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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42692 ***
+
+An Idyll of All Fools' Day
+
+
+
+An Idyll of All Fools' Day
+
+
+
+By Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+Author of "Memoirs of a Baby," "The Madness of Philip," etc.
+
+
+
+_With numerous illustrations_
+
+By R. M. Crosby
+
+
+
+New York
+
+Dodd, Mead and Company 1908
+
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1908, by The Phillips Publishing Co.
+
+Copyright, 1908, by Dodd, Mead & Company
+
+_Published, October, 1908_
+
+
+
+To A. A. B.
+
+this bit of busy nonsense
+
+is dedicated.
+
+J. D. B.
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Only her shriek of terror saved them from the stone wall" (p, 47)
+Frontispiece
+
+Facing page "'Here we are at last, Nette dear, dressed in our best
+for you!'"
+
+"'On the right,' he began didactically"
+
+"The red-headed boy bounded beside them, whooping madly"
+
+"At the risk of losing his straight course he stole a rapid glance
+at her"
+
+"'Jump! Jump!' he cried hoarsely"
+
+"'Well, here we are!' he said tentatively"
+
+"Nette, wringing her hair and murmuring incoherent abnegations"
+
+"'Mademoiselle,' he began, 'you are--you are--' he paused, for
+genuine lack of words"
+
+"'This gentleman here will take you down directly'"
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+I.
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+'TWAS a bloomy morning, all crocuses and tree buds, and Antony
+sniffed it into his nostrils thankfully, even while he scowled.
+
+"Come, come!" said his Uncle Julius, a wealthy old gentleman
+buttoned firmly into a white vest, "what a face! It is nothing so
+terrible that I ask of you! One would think it a hanging matter, to
+beau a pretty young girl about the place!"
+
+"You know that I do not care for schoolgirls, Uncle Julius," said
+Antony severely.
+
+"Fiddlestick!" his Uncle Julius cried, "and what are you sir, but a
+school boy, I should like to know? What shall we hear next, I
+wonder?"
+
+Antony put on some fresh grey gloves with a sigh.
+
+"Schoolgirl! Schoolgirl!" his uncle repeated mimickingly, "she
+will not be reciting her lessons, I suppose!"
+
+Antony buttoned his gloves.
+
+"Or if she does, it will be your fault, sir," pursued his uncle.
+
+Antony selected a slender walking stick from a rack of many, and
+reviewed his collar with a critical hand.
+
+"The young lady's topics of conversation will be a matter of
+indifference to me, Uncle Julius," said he, "I assure you."
+
+"And I assure _you_," cried Uncle Julius, "that if we were not on
+this open porch, I should be strongly tempted to apply that stick
+of yours where, as we used to say, it would do the most good!"
+
+Antony adjusted his coat trimly and started down the steps.
+
+"But since we are upon this open porch, let us, Uncle Julius,"
+said he, "go where duty calls us. _En avant!_"
+
+He strode along the flagged walk with Uncle Julius puffing behind
+him, loquaciously indignant.
+
+"Look at your mates, sir, as we pass them, and notice how enviously
+they smile," he urged the youth, who replied shortly that he
+observed them.
+
+"In my time, I can tell you," said Uncle Julius, "there was no
+shilly shallying in these matters. We had more blood. Let any
+college lad be given a free day--and a fine day, too--and one of
+the prettiest girls that ever wore a petticoat to enjoy It with
+him, and he was the envy of all his fellows. And I believe," he
+ended with a fine optimism, "that it is so now! Not one of these
+lads but would change places with you at a nod."
+
+"But you will not
+nod, my dear Uncle Julius," Antony responded
+calmly, "and so these lads--as you so felicitously call them--will
+never lose the opportunity I would cheerfully relin----"
+
+"Hush! there she is!" his uncle whispered, and Antony at once
+removed his hat with a lordly and accomplished gesture, which Uncle
+Julius noted with unwilling admiration.
+
+"Well, here we are!" he said, with an attempt at prankish levity in
+which he received no assistance from Antony. "Here we are at last,
+Nette dear, dressed in our best for you!"
+
+"So I see. And this is, I suppose, your young nephew, Mr. Julius?"
+said the person at whose face Antony had not yet looked.
+
+If she had intended to remedy this omission she could not have
+devised a more efficacious means. Not only did Antony look at her:
+he stared. From the topmost strand of her braided chestnut hair to
+the lowest dimple In her olive cheek--for she was of that
+irritatingly attractive class of females that combines deep-set
+violet eyes with a gipsy colouring--every curve of her audacious
+body spelled youth, unmitigated youth, and her tone was
+correspondingly insulting.
+
+"I am truly pleased to meet you," he said with the air of one to
+whom experience has lent tolerance.
+
+"I should truly never have guessed it," she returned promptly with
+an amused smile.
+
+Antony flushed. An impudent chit, this. A girl to be taught her
+place, and that right early.
+
+"I am to have, I believe," he said, with a fine air of disregard
+for any previous conversation, "the honour of escort--of show--of,
+er, of entertaining you for the day."
+
+"That distinction is indeed yours," she replied gravely, "I have no
+doubt that I shall be escort--show--er, entertained most
+agreeably."
+
+With this insulting remark she but half concealed a yawn and
+Antony's blood boiled within him.
+
+"Come," chirped Uncle Julius with a fatuous chuckle, "we are
+getting along famously! What did I tell you? Yes, indeed!"
+
+To this idiotic speech neither his nephew nor that nephew's new
+acquaintance made any further reply than two eloquent but totally
+ineffective glances. They were ineffective because the glance
+as a medium of expression had not been included in Uncle Julius's
+aesthetic training.
+
+"And what are you going to do first, hey? Where does the great day
+begin--see the town sights, I suppose?" this Imbecile old relative
+maundered on.
+
+"It will give me great pleasure, if she wishes to see them," said
+Antony coldly, "to point out the various objects of local interest
+to Miss----"
+
+"Good gracious!" Uncle Julius interrupted, "what's come over the
+boy? 'Miss,' indeed! Didn't I tell you that this is my old
+godmother's own daughter's stepdaughter? 'Miss!' Her name is
+Nette."
+
+"Ah," said Antony.
+
+"And his," continued Uncle Julius, with a flip of his finger at his
+nephew and a wink at the young lady, "is Tony. Let's have no
+formality among chicks of your age. No, no; Tony's his name."
+
+"Indeed!" the young lady observed, gazing critically at the
+embarrassed possessor of the cognomen, "and a quaint little name, I
+am sure."
+
+She smiled with a perfunctory brightness and continued in some
+inexplicable manner to look down at her escort--though had she been
+presented with ten thousand dollars for every one of the inches
+over five feet in her height she would not have appeared before the
+world as any considerable heiress. The object of this remarkably
+achieved envisagement writhed inwardly. Uncle Julius rubbed his
+hands in maudlin delight at her appreciation of his nephew's
+baptismal acquirements, and she continued, prettily stifling a
+second yawn between her white little pointed teeth:
+
+"Since our young friend naturally pants to show us the beauties of
+his Alma Mater, let us by all means begin with them," _and get them
+over_, said the strangled yawn.
+
+Antony bit his tongue in his seething rage and the pain turned him
+crimson and wet-eyed. This did not escape the intolerable chit and
+her deep-set violet eyes twinkled maliciously.
+
+"It will not be at all necessary to see"--he began, when Uncle
+Julius's round, astonished eyes interrupted them.
+
+"He is not going to show 'us' at all," explained this worthy
+but misguided man, "he is going to show you, my dear. I knew all
+these sights well forty years ago. Dear, dear! yes, indeed."
+
+Antony could have choked him for the apprehension that passed over
+his young charge's face.
+
+"You will not desert me, Mr. Julius?" she cried with a melting
+glance that visibly warmed the cockles of his infatuated old heart,
+"you can't mean to leave me"--_to the awkward attentions of this
+red faced boy!_ her eyebrows continued the appeal, intelligible
+only to Antony.
+
+"But that's just what I do mean, Miss Nette," he assured her,
+winking incredibly, "I am this moment due at my trustees' meeting.
+I'm off directly. You must"--and he flapped his hand with airy
+abandon--"endure the time without me!"
+
+Here he smiled with disgusting coquetry and pattered like a plump
+white rabbit down the shady brick path. As they stared blankly
+after him he turned and waved his stick at them.
+
+"Oh, I'm no spoil-sport!" he crowed, and rounded his corner. They
+were left alone.
+
+"Silly old ass!" Antony muttered, and then glared angrily at
+the spot the buxom gentleman had quitted.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said the young lady, "did you speak?"
+
+"Not to you," he replied briefly. She shook out a fluffy white
+parasol and under its becoming shadow looked curiously about her.
+
+"Indeed--to whom, then," she inquired.
+
+Antony was silent.
+
+"Minx!" he thought.
+
+"You are not at all like your uncle, are you?" she began, after a
+moment of this pregnant silence. Then after another moment she
+added absently, "he has such pleasant, easy manners!"
+
+Antony settled his fleckless straw hat firmly upon his head and
+tightened his grip on his stick.
+
+"My uncle," he began with great control, "is an estimable man. His
+intentions are of the best--that is to say, I have always believed
+them to be--but like too many others he does not always carry out
+his intentions. Take, for instance, this present situation. It was
+evidently his intention to give you (and me) a pleasurable day. It
+is quite obvious to me, at least, that he has failed in his
+intention--to a certain extent," he added politely, for he had
+by now talked himself into his usual superior calm. His eyes were
+fixed upon the tip of the young lady's parasol, some distance below
+him, as she sat on the brick steps of the old porch before which he
+stood, her slender figure leaning against a white pillar.
+
+"Now, I have a suggestion to make," he continued, quite pleasantly
+by this time. "I can plainly see that my uncle's somewhat
+Philistine scheme for my showing you about the place is likely to
+bore you extremely. Let us, then, omit that part of the programme
+altogether. We must try to think of something that will attract
+you, however," Antony had by this time a fairly paternal interest
+in the young lady, "and if you will help me out, no doubt we can.
+Perhaps," he concluded tentatively, "you would really prefer to
+remain by yourself, and not be entertained at all?"
+
+He paused, and as no reply appeared to be forthcoming, slowly
+lowered his eyes along the fluffy parasol till they reached the
+level of those deep-set violet ones. He could not have recognised
+them by their colour, however, for they were closed; the gentle
+rise and fall of the young lady's breast, the placid and
+uncharacteristic kindness of her half-smile made the reason
+for this closing only too obvious. She was sleeping.
+
+Antony swallowed hard. Sheer rage choked him and his collar became
+intolerably tight. His fingers itched along the supple stick he
+carried and a longing to employ it in an absolutely unheard of
+manner nearly flooded him off his feet. "Where it would do the most
+good"--the obnoxious phrase flashed luminously across his mind.
+
+The sudden silence had its natural effect upon the young person on
+the brick steps. Slowly, inquiringly, her eyelids lifted, and the
+peculiar, rain-washed effect of those dark blue eyes, so startling
+above her olive cheeks, was not lost upon Antony.
+
+"Not entertained at all?" she repeated vaguely, diving under the
+ruffles of the parasol to cover the positively unconcealable
+paroxysm of the third yawn, "oh, on the contrary! Really. I am
+delightfully entertained, Mr.--Mr. Tony!"
+
+"So it appears," he returned acidly. A soft dark colour suffused
+her gipsy cheeks, but she brazened it out. She seemed to possess no
+sense of shame whatever.
+
+"This sun makes one almost sleepy," she said calmly, "and I sat up
+quite late last night, too--playing picquet with your uncle. He is
+a poor sleeper."
+
+"Indeed. I am not acquainted with his habits," Antony responded.
+"We will look at the buildings now, I think, if you are
+sufficiently rested." A fell purpose had suddenly found itself in
+his humiliated breast. This insolent young puss should have cause
+indeed for drowsiness.
+
+She sprang instantly to her feet with a quick and pleasing muscular
+co-ordination, which, again, was not lost upon Antony. She wore a
+white flannel costume dotted with a dull blue--the blue of Canton
+china. Of this colour, too, was the silk stocking that flashed down
+the steps above her low-cut shoes. A ludicrous and daring colour
+for a brunette--until you encountered her eyes.
+
+"I am quite ready," she said demurely, and Antony started briskly
+down the street.
+
+"On the right," he began didactically, "you will see Wadsworth
+Hall, the building of applied sciences. It was presented by the two
+sons of Mr. Ezra Bement Wadsworth in memory of their father, a
+prominent graduate. It cost three hundred thousand dollars and is
+one of the most completely equipped buildings of its kind in the
+country, I believe."
+
+"How interesting!" she murmured.
+
+"Yes," Antony agreed, "it _is_ interesting."
+
+"To what are the sciences applied?" she inquired placidly.
