry you and promise not to tell a soul until you say that I may. You say that this will not be for long. But how do I know? To-morrow you may change your mind. You may come begging that I still delay telling the world my great news. And you know that I never can resist you when you seriously want me, Elsie!"
"But," he said, "a marriage under the rose— I don't know anything in the world that could be more distasteful to me. Will you believe me, my dear, and will you try to think on my side of the question a little bit?"
She promised that she would, and no sooner had she promised than she began to attack him again with such an array of arguments that poor Mr. Philip Walton held his withered little hands over his ears and shook his head and laughed at her.
"Of course I shall go there when you wish me to," he said. "I am protesting merely to make an honorable surrender possible, and so that I may reserve the right to say I told you so, later on! When do you need me?"
And here he interrupted: "It's in actual shadow, then? Ah, Elsie, it isn't fair to the rest of us. We've been waiting all these years in the hope that eventually we should see you walk up the aisle in the church and—"
He stopped and shook his head again.
"But I'll come there to-night as you wish, and if an old man's honest blessing can help you to happiness, you shall have it, my dear. You shall have it!"
And so she left him. But when she reached the street on the way back to the hotel, she found that she was not happy at all. Indeed a darkness had fallen upon her spirit. And this with a blessing hardly yet silent in her ears! But it was simply because the old man had brought such an air of solemnity to the occasion. And now Elsie began to remember that weddings were times of tears and sad thought as well as of merriment and laughter. A wedding was the death of a name, the death of an old life, and the beginning of a new.
So she said to herself as she went slowly onward. But the happiness was taken out of her heart. Moreover, now that two of the steps had been taken, there seemed no great need for anxiety about the third. This was the step which was most important of all, and in the eyes of Blondy it would be the most difficult for her to accomplish. But he did not know her power.
On the outskirts of the town, where it began to run into the western hills, she stopped before a small cottage set well back from the street, and at her coming a tall, brown-faced, long-shanked boy in the awkward age of fifteen, rose and uncoiled his length to greet her. His grin abashed and diminished all the other features of his face.
Why a cousin of her own should look like this she could not tell, though she had often asked that question of an uncommunicative Providence. But from his birth, it seemed, Willie Chalmers had been mostly mouth, so far as his face was concerned, and mostly legs in the rest of his make-up. She could not look beyond the veil of the future and see him a stalwart, fine-looking youth a short three years hence.
"Willie," she asked, "why have you never come to see me all the time I've been at the hotel?"
"I sort of thought," he answered, "that you'd be busy, Elsie. That's why I never come. But I sure enough thought about it a couple of times. How's everything with you been going?"
He advanced toward the gate and faced her, dropping the heel of his right shoe most awkwardly upon the toes of his left and thrusting his hands into bottomless pockets.
So she explained to him, still smiling and watching him during every instant of that smile, that on that very night she would have a tremendous need of him, and she wondered if she could depend on him. Willie was so eager that he swallowed before he could answer. Of course she could use him as she pleased to use him!
"How far is it," she asked, "to the Roger place?"
"About a mile and a half," said Willie.
"And how long would it take a man to ride that far?"
"All depends," said Willie. "If he went like lickety he might get there in five minutes, I suppose."
"It has to be farther then," she said. "But how far is it to the Chalmers' place?"
"Oh, three miles— then it will take twice as long."
"More'n that His hoss would get pretty tired before it hit the last mile and a half at that clip."
"Well, that's good! Willie, you know the Chalmers boy?"
"Joe Chalmers? Sure, him and me fought every other week last year. I busted his face good for him. Sure I know Joe. Him and me are chums. We're going shooting next month!"
She was too serious to smile at this strange recital of the bases of friendship among the young.
"Willie," she said, "this is to be kept a dead secret, you see?"
"Cross my heart to die!" whispered Willie in delight. "I sure won't breathe a word of it to nobody!"
"Then you come running to the hotel to-night at a quarter to eight— mind you, at seven-forty-five sharp! And you come shouting for the doctor!"
"Because the Chalmers boy has been thrown from a horse and broken his leg."
"Thrown from a hoss? Why, there ain't a hoss in the world that could throw— oh!"
With this exclamation the light dawned upon Willie in a great and a blinding burst, so that he gasped, choked, and then was silent.
"Will I do it?" exclaimed Willie. "Didn't that damn doctor— excuse me for swearing, Elsie— pretty near raise me on castor oil?"
