Tales from Bohemia | Page 7

conduct toward the
loveliest girl, etc., he hardly thought of her at all, more than to wonder
by what good fortune he had avoided meeting her. Some of the people
at their hotel made the same mistake regarding Morrow and Clara as
Captain Clark had made; the two were seen constantly together. Others
thought they were engaged.
Morrow spoke of this to her next morning as they were being whirled
down to Longport on a trolley car along miles of smooth beach and
stunted distorted pine trees. "I heard a woman on the piazza whisper
that I was your fiancé," he said.
"Well, what if you were--I mean what if she did?"
At Longport they took the steamer for Ocean City. They rode through
that quiet place of trees and cottages on the electric car, returning to the
landing just in time to miss the 11.50 boat for Longport. They had to
wait an hour and a half and they were the only people there who were
not bored by the delay. They returned by way of Somers' Point.
While the boat was gliding through the sunlit waters of Great Egg
Harbour Inlet, Clara's hand happened to fall on Morrow's, which was
resting on the gunwale. She let her hand remain there. Morrow looked
at it, and then at her face. She smiled. When the Italian violin player on
the boat came that way, Morrow gave him a dollar. Alas for the
loveliest girl in the world!
They passed most of that evening in a boardwalk pavilion, ostensibly
watching the sea and the crowd. They went up the thoroughfare in a
catboat the next morning, and, strange as it seemed to them, were the
only people out who caught no fish. The captain winked at his mate,

who grinned.
In the afternoon, while Morrow and Clara stood on the boardwalk
looking down at the Salvation Army tent, along came that innocent
eccentric "Professor" Walters in bathing costume and with his
swimming machine. The tall, lean whiskered, loquacious "Professor"
had made Morrow's acquaintance in a former summer and now greeted
him politely.
"How d'ye do?" said the "Professor." "Glad to see you here. You turn
up every year."
"You're still given to rhyming," commented Morrow.
"Yes, I have a rhyme for every time, in pleasure or sorrow. Is this Mrs.
Morrow?"
"No."
"You ought to be sorry she isn't," remarked the "Professor," taking his
departure.
Morrow and Clara walked on in silence. At last he said somewhat
nervously:
"Everybody thinks we're married. Why shouldn't we be?"
She answered softly, with downcast eyes:
"I would be willing if I were sure of one thing."
"What's that?"
"That you have never loved any other woman. Have you?"
"How can you ask? Believe me, you are the only girl I have ever
loved."
That evening, after dinner, Morrow and Clara, the newly affianced,
about starting from the hotel to the boardwalk, were at the top of the
hotel steps when a man appeared at the bottom.
Morrow uttered a cry of recognition.
"Why, Haddon, old boy, I'm glad to see you. Let me introduce you to
my wife that is to be."
Haddon stood still and stared. Clara, too, remained motionless. After a
moment, Haddon said very quietly:
"You're mistaken. Let me introduce you to my wife that is."
Morrow looked at Clara. She turned her gray eyes fearlessly on
Haddon.
"You, too, are mistaken," she said. "I had a husband before you married
me. He's my husband still. He's doing a song and dance act in a variety

theatre in Chicago. I'm sorry about all this, Mr. Morrow. I really like
you. Good-bye."
She ran back into the hotel and arranged to make her departure on an
early train next morning.
Haddon turned toward the boardwalk, and Morrow, quite dazed,
involuntarily followed him. After a period of silence, Morrow said:
"This is astonishing. A bigamist, and a would-be trigamist. She came
here the night before you left. How did you find out she was here?"
"I read it in the Atlantic City letter of The Philadelphia Press that one
of the Comic Opera singers daily seen on the boardwalk is Miss Clara
Hunt, who is known to theatre-goers by her stage name, Lulu Ray.
These newspaper correspondents know some of the obscurest people. If
I had told you her real name, you would have known who she was in
time to have avoided being taken in by her."
"Her having another husband lets you out."
"Yes. I'm glad and sorry, for damn it, I was fond of the girl. Excuse me
awhile, old fellow. I want to go on the pier and think awhile."
Haddon went out on the pier and looked down on the incoming waves
and thought awhile. He found it a disconsolate