+
+"To--er, to--really, I have never gone into it so far as that,"
+Antony returned, biting his lip, "I am not interested in science
+myself. But that is what it is generally called: it is on a bronze
+tablet on the corner. It is probably only an expression."
+
+"Ah, yes, probably," she assented.
+
+"Beyond it and a shade to the left you will see," he continued,
+with a wave of his stick, "Mansfield Hall. It is a dormitory,
+occupied by sophomores."
+
+"And who presented that?" his companion inquired, gazing
+respectfully at the end of his stick.
+
+"I do not know," he informed her briefly.
+
+"Oh, you do not know," she repeated in her low voice. Something in
+the falling inflection caused her guide to wriggle uneasily.
+
+"Nobody knows," he added, rashly. "I should think nobody would want
+to, it is so hideous."
+
+"To be sure," she said. "And sophomores live there. Are you perhaps
+a sophomore, Mr. Tony?"
+
+"I?" Antony exclaimed; then in level tones, "I am a senior."
+
+"Really!" she murmured. "I suppose that means that you are one of
+the older pupils, then? In the first class?"
+
+"It does," he assented grimly, adding as a cutting afterthought, "a
+sophomore, I suppose, would be beneath your notice?"
+
+She smiled sweetly. "Oh, dear me, no!" she assurred him, "not in
+the least--it is all the same to me, you see, Mr. Tony!"
+
+Antony should have realised by this time the folly of any further
+tilting, but he did not.
+
+"Your interest naturally turns, then, to men of my uncle's age?" he
+inquired caustically.
+
+She considered this with a pretty seriousness.
+
+"N-no, hardly that," she said at length. "It is only that I do not--
+that I am not--somehow, young men (_and such very young men!_ her
+eyes added) do not exactly . . ."
+
+"You need not trouble to explain yourself any further," Antony
+broke in coldly. "It is somewhat unfortunate," he continued,
+enunciating carefully, with averted eyes, "that I, of all people,
+should have been selected for your escort this morning."
+
+He had never said anything so nearly rude to a woman; but then he
+had never to his recollection been so thoroughly annoyed by one,
+since the dimly distant days when a series of deprecating aunts and
+spying nurses had darkened his youthful horizon.
+
+"Indeed. And why is that?" she asked pleasantly. She had, when she
+chose, an exceedingly pleasant manner.
+
+"Because," he returned, astonished at himself, but firm
+nevertheless, "I am not sufficiently accustomed to the society of
+young ladies to be certain of my ability to entertain even the
+ordinary variety--much less those who prefer the society of
+eccentric old gentlemen." _Come_, he reflected, _that's not half
+bad. Perhaps that will teach her a thing or two!_
+
+It seemed to him that there was a flash of respect in her eyes, but
+he could not be sure, it was so fleeting.
+
+"I suppose your studies take up so much of your time that you have
+no leisure for society," she said kindly, "but you must not let
+yourself grow shy: ladies are not very difficult to entertain,
+really!"
+
+To this remark Antony made no reply, perhaps because he could not
+think of one which combined the expression of his feelings with
+anything remotely resembling propriety. They walked on, therefore,
+in utter silence.
+
+The village through which they took their way was but a tiny one, a
+green and sheltered cradle for the warm brick walls and lichened
+chapel of the old college; and soon the grass-grown flagged walk
+gave way to one of trodden earth, the houses grew sparser and
+smaller, the trees thicker and less carefully tended. They were in
+the country. The season was well forward: though the calendar
+marked April, the warm blue sky, the odorous earth, the fresh,
+full grass, all smelled of May. The early flowers were out long
+before their wonted times; the birds, misled by the generous sun,
+were already nesting musically; shock-headed urchins, those most
+delicate barometers of the real seasons, had bravely cast off their
+shoes and stockings and renewed the year in the splashing puddles
+of some recent rain. All the scene spoke peace and promise of
+better to come--all, I say, but those two fractious young souls who
+walked diverse among the lovely unity of the pleasant world about
+them. Antony strode on, his eyes fixed on the winding road, though
+it is to be doubted if he saw it. Who would have thought to find
+him, Antony, in such a baited, hot-necked frame? The day had gone
+hideously awry from the beginning, and it was all the fault of this
+blue-eyed, brown-cheeked chit.
+
+She, for her part, moved easily and it must be admitted,
+gracefully, beside him. Her step shot out from the hip, elastic as
+a boy's; only the faintest shade of red under her skin confessed to
+the pace he drove her; she drew regular breaths, through her small
+nostrils. Though she could not match his stride, she yet fell into
+a sort of rythmical accompaniment to it; evidently she was an
+accomplished and enduring dancer.
+
+They swung around a sharp corner under a great sprawling oak and
+fairly mowed down an unattractive red-headed boy, insufficiently
+attired and freckled beyond belief, who was hurrying frantically in
+a direction only too obviously opposed to their own. Conscious of a
+distinct relief at the necessity for constructive action, Antony
+stooped and raised the howling and resentful creature, who dug his
+grimy knuckles into his eyes and yelled the louder at each polite
+query as to his injuries. After a few minutes of this
+fruitless performance, Antony, irritated at his failure to bring
+even this sordid incident to a triumphant conclusion, was about to
+produce a coin and leave his victim to the sovereign solace of
+Time, that great healer, when his companion, who had stood,
+hitherto, discreetly aside from the business, now stepped forward
+and laid a small brown hand on the heaving shoulder of the injured
+infant.
+
+"Where were you going, Bubby?" she asked abruptly.
+
+He looked up from his bent and screening arm, stared a moment, and
+replied in a matter-of-fact tone, without a trace of the sobs that
+still echoed about them:
+
+"To see the big snake!"
+
+"The snake?" She shuddered involuntarily. Had the child mentioned
+Leviathan, the monster would not have seemed more exotic to this
+rural and domestic spot. By judicious questioning they elicited
+from the suddenly secretive imp the successive facts of the
+spectacular and recent arrival of an enormous foreign reptile; its
+display under a tent on the outskirts of the village, very near
+their present station; the establishment of a tariff of
+fifteen cents for one view, or two separate opportunities for
+excitement at the comparatively small sum of a quarter of a dollar;
+and lastly, the cruel certainty that the delay occasioned by this
+unexpected and sudden meeting had undoubtedly cost their informant
+his only possible view of the monster, since the price of his
+admission, though offered voluntarily by his maternal uncle, was
+contingent upon his arrival at the tent ahead of his cousin, who,
+in case of a previous appearance, was to receive the prize.
+
+Overcome afresh by the bitterness of his lot, the red-headed boy
+would have renewed his unpleasant and gulping demonstrations, had
+not Antony hastily produced a coin of sufficient size to insure two
+periods of ecstasy and offered it in reparation for what he
+handsomely described as his clumsiness. Staggered by this princely
+generosity, the urchin balanced the silver piece doubtfully, then
+with a shy and unlooked-for courtesy suggested that they should use
+it together.
+
+"And what should I do, then?" asked the young lady with a smile--I
+have mentioned that she had, when she saw fit to employ it, an
+exceedingly pleasant manner.
+
+The boy hesitated.
+
+"Girls don't like snakes," he finally mumbled; "you could wait
+outside!"
+
+"Where is that tent?" she demanded indignantly, and they hurried
+on, one on each side of their unconscious guide. No kindly
+premonition laid a thrilling chill along Antony's stiff spine; no
+wholesome doubts as to the successful issue of that doomed
+expedition slowed the springing step of his companion. They hurried
+on, I say, each with a hand upon the earth-stained, ragged shoulder
+of that freckled imp whom Fate had selected as the instrument of
+their destiny, and in ironic rivalry they literally urged him on,
+and shot him, panting, through the roped enclosure that protected
+the elect possessors of the admission price from contact with the
+envious herd.
+
+With the curt direction to their guide to invite, if he pleased, a
+friend to enter with him, Antony slapped down a coin on the
+improvised counter, received two greasy green cardboard slips and
+strode towards the canvas flap of the small tent. The mingled odour
+of tobacco smoke, crushed grass, and tethered horses, the cheerful,
+chattering crowd, the honk and blare of a great claret-coloured
+motor-car, hurtling inquiringly up the slope, all imparted a festival
+air, a holiday spirit; and it was with a mild excitement that Antony
+pushed into the close tent, clearing the way punctiliously for his
+companion.
+
+In the middle, under the opening, was a standard painted a dull,
+forbidding red, and on this, in a cage of twisted iron, lay a
+monstrous, coiled thing, hideously and brilliantly mottled, his
+blunt, flattened head lazily resting on his topmost ring, his
+malignant, weary eyes fixed in a listless stare, that drooped over
+the human mushrooms around him, over the seas he had travelled,
+back to the old gods and the beginnings of things. The inked
+diamonds along his great length gleamed in a dreadful, supple
+pattern; the eye, entranced in a seductive terror, followed the
+massive rounds of those murderous coils, longing, yet dreading, to
+trace them to their horrid head: it seemed that a faint, uncanny
+odour, a hint of dead spices, like the secret wrapping cloths of
+old mummies, hung in the air. Now Antony knew, or supposed he knew,
+that cobras exhale no such odour, and in a disgusted curiosity he
+peered about for the source of it, but found nothing in the stained
+and faded tent, nor any nook or cranny in the obvious bareness
+where the source of it could lurk.
+
+The scene was a strange one; no officious showman called attention,
+in a raucous voice, to the ugly thing in the middle. There appeared
+to be no director, no advertisement of any kind, no appeal to a
+credulous or morbid crowd. The tent could contain but a score of
+visitors simultaneously, and they pushed in, fairly quiet as soon
+as they had entered, slowly encircled the scornful, wicked-eyed
+heap on the standard, discussed it in low tones and went out
+through another flap to make room for the next group. Indeed, the
+accustomed ease with which they performed these evolutions awoke in
+Antony the wonder whether they had not rehearsed them many times,
+and he involuntarily mentioned this idea to the girl, who gazed, at
+once fascinated and repelled, as Eve at the Seducer.
+
+"I suppose," she returned musingly, "they keep coming to see if it
+will by any chance bite some one."
+
+At this precise moment there pushed through the entrance-flap one
+who by his distinctive dress showed himself the mechanician of the
+claret-coloured motorcar. He was as obviously a foreigner, and
+among the simple rural types that filled the tent his mustachioed
+personality stood out as startlingly as the great cobra's. Elbowing
+his way through the little crowd he made himself a place directly
+beside Antony and the freckled boy, who had attached himself
+definitely to his patron, and smiled at the young man in easy
+cosmopolitan contempt of the rustics, conveying at the same time,
+In a graphic Continental hint of respectful salutation, his
+duty to the young lady. Antony accepted the smile with a lordly
+nod, expressive of his familiarity with mechanicians as a class and
+his appreciation of their place in the general scheme of things,
+and the two men surveyed the reptile in silence.
+
+"I know heem well," volunteered the big fellow in the leather suit,
+at last.
+
+"_C'est Monsieur le Cobra_, zat one. We have take ze car all
+s'rough 'is country. Wait--I will amuse Mademoiselle. Watch heem!"
+
+Lowering his head till the great goggles on his cap fronted the
+slitted eyes in the cage he emitted a long, piercing hiss, a nerve
+racking, whistling call. Everyone in the tent jumped backward
+spasmodically; Antony threw out his arm and pushed the girl behind
+him before he realised that there was no danger.
+
+Upon the great snake the effect of the sudden noise was even
+more appalling. His ugly flat head appeared suddenly high above
+his writhing folds; no one saw the movement, for it was too
+lightning-quick for sight, but it was undoubtedly the fact that
+his head was no longer pillowed. The symmetrical turban on his
+forehead puffed and quivered, his cold eye caught every eye
+in the tent with a swift, horrible glance; and every eye shrank,
+terrified, from his.
+
+"A very unpleasant old party, that snake," Anthony remarked, "I
+trust our friend won't think it advisable to repeat----"
+
+In the middle of his sentence the Frenchman hissed again. The
+cobra, irritated beyond further endurance, threw its massive weight
+against the side of the cylindrical cage, which swayed slightly and
+then dropped forward into the panic-stricken crowd.
+
+Antony felt a soft, sighing breath on his neck and caught his
+companion as she fell; he heard the ribs of her fluffy parasol
+crack under somebody's stamping feet and braced himself to meet the
+crushing, struggling rush of the frightened crowd. Through the
+oaths and shrieks of the nightmare moment piped shrill the voice of
+the red-headed boy.
+
+"Mister, the cover's on! The cover's on tight."
+
+Between the grovelling legs of two infuriated men, fighting
+like demons for leeway from the horrid cage, Antony caught a
+glimpse of it and realised that it was, indeed, completely
+fastened. Though it rolled and bounded under the lashings of its
+excited occupant, it was securely padlocked, and another moment of
+frenzied struggle for the door-flaps emptied the tent sufficiently
+to give passage to two angry men who threw a heavy canvas over the
+cage and righted it, breathing hard.
