MOLLY IN HER ELEMENT
Sylvia faced her aunt's dictum with heartsick shrinking from its
rigor; but she recognized it as an unexaggerated statement of the
facts. "You can't go home now, Sylvia--everybody would say you
couldn't stand seeing Molly's snatch at Felix successful. You really
must stay on to let people see that you are another kind of girl from
Molly, capable of impersonal interest in a man of Felix's brains."
Sylvia thought of making the obviously suitable remark that she
cared nothing about what people thought, but such a claim was so
preposterously untrue to her character that she could not bring the
words past her lips. As a matter of fact, she did care what people
thought. She always had! She always would! She remained silent,
looking fixedly out of the great, plate-glass window, across the
glorious sweep of blue mountain-slope and green valley commanded by
Mrs. Marshall-Smith's bedroom. She did not resemble the romantic
conception of a girl crossed in love. She looked very quiet, no paler
than usual, quite self-possessed. The only change a keen eye could
have noted was that now there was about her an atmosphere of slightly
rigid dignity, which had not been there before. She seemed less
girlish.
No eyes could have been more keenly analytical than those of Mrs.
Marshall-Smith. She saw perfectly the new attribute, and realized
perfectly what a resolute stiffening of the will it signified. She
had never admired and loved Sylvia more, and being a person adept in
self-expression, she saturated her next speech with her admiration and
affection. "Of course, you know, my dear, that _I'm_ not one of the
herd. I know entirely that your feeling for Felix was just what mine
is--immense admiration for his taste and accomplishments. As a matter
of fact it was apparent to every one that, even in spite of all
Molly's money, if you'd really cared to ..."
Sylvia winced, actually and physically, at this speech, which brought
back to her with a sharp flick the egregiousness of her absurd
self-deception. What a simpleton she had been--what a little naïve,
provincial simpleton! In spite of her high opinion of her own
cleverness and knowledge of people, how stupidly steeped she had
been in the childish, idiotic American tradition of entire
disinterestedness in the relations of men and women. It was another
instance of how betrayed she constantly was, in any manoeuver in
the actual world, by the fatuous idealism which had so colored her
youth--she vented her emotion in despising that idealism and thinking
of hard names to call it.
"... though of course you showed your intelligence by _not_ really
caring to," went on Mrs. Marshall-Smith; "it would have meant a
crippled life for both of you. Felix hasn't a cent more than he needs
for himself. If he was going to marry at all, he was forced to marry
carefully. Indeed, it has occurred to me that he may have thrown
himself into this, because he was in danger of losing his head over
you, and knew how fatal it would be. For you, you lovely thing of
great possibilities, you need a rich soil for _your_ roots, too, if
you're to bloom out as you ought to."
Sylvia, receiving this into a sore and raw consciousness, said to
herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that she had never
heard more euphonious periphrases for selling yourself for money. For
that was what it came down to, she had told herself fiercely a great
many times during the night. Felix had sold himself for money as
outright as ever a woman of the streets had done.
Mrs. Marshall-Smith, continuing steadily to talk (on the theory that
talking prevents too great concentration of thought), and making the
round of all the possible things to say, chanced at this moment upon
a qualification to this theory of Morrison's conduct which for an
instant caught Sylvia's attention, "--and then there's always the
possibility that even if you _had_ cared to--Molly might have been
too much for you, for both of you. She always has had just what she
wanted--and people who have, get the habit. I don't know if you've
noticed it, in the little you've seen of her, but it's very apparent
to me, knowing her from childhood up as I have, that there's a slight
coarseness of grain in Molly, when it's a question of getting what she
wants. I don't mean she's exactly horrid. Molly's a dear in her way,
and I'm very fond of her, of course. If she can get what she wants
_without_ walking over anybody's prostrate body, she'll go round.
But there's a directness, a brilliant lack of fine shades in Molly's
grab.... It makes one remember that her Montgomery grandfather had
firmness of purpose enough to raise himself from an ordinary Illinois
farmer to arbiter of the wheat pit. Such impossible old aunts--such
cousins--occasionally crop up still from the Montgomery connection.
But all with the same crude force. It's almost impossible for a
temperament like Felix's to contend with a nature like that."
Sylvia was struck by the reflection, but on turning it over she saw
in it only another reason for anger at Morrison. "You make your old
friend out as a very weak character," she said.
Mrs. Marshall-Smith's tolerant, clear view of the infirmities of
humanity was grieved by this fling of youthful severity. "Oh, my dear!
my dear! A young, beautiful, enormendously rich, tremendously enamored
girl? That's a combination! I don't think we need consider Felix
exactly weak for not having resisted!"
Sylvia thought she knew reasons for his not yielding, but she did not
care to discuss them, and said nothing.
"But whether," continued Mrs. Marshall-Smith, attempting delicately
to convey the only reflection supposed to be of comfort to a girl in
Sylvia's situation, "whether or not Molly will find after marriage
that even a very masterful and ruthless temperament may fail entirely
to possess and hold the things it has grabbed and carried off ..."
Sylvia repudiated the tacit conception that this would be a balm to
her. "Oh, I'm sure I hope they'll manage!" she said earnestly.
"Of course! Of course!" agreed Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "Who doesn't hope
so?" She paused, her loquacity run desperately thin. There was
the sound of a car, driving up to the front door. Sylvia rose in
apprehension. Her aunt motioned a reassurance. "I told Tojiko to tell
every one that we are not in--to anybody."
Hélène came to the door on silent, felt-shod feet, a black-and-white
picture of well-trained servility. "Pardon, Madame, Tojiko says that
Mlle. Sommerville wishes to see Mlle. Sylvie."
Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked with considerable apprehension at her
niece. "You must get it over with some time, Sylvia. It'll be easier
here than with a lot of people staring at you both, and making nasty
speculations." Neither she nor Sylvia noticed that for an instant, in
her haste, she had quite dropped her careful pretension that Sylvia
could, of course, if she had really cared to....
Sylvia set her jaw, an action curiously visible under the smooth,
subtle modeling of her young cheeks. She said to Hélène in a quiet
voice: "_Mais bien sûr!_ Tell her we're not yet dressed, but if she
will give herself the trouble to come up...."
Hélène nodded and retreated. Sylvia looked rather pale.
"You don't know what a joy your perfect French is to me, dear," said
Mrs. Marshall-Smith, still rapidly turning every peg in sight in an
endeavor to loosen tension; but no noticeable relaxation took place in
Sylvia. It did not seem to her at just that moment of great importance
that she could speak good French.
With desperate haste she was saying to herself, "At least Molly
doesn't know about anything. I told her I didn't care. She believed
me. I must go on pretending that I don't. But can I! But can I!"
Light, rapid steps came flying up the stairs and down the long hall.
"Sylvia! Sylvia!" Molly was evidently hesitating between doors.
"Here--this way--last door--Aunt Victoria's room!" called Sylvia, and
felt like a terror-stricken actor making a first public appearance,
enormously surprised, relieved, and heartened to find her usual voice
still with her. As Molly came flying into the room, she ran to meet
her. They fell into each other's arms with incoherent ejaculations
and, under the extremely appreciative eye of Mrs. Marshall-Smith,
kissed each other repeatedly.
"Oh, isn't she the dear!" cried Molly, shaking out amply to the breeze
a victor's easy generosity. "Isn't she the darlingest girl in the
world! She _understands_ so! When I saw how perfectly _sweet_ she was
the day Arnold and Judith announced their engagement, I said to myself
I wanted her to be the first person I spoke to about mine."
The approach of the inexorable necessity for her first words roused
Sylvia to an inspiration which struck out an almost visible spark
of admiration from her aunt. "You just count too much on my being
'queer,' Molly," she said playfully, pulling the other girl down
beside her, with an affectionate gesture. "How do _you_ know that I'm
not fearfully jealous of you? _Such_ a charmer as your fiancé is!"
Molly laughed delightedly. "Isn't she wonderful--not to care a
bit--really!" she appealed to Sylvia's aunt. "How anybody _could_
resist Felix--but then she's so clever. She's wonderful!"
Sylvia, smiling, cordial, clear-eyed and bitter-hearted, thought that
she really was.
"But I can't talk about it here!" cried Molly restlessly. "I came to
carry Sylvia off. I can't sit still at home. I want to go ninety miles
an hour! I can't think straight unless I'm behind the steering-wheel.
Come along, Sylvia!"
Mrs. Marshall-Smith thereupon showed herself, for all her amenity and
grace, more of a match of Molly's force and energy than either Sylvia
or Morrison had been on a certain rather memorable occasion ten
days before. She opposed the simple irresistible obstacle of a flat
command. "Sylvia's _not_ going out in a car dressed in a lace-trimmed
négligée, with a boudoir cap on, whether you get what you want the
minute you want it or not, Molly Sommerville," she said with the
authoritative accent which had always quelled Arnold in his boyhood
(as long as he was within earshot). The method was effective now.
Molly laughed. Sylvia even made shift to laugh; and Helene was
summoned to put on the trim shirt-waist, the short cloth skirt and
close hat which Mrs. Marshall-Smith selected with care and the history
of which she detailed at length, so copiously that there was no
opportunity to speak of anything less innocuous. Her unusual interest
in the matter even caused her to accompany the girls to the head of
the stairs, still talking, and she called down to them finally as they
went out of the front door, "... it's the only way with Briggs--he's
simply incorrigible about delays--and yet nobody does skirts as he
does! You just have to tell him you _will not take it_, if he doesn't
get it done on time!"
Sylvia cast an understanding, grateful upward look at her aunt and
stepped into the car. So far it had gone better than she feared. But a
tête-à-tête with Molly, overflowing with the confidences of the newly
betrothed--she was not sure that she could get through with that with
credit.
Molly, however, seemed as little inclined to overflow as Sylvia to
have her. She talked of everything in the world except of Felix
Morrison; and it was not long before Sylvia's acuteness discovered
that she was not thinking of what she was saying. There passed through
her mind a wild, wretched notion that Molly might after all know--that
Felix might have been base enough to talk about her to Molly, that
Molly might be trying to "spare her." But this idea was instantly
rejected: Molly was not subtle enough to conceive of such a course,
and too headlong not to make a hundred blunders in carrying it out;
and besides, it would not explain her manner. She was abstracted
obviously for the simple reason that she had something on her mind,
something not altogether to her liking, judging from the uneasy color
which came and went in her face, by her rattling, senseless flow of
chatter, by her fidgeting, unnecessary adjustments of the mechanism of
the car.
Sylvia herself, in spite of her greater self-control, looked out upon
the world with nothing of her usual eager welcome. The personality of
the man they did not name hung between and around the two women like a
cloud. As they swept along rapidly, young, fair, well-fed, beautifully
dressed, in the costly, shining car, their clouded faces might to a
country eye have been visible proofs of the country dictum that "rich
city folks don't seem to get no good out'n their money and their
automobiles: always layin' their ears back and lookin' 'bout as
cheerful as a balky horse."
But the country eyes which at this moment fell on them were anything
but conscious of class differences. It was a desperate need which
reached out a gaunt claw and plucked at them when, high on the flank
of the mountain, as they swung around the corner of a densely wooded
road, