Chapter XXI: A Missing Bride

IT was two days before Peggy's wedding, and in the front room downstairs Peggy was looking around complacently on her wedding presents. They were very much like the wedding presents of other prospective brides. A few were admirably suited to the needs of a young couple of moderate means, about to start house-keeping. Others would have been useful in the establishments of wealthy people who expected to do a great deal of entertaining. And there were still others whose use was problematical, anywhere and under any circumstances.

Peggy's mood, however, was far from critical. Each gift as it came had given her the keenest pleasure, and if it were impossible to find anything admirable in the article itself, she could always say, "How awfully kind of them to send it. Everybody's being perfectly dear to me." She approached every newly arrived package with the same feeling with which she had once taken up a bulging Christmas stocking.

The clock in the dining room, a pert little timepiece with a peremptory voice, struck three. It was characteristic of this particular clock always to strike the hour as if it were reminding somebody of something. On this occasion it reminded Peggy that she had an engagement with the dressmaker at half past three, and that she was to call for Ruth, who had promised to accompany her. As it was impossible to take along a crowd of girls to the dressmaker's rather cramped quarters, Peggy avoided hard feeling by inviting a different girl each day.

Peggy had hardly reached the top of the stairs when the bell rang, and Sally came rushing from the kitchen to answer it. The prospect of a wedding in the family had so excited Sally that she was even less responsible for her conduct than usual. Almost the only thing she could be trusted to do was to answer the door-bell, but as the bell rang very often, she succeeded in making herself rather useful. On this occasion a swarthy woman stood outside, and in a quick, parrot-like fashion said something Sally did not understand.

"You want to see Miss Peggy?" Sally demanded. Such wits as she possessed were not on duty, for ordinarily she would have recognized the stranger's errand, and sent her about her business. As the woman nodded, Sally at once admitted her, showing her into the room where the wedding presents stood about in picturesque confusion.

"Miss Peggy," shrieked Sally, forgetting for the moment the lesson impressed on her on innumerable occasions that she was not to save her steps by calling up the stairs, "Somebody to see you."

It was a minute or two before Peggy came down, and Sally had retreated to the kitchen in the meantime. Peggy who had naturally expected to see an acquaintance, was rather startled to be confronted by a dark-skinned woman with jet black eyes and an oily voice.

"Buy lace, lady? Very cheap: three inch wide up to nine inch. Very cheap!"

Peggy replied politely that she did not care for any lace, reflecting as she spoke that had the woman presented herself a few months earlier, she might have thought it worth while to examine her stock. Having had some experience in the persistence of her kind, she was surprised when the dark woman took her refusal as final, and meekly let herself out. Peggy stepped into the kitchen to warn Sally against her late indiscretion, and came back through the hall, reflecting that she must hurry, since the dressmaker did not like to be kept waiting. As she passed the open door of the room the vender of lace had so lately quitted, she stopped and stood transfixed.

One of her wedding presents was missing. She knew exactly the place where it had stood on the center table, flanked on one side by a pair of book-ends, and on the other by a cloisonné vase. The gap left by its removal was as obvious to Peggy's startled eyes as the breach in a smile, due to a missing tooth. Instantly she understood that there was no mystery about its disappearance. She had seen it not ten minutes before, and the only person who had entered the room since then was the woman with lace to sell.

The discovery went to Peggy's head. The stealing of any of her other possessions would not have affected her in just the same way. But these were her wedding presents, invested with a certain sanctity because of the goodwill they represented, and the occasion which led to their bestowal. It never once occurred to Peggy that she could submit to such an outrage.

She ran out of the house, looking up and down the street, and immediately caught sight of the woman she wanted. Apparently she had suspended business for the day, for she was walking, rapidly and making no attempt to dispose of her wares in any of the houses she passed. Peggy promptly started in pursuit. Her idea was to follow the woman, keeping her in sight until she could encounter a policeman. Peggy had no desire to deprive any human creature, however erring, of her liberty. She hoped the officer of the law would force the surrender of her ill-gotten gains without formally arresting her. But whatever the consequences, she meant to recover her property.

According to the calendar it was the last day of June, but the thermometer proclaimed it mid-July. The heated air quivered. The streets seemed as silent as the thoroughfares of a deserted village. A block from Peggy's home, the woman took the right-hand turning and went down Rossiter Street. Peggy followed, walking rapidly in her determination to gain on the quick-walking figure on ahead.

Three blocks on Rossiter Street, and then the woman turned north, giving Peggy a clew to her plan. Friendly Terrace lay near the outskirts of the city. A walk of a mile from Peggy's home brought one into a section sparsely settled. It looked as though Peggy's quarry were making for the open country.

