Her Forbidden Knight (2 page)

“But still,” persisted Driscoll, “by what right do you interfere with me?”

“Well,” Dougherty appeared to reflect, “perhaps none. But there’s one or two things we’ve found out that I haven’t told you. One is that she has no father or mother. She’s all alone.

“Very well. One thing a mother does is this: if some guy comes round with a meaning eye, she hauls him up short. She says to him: ‘Who are you, and what are you good for, and what are your intentions?’ Well, that’s us. As far as that part of it’s concerned, we’re mama.”

“But I have no intentions,” said Driscoll.

“That’s just the point. You have no intentions. Then hands off.”

Dougherty at this point glanced aside at a shout from the billiard players. When he turned back he found Driscoll standing before him with outstretched hand.

“You’re on,” said Driscoll briefly. “Shake.”

“You’re a gentleman,” said Dougherty, grasping the hand.

“And now—will you introduce me to Miss Williams?”

Dougherty looked somewhat taken aback.

“I want to apologize to her,” Driscoll explained.

“Why, sure,” said Dougherty. “Of course. I forgot. Come on.”

Halfway to the door they were intercepted by Dumain.

“Well?” said he.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Dougherty. “Driscoll’s a gentleman.”

“
Mon Dieu!
” exclaimed the little Frenchman. “Eet ees not surprising. For zee little Miss Williams—she ees irresistible.”

He returned to the game, and Driscoll and Dougherty passed down the hall and thence into the lobby.

The lobby, more ornate and pretentious than the billiard room, was at the same time more typical. With Driscoll, we shall pause to observe it in detail.

There were two entrances: the main one on Broadway, and a side door leading to a crosstown street not far from Madison Square. On the right, entering, were the hotel desk and the cigar stand; beyond, the hall leading to the bar and billiard room. Further on came the telegraph desk and the elevators. Along the whole length of the opposite side was a line of leather-covered lounges and chairs, broken only by the side entrance.

At one time the Lamartine had been quiet, fashionable, and exclusive. Now it was noisy, sporty, and popular; for fashion had moved north.

The marble pillars stood in lofty indifference to the ever-changing aspect and character of the human creatures who moved about on the patterned floor; subtly time had imprinted the mark of his fingers on the carvings, frescoes, and furniture. From magnificent the lobby had become presentable; it was now all but dingy.

With its appearance and character, its employees had changed also. The clerks were noisy and assertive, the bell boys worldly-wise to the point of impudence, and the Venus at the cigar stand needs no further description than the phrase itself.

But what of the girl at the telegraph desk? Here, indeed, we find an anomaly. And it is here that Driscoll and Dougherty stop on their way from the billiard room.

As Lila Williams looked up and found the two men standing before her, her face turned a delicious pink and her eyes fell with embarrassment. Before Dougherty spoke Driscoll found time to regard her even more closely than he had before, in the light of the new and interesting information he had received concerning her.

Her figure was slender and of medium height; exactly of the proper mold and strength for her small, birdlike head, that seemed to have fluttered and settled of itself on the white and delicate neck. Her lips, partly open, seemed ever to tremble with a sweet consciousness of the mystery she held within her—the mystery of the eternal feminine.

Her hands, lying before her on the desk, were very white, and perhaps a little too thin; her hair a fluffy, tangled mass of glorious brown.

“Altogether,” thought Driscoll, “I was not mistaken. She is absolutely a peach.”

“Miss Williams,” Dougherty was saying, “allow me to introduce a friend. Mr. Driscoll—Miss Williams.”

Lila extended a friendly hand.

“A little while ago,” said Driscoll, “I was presumptuous and foolish. I want to ask you to forgive me. I know there was no excuse for it—and yet there was—”

He stopped short, perceiving that Lila was not listening to him. She was gazing at Dougherty with what seemed to Driscoll an expression of tender alarm.

“Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Mr. Dougherty!”

That gentleman appeared startled.

“What is it?”

“Your—your—why, what has happened to your nose?”

“My nose?” he repeated, puzzled.

“Yes. What has happened?”

Dougherty raised his hand and roughly grasped that rather prominent feature of his face; then his hand suddenly fell and he made a grimace of pain. Then he remembered.

“Oh,” he said, as carelessly as possible, “a mere nothing. I fell. Struck it against a billiard table.”

Driscoll was doing his best to keep a straight face.

