Chapter XXVII The Letter
For a moment or two Lawrence stood there staring at the name. Then, pulling himself together, he turned on his heel, and made for the elevator. Whatever the letter contained, it was impossible to read it down there.
Once in his sitting room, he switched on the lights, and, flinging himself into a chair without even taking time to remove his coat, plunged into a perusal of the letter:
My Dear Mr. Lawrence: As I sit here in a perfectly charming boudoir, done in blue, with lovely old mahogany furniture, the things you said last night about the strangeness of chance come irresistibly back to me. I could not help but feel then that fate or destiny, or what you will, must have had something to do with bringing us together, and perhaps that was why I let myself drift with the current in a manner which was, to say the least, decidedly unconventional. Really, you know, I’m not in the habit of taking supper and favors from men I’ve never seen before!
The story you told of what had happened to you was unreal enough in all conscience, but never for an instant did I imagine when I left you that something infinitely more extraordinary, something a thousand times more impossible, was coming to me.
Lawrence started and frowned with perplexity; but he reflected that scarcely anything could be unbelievable after what had already transpired. He went on reading eagerly:
It is much too long to put into writing. Besides, I have a notion that I’d like to tell it to you, so I’ll only give you enough to whet your appetite and stir your curiosity.
I went into that house on Forty-eighth Street despairing, hopeless—perhaps not quite so hopeless as I had been two hours before; but, still, I had little enough to hope for. I tried my best to keep you from seeing how utterly miserable I was and how completely at my wits’ end, but I think you guessed something of it in spite of my efforts.
I was there for less than ten minutes, then I came away in a private brougham with a woman I had never seen before. There were two men on the box. Inside there were furs—soft, luxurious furs—into which one could snuggle down and be warm at last. There was some sort of electric heating apparatus, and I could smell the perfume of roses clustered in a hanging vase. Do you wonder that I thought of Cinderella and the pumpkin coach, and was afraid it would all vanish into nothing?
We drove to a splendid house on the avenue, and there I was made to go to bed at once in a wonderful, carved, four-poster, with silk hangings. This morning it was still there; it had not vanished in the night. I had not dreamed it, or, if I had, I am dreaming still.
Lawrence laughed aloud; but he wondered if he himself were not dreaming. But he finished the letter with no lessening of interest:
At first I went about in a sort of daze, but, little by little, I’m becoming convinced that it is real. We have been shopping all morning, and somehow the quantities of lovely clothes which are constantly arriving are not like dream clothes. There is a dance, to-night, too. Fancy going to a dance again! That’s almost the most impossible thing of all. It isn’t really so long since the last one, but I feel as if I had lived a thousand years since then.
Isn’t it stranger than any fairy tale? Do you wonder that I feel as if this wasn’t Shirley Rives at all, but some one else? And, stranger than anything else is the fact that I owe it all to you and your helping me through the “Gates of Chance” last night. If I had come straight to Sally’s, as I meant to, nothing would have happened. If we had not met in the square, if we had not lingered at the restaurant, even, nothing would have happened. If one single thing had occurred to vary the time of my reaching the house by five short minutes, there would be nothing to tell you now.
I know I’m perfectly hateful not to give away the secret—you see, I’m taking it for granted that you are a little curious about it—but I have a selfish desire to tell it to you; to try and show you something of how strange and wonderful and utterly staggering it has all been to me. I’m sure you’ll let me, won’t you—soon? Sincerely yours, SHIRLEY RIVES.
Below the girl’s signature was written the address of a house in the most exclusive section of Fifth Avenue, a section where dwelt only people of great wealth, and usually of equally great social position.
Lawrence stared at it, his face dazed and bewildered. Then he turned back to the first sheet, and read the letter slowly through to the very end again. It was utterly baffling and incomprehensible, yet through it all there ran a strain of perfect truth and high-minded sweetness which was unmistakable. The realization of this, coupled with a remembrance of what he had once tried to make himself believe about Shirley Rives, brought a rush of color to his cheeks, and an expression of shame into his pleasant face.
“She’s true-blue to the very core,” he murmured at length. “I can’t imagine what sort of luck it is that’s come to her; the whole business sounds like a tale from the ‘Arabian Nights.’ But I know one thing—I was the biggest fool in all creation ever to have doubted her for a second.”
He glanced again at the end of the letter, and a swift smile curved his sensitive lips.
“Will I come and let her tell me all about it?” he said aloud. “Will I? And soon? Well, I guess yes!”