Oh, for a policeman! Peggy rather unjustly resented the scarcity of officers of the law, forgetting how seldom their services were required in the law-abiding part of town. She discovered, too, that the woman pursued was uncannily aware of her pursuer. Though apparently she never looked back, she accommodated her pace to Peggy's, accelerating her speed, as Peggy quickened hers, so that the distance between them remained about the same in spite of Peggy's efforts to lessen it.

Owing to the lack of policemen, had any reliable looking man passed her in a car, Peggy believed herself capable of stopping him and commandeering his services. But apparently the heat had driven every one indoors. Two or three delivery wagons passed with small boys handling the reins. One machine glided by, but the driver was a woman. After an hour's chase the two participants in the singular game of "Follow my Leader," came out upon the turnpike, stretching away to the north, white and dusty and hot in the brilliant sun. Here the houses were scattered and stood back from the road. The likelihood of encountering a policeman had become extremely faint. But Peggy set her teeth and pressed forward.

Graham got off half an hour early this particular afternoon, and reached Peggy's a little before five. Irma, dimpled and sweet, a replica of Dorothy a few years earlier, rushed to meet him squealing with delight, while Dorothy smiled a welcome, her lips pinched tightly together. One of Dorothy's upper front teeth was missing and Dorothy was painfully conscious of the lack every minute that she was awake.

Graham kissed his prospective nieces, greeted the older members of the family cordially, if less effusively, and put the inevitable question, "Where's Peggy?"

"Oh, at the dressmaker's of course," sighed Mrs. Raymond. "I hope she won't keep the poor child very long. It's so dreadfully warm."

The telephone tinkled, and Dick went to answer it. He scowled as he listened. "Who did you say it was? Oh, wait a minute!" He turned to his mother. "I thought you said Peggy had gone to the dressmaker's."

"She has. She had a fitting at half past three."

"Well, this is the dressmaker, and she says Peggy hasn't come."

"Let me speak to her." Mrs. Raymond crossed to the phone, with an air of expecting to clear up the puzzle immediately. And hardly had she made herself known, when the door opened and Ruth appeared. "What's become of Peggy? She was to call for me a little after three, and I've had my hat on waiting for her nearly two hours."

What had become of Peggy? She had not kept her engagement with the dressmaker, and Ruth knew nothing of her whereabouts. Mrs. Raymond called up Priscilla and Amy, each of whom disavowed having seen Peggy since noon. And then as there seemed nothing better to do, she went on calling neighbors and friends and trades-people, growing more and more puzzled, moment by moment. For no one had seen Peggy.

It finally occurred to Peggy's sister, Alice, to make inquiries in the kitchen. Sally informed her that Miss Peggy had come into the kitchen with her hat on, and had said something about the dressmaker. The new girl, who had been engaged to help out for the few weeks before the wedding, confirmed Sally's story, adding that it was a little after three when Peggy left the house. Obviously Peggy had started out with the intention of keeping her appointment, and obviously she had not done so.

Dinner was ready at six o'clock, but no one was ready for dinner. Peggy's failure to appear at meal-time added to the general consternation. Peggy was by nature prompt and methodical, and she had acted the rôle of cook too often not to realize how the best efforts of that important functionary are frustrated by late arrivals. At quarter past six Mr. Raymond went to the telephone and called up the hospitals one after another. But the hot sleepy day had not been productive of automobile accidents, and the only cases of sun-strokes reported were elderly people, four men and one old woman.

Graham was very pale. A dreadful suspicion was taking shape in his mind. Could it be that, as the second of July drew near, Peggy had found herself unable to face the situation? Perhaps he had asked too much of her when he had urged her accompanying him to South America. He thought of the innumerable ties that bound her to her native land, and yet he had assumed that she would be ready to leave everything and every one she loved, and go with him to a land of strangers. Graham was no more troubled by excessive humility than other popular young men, but in the present emergency he seemed to himself to have put a most preposterous estimate on the value of his own society. He had a horrible conviction that, through his demanding too much, Peggy was lost to him forever.

It hardly need be said that no one in the anxious company shared this particular apprehension. At seven o'clock Peggy's father made up his mind that it would be necessary to appeal to the police. But before he could bring himself to act on this conviction, the gate clicked and Irma, standing at the window, her nose flattened against the screen, exploded in a series of joyful shrieks.

"Aunt Peggy! Aunt Peggy! Oh, it's Aunt Peggy!"