+
+One of these as he rose to his feet met Antony's eyes, shifted his
+gaze to the fainting girl on his arm, and thrust his hand into the
+capacious pocket of his flapping linen coat.
+
+"Try her with this," he said shortly, "I've got the crowd to
+settle. Then we'll kill the Frenchy, and then we'll leave!"
+
+Antony forced the offered flask into the girl's mouth and
+dragged her backward through the open flap. As the air reached her
+she gasped and choked, gulping down the strong spirit nervously,
+then stiffening herself in his arm and adjusting her hat.
+
+"Your town is not dull, at any rate, Mr. Tony!" she observed, and
+the observation, though a little breathless, was almost perfectly
+under her control.
+
+Antony felt his admiration rise into his eyes, nor did he seek to
+conceal it.
+
+"You are a brave, sensible--for heaven's sake, what's the matter
+now?" he cried anxiously, staring at a point behind her.
+Involuntarily she turned and looked in the same direction.
+
+The greater part of the crowd had scattered and fled far down the
+long hill; only a few groups of the most hardy and venturesome
+among the villagers remained at varying distances from the deserted
+tent. The most important of these groups now fell apart slightly,
+disclosing as its centre a large and writhing human figure, prone
+on the grass. The light box coat, the great goggles, proclaimed
+this figure the ill-fated mechanician. Even as he sprawled and
+twisted, the men who surrounded him turned and looked at
+Antony and his companion, and there was an unpleasant fixity, an
+unmistakable threatening, in their regard that chilled the young
+gentleman slightly, though he was utterly at a loss as to its
+import. Presently one of the men caught his eye and beckoned
+commandingly.
+
+"They seem to want me over there," he said to the girl, with an
+attempt at unconcern, "perhaps I'd better step over a moment--I'll
+return immediately. You don't object?"
+
+She looked at him with a curious vague smile, then shook her head
+slowly. This he took for acquiescence to his request, and as she
+said nothing, he left her and joined the group about the prostrate
+foreigner. She stared idly at him, but appeared little
+impressed by his irritated and repeated pantomimic denials of what
+was, to judge from the faces of the men, a grave charge of some
+sort. Even when he threw off a hand on his arm and hastened angrily
+back to her, his countenance dark with angry concern, she did not
+alter that vague smile, and this vexed him still further, as he
+began to explain their situation.
+
+"I am very, very sorry Miss--Miss Nette," he began, his voice
+fairly trembling with irritation, "but a most absurd and disgusting
+complication has arisen. This French fellow swears he has been
+bitten, and they think he is accusing you of hissing at the snake.
+I don't think he is really such a cad as all that, but he is
+practically hysterical, and now I don't believe he knows what he is
+saying. There is certainly some mark on his wrist and one of the
+men says that he saw the snake's head touch him, and they have
+filled him so thoroughly with whisky that he really is not
+responsible for what he says. I think,"--he marvelled at her lack
+of fright or emotion of any kind--"indeed, I am sure, that they have
+merely misunderstood his broken French, but these people are so
+idiotically obstinate, you know. They've sent for a doctor,
+and they insist that they hold--me responsible, and that if we
+don't stay here quietly they'll--in short, I don't see what to do.
+I'm dreadfully sorry."
+
+He paused, ready for reproaches, for tears, for rebellion. But none
+of these was apparent.
+
+"How silly!" said Nette carelessly, glancing a moment at the group
+of men.
+
+Antony felt slightly relieved, but only slightly.
+
+"I'm afraid that it can be made quite disagreeable, however," he
+explained gently, "though it is silly. The fellow deserved to be
+bitten--if he is, which I'm not at all certain of," he interjected
+hastily, "and it's none of our business and all his fault; but I've
+tried everything--bribing and bullying--and we seem to be caught
+here. I regret it so much--as soon as we can get to my uncle, it
+will be all right, of course, but nobody here will take a message
+for me and--and I think perhaps it will make less publicity and
+fuss, you know, if we go quietly with--with whoever they ask us to
+and . . ."
+
+He ground his teeth--if only he had been alone! He saw himself the
+butt of the whole college, nick-named for eternity, blamed by his
+uncle, that bulwark of convention, self-disgraced by reason of
+utter, crude failure in this, the greatest social crisis of his
+life. It was maddening, humiliating--and this thick-skinned,
+feather-headed girl by his side seemed absolutely indifferent to
+her (to say the least) embarrassing situation. Stealing a glance at
+her he perceived that she was still smiling. Nay, more, she now
+directed the smile straight at him, and though its warm brightness
+cheered him irrationally for a moment, it was for a moment only,
+and the gloom of their plight shut round him again as he caught the
+eye of the leader of the hostile group beyond.
+
+Suddenly he felt a tug at his coat, turned to see the gleaming red
+head of the author of all his woes, and seized him by the arm with
+a confused idea of vengeance.
+
+"The doctor's coming, mister, he's nearly got here!" panted this
+unconscious instrument of Fate, "and I'll bet that foreign man
+dies! I'll bet he does! He got a terrible bite! Did you see it?"
+
+Antony throttled the boy hastily and looked apprehensively at his
+companion; he had hoped to spare her this. To his surprise she
+turned to the child and laughed lightly.
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" she said, "he won't die, little boy. Chauffeurs
+don't die--they explode!"
+
+Antony had a sense of moral shock. This passed frivolity. Really,
+the girl was scarcely human; sympathy was wasted on her.
+
+"Did you know the sheriff was coming?" the freckled-faced imp
+pursued, after a mildly contemptuous stare at his patron's
+incomprehensible friend. "I wouldn't go with him, if I was you. My
+uncle says he's got no right to make you."
+
+"Of course he's got no right," Antony exclaimed angrily, "but what
+can I do about it? I can't fight eight or ten men, can I? I'd
+rather go than be carried."
+
+"Why don't you jump into that automobile?" the boy asked abruptly.
+"I would. She goes easy--I saw him start her up before. She'll
+whizz off, I'll bet you!"
+
+The girl turned abruptly. "That's it!" she cried; "let's do that,
+Mr. Tony!"
+
+In a flash he caught the practical possibility of the scheme. Once
+at his uncle's and the affair was finished. But common sense gave
+pause.
+
+"I can't run the thing," he admitted with vexation, "I don't know
+the first thing about them."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing--they run themselves!" she said competently,
+"I'm used to them. Hurry--here comes a man, now!"
+
+It was indeed the fact that a burly, self-satisfied creature was
+advancing towards them, and Antony's blood boiled at the pompous
+rustic's meaning glance.
+
+"Come, come, Mr. Tony!" she urged excitedly.
+
+"Can you run?" he muttered desperately, "it's no good if you can't,
+you know."
+
+"Of course I can," she replied, and he noted how different the
+tones of her voice had grown, how much richer and more alluring. "I
+can beat you to the car! Come!"
+
+The freckled boy plucked at his coat urgingly, and in a moment, as
+one flees in dreams, he was dashing down the slight slope that led
+to the little tableland at the head of the steeper hill where the
+huge car stood, pointed towards freedom.
+
+A hoarse, suety cry issued from the constable, answered by the
+farther group; a number of men rushed hastily in their direction,
+but no one seemed to realise the object of their flight and the way
+was left clear. The red-headed boy bounded beside them,
+whooping madly; Nette's pale skirt flashed valiantly a trifle ahead
+of them; the loose stones rolled under their flying feet.
+
+With a light bound the girl dropped on the wide leather seat, and
+Antony tumbled in after her, an agile village boy almost at his
+heels. Even as it was, this boy would have seized him had not the
+freckled arbiter of their destinies dexterously tripped him,
+grinning derisively at his downfall as he dashed to the side of the
+car and panted:
+
+"Let her go, mister, let her go!"
+
+Mechanically Antony grasped the steering wheel as he had seen
+others grasp it and turned to his companion. But she had toppled
+breathless against his shoulder and huddled there motionless. He
+stared helplessly at the approaching pursuit--his head whirled.
+
+"Here, I'll pull it!" cried the red-headed urchin and fumbled
+mysteriously at Antony's feet. A low, raucous buzzing began
+forthwith, and as three men dashed up to them triumphantly, the
+great car shuddered a moment and lurched down the hill, gathering
+speed with every quarter-second.
+
+There flashed before Antony's eyes a quick panorama of the extended
+Frenchman, the kneeling doctor, the threatening men; his ears
+resounded with the gleeful cackle of that freckled Fate who had
+launched them, and then he faced an empty country road, silent but
+for the whirring of their chariot. He turned his face to the girl,
+unconsciously moving the simple steering apparatus so as to keep
+the car in the middle of the road, while he spoke.
+
+"May I trouble you to take this now?" he said politely. "Your
+knowledge of this business has undoubtedly saved you a great deal
+of mortifying bother and delay."
+
+She stiffened sensibly beside him, and in her voice he caught no
+hint of the momentary rich abandon that he had noticed at the
+beginning of their flight, for she spoke with the cool and airy
+dryness of their first meeting.
+
+"My knowledge?" she repeated, with an obviously sincere surprise,
+"my knowledge? What do you mean? Why should I take it? I never
+handled a car in my life!"
+
+Antony's fingers stiffened and grew damp against the wheel. For a
+few sick seconds he sat utterly silent, stunned and incredulous,
+not knowing what he did, while his hands, with a strange muscular
+memory all their own of the days when he had propelled a
+little mechanical velocipede steered by a wheel, kept the whirring
+vehicle in the centre of the long, empty road.
+
+"Good heavens!" he muttered at last, "I thought you told me--you
+certainly said--I understood you--oh, the devil!"
+
+"Put your foot on something!" Nette cried feverishly; "that's the
+way they do! It can't be hard to stop it for just a moment. Put
+your foot----"
+
+With that she stamped her little white shoe on a round metal disc
+projecting like a toadstool from the floor in front of her, and
+immediately, whether from that cause alone, or because Antony
+unwittingly complicated the manoeuvre by some untoward pressure of
+knee or wrist, the car, with a tremendous jerk, began to revolve
+backward upon itself in a dizzy swoop. A moment more had seen them
+in the deep ditch beside the road, had not Antony dislodged her
+foot with an ungraceful but timely kick and allowed the mechanism
+to right itself and lumber into its course again.
+
+"For God's sake, sit still!" he shouted hoarsely. "Is it possible
+you do not understand you are in danger? Do you wish to kill or
+maim us both before it is necessary? I order you to sit perfectly
+quiet until I tell you to jump!"
+
+"Very well," she replied meekly, with a short, frightened intake of
+the breath, and they sped along.
+
+
+THE FLIGHT
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE FLIGHT
+
+ANTONY had now--so wonderfully resilient is youth--won sufficient
+confidence in himself to realise that there was yet a chance of
+bringing this dangerous expedition to some sort of successful
+issue, if fate should prosper them with a straight and empty road.
+They were not, fortunately, travelling at any tremendous rate of
+speed; though jumping from the car would have been extremely
+unwise, it remained a possibility, at least, and if, as was fairly
+probable, the car had already travelled a considerable distance,
+its motive power would become exhausted sooner or later and they
+could dismount safely. In a few curt sentences he explained the
+situation, as it appeared to him, to his companion.
+
+"I must beg you to believe," he concluded, "that I somehow got a
+distinct impression of your telling me that you were used to
+managing these things--I cannot understand how I could have
+made such a mistake. I am particular in repeating this, because in
+case of accident--and it would be the merest idiocy to deny that a
+very grave accident is quite likely to happen at any moment--I do
+not want you to think too hardly of me. But of course your realise
+that unless I had been quite certain of your ability I should never
+have attempted such a foolhardy thing."
+
+She made no answer, and at the risk of losing his straight course
+he stole a rapid glance at her.
+
+To his surprise she was crimson with what was obvious, even to his
+fleeting view, as embarrassment. Her fingers twisted nervously; the
+tears that suffused her eyes were certainly not tears of grief or
+fright. She bit furiously at her under lip, and began more than one
+sentence that faltered away into confusion. Indeed, they had
+triumphantly climbed and descended a hill that sent Antony's heart
+into his throat before she succeeded in the task she evidently
+loathed but had as evidently determined to fulfil.
+
+"Mr.--Mr. Tony," she began suddenly, alarmed in her turn at their
+increased speed as they went down the hill, "in case, as you say,
+anything should happen, I must tell you something. When I said
+that about--about my running the car perfectly well----"
+
+"You didn't, of course, put it in that way," he interjected, as she
+seemed unable to go on.
+
+"Oh, didn't I?" she asked. "I thought you said I did."
+
+"You said that they ran themselves, you remember, and that you were
+used to them," he reminded her, "and I took that to mean----"
+
+"Oh, that's what I said," she repeated, thoughtfully.