“Mr. Dougherty,” said Lila, shaking a finger at him solemnly, “tell me the truth. You have been fighting.”

The ex-prizefighter and Broadway loafer, blushing like a schoolboy, gathered himself together as though about to attack the entire heavyweight division.

“Well,” he demanded with assumed bravado, “and what if I have been fighting?”

“You promised me you wouldn’t,” said Lila. “That is, you said you wouldn’t—anyone—who annoyed—about me.”

“It wasn’t his fault, Miss Williams,” said Driscoll, coming to his friend’s assistance. “The blame is mine. It is for that I want to apologize. I can’t say how sorry I am, and I hope you’ll forgive me, and if there’s any—I mean—”

Driscoll, too, found himself hopelessly confused by the frank gaze of those brown eyes.

“Anyway,” he ended lamely, “I’ll renew his promise for him. He’ll never do it again.”

“No, you won’t do anything of the kind!” exclaimed Dougherty, who, during the period of relief offered by Driscoll, had fully recovered himself—“nobody shall promise anything for me. And, Miss Williams, I am very sorry I ever made that promise to you. I take it back. What has happened today is proof that I would never be able to keep it, anyway.”

“But you must keep it,” said Lila.

“I can’t.”

“Mr. Dougherty!”

“Well, I’ll try,” Dougherty agreed. “I promise to try. But there are some things I can’t stand for; and we all feel the same way about it. You leave it to us. We know you don’t like us much, and we don’t blame you. But any guy that tries to get into informal communication with your eyes is going to see stars—and that’s no pretty speech, either.”

Lila opened her mouth to renew her protest, but someone approached to send a telegram, and she contented herself with a disapproving shake of the head.

Driscoll touched the ex-prizefighter on the arm.

“Dougherty,” he said, “you’re enough to frighten a chorus girl; and that’s going some. Come on, for Heaven’s sake, and do something to that nose!”

Dougherty allowed himself to be led away.

I
T WAS THREE OR FOUR DAYS LATER, ABOUT ONE
o’clock in the afternoon, that Pierre Dumain and Bub Driscoll, seated in the lobby of the Lamartine, beheld a sight that left them speechless with astonishment.

They saw Tom Dougherty enter the hotel by the Broadway door, carrying a bouquet of roses—red roses. They were unwrapped, and he bore them openly, flamboyantly, without shame. An ex-prizefighter carrying roses on Broadway in the light of day!

“ ‘Mother, Mother, Mother, pin a rose on me!’ ” they sang in unison.

Dougherty ignored them. He scowled darkly at the hotel clerk, who grinned at him delightedly, and walked boldly down the center of the lobby, past a score of curious eyes. At the telegraph desk he halted and accosted the messenger boy. Lila had gone to lunch.

“Got a vase?” Dougherty demanded.

The boy gaped in complete bewilderment.

“Don’t you know what a vase is?” said Dougherty sarcastically. “V-a-s, vase. Get one.”

“They ain’t any,” said the boy.

“Then get one!” Dougherty roared, producing a dollar bill. “Here, run around to Adler’s. They keep all kinds of ’em. Get a pretty one.”

The boy disappeared. In a few minutes he returned, bearing a huge, showy, glass vase, the color of dead leaves. During his absence Dougherty had kept his back resolutely turned on Dumain and Driscoll, who received only silence in return for their witty and cutting remarks.

“Fill it with water,” commanded Dougherty.

The boy obeyed.

“Now,” said Dougherty, arranging the roses in the vase and placing it on the top of Lila’s desk, “see that you leave ’em alone. And don’t say anything to Miss Williams. If she asks where they came from, you don’t know. Understand?”

The boy nodded an affirmative. Dougherty stepped back a pace or two, eyed the roses with evident satisfaction, and proceeded to the corner where the others were seated.

“Do you know who that is?” said Driscoll in a loud whisper as the ex-prizefighter approached.

“No,” said Dumain. “Who ees eet?”

“Bertha, the flower girl,” Driscoll replied solemnly.

“Oh, shut up!” growled Dougherty. “You fellows have no sentiment.”

Dumain lay back in his chair and laughed boisterously.

“Sentiment!” he gasped. “Dougherty talking of sentiment!”

Then suddenly he became sober.

“All the same, you are right,” he said. “Miss Williams should get zee roses. They seem made for her. Only, you know, eet is not—what you say—correct. We can’t allow it.”