And Peggy it was, though it took a second glance to be sure. The perspiration trickling over her dusty face had produced a curious piebald effect, and she walked with a noticeable limp. They rushed to the door, greeting her with mingled cries of joy and reproach. All but Graham. He sat down in the darkest corner of the living room and put his hands over his face. The intensity of his relief was almost too much for him.

Peggy limped in, looking decidedly ashamed of herself.

"Have you waited dinner for me? I'm awfully sorry."

"Waited dinner," repeated Mrs. Raymond, and burst into tears. Peggy's sister Alice caught her by the shoulders and gave her a sharp little shake.

"Peggy Raymond, where have you been and what have you been doing? Don't you understand that we've been frightened to death about you?"

Peggy dropped into the nearest chair and began on her story. She told of the woman Sally had admitted to the house, the missing wedding present, and the purpose with which she had started in pursuit. They all listened breathlessly, Graham left his corner and stood back of the others, unwilling to miss a word.

It was not till Peggy's recital brought her to the turnpike that she lost a little of her fluency. At this point she hesitated and seemed to appreciate the difficulty of making matters clear to her audience. "Of course I should have given up then. But somehow I couldn't. I kept hoping that somebody would appear, and it seemed such a shame when I'd followed that thief so far, to give up and go back. I'd made up my mind that as soon as an automobile came along, I'd ask for a lift. I felt if I could only catch up with her I could frighten her into giving me what belonged to me. But nobody passed me, and then when she got to the old toll-gate--"

Mr. Raymond interrupted, "You don't mean you followed her to the toll gate?"

"Yes, father. Or at least I was almost there. You know there's a cross-road just beyond the gate, and a Ford car came up that cross-road and turned north on the pike. And the woman stopped it--"

"Confederates, I'll bet," cried Dick.

"No, it looked as if she were just asking some stranger for a ride. And as far as they knew she was only a tired woman carrying a bag and they took her in. And then I saw it wasn't any use to go further."

"You surprise me." Mr. Raymond's voice was satirical. "I can't understand why you didn't run after the machine."

Peggy accepted the sarcastic rejoinder meekly. "Then I turned around and came home. But you see I had put on my new brown shoes because Mrs. Morley wanted to fit my brown dress with the shoes I was going to wear with it, and all at once they began to hurt me terribly. Instead of hurrying I had to slow up, and sometimes I had to stop and wait. I never had anything hurt so."

"If you'd walked three blocks east," exclaimed Graham, speaking for the first time, "you could have got a car."

"I knew it, but I'd come off without my pocket book. I didn't have a penny with me. That was the reason I didn't telephone."

Peggy looked about her with a crestfallen air. While she was far from realizing the extent of the alarm her family had felt, and would not have believed Graham had he told her of the apprehensions that had tortured him through the terrible time of waiting, she understood that they had all been worried and that she had inconvenienced every one by making dinner late. "Don't wait for me any longer," she pleaded. "Have the dinner put on, mother, and I'll be down as soon as I've washed up a little."

Mrs. Raymond put her arm about her. "Yes, come upstairs, darling. You must have something on those blisters right away. Alice, tell Sally to put on plates for Ruth and Graham."

It was while they were eating lamb chops, which after an hour and a half in the warming oven might as well have been anything else, that some one thought to put the question Peggy had been dreading. "Do you know what present she stole?"

Peggy took a hasty sip of her iced tea and looked appealingly at her questioner. But her reluctant manner only aroused the curiosity of every one.

"I'll bet it was the silver teapot," exclaimed Dick.

"It doesn't matter what's missing, as long as Peggy herself is here safe and sound," declared Mrs. Raymond fervently.

"But what _did_ she take?" insisted Alice, eyeing her sister with suspicion.

Again Peggy forfeited herself with iced tea, and her cheeks, flushed by heat and weariness, took on a deeper hue. "It--it really wasn't so valuable,--" stammered Peggy. "You know Elvira Bond gave me half a dozen teaspoons that she got by saving soap wrappers or something. They came in a neat little case, and I suppose the woman snatched the nearest thing without looking. I didn't chase her because the spoons were worth so much because--well, it was the principle of the thing."

There was a long moment of silence, and then a roar of laughter. They laughed long and helplessly and wiped their eyes and started all over again. As a rule Peggy could appreciate a joke, even if it was against herself, but on this occasion a rather wry smile was the best she could do. She was beginning to realize that she had been very silly.

"Well, Graham," remarked Mr. Raymond when he could make himself heard, "In my opinion you're assuming quite a responsibility in planning to take this young woman to South America."

Graham's eyes met Peggy's and something in his look arrested her attention, a peculiar radiance as if he had just heard a wonderful piece of news. But all he said was, "I'm ready to take the risk, sir."