+
+"Don't you know what you said?" he demanded, a spasm of terror
+catching him and quickening his heart-beat as a great waggon loomed
+into sight horribly near them. Despairingly he glanced at the
+shining metal paraphernalia that encompassed him--his eye fell upon
+an unmistakable brass horn at his right, terminating in a rubber
+bulb. This could be but one thing, and cautiously loosening one
+clammy hand from the wheel, he pressed the bulb nervously. A loud,
+harsh cry from its brazen throat relieved him inexpressibly and
+sent a glow of confidence through him. He repeated the pressure,
+the driver of the cart looked leisurely around, and with a
+scowl drew off to one side of the road. Antony's blood resumed its
+normal pace, and as the course was now clear for a moment, anyway,
+he repeated his question:
+
+"Don't you know what you said?"
+
+The trees, the full brooks, the grazing cattle, unrolled behind
+them like a painted ribbon for several seconds before she answered.
+At length his ear caught a faint, short murmur.
+
+"N--no."
+
+"Why not?" he demanded briefly.
+
+"I would rather not tell you," she replied with a return of her old
+spirit.
+
+"You must tell me," he said angrily. "Here come two carriages--oh,
+why did I never notice how they stopped these things? Reach under
+my arms and squeeze that horn--quick!"
+
+The carriages separated and he went, quaking, between them.
+
+"Now, go on--this luck can hardly last," he warned her. "I intend
+to know for how much of this nightmare I am responsible."
+
+"You are responsible for all of it, then," she cried recklessly.
+"You had not the slightest excuse for making me drink all that
+nasty, burning stuff!"
+
+Regardless of his wheel, Antony turned and stared at her, and only
+her shriek of terror saved them from the stone wall that bordered a
+curve in the road.
+
+"You mean you were----"
+
+"If you dare to say it I shall jump!" she interrupted, plucking
+nervously at her skirt, and he saw that she was quite capable of
+carrying out the threat.
+
+"But--but you drank it yourself--I thought you knew----" he
+stammered.
+
+"It was down in my throat--I couldn't help it--I pushed it away as
+soon as I could--I never tasted anything but champagne and sherry
+and I thought they were all the same, those things. . ."
+
+She was on the point of tears now, and even in his keen sense of
+danger Antony was conscious of a gratified consciousness of that
+calm masculine superiority so long denied him.
+
+"I see, I see," he said hastily. "I am very sorry. I did the best I
+could at the time: I am not accustomed to resuscitating fainting
+young ladies and I rather lost my head. I assure you that I assume
+all the blame."
+
+"I think you had better," she replied vindictively, and Antony's
+conscious magnanimity collapsed instantly into an intense
+irritation.
+
+"I must beg you to observe," he said, somewhat jerkily, as they
+bounced up and down the irregularities of a rough country road,
+"that I am hardly responsible, even with the best will in the
+world, for your inability to consume five or six swallows of bad
+whisky without--without----" in a panic of terror as her hands flew
+to her skirts and her knees stiffened, he concluded
+impotently, "oh, have it any way you like! It's all my fault. Now,
+for heaven's sake, sit still and listen to me. Do you or do you not
+know anything whatever about motor cars? I ask because it is
+absolutely necessary," he added hastily.
+
+"I know nothing whatever about them," she returned with an icy
+finality, an air of uninterested irresponsibility, that maddened
+even while it appalled him.
+
+"Very good; neither do I," he said. "We are, as you see, on a long,
+empty, practically uninhabited country road. This is extremely
+fortunate for us, but it will not last much longer, for we are
+coming into Huntersville, which was, on the occasion when I last
+went through it in one of these ungodly machines, full of babies,
+chickens, unhitched horses, and large, disagreeable dogs. Rather
+than go through Huntersville I would run this thing at a tree, now.
+If I could estimate the force of the shock, I'd do it anyway. But I
+cannot estimate it, and I do not want to frighten you to death.
+Besides, it might send the thing backward. The same reasoning
+applies to a steep bank. Now, as I remember it, there is a wild
+sort of road that turns off to the left very soon and goes up
+a long hill somewhere or other. I haven't the least idea where, but
+it must lead to something. My idea would be to go up that road and
+try to wear the machinery out on it. If it runs into a field, it
+can't be helped. At any rate, I think there is less risk. Are you
+willing to try it?"
+
+His sincere and serious manner had its effect and she answered
+simply, "Anything that you think is best, of course. But could we
+not experiment a little, and try to stop it? It cannot be anything
+very complicated, since it has to be done so often."
+
+"No, no, no!" Antony cried nervously, "not while I'm in my right
+mind! It may seem foolish to you," he continued more stiffly, "but
+I have reached my limit of experiment. I--I know nothing of any
+kind of machinery--I loathe it. As soon as I began anything of that
+sort, my nerve would go. You remember the result when you stamped
+on that brass knob? Well, I admit that I am not equal to a
+repetition, to be quite frank."
+
+"I thought men always understood machinery," she murmured
+impatiently. "All the men I know are quite clever at it."
+
+Now, curiously enough, this pettish and really inexcusable
+fling did not produce its presumable effect upon Antony. Whether he
+felt that it was partly justified and that he was really in some
+sort unworthy of his sex, or whether the actuality of their
+pressing danger rendered him immune as regards such flighty stabs,
+is not known, but it remains a fact that he merely pursed his lips
+indulgently and spoke as follows:
+
+"You are indeed fortunate in your acquaintance. I regret that
+practice in steering horses, sail boats, bob sleds and to a certain
+small extent, dirigible balloons, has left me little leisure--and
+less inclination--for these evil-smelling devil-waggons. Neither
+the steamfitter nor the engineer has ever appealed to me----"
+
+He ceased abruptly, and as his voice died out she looked
+questioningly at him, for even her slight acquaintance with the
+young gentleman had taught her that he was not one to leave a
+well-planned sentence incomplete from choice.
+
+"What is it?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"That wild road is on the other side of Huntersville!" he said,
+with an utter absence of comment that impressed her more deeply
+than any of his previous conversational embroideries.
+
+Indeed, the pointed spire of the Huntersville church rose white
+before them and scattered houses even now lined the road.
+
+"I wish we were going uphill now," Antony began, "and I should
+advise you to jump. I don't believe you'd make such a mess of it as
+a great many girls would be likely to. Of course, you might have on
+the last hill, but I hated the idea of it. It may be steering will
+do. But if it's a question of running someone down, you'll have to,
+of course, and I'll turn sharp about and take my chance. Or aim at
+tree. Now, blow the horn hard, please, and when I say jump, go the
+way the car is going, and clear it well. You may sprain your ankle
+or get a bruise or two, but that won't kill you. It's a small sort
+of place, and we might get through. Don't stop the horn a moment.
+What's that idiot doing?"
+
+On the side of the road an overgrown boy of eighteen hopped wildly
+on one foot, the other stretched at right angles in front of him,
+while his lank red wrists beat the air like the arms of a windmill.
+
+These apparently purposeless evolutions he performed mechanically
+so long as his ungainly figure filled their vision, and the
+maniac appearance of the yokel rasped Antony's over-strained nerves
+unendurably.
+
+"If that is a fair sample of Huntersville youth, it would be a real
+blessing to the community to murder a few," he muttered
+malevolently, as they dashed, at what seemed to him a terribly
+accelerated pace, into the little town. A large sign-board sprang
+up suddenly, as it seemed, and faced them.
+
+_Village limits. Slow down to six miles an hour_ (it read) _by
+order of Commissioners. Offenders Will be_----
+
+But Antony, though desirous of reading further, even at the cost of
+a halt, was unable to do so.
+
+It was high noon and the main artery of travel could not have
+assumed a condition more favourable to an unwilling excursionist.
+Save for a group of children, which scattered to safety at
+the steady warning of the horn, and a laggard team of greys,
+whose languid progress from the middle of the road to their
+legitimate anchorage at the side cost their master his hind wheel,
+only a pompous speckled hen disputed their right of way. To his
+companion's shriek of horror--"The hen! The hen, Mr. Tony!"--Antony
+replied only, through set teeth, "This is no time to think of hens--
+blow that horn!" and drove like Attila the implacable over whatever
+of domesticity and motherhood that obstinate fowl may have
+represented. One more heap of empty barrels making a treacherous
+curve, one more angry woman, leaping into a puddle to protect her
+wide-eyed urchin, one heart-stifling ne'er-do-weel lurching at the
+last possible quarter-second with drunken luck, out of
+destruction's way, and it was over: Antony, firmly convinced
+that his hair must be snowy white, suffered the pent-up breath to
+escape at last from his lungs, only to catch it desperately again
+as a burly man, whose ostentatiously drawn-back coat displayed a
+gleaming metal badge, stood deliberately before them, not a hundred
+feet away, and waved his hand with unmistakable meaning. In this
+hand fluttered a bit of yellow paper which recalled irresistible
+memories of the telegraph office; the other grasped a large nickel
+watch that winked derisively in the sunlight.
+
+"Stop!" he bellowed majestically, and balanced upon his bow legs.
+
+On one side stretched a hastily constructed barrier of old boards
+and flimsy crates through which the blue sky line gleamed in bright
+bars; on the other a heavy waggon rested at an evidently
+intentional slant.
+
+"Blow, blow!" gasped Antony, and, "Get out of the way, you fool!"
+he cried with ineffective hoarseness, grinding his teeth as it
+became apparent that the creature meant to brazen it through.
+
+"Look out! We can't stop! Oh, please go away!"
+
+The shrill scream of the girl at his side accomplished more than
+the horn: the terror in her eyes spoke loudly for her, and with a
+face wherein rage and incredulity struggled, this vidous obstructor
+of highways stepped unwillingly aside and left them a scant five
+feet of passageway. But for Antony, in his present state of nerves,
+five feet was all too scant. Had he then escaped all the chances
+and changes of this mad morning, had he won through by a
+miracle of success, only to be balked at the last by an
+incalculable old village marplot? Should a paunchy waddler of this
+sort wreck at once his pride and his car? Thus he frothed and
+boiled in his heart, and perhaps that overheated organ clouded his
+eyes and vibrated in his wrists, for the heavy front wheels of the
+great vehicle crashed into the flimsy right-hand barrier, mowed
+down the crates and planking as if they had been of straw,
+scattered them, crackling and clattering, far and wide; and worse
+than this, the hind wheels, with an utterly unintentional flirt
+which had nevertheless all the effect of a malicious and
+brilliantly executed manoeuvre, jolted the barrier-waggon so
+violently that the horse attached to it sprang quickly forward,
+thus unfortunately upsetting the pursy and authoritative native who
+had retreated to that side for safety. Down he rolled in the dust,
+yelling frantically, while the frightened horse with a sharp turn
+fled back through the town, scattering still further the wreckage
+of the ill-fated barricade. Nette, turning involuntarily, saw all
+this and saw, too, that even as he bit the dust the outraged wearer
+of the metal badge still clutched, and as it seemed to her
+brandished, with a sinister motion the square of yellow paper.
+
+She stole a glance at Antony, but his set jaw and lowering brow did
+not invite confidences, and she sat in silence during the few
+remaining moments that sufficed to set them free of the village
+outskirts.
+
+"Here is the road," said Antony briefly as they turned into a
+winding, stony track that closed behind them like a gate; and on
+this occasion no untoward happening checked the deep breath that he
+allowed himself.
+
+"I have ridden along this road ten miles at least," he continued,
+"and it is practically deserted. They have to keep it in some sort
+of shape because it is the only way they have to haul timber in the
+autumn from the woods beyond, and telegraph poles; then they send
+them away by boat down the river. I never followed it to the end,
+but I should suppose it would wind into Brookdale, which is on the
+Northern Trunk Division, and nowhere near us by rail, you know."
+
+"Brookdale . . . Brookdale?" she murmured vaguely, as he seemed to
+be waiting for her to speak.
+
+"What I propose to do," he went on, quite easily now, and steering
+the car, within the simple limits possible, almost unconsciously,
+"is to go on like this as long as the road is deserted as it is
+now. As soon as we reach Brookdale--or whatever village we touch
+first--I will try to find a big enough sweep to turn around in and
+simply retrace our way. This I shall continue to do until this
+brutal machinery runs down. It will be dull, but safe. All the
+farmhouses have turns for their own waggons, and I can be fairly
+sure of a clear path around a watering trough or sign board, you
+see. There is a good broad sweep, I noticed, in front of the last
+farm before we turn into the woods here and I'm not afraid to go as
+near Huntersville as that. To begin with, they'd never believe that
+we would be so foolish as to come back, and they will naturally
+suppose that we took the regular state road and got across the
+river; touring-cars like this don't go up this way--unless they are
+obliged to," he added grimly, as an unusually rough spot shook them
+till their very teeth rattled. "I hope you approve of this plan?"
+he concluded politely.
+
+"I suppose it is the best thing to do, considering
+everything," she answered after a little pause, "though I wish . . .
+when shall we reach Brookdale?"
+
+"I am unable to tell you," Antony replied with a touch of asperity,
+"and I really cannot see what difference it makes, since we can
+hardly hope to stop there on our first trip."
+
+"To be sure," she said, "I forgot. You manage the car so well that
+I forgot that you can't do anything you like with it. You must
+excuse me."
+
+At these words a comforting and fragrant warmth, the very subtle
+aroma of well-being, stole about Antony's heart, and his face
+relaxed insensibly. He could the more readily excuse her ingenuous
+error because he had more than once in the last hour fallen into it
+himself. It was difficult to believe that his control of this
+cumbrous soft-bitted monster, answering so sweetly to the slightest
+contraction of his wrist, was merely nominal; that only the most
+extraordinary good fortune stood between him and crushing ruin.
+
+"Why do you suppose that ugly fat man wanted to stop us, Mr. Tony?"
+Nette demanded suddenly--"did he have any right to, or any reason?"
+
+
+Antony sighed thoughtfully, and his various feelings struggled in
+his face.
+
+"As to his rights," he answered judicially, "I really could not
+say. He certainly had some kind of badge. But as to his reasons, I
+fear the only difficulty will be to count them."
+
+"To count them?" she repeated curiously. "Are there so many, then?"
+
+Antony shrugged his shoulders expressively.
+
+"In the first place," he began, "we are supposed to have purposely
+irritated an extremely unpleasant old snake to the point of biting,
+perhaps fatally, a French chauffeur. If fatally, the law wants us
+on that account. In the second place, we have stolen a large
+and costly touring car and are apparently occupied in making away
+with it as fast as possible. And the law wants us on that account.
+In the third place, we have violated the speed regulations of
+Huntersville and refused to stop when called upon to answer for it,
+and the law wants us on that account. In the fourth place, we have
+knocked down and, for all I know, seriously injured an official of
+Huntersville, and the law wants us on that account. Do I make
+myself clear?"
+
+"Quite clear," she replied soberly, and then, without the slightest
+warning, she burst into a rich gurgle of laughter, so rollicking
+and infectious that Antony had joined her before he realised it,
+and the wood rang with their united mirth. The massive mechanism,
+whose least lever they could not have explained, had it been to
+save their lives, rolled ponderously along, clanking and hissing
+beneath them; and they, perched like flippant butterflies on its
+upholstered surface, chuckled and trilled and rejoiced in their
+youth. As the Indian child leads the mighty elephant by a leash of
+meadow grass, so Antony directed his car with a flick of the wrist,
+and like the child thought nothing of what he did, save that it was
+amusing and showed forth his mightiness. Death glided along
+beside them, revolving softly with each turn of the four broad
+tires; terror lurked at every vine-twisted bend in the road; not a
+smooth beech nor a rough chestnut but might have hidden behind it
+some horrid destiny--and they rode on lightly, as the froth on the
+breaker before it crashes on the beach.
+
+Upon Antony, indeed, positive serenity had fallen, and a
+consciousness of readiness for any emergency. It was with some
+strong sense of this that he leaned down to his companion and said
+with a masterful smile--the smile of one whose thorough
+acquaintance with himself precludes any idea of self-gratulation:
+
+"Perhaps, my dear Miss Nette, it is, after all, as well that you
+have one of us despised young fellows with you to-day? Even the
+most fascinating of greybeards might have found this crisis a
+little too much for him?"
+
+Only the lowest curve of her flushed cheek was visible. Grapelike
+curls of warm brown shielded her eyes, but he remembered their
+astonishing blue and glanced with keen appreciation at her silken
+instep to strengthen the memory. When all was said, what pluck she
+had! How many girls would have skimmed so swiftly and surely
+down that hill, would have faced a danger so evident with such
+buoyant courage, would have smiled so comradely in the face of
+fear? What if her tongue were a little sharp? She was not the
+ordinary brainless twitterer of her age. And something more than
+brain had flashed and deepened in her eyes. . . . She was speaking.
+
+"Perhaps, my dear Mr. Tony," she responded affably--alas, too
+affably--"it is, after all, as well to remember that even the least
+fascinating of greybeards would be hardly likely to involve me in
+such a crisis!"
+
+The car rose to a large irregular stone that punctuated the already
+rough road, and Antony bounced angrily from his seat, descending
+with a shock that jarred his spine throughout its length. It seemed
+to him that the machinery clanked and laboured more heavily, that
+they were going a little more slowly; only a little, perhaps, but
+still more slowly. But he was too vexed to care if their progress
+were slow or quick. He loathed the pert, confident creature at his
+side from the bottom of his heart. Viewed in the sudden sultry heat
+of his feelings, what was her self-possession but brazen
+effrontery? Was such diabolic quickness of _riposte_ even
+creditable to her years and sex? He considered the situation
+briefly: why were they in their present plight? Because, to put the
+matter baldly, he had been misled by the statements of a young
+woman who had openly admitted herself in no condition to be held
+responsible for her words--a pretty state of things! Really, it was
+hardly . . . hardly . . . but she was speaking again.
+
+"Mr. Tony," she said softly (she had the knack of making a soft
+murmur rise above the clamour of the machinery), "please do not
+think, Mr. Tony, that I do not appreciate your courage, and--and
+sensibleness after it all happened! And I fully realise that it was
+partly my--that I--that if I had not----"
+
+"Not at all," he answered stiffly, taking pity in spite of himself
+at her evident embarrassment. "As you implied, the initial
+responsibility was all mine."
+
+But though his words were stiff, his heart had grown insensibly
+supple under the pressure of her voice. After all, what did her
+condition prove--that condition that had prompted their mad flight--
+but her very innocence and ignorance of alcoholicstimulant? A
+very good showing, in these relaxed and indecorous days. We should
+always try to be just.
+
+Drifting on these conflicting tides of feeling, Antony ceased to
+study the winding road with the severe scrutiny he had hitherto
+applied to it, and as the way was now very rough, he failed utterly
+to observe for what it was, a certain grassy cart track curving
+into their path, and took it with a twist of the wheel, even as his
+companion cried out in alarm.
+
+"What are you doing? This cannot be right!" she warned, but it was
+too late, and Antony realized that on the very verge of the
+wood road, just as he should have looked for a space to turn in and
+retrace their safe course, he had left that course entirely and was
+steering along a now barely perceptible wheelway through a rough
+and rolling pasture lot.
+
+He shut his lips tightly and affected not to have heard her, and
+for a few seconds they rode, in silence, through the stony field.
+Suddenly she grasped his arm and for the first time terror
+sharpened her voice.
+
+"Oh! oh! see those cows! Oh, don't you see them? Go back! Go back!"
+
+Antony shook her off impatiently and grazed a stump on the right
+only to bump against a jagged boulder on the left. The car was
+undoubtedly moving more slowly; he could swear to it.
+
+"I believe it is an established fact that the cow is not
+carnivorous," he observed, peering in spirit to the limits of the
+field and wondering if he could turn in case a stone wall
+threatened.
+
+"I am going to jump," she announced quietly, and a spasm of fear
+shot through him remembering the pointed stubble and the flinty
+rocks.
+
+
+
+"Listen," he commanded, "and try not to be a little idiot. What
+harm can a cow do you? Or if it could"--with a burst of
+inspiration--"why should you throw yourself into the middle of
+them--perhaps with a broken leg?"
+
+A smothered gasp told him that this shot had told, and he drove on
+grimly; the nearly obliterated track led straight into the nibbling
+herd. As the monstrous, labouring chariot neared them they lifted
+their heads, stared gloomily a moment, and lumbered off, herding
+into a clumsy canter as the unknown enemy gained on them. Stunted
+firs rose here and there beside the track; the wheels crushed the
+smaller stumps now, and tipped more alarmingly as they took the
+unavoidable stones. They two might have been the first (or last) of
+human pairs in all the world, for they rode utterly alone between
+the dun earth and the blue sky. Each moment Antony expected to
+wake, gripping the sheets, and each moment this dreamlike progress,
+this mad chase of dappled cows, this pitching, tossing, clangorous
+flight, grew more real, more ludicrous, more menacing.
+
+Suddenly the path grew smoother; even, it seemed to Antony, more
+slippery. The wheels took a different motion, the noise of
+machinery grew by tiny degrees less and lower and died into a
+drone. It almost seemed that they were gliding with the force of
+gravity alone, for the track (now a broad muddy band) dipped
+slightly but steadily. They appeared to be bound for a providential
+gap in an ugly stone wall; below this stretched a wonderfully green
+field bounded by a thick row of feathery sage-coloured trees, the
+first full foliage they had seen.
+
+Drugged with the steady head-wind of their flight, his hands
+mechanically glued to the wheel, his brain a mere phonograph that
+sang, over and over, "Keep in the track! Keep In the track!" Antony
+took his juggernaut through the scant six feet in the wall, marked
+how those of the cattle that had crowded through the opening made
+for the thinnest place in the fringe of trees, tried to estimate
+the force of a collision with one of those gnarled and twisted
+trunks, and realised to his horror that all power of initiative
+was exhausted in him. Helpless and hypnotised, fatalistic as a
+wild-riding Arab, he could only sit and grasp the wheel and wonder
+vaguely what would happen. Would she jump? He was practically
+certain that the motive-power was completely or nearly
+exhausted, and that they were slipping along on a different and
+sloping soil. Even as this flashed through his mind he saw a
+welcome gap in the sage-green trees and made for it, though in
+doing so he left the path, which, for that matter, split
+inexplicably into many tiny paths.
+
+What was that behind the green? What fields or walls or trees are
+blue? What blue shimmers and sparkles? . . .
+
+"Jump! Jump!" he cried, hoarsely, but she sat fascinated, turned to
+stone by his side.
+
+As one watches the water in a globe of coloured glass by the
+seashore and smiles at the tiny splashing mites that sport in it,
+so Antony watched a large red-and-white cow stagger helplessly down
+a steepish slope, and smiled as she plunged clumsily into the broad
+river. "It is beyond her depth, for she is swimming," he thought,
+and then they hung for three seconds on the brink of the tiny
+slope, a maddening three seconds, in which they might have jumped,
+but could not--and plunged, with a sharp, sweet scream from the
+rigid girl by his side, into the river. It rose up strangely, as it
+seemed, to meet them, and with the cold shock of the water
+Antony's will returned to him, and he rolled over the side of the
+car before it was quite submerged, dragging Nette with him, and
+pitching her over beyond him with his left arm. She slipped from
+his grasp by the very force of the movement and went down, and the
+current caught them both.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE RETURN
+
+EVEN as he sank in the river, Antony perceived that he was in the
+grip of a terrible current. He struck out with all his strength
+against it for a moment, instinctively, before he realised that it
+was folly to combat it; and as he rose to the surface, staring
+eagerly along the course of its tugging compulsion, he saw, as he
+had hoped to see, a sleek small head several yards in advance of
+him. With a shout of encouragement he made for the small, floating
+dot, and swam as he had never swam before, marking its distance
+each second in order to be able to dive when it should disappear.
+But it did not disappear. To his delight it floated serenely along,
+and as he caught up with it, still yelling in his excitement, it
+turned towards him.
+
+"Don't you think you might as well stop that noise, now?" said
+Nette calmly. "We seem to be saved. Is it far to the shore?"
+
+Antony's jaw dropped and he swallowed more of the river water than
+was conducive to his comfort.
+
+"I--I don't know, really," he gasped, "but it can't be, of course,
+if this beastly current will only let us land. Shall I hold you a
+little? Aren't you tired?"
+
+"Not yet" she answered briefly. "I'll let you know. Of course my
+clothes make a dif----"
+
+She paused abruptly and devoted her breath to keeping up with him.
+Antony was a strong and rapid swimmer and had had more than one
+occasion to practice the art when fully dressed. Rising on his
+stroke, he glanced about him and saw with joy that the current was
+sweeping them gradually, though not directly, to the left bank of
+the river. He could in fact discern their course in the different
+texture of the water as it sparkled in the sun.
+
+"Just put your hand on my shoulder," he begged. "There's no use
+wasting your strength. I think we ought to be there in five
+minutes, at this rate. It must be awfully hard in those skirts."
+
+Her breath came short and hard now; with a slight motion of her
+head she indicated her assent, and placed her hand on his shoulder,
+and they slid in silence through the water. The bank, which now
+loomed clearly over them, was quite high at this point, and Antony
+deliberately neglected more than one place where a brief effort
+would have got them out of the current, in order to make sure of an
+easy slope by which to land. Suddenly his eye lit on what he had
+been waiting for, a winding, easy path up through the cleared
+underbrush, with a rough, three-sided shanty near it.
+
+"Here we are!" he cried encouragingly. "I think I can get you
+across--by Jove, it's taking us there!"
+
+And this was so: the current, with a distinct twist, urged them in
+towards shore, and in a moment more Antony touched the bottom of
+the river and towed his companion, now hanging heavily on him, in
+to safety. They dragged themselves wearily up the little path,
+soggy and dripping, Nette's skirts heavy with water, and sat down
+with one accord on a sunny rock in front of the decaying old
+building, evidently a deserted boathouse, from the coils of rope
+and broken oars that lay there. They looked dully at each other,
+and as they looked they shivered, for hot as was the sun, the
+river, not yet warmed by this specious early spring, had chilled
+them to the bone.
+
+Antony shook himself and tried to overcome the lassitude that had
+crept on him.
+
+"Well, here we are!" he said tentatively, pressing his teeth
+together to hide their chattering. "It is a mighty good thing you
+swim so well, isn't it? Now we must get out of this as soon as
+possible--your lips are blue. I suppose you really ought to run
+about a little, oughtn't you?"
+
+"I suppose so," she assented wearily, "but I shall not do so,
+nevertheless. Is there no house near here?"
+
+They gazed about them, but no chimney, no red barn, no white
+steeple, rewarded the inspection. Robinson upon his isle could have
+felt himself no more abandoned. Jutting headlands cut off their
+view up and down the river; high pasture land broken with woods
+covered all they could see on the opposite bank, and the one upon
+which they found themselves appeared to consist entirely of sand
+pits, gnarled roots, and fallen trees, with what seemed a rather
+formidable forest behind.
+
+"It seems idiotic," Antony began, "and of course we must be
+somewhere--this is a ridiculous sort of country; one would think we
+were in the middle of Africa--but just at the moment I cannot say
+that I see any signs of humanity but this old boathouse. I will
+take a run up beyond that little promontory and look about. Please
+jump up and down while I am gone, and could you not take that skirt
+off and dry it in the sun?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And by the way," she observed casually, "where is the motor-car, do
+you suppose?"
+
+Antony sat down from sheer force of surprise. He had utterly
+forgotten the motor-car. Life to him had begun anew when he
+staggered up the bank. He looked piteously over the shining river.
+
+"Well, we've done it, now!" he exclaimed, and as he sat in huddled
+misery a fit of senseless laughter shook him, nor was his dripping
+companionlong in joining him. They laughed till the decayed
+old boathouse echoed, and when, from very fatigue, they stopped, no
+trifles such as cold or wet or isolation or the justly merited
+terror of the Law could cloud their invincible youth after that
+baptism of mirth.
+
+"Anyway," Antony began, his voice still shaking, "we are on the
+other side of the river, and there is no bridge for two miles,
+certainly, and we came through a pasture to get here and so the old
+car is pretty safe to be under the mud by the time she could be
+traced. They say the bottom is mostly quicksand all about here--if
+we are here--for heaven's sake, what is that?"
+
+He pointed to a black rectangular object floating placidly on to
+shore, not ten feet from them.
+
+"It is a trunk," Nette replied excitedly, "a black, waterproof
+motor trunk! And a suit case behind it! And oh, see, do you see
+that hat box?"
+
+They held their breath as the strange squadron sailed majestically
+along the guiding current into their tiny port, the trunk floating
+high, displaying its white stenciled monogram proudly, the suit
+case following, the absurd little chimney-pot ducking and bobbing
+in the rear. Suddenly, as the suit case seemed likely to drift
+out again, they rushed to the bank, and while Nette dragged the
+trunk to shelter Antony strode into the water and gathered in the
+smaller craft.
+
+They were all of wicker, with a lining of oiled silk and a covering
+of thick waterproof rubber material, and as Nette pulled at the
+fastenings of the trunk and flung back the lid it was at once
+evident that both these shielding materials had admirably performed
+their office: the contents were uninjured. They looked upon a
+shallow tray divided into two parts. In one lay what was apparently
+a small, fantastically shaped cloud of palest mauve. Upon one side
+of this cloud there was fastened with a sort of jewel a long, soft
+feather of a slightly deeper tint of mauve. This feather curled
+caressingly about the cloud and Antony's experience instructed him
+that the object was quite terrestrial--was, in fact, a hat. An
+indistinguishable, fluffy, shimmering mass of mauve filled the
+other compartment, and in the cover a cunning artificer had set a
+fair-sized mirror, surrounded by numerous loops of leather which
+held brushes, combs, and other toilet accessories. As Antony
+regarded this collection of objects, he was aware of a long, soft
+sigh, and turning to his companion he beheld her bowing as in a
+trance before them, lost, like the persons in a well-known hymn, in
+wonder, love and praise.
+
+"Oh! How perfect!" she breathed, and at the picture of her,
+dripping and draggled, shivering and ecstasied, he shook his head
+in thoughtful amazement.
+
+"Now, Miss Nette," he said abruptly, "do you know what you are
+going to do. This is simply too extraordinary to be anything less
+than providential. You are going to follow me into this little shed
+and when I have taken the trunk there, you are going to put on
+everything you can find in it. If there's anything sensible enough
+there, please give yourself a good rub-down with it. Will you take
+cold with your hair wet?" he added masterfully.
+
+Either moisture or the sight of the mauve glories had taught her
+meekness, for:
+
+"Oh, no, my hair will dry in a few minutes--it dries very quickly,"
+she assured him, adding timidly, "but ought I--they are so lovely--
+have we any right----"
+
+"I suppose you have a right to avoid pneumonia," he interrupted her
+rudely "and as far as the question of rights is concerned, this is
+rather late in the day to go into that, I think!"
+
+He marched to the little shed, bearing the trunk, as it had been
+the crown regalia, on outstretched arms, and Nette, wringing her
+hair and murmurmg incoherent abnegations concerning her
+unworthiness of the mauve mysteries, followed nevertheless.
+
+Repeating sternly his injunctions as to the value of thorough
+rub-downs, he left her, and falling upon the suit case, which he
+prophetically connected with the comforting masculine hat box, he
+carried it behind the shed, and at a chivalrous distance opened it
+Then in that deserted wood there was a silence, like that which
+fell in heaven, for the space of half an hour and, it may be, a
+little longer. At the end of this silence there appeared from
+behind a large oak a very dignified and handsome young gentleman
+attired, perhaps a thought impractically for his surroundings,
+in a fleckless frock coat with the appurtenances usually
+thereto accredited by our leading metropolitan tailors, such as
+stiffly creased grey trousers, patent-leather shoes, and delicate
+gloves dangled in the hand. Walking somewhat mincingly, this
+gentleman, elaborately backing around the shed and apparently not
+observing it, sought a rubber-incased hat box lying on the ground,
+and stooping gingerly, unclasped it, drew from it a glossy, black
+hat, and after a few affectionate strokings, which, applied to its
+surface, could but recall to any student of literature the painting
+of the lily, placed the same upon his sleek head with an absorbed
+and even slightly terrified expression, which melted slowly into
+one of deep satisfaction. After this he coughed politely and
+prepared to back again around the little hut. In this operation he
+was, however, interrupted by a soft tug at one of his almost
+too perfect coat tails.
+
+"I look very well, too, I think," said a hesitating, sweet voice,
+and in an instant he was bareheaded before her.
+
+Charming as Nette had appeared in her simple walking dress, Antony
+was utterly unprepared for the picture she now presented. In the
+absurd and yet wonderfully effective setting of the brown, budding
+trees, the broken and forbidding rocks, against the dull background
+of the dingy, decaying hut, her soft, pale tints of hat and gown
+gleamed like some one of the perfumed daintinesses Watteau traced
+upon his tricksy, tempting court fans. The whole costume, from the
+sweeping cavalier feather to the saucy, buckled slippers, recalled
+subtly that delightful pretense at Arcadia, that amusing pastoral
+figuring and posturing that broke under a sigh too ardent, a
+pressure too fiery, into the scented powder puff and the satin
+stays. One looked for a spinet, garlanded with golden cupids, for a
+white lamb smelling like Araby the blest, for a wreathed crook with
+a tiny mirror artfully set in its curve. To gaze upon that
+diabolically contrived simplicity was to produce in the susceptible
+breast, and most particularly in the susceptible masculine
+breast, an odd tumult of sensations too conflicting in their nature
+for description.
+
+Nette's hair ran vine-like under the melting, tender-coloured
+plume; her skin glowed softly rosy, and two faint violet shadows
+under her brilliant eyes toned sweetly with the colours of her
+misleading gown. Around her neck on a slender golden chain was hung
+a singularly perfect fresh-water pearl, large, with shifting
+colours, utterly unadorned by any jeweller's fancies; an odd and
+very elegant bauble that caught Antony's eye instantly.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he began, "you are--you are----" he paused, for
+genuine lack of words. "You are absurdly charming," he concluded,
+not altogether lamely, after all, and she swept him a graceful
+courtesy, her long, pale sash-ends floating out against the rough
+bark behind her. Nor was Master Antony displeased at the
+satisfaction at his appearance which he surprised in her eyes.
+Intrinsically inartistic indeed is the garb of our modern male, and
+yet to our accustomed eye there is a fine air of fitness, a grave
+elegance, in his sombre bifurcation; an ordered poetry in his
+candid vest, his lustrous neck scarf; a twinkling luxuriousness
+in his polished and costly footwear. All this appeared to
+perfection in Antony's dignified figure, just sufficiently above
+the middle height to allow of his being called tall.
+
+"The sleeves," he informed her, "are a little short and I am not
+sure that I have not stretched the shoulder seams a little, but the
+shoes are exactly my own size. The underwear," he added absently,
+"was silk. Apricot colour----"
+
+"My shoes," she began hastily, "are too large, but I think I can
+keep them on. The skirt is too long, of course, but I can hold it
+up. The hat," she concluded, with softened eyes, "I should like to
+be buried in."
+
+"I should dislike to have you buried in it," he said briefly, "and
+now," he continued briskly, "the next thing is to get away. I have
+put all my things into the suit case and I will, with your
+permission, put yours there too. Then we will leave the suit case
+and the hat box under a pile of old boughs near where I dressed,
+and the trunk--is there anything in the trunk?" he broke off.
+
+"No, I put them all on," she assured him, flushing delightfully.
+"There was just enough--of everything."
+
+"I see. Well, I think we'll simply leave it here. Perhaps I might
+hide it a little," and he tossed a dusty roll of cocoa matting and
+a coil of rope over the receptacle, which being small became from
+that moment unnoticed.
+
+"And now," said Antony, when he had conveyed the neat, damp roll
+she handed him to its hiding place, "let us get along. We can do no
+better than follow this path, which seems to grow broader, if
+anything, and it stands to reason we must come out somewhere. I may
+as well confess that I have a very poor idea of location, and I
+don't as yet find any landmarks. From the moment that we struck off
+into that field track I lost my bearings entirely. I should suppose
+we were opposite--or almost opposite--Brookdale; perhaps a bit
+lower down. We can get a rig and drive back probably--unless we die
+of hunger," he ended angrily. "I have only a little change with me
+--forgot it when I changed my clothes, of course, this morning. I
+suppose, though, I could get some money on this," and he fingered
+the scarf pin at his throat. It was a horseshoe of small diamonds
+of the purest water, and as Nette's eyes fastened on it she started
+suddenly.
+
+"Was that what you had on this morning?" she asked.
+
+"No," he answered, flushing a little. "I found it in a jeweller's
+box on the top of the things in the suit case, with a letter. I
+have the letter--it says only 'Amory' on it. I put the pin on," a
+trifle shamefacedly, "more or less to go with the whole rig, you
+know!"
+
+Antony looked very boyish as he made this confession and Nette
+could but smile as he fingered the little horseshoe consciously.
+This smile was not lost upon the youth, and turning, he walked on
+in silence, advancing steadily if delicately along the path, which,
+though narrow enough to force them into single file, was
+sufficiently clear to afford a certain margin of safety to
+Nette's billowy splendours. Antony occasionally held back a
+threatening bough, and she from time to time moaned apprehensively
+as some projecting stump detained her drapery for a terrifying
+second; but for this they exchanged no further conversation.
+
+Antony's faculties, stretched to their utmost since morning,
+unfortified by food, absolutely refused to rally around him on this
+occasion, and though he cudgelled his brains for a solution of the
+probabilities of his conduct when they should emerge from the wood,
+it was a useless performance. He was capable of walking erectly
+through the trees, of keeping his shoes bright, of shielding his
+hat from indignity--and of nothing more. Thus oblivious to all but
+the sensations of the moment, he plodded steadily on, and it was
+with an expression of positive stupor that he burst all at once and
+without the slightest transition of the foliage out of the rude
+woods into a trim gravel road flanked by incredibly artificial
+Lombardy poplars. In front of him swept a terraced lawn; far across
+it rose a lordly Elizabethan mansion composed, apparently, of
+weathered oak and gay window boxes; a marvellously rolled
+tennis court swam before his dazzled eyes. As he felt Nette at his
+side and opened his lips to speak, a loud, triumphant shout burst
+upon the air and a carriage and pair stationed at the end of the
+drive sprang into rapid motion towards them.
+
+"'Ere you are, sir! 'Ere! Just in time, sir, jump in! All right,
+sir--I knew by the lady's dress--could you h'open the door
+yourself, sir? Mr. Richard said he knew you'd try the old road--
+'owever did you get over the old bridge, sir? I doubt we can make
+it this late, but we'll try. Excuse me, sir, but there's no time
+for talk--in you go, sir!"
+
+Under the piercing eye of the garrulous old servant Nette slipped
+into the brougham and Antony after her, as one in a dream. The fat
+bays literally galloped along the crushed stone, whirled through an
+elaborate iron gateway, and devoured the stretch of country road
+whose scattered houses Antony tried in vain to identify.
+
+"Where are we going?" Nette asked fearfully, but he could only
+shake his head.
+
+"Somewhere near a railroad station, I hope," he answered; "we
+couldn't very well walk along the road dressed like this.
+Evidently this old idiot knows your dress--that's very
+unfortunate."
+
+"He cannot know it," she insisted, "for it has never been worn. I
+am sure of it."
+
+"Nonsense," said Antony brutally, and at her incredulous
+displeasure he softened only so far as to demand:
+
+"Then how did he know you?"
+
+"I don't know," she admitted, and they drew up suddenly among a
+crowd of carriages and motor-cars gathered around a quaint stone
+church.
+
+"Now we'll slip out," Antony began, when all at once a slender
+young man sprang to the door of the brougham, wrenched it open,
+seized Antony's hand, and burst into a torrent of language.
+
+"Well, you took your time, didn't you? At last! Ritchie was sick
+with rage--till we got the telegram. How's Auguste? Car gave
+out, of course. Poor Emily felt dreadfully. Miss---excuse me, but
+all I can think of is Gertrude, you can just get in--dash over to
+the cloister and they've left a place, _So_ glad to have met you--
+yes, indeed. This is Williamson. Please ask for mother's carriage
+directly the ceremony is over--we're going to form an arch or
+something at the house. Hurry up, old man--I had all your work. The
+rest are in by this time, but I have to attend to the carriages and
+you are to take in the late ones. Family on left of white ribbons--
+for heaven's sake, Miss Gertrude--_run!_"
+
+He dragged Nette from the step and raced her toward the church; she
+lifted her skirts and skimmed like a swallow beside him. Antony
+stumbled to the puffing old coachman, pulled all the silver out of
+his pocket and handed it to him mechanically.
+
+"Thank you kindly, sir--I did my best. So many not knowing either
+you or the young lady, sir, it was 'ard for us, but I did my best.
+She looks beautiful, they tell me--h'isn't that some one waving for
+you, sir?"
+
+Antony ran wildly towards the church door, whence issued a pompous
+and familiar peal from the organ; a strongly accented march, to
+whose measures, he reflected dizzily, no one whom he had yet
+encountered had ever been able to adapt his steps. He peered up the
+little, crowded aisle. Half-way along it paced a solemn party of
+young men; four visions of mauve and feathers followed them, and
+even as he removed his hat four more hurried past him and entered
+the door. They were in couples, each bearing a great armful of
+white and purple sweet peas, and the maiden nearest him in the last
+couple, flushed and panting, with one bare arm, was none other than
+poor Uncle Julius's godmother's own daughter's stepdaughter! She
+moved demurely, her eyes downcast, the great pearl rising with her
+quick breath, and Antony wiped the troubled sweat from his brow. A
+stir behind him, a murmured, sighing tribute, and the bride was
+passing by. White as the lilies in her hands, a frostlike veil
+falling over her glistening train, she glided beside her portly
+father, and the crowded little church turned to mark her passage as
+a hedge of sunflowers seeks the sun.
+
+Antony sighed and turned to confront a massive lady swathed in
+rose-coloured satin and variously adorned with precious stones of
+all colours. She fixed him with a protruding grey eye and directed
+toward him a hissing whisper.
+
+"I am the bride's Aunt!" she declared. Antony stared vaguely at
+her.
+
+"And I hope there is a seat well to the front," she continued
+severely, if hoarsely.
+
+With a shock of comprehension Antony thrust forward his arm.
+
+"I am sure that there is, madam," he said politely, "pray come with
+me."
+
+And so it happened that he led the massive satin creature up the
+aisle in the wake of that mystic procession, outwardly a mask of
+courtly solicitude, but within him the premonitions of whirling
+mania. He was literally faint with hunger; the strong sweetness
+of the lilies and other aromatic plants disposed about the church
+for its decoration affected him almost unpleasantly with their
+cloying odours, and the menacing fear that with every step he was
+involving himself further in a list of crimes so confused as to be,
+perhaps, yet uncatalogued in the annals of the law, shadowed his soul.
+
+"_I, Emily Hildegarde, take thee, Richard_----"
+
+the tones of the frost-like bride were as clear and silvery as her
+veil. Richard would encounter a certain amount of self-possession,
+it appeared. But perhaps young women were all self-possessed, now.
+Antony could not recall a bride that had trembled in his
+experience.
+
+The solemn service hastened to its conclusion. Suppose the marriage
+should prove to have been invalid because of a fraudulent and
+criminal usher? It might be possible. . . .
+
+"I am sorry, but the church is filled," he murmured suavely to a
+beseeching violet-scented pair, marvelling at his own self-command.
+
+It was over. Mendelssohn announced it and his echoes shook the
+windows. Two more hopeful voyagers had launched out upon life,
+arm in arm down the smiling, tearful aisle; two more combatants
+with armour scarcely buckled smiled boastfully on entering the
+field, nor noted that it was strewn with the breakage of their
+predecessors!
+
+Thus cynically did Antony muse as the glowing pair swept by, when
+all at once a soft voice murmured close to his ear:
+
+"Ask for Mrs. Williamson's carriage!"
+
+She was gone. They were all gone, in a perfumed cloud of mauve, and
+with a bound he cleared the three entrance steps and ran to the
+crowd of vehicles that began to move about.
+
+"Is Mrs. Williamson's carriage here?" he called loudly, and, as a
+one-horse coupe drew up to him, the odour of sweet peas was wafted
+across his nostrils and she swept in beside him, jealously guarding
+her skirts from harmful contacts. Obedient to her imperative
+gesture, he took his seat beside her, and feeling unable to combine
+into any intelligible sentence his emotions and apprehensions,
+gazed questioningly into her flushed and sparkling countenance. She
+pressed the sweet peas to her breast, and as the carriage moved off
+at a rapid pace she looked deep into his eyes and spoke.
+
+"Wasn't she lovely?" she said dreamily.
+
+Antony opened his mouth and closed it, opened it again and again
+closed it. For a moment it seemed to him that his mind was reeling
+from its foundations; that perhaps, after all, he was the
+legitimate usher of Emily's wedding and that this lustrous-eyed
+creature with him was Gertrude . . . and then a wholesome rage came
+to his assistance.
+
+"For heaven's sake," he cried, "talk reasonably! Where are we
+going? What town is this? Do you realise the awful situation we are
+in? I shall go raving mad if this thing keeps up much longer!"
+
+She laid a small gloved hand on his knee and spoke calmly to the
+quivering youth.
+
+"Listen," she said, "I do not see that we can do better than
+go on to the house. It is a very big wedding and we can mix very
+easily in the crowd if only I can get another dress--or a long
+coat, somewhere. Perhaps I can. Especially now, when hardly any one
+is here yet. Then you can get hold of a carriage and we can drive
+to the station. We can at least get something to eat, for I know
+how hungry you are. Nobody knows who half the people are at a
+wedding--it is the safest place in the world for--for----"
+
+"For escaping criminals," he concluded bitterly, yet with an
+unreasonable lightening of heart. "It is true, nobody will know me.
+And perhaps I can find out where we are."
+
+"And who we are," she reminded him, smiling kindly.
+
+He was amazed at the almost maternal gentleness, the sweet poise of
+her manner. She might have been the very bridesmaid she simulated.
+
+"Did any one speak to you?" he asked curiously.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I was so late. I think I am _her_ friend, and they don't seem to
+know each other so very well. The first four are friends, but
+my four, no. Still, I can't very well see them again, for she will
+ask about me--oh, who can this be?"
+
+They had turned in at a different gate from the one by which they
+had left and were following a driveway that led along a series of
+stables and offices. From one of these a house-maid ran out,
+stopping the carriage with a gesture. At her embarrassed request
+Antony opened the carriage door.
+
+"I was to ask the first one that came by this way, if you please--
+you are an usher, aren't you, sir?"--Antony nodded grimly--"to go
+to the laundry, right here, sir, and pick out the best arches.
+They're in the tubs. The other gentlemen will help carry them in.
+Mr. Richard thought the ladies would know best about the arches,"
+she added shyly, Smiling graciously, Nette stepped lightly from the
+coupe, and as Antony followed her she nodded to the coachman,
+
+"You may go back now," she said, "we will walk up to the
+house in a few moments."
+
+He touched his hat and drove on, the house-maid hastened in the
+same direction, and Nette, followed by her companion, stepped into
+the laundry. There indeed were the arches, twined with purple and
+white sweet peas; the dim, damp room reeked and bloomed with them.
+As they confronted each other uncertainly, a high, excited voice
+floated toward them, evidently nearing rapidly.
+
+"We must have every carriage guarded and the trains watched, that's
+all. They must be in the house, and they had no luggage, so how can
+they change their clothes? That dress will mark the woman
+absolutely. They will try for a motor, of course."
+
+Steps were at the laundry door. In an agony of terror Antony
+dragged the girl into a back room, and hardly knowing what he did,
+beckoned her up a narrow, dingy stair. Like shadows they fled up
+it, and crouched at its head listening to the tramping feet of what
+was evidently a group of men: young men from their tone and manner.
+
+"It's perfectly clear," began the unmistakable voice of Williamson,
+"they are, of course, that same couple that got off with
+three big touring cars last season. It's their specialty. The man
+drives like a demon, and the woman is the coolest little devil that
+ever walked. They have Amory's car, they got the clothes, and by
+coming so late they actually put the thing through. I hope no
+jewelry is gone, but we mustn't alarm the guests at any cost--Emily
+would never forgive us."
+
+"The woman is marked--I know all the bridesmaids now, and I shall
+make it my business to locate the eighth. Harvey, will you stay
+with the presents? Ritch, like a fool, refused to have a
+detective."
+
+"What did he look like, Williamson?" some one demanded.
+
+"Kick me, if you want to, Harvey, I couldn't tell to save my
+life I--I was so excited, and he was so decent about it--he's just
+like anybody else. And I'm the only one that said a word to him--
+it's maddening! We'll have to let him go--we can't grab every man
+we see, and nobody knows who half these people are. But watch the
+dining-room. Amory ought to be here any minute. He's nearly crazy,
+I suppose."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," drawled a third voice. "If his precious
+Gertrude is with him, what's a scarf pin more or less to Ammy?"
+
+"Nevertheless, I'm sorry for the man that took that car," said
+Williamson curtly, and Antony bit his lip nervously on the stairs
+as he listened to the low murmur of assent that followed.
+
+"Well, don't let us stay here all night," Williamson began again
+fussily. "Grab some of these damned wreaths, you fellows, and see
+if we can get them up to the house without sitting down in them!"
+
+They bustled out, arguing over the best methods of tracking down
+their victims, who cowered miserably above them. Fear, insensate,
+reasonless fear, had laid his quivering, livid fingers on their
+shoulders, and chilled the blood in their veins. To get away--
+to get away, at any cost!
+
+Antony, stooping over the crouching figure by his side, whispered
+in her ear:
+
+"I'll step down and look about a bit. There must be some way--I'll
+get you a coat somewhere and we can slip out. Wait here."
+
+All was empty and silent in the laundry, but as he stopped a moment
+behind the door before peering out, a hand knocked gently on it and
+a boy's voice questioned softly.
+
+"Are ye' there, then? Are ye, sir?" Instinctively and before he
+could catch back the word, Antony whispered hoarsely:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"I'll be puttin' this in the durway, then, and Miss Delia Nolan
+said for me to say for ye to please wait an hour for her, an' she'd
+surely come. She does be needed in the bedrooms upstairs to watch
+the ladies' clothes f'r fear they'd be stolen, she says. But if
+ye'll wait the hour, she'll be with you, with more, maybe, if she
+can get it. Trust me for the horses, sir!"
+
+There was a rattle and a thud as of some heavy object deposited on
+the floor in the open door, and the messenger scurried away.
+Antony looked cautiously around the door, and as he looked his eyes
+grew large and round, for there before him lay a mammoth tray
+filled with dainties to wake an appetite in one far less famished
+than poor Antony. Two half-emptied bottles reared their grateful
+promise high in the middle, and the jellied fowl vied with the
+crusted croquet, the rich pâté gleamed among the feathery wheaten
+rolls, the lobster nestled coyly in his luscious mayonnaise,
+seeming indeed to blush under the young man's ardent and
+devouring gaze. Breathlessly he lifted it, eagerly he bore it to
+that musty upper room, and there, with soft little cries of
+surprise from her and long-drawn sighs of satisfaction from him,
+they fell upon it. With every morsel of the food, with every
+throatful of the heartening, still beaded wine, courage, nay,
+audacity, crept softly over their jaded spirits, as the gentle but
+inevitable tide creeps up the beach.
