A Husband by Proxy | Page 3

lip
with his thumb and finger. He reviewed his few New York experiences
rapidly.
"No," he repeated. "I know of no such man. I am sorry."

His visitor looked at him with a new, flashing light in her eyes.
"Not one?" she said, significantly. "Not one young college man?"
He was unsuspicious of her meaning.
"Not one."
For a moment she fingered her glove where it lay upon the desk. Then a
look of more pronounced determination and 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 rôle--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