Chapter XXVIII The House on the Avenue
Though he tried his house and one or two other places where Jock Hamersley was likely to be at this hour, Lawrence was unable to get his friend on the phone. Somehow, he was not altogether sorry. He certainly owed an apology and some sort of reparation to the men he had been forced to leave in the lurch in this abrupt, seemingly ill-mannered fashion, but he was just as well pleased to have it all put off until to-morrow. With a mind full of Shirley Rives and her extraordinary letter, he did not particularly fancy the idea of doing anything but just sit there in his room and think it all over.
Having taken off his things, and made himself comfortable, he read her letter over for the third time, gaining nothing from this perusal save an intense desire to see the girl as soon as he could, and hear from her own lips the details of the amazing good fortune which had come so opportunely.
Of course, it could not be stranger than his own experiences during the past three days; but the manner in which it had followed so close upon the heels of that, brought again to Barry that odd feeling of being in the grip of circumstance, the conviction that fate was molding her life as well as his, without consulting either of them even in the smallest detail.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be at all the thing to call there in the morning,” he thought impatiently, as he was getting into bed, long after midnight. “Hang it all! I don’t see how I’m going to restrain myself until the conventional hour.”
While he was breakfasting the next morning, however, he resolved to set convention at defiance for this once, at least. Almost as fervent as his desire to hear Miss Rives’ story was his eagerness to set himself right with her. He did not wish her to labor an hour longer than was absolutely necessary under the impression that his failure to call in answer to her letter was due to any possible lack of interest on his part. He must see her this morning, and so he determined to send up some flowers with his card, and the intimation that he would follow himself in an hour or so.
On his way out he stopped at the desk to obtain some more money from the wallet he had left in the safe. He had done this every morning, but now, as he opened it, the realization came to him for the first time that his supply was growing low. The thousand dollars had been placed in one compartment, leaving his expense money in another, and, as he took out about a hundred dollars, he was astonished to find how comparatively little was left. He was not conscious of having been especially extravagant, but he had obeyed the unknown donor’s injunctions to the letter, and had not spared expense.
“By Jove!” he muttered, as he left the hotel and walked toward Fifth Avenue. “I’ll have to go slow, or I’ll be dipping into my capital. It’s astonishing how money melts away on comparatively little things. I must begin to economize.”
Evidently he did not mean to begin quite at once, however. He made his way directly to an expensive flower shop on the avenue, where he selected a huge box of very costly roses, wrote a line on his card, and ordered them sent at once to Miss Rives. As he left the shop he consoled himself for the flatness of his bill case by the reflection that this was a private matter, which could be paid out of his own money.
The hour and a half which followed seemed to pass on leaden wings. Barry had never known a period of time to drag so boringly. He could not enjoy his morning walk, and, though he had several errands to do, which ordinarily would have consumed the better part of an hour, it seemed as if the salesmen were conspiring to attend to his wants with positively supernatural briskness.
“If I were in a hurry,” he thought crossly, “I’d cool my heels in each store for fifteen or twenty minutes. That’s always the way when you want to kill time.”
At length, when the hands of his watch had crept around to eleven, Barry squared his shoulders with a determined gesture, and, making his way swiftly through from Broadway to the Waldorf cab stand, procured a taxi which deposited him less than ten minutes later before a very imposing residence up in the seventies, facing the park.
And, now that he was actually here, and the taxi dismissed, a sudden, curious timidity began to besiege Lawrence. The marble front, with its heavy, ornamental carvings, was almost oppressive in its atmosphere of wealth and exclusiveness. The wonderfully wrought bronze grille which guarded the imposing approach, even though one of the doors was flung back, revealing the elaborate mosaic of the square entrance, seemed fashioned for the sole purpose of excluding the presumptuous stranger who sought admission.
The amazing contrast between this palatial residence and the desperate, homeless girl he had encountered in Madison Square little more than forty-eight hours before, struck Barry anew with startling force, and made him hesitate at the foot of the broad, shallow sweep of marble steps.
A dozen doubts and questions flashed through his mind in that brief pause. Then, with a swift, characteristic flinging back of his head, he thrust them from him in a flash.
“What a fool I am!” he muttered angrily. “I swore I’d never doubt her again, and I won’t.”
A second later he reached the entrance, and firmly pressed the electric button.