+
+"To Miss Delia Nolan!" he cried lightly, raising high his glass;
+"long life to her and her coachman!"
+
+And "long life to her and her coachman!" Nette echoed, smiling from
+the broken chair she sat upon at Antony, who knelt before the tray.
+Through the chinks of the closed, dusty blinds vivid pencils of
+light streaked her delicate dress: she gleamed like a modish crocus
+in the bare lumber room. The rich viands before her, the dainty
+opalescence of the frozen sweet she held in a tinted, flower-shaped
+glass, the very dusk of the closed chamber, making her youth and
+loveliness more jewel-like, all enhanced the piquancy of the
+picture she presented. Antony's resolution flamed high in him:
+should such pluck, such beauty, such resource, be captured
+now, now after all they had gone through?
+
+Never! He swore it.
+
+As he registered this oath she rose lightly from her chair, and
+still jealously protecting her billowy skirts, began to peer about
+the room. Of a sudden she stopped and stood like a pointer dog, one
+finger raised to command his attention.
+
+"What is in that basket?" she whispered excitedly.
+
+There was no need to whisper, for not only the laundry but all the
+ground about it was absolutely deserted. But secrecy and flight
+have but one language and must conspire in whispers at the Pole
+itself. The basket in question, which lay in the darkest corner of
+the room, was of the description commonly in use among laundresses
+when they would return the purified objects of their toil. Bending
+over this, Nette fumbled a moment among its contents, and with a
+triumphant exclamation held up to Antony's bewildered vision a
+fresh, creased garment striped alternately with blue and white.
+
+"And here is the apron! And here is the cap!" she murmured
+exultantly, "now I defy that horrid Mr. Williamson to find
+me! 'A marked woman,' indeed!"
+
+Instantly the feasibility of the plan struck him, and he
+congratulated her warmly.
+
+"Now all we need is to know where we are," he assured her, "and
+enough money to get away from it, wherever it is, and we are safe!
+I will step out and look about a bit while you change your dress; I
+feel confident that we shall find some means--luck would not have
+the heart to desert us now!"
+
+He tiptoed, needlessly, it is true, down to the laundry, and in the
+very act of opening the door stumbled upon a plump old gentleman--
+the very gentleman upon whose doubtless paternal arm the frost-like
+bride had preceded Antony to the altar. Ere the youth had time to
+catch his breath the portly one addressed him querulously.
+
+"Oh! how d'ye do? So dark in here--senseless place to send a man!
+No more sweet peas, that I can see--can you? Pack-horse, too, I
+suppose like the rest of us? Fine business for my guests!"
+
+"There is not a sweet pea left, sir," said Antony respectfully,
+"and if there were any I should certainly not allow you to
+undertake the transportation of them. You have enough on your
+mind, I should say." With a long drawn sigh the portly gentleman
+sank upon an inverted wash tub and wrung his hands miserably.
+
+"Never in my life!" he mourned, "never in all my entire life!"
+
+Antony uttered a soothing sound, of vague but apparently
+satisfactory import.
+
+"Not that we mind the loss of the car at all," continued the old
+gentleman, more collectedly now, "only this morning his mother told
+me with tears in her eyes that she had offered him the price of it
+to give it up; so far as that goes, she is, as she only just now
+informed me, thanking her Creator on her bended knees and begging
+Him never to let us see or hear of that horrible machine again.
+Ammy promised her on his honour that if anything happened to
+this one, he would never buy another. It was his seventh."
+
+Antony's heart leaped up, but he spoke decorously.
+
+"It seems to me, sir," he said, "that you will, in all human
+probability, never see that car again."
+
+"Thank God!" said his host fervently. "What is a stickpin to
+Richard?" he demanded explosively, "what, in heaven's name, do I
+care for a paltry fresh water pearl? It is the disgrace, the
+publicity; the laughing stock--in my house they tell me, these
+scoundrels are! At my daughter's wedding. Eating my food at this
+moment, perhaps, Mr. Williamson warns me!"
+
+"This Mr. Williamson," said Antony gently, "seems to be a very keen
+person."
+
+"The keenest," replied the old gentleman eagerly, "he is hunting
+for the woman now. It is unfortunate that he is the only one of the
+ushers who did not know Ammy, you see."
+
+"I see. It was certainly unfortunate," said Antony suavely.
+
+"Ammy is due in a few minutes," said the old gentleman, pulling out
+a wealthy gold watch, "and here I am sitting here! I am so
+overcome, you must excuse me. The five:three. I was to send
+someone."
+
+"Can I not go, sir?" Antony asked feverishly, "just get me
+somebody's trap--anybody's--and let me go to get him and save you
+any further trouble."
+
+"Why, that is very kind, I am sure," said Gertrude's father, "I
+will call the first one I see."
+
+There was a scurrying down the narrow stair and as the old
+gentleman turned to go, a neat and very pretty housemaid rushed
+towards him.
+
+"O sir, excuse me, sir," she cried, blushing delightfully, "but
+Miss Gertrude said I was to ask you for five dollars, sir, to pay
+for the C. O. D, at the station, sir. She wants it immediately. If
+some one is going down, sir, could he take me?"
+
+With a practiced hand the father of the bride reached into his
+pocket, lifted from it a thick, green bundle, and placed a bill in
+the pink trembling hand held out for it.
+
+"This gentleman here will take you down directly, Mary--Delia--er,
+my dear," he said kindly, "I don't recall his name at the moment,
+but we are all very informal to-day, and I'm sure he won't object.--
+Here, boy, call me a carriage--anybody's! I'll see you later,
+my dear boy, and I am much obliged."
+
+"Don't mention it, sir," Antony replied, and leaped nimbly into a
+gorgeous station-waggon, taking his seat beside the driver. The
+housemaid, displaying, as she mounted to the back seat, remarkable
+hosiery and footgear for one in her humble walk of life, followed
+quickly, and forth they drove.
+
+The blood was tingling in his fingertips, his head reeled with a
+strange mixture of terror and delight--the intoxication of the
+artist in dangerous adventure--but Antony's voice was level as he
+inquired of the driver beside him:
+
+"And what's the next station up the road, do you know?"
+
+"Brookdale, sir, and there you can get the other road if you want
+it."
+
+"I see. And is this the up train?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I suppose Mr. Amory had to go out of his way to make any
+connection--the trains are poor here, sir. Mr. Ashley had to have
+two specials put on for to-day. You see, Cliffwood is a small
+place, sir."
+
+Cliffwood! Antony could have kicked himself for not
+recognising in all this pomp of iron-gated villas, the scattered
+collection of estates thus poetically christened.
+
+"That's a bad business about them murdering thieves, isn't it,
+sir?" pursued the driver confidentially.
+
+Antony's heart sank like lead. "Murdering?" he gasped, "did the
+Frenchman die, then?"
+
+"Oh, him!" returned the driver scornfully, "no, he didn't, the
+foreign pup. How could he--that old snake hasn't a fang in his
+head!"
+
+Antony grasped the seat beneath him and drew a long, deep breath.
+
+"I--I am glad to hear it," he said concisely, and as he spoke the
+incoming train whistled--a mellow, pleasing note that sang of
+freedom (yea, and guiltless freedom!) to wedding guest and
+housemaid alike.
+
+Forth from the train, ere hardly it had stopped, leaped an eager
+pair, a man and a maid, not too precisely attired, for their
+garments were rumpled and not such as the critical in these matters
+assume when bound for a wedding festival. Yet they did not seem
+unhappy, these two, but rather lenient and tender in their
+judgments upon all the world, for they smiled sweetly upon
+the empty platform, and sweetly, if a little vaguely, upon Antony,
+who advanced to meet them, hat in hand.
+
+"Mr. Amory, I presume?" he said airily. "I came down to get you,
+but I find I must send a telegram, on account of the trains running
+so poorly here, and so I will not detain you a second, as I am sure
+you cannot see Mrs.--Mrs. Richard too soon. They will send back for
+me."
+
+"Thanks, old man--are they caught?" cried the lately arrived,
+making for the station-waggon, and staring at the diamond horseshoe
+in Antony's pearl grey tie, Antony touched it knowingly and smiled.
+
+"No. They are not caught yet," he said, "but we're on the scent!"
+
+"Good!" exclaimed the other, "now jump in, dear," and as the last
+bit of baggage left the train and the waggon turned, Antony fled
+through the station and raced up the steps of the moving car, hand
+in hand with the pretty housemaid.
+
+They seated themselves amid curious and friendly smiles.
+
+"I will speak when the wheels are well started," thought Antony,
+and then, "when she gets her breath, I will say something,"
+but with each minute overwhelming embarrassment wrapped him, more
+deeply, and he sat, with averted eyes, in silence. Just as they
+slackened pace to pause at Brookdale and he motioned her to rise,
+she spoke, huskily and with an evident effort.
+
+"What will you do with the chain and the pin?"
+
+"Put them, with all these clothes and five dollars, in the trunk,
+row the three pieces across the river, meet them with a cart and
+express them to Mr. Ashley from Turnersville," he answered,
+promptly and with a rapid lucidity which astonished himself.
+
+"They will be surprised," she remarked indifferently, as she
+descended the steps of the train, and:
+
+"It is probable that they will," he agreed.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was some three hours later that a vehicle conducted by one horse
+moved solitary under a rich and rising moon along the fair
+white road that leads to one of the most venerable if not the
+largest of our colleges. Dogged by its own black shadow, whose
+wheels, smaller but no less symmetrical, rolled silently beside
+it, this vehicle would inevitably have stirred romantic interest
+in the breast of any imaginative spectator of its progress. And
+this with reason, for one of its two occupants was a girl, who slept,
+white-faced beneath the moon, her head, on which was perched askew a
+housemaid's cap, drooped forward on her breast, her lips slightly
+parted. The other, a well-dressed young man, allowed the easy-going
+beast to pick its own way, the while he gazed at the sleeping face,
+compassionately, it would seem, for all at once, with a pitying
+exclamation, he slipped his arm behind her, and gently guided her
+head to his shoulder. With a sigh of relief she nestled against him
+and her face relaxed with the comfort of her new attitude, while
+still she slept. Thus they drove on for many minutes, nor did his
+eyes once leave that white, appealing face. So small she seemed, so
+helpless--could this slender creature have stood by him so
+gallantly, have matched her wits so triumphantly against the
+incredible crises of the past day? Day? Antony felt that the
+ordinary partitions of time had henceforth no meaning for him and
+that the philosopher who questioned the validity of time itself
+knew well whereof he had written.
+
+What a spirit the girl had! How beautiful she had looked in the
+wood! He sighed, and at that or some other slight sound she opened
+her eyes and gazed in terror at him. And as she gazed the terror
+slowly melted and disappeared, a lovely child-like confidence grew
+in its place, and she spoke softly.
+
+"It is you!" she said, and half awake, she smiled deliciously,
+straight into his bending eyes, "you are here?"
+
+A great wave seemed to break in Antony's breast.
+
+"Here?" he cried, deep voiced, "where could I be but here--with
+you? Who could be here--but me?"
+
+Fully awakened now, she started from him, a flood of red sweeping
+her pale face as she saw where she had been resting.
+
+"No--no!" she stammered, "you are--we are--I was only dreaming
+that----"
+
+With his eyes he entreated her, for their steed, spying the lights
+of home, had started forward and Antony's hands were busy.
+
+"Ah, Nette, dearest Nette," he begged her, and something in his
+voice shook her so that she trembled beside him, "if waking makes
+you hate me again, then dream! For when you dream, I am sure you
+love me."
+
+"I do not! I do not!" she cried, covering her face with her hands.
+
+The eager horse tugged at the bit: Antony forced her by his mere
+will to meet his eyes.
+
+"Not?" he said, low and clearly, "Not? Not after to-day, Nette?"
+
+She bit her lip, and then, as the old college bell rang out nine
+sharp strokes she laid her arms swiftly about his neck and his
+cheek quivered under her warm soft hair.
+
+"You are right," she whispered, "after to-day--everything!"
+
+The streets were no longer empty. They sat, separate, with whirling
+hearts, trembling under the mounting moon. They were in the
+familiar street. . . .
+
+"After to-day--after to-day!" he muttered dizzily, when
+suddenly she laughed out beside him, sobbed brokenly, then laughed
+again.
+
+"To-day is the first of April!" she cried.
+
+And once again the polished moon threw her needless glory over
+youth and love and laughter.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Idyll of All Fools' Day, by 
+Josephine Daskam Bacon
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42692 ***