A Husband by Proxy | Page 3

courage came upon her face as she raised her eyes once more to Garrison's.
She said:
"Are you married?"
A flush came at once upon Garrison's face--and memories and heartaches possessed him for a poignant moment. He mastered himself almost instantly.
"No," he said with some emotion, "I am not."
"Then," she said, "couldn't you undertake the task yourself?"
Garrison leaned forward on the table. Lightning from an azure sky could have been no more astonishing or unexpected.
"Do you mean--will I play this r?le--as your husband?" he said slowly. "Is that what you are asking?"
"Yes," she answered unflinchingly. "Why not? You need the money; I need the services. You understand exactly what it is I require. It is business, and you are a business man."
"But I have no wish to be a married man, or even to masquerade as one," he told her bluntly.
"You have quite as much wish to be one as I have to be a married woman," she answered. "We would understand each other thoroughly from the start. As to masquerading, if you have no acquaintances, then who would be the wiser?"
He acknowledged the logic of her argument; nevertheless, the thing seemed utterly preposterous. He rose and walked the length of his office, and stood looking out of the window. Then he returned and resumed his seat. He was strangely moved by her beauty and some unexplained helplessness of her plight, vouchsafed to his senses, yet he recognized a certain need for caution.
"What should I be expected to do?" he inquired.
His visitor, in the mental agitation which had preceded this interview, had taken little if any time to think of the details likely to attend an alliance such as she had just proposed. She could only think in generalities.
"Why--there will be very little for you to do, except to permit yourself to be considered my lawful husband, temporarily," she replied after a moment of hesitation, with a hot flush mounting to her cheek.
"And to whom would I play?" he queried. "Should I be obliged, in this capacity, to meet your relatives and friends?"
"Certainly--a few," said his visitor. "But I have almost no relatives in the world. I have no father, mother, brothers, or sisters. There will be, at most, a few distant relatives and possibly my lawyer."
Garrison made no response. He was trying to think what such a game would mean--and what it might involve.
His visitor presently added:
"Do you consent--for five hundred dollars?"
"I don't know," answered the man. Again he paced the room. When he halted before his client he looked at her sternly.
"You haven't told me your name," he said.
She gave him her card, on which appeared nothing more than just merely the name "Mrs. Jerold Fairfax," with an address in an uptown West Side street.
Garrison glanced at it briefly.
"This is something you have provided purposely to fit your requirements," he said. "Am I not supposed to know you by any other name?"
"If you accept the--the employment," she answered, once more blushing crimson, "you may be obliged at times to call me Dorothy. My maiden name was Dorothy Booth."
Garrison merely said: "Oh!"
They were silent for a moment. The man was pondering the possibilities. His visitor was evidently anxious.
"I suppose I can find someone else if you refuse the employment," she said. "But you will understand that my search is one of great difficulty. The person I employ must be loyal, a gentleman, courageous, resourceful, and very little known. You can see yourself that you are particularly adapted for the work."
"Thank you," said Garrison, who was aware that no particular flattery was intended. He added: "I hardly suppose it could do me any harm."
Mrs. Fairfax accepted this ungallant observation calmly. She recognized the fact that his side of the question had its aspects.
She waited for Garrison to speak again.
A knock at the door startled them both. A postman entered, dropped two letters on the desk, and departed down the hall.
Garrison took up the letters. One was a circular of his own, addressed to a lawyer over a month before, and now returned undelivered and marked "Not found," though three or four different addresses had been supplied in its peregrinations.
The second letter was addressed to himself in typewritten form. He was too engrossed to tear it open, and laid them both upon the table.
"If I took this up," he presently resumed, "I should be obliged to know something more about it. For instance, when were we supposed to have been married?"
"On the 10th of last month," she answered promptly.
"Oh!" said he. "And, in case of necessity, how should we prove it?"
"By my wedding certificate," she told him calmly.
His astonishment increased.
"Then you were actually married, over a month ago?"
"I have the certificate. Isn't that sufficient?" she replied evasively.
"Well--I suppose it is--for this sort of an arrangement," he agreed. "Of course some man's name must appear