“How?” said Dougherty. “Can’t allow it?”

“Positively not,” put in Driscoll. “Too much of a liberty, my dear fellow. ’Tis presumptuous. You know your own views on the subject.”

This staggered Dougherty. Without a word he seated himself, and appeared to ponder. Dumain and Driscoll, after trying vainly to rouse him by sarcastic observations and comments, finally tired of the sport and wandered over to throw Indian dice for cigars with Miss Hughes. That lady, being wise in her manner, separated them from two or three dollars in as many minutes with ease, complacency, and despatch.

They were rescued by Dougherty, who came bounding over to them with the grace of a rhinoceros.

“I have it!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“Then hold onto it,” said Driscoll, setting the dice box far back on the counter with an emphatic bang. “You have what?”

“About the roses. See here, Miss Williams ought to have ’em. Dumain said so. Well, why can’t we take turns at it? Say, every day we fill up the vase, each one in his turn. She’ll never know where they come from. Are you on?”

“Wiz pleasure,” said Dumain. “And I’ll tell Booth and Sherman and the others. We’ll have to let them in.”

“Ordinarily,” said Driscoll, “I would be compelled to refuse. Being an actor, and, I think I may add, an artist, my normal condition is that of flatness. But at the present time I have a job. I’m on.”

Thus it was that Lila, on her return from lunch, was surprised by the sight of a floral offering which flamed like a beacon on the top of her desk. She regarded it in wonder while taking off her coat and hat, and glanced up in time to receive a knowing smirk from the hotel clerk. Then she saw the three conspirators observing her furtively with self-conscious indifference. She smiled at them pleasantly, reached up for the vase, and buried her face in the velvet petals. Then, replacing the vase, she seated herself at her desk and picked up a book.

“Gad!” exclaimed Dougherty in high delight. “She kissed ’em! D’ye see that? And say, d’ye notice how they match the pink on her cheeks?”

“My dear fellow,” said Driscoll, “that won’t do. It’s absolutely poetical.”

“Well, and what if it is?” Dougherty was lighting a cigarette at the taper at the cigar stand. “Can’t a prizefighter be a poet?”

“If you are talking of the poetry of motion, yes. But this is the poetry of e-motion.”

Miss Hughes, the Venus at the cigar stand, tittered.

“You Erring Knights are funny,” she observed. “Who bought the roses?”

“Us what?” said Dougherty, ignoring the question. “What kind of knights did you say?”

“Erring Knights.”

“She means knights errant,” put in Driscoll.

“I do not,” denied Miss Hughes.

“It’s a pun. Erring Knights.”

“Well,” said Dougherty, “and why not? I like the title.”

And the title stuck. The lobby loungers of the Hotel Lamartine, purveyors of roses and protectors of beauty in distress, shall henceforth be designated by it.

They formed a curious community. What any one of them might have attempted but for the restraining presence of the others may only be conjectured. Collectively, they became the bulwark of innocence; individually, they were—almost anything.

There was Pierre Dumain, palmist and clairvoyant, with offices just around the corner on Twenty-third Street, a little garrulous Frenchman who always had money.

Tom Dougherty, ex-prizefighter, bookmaker, and sport, who was generally understood to be living under the shadow of a secret.

Bub Driscoll, actor and philosopher, about whom there was known just one fact: he had floored Tom Dougherty.

Billy Sherman, newspaper reporter (at intervals), who was always broke and always thirsty.

Sam Booth, typewriter salesman, who was regarded as somewhat inferior because he rose every morning at nine o’clock to go to work.

Harry Jennings, actor, who was always just going to sign a contract to play leads for Charles Frohman.

What a collection of Broadway butterflies for a young girl to accept as protectors and friends! And yet—you shall see what came of it.

For something over a month the roll of membership remained as given above; then, on a day in October, a candidate presented himself for election.

The corner of the lobby preempted by the Erring Knights was that farthest from the Broadway entrance, opposite the telegraph desk. It was partially hidden from the front by two massive marble pillars, and contained an old worn leather lounge, three or four chairs, and a wide window seat.

This corner had been so long occupied by a dozen or so of the oldest habitués that the advent of a stranger within its sacred precincts was held to be an unwarranted intrusion. This opinion was usually communicated to the stranger with speed and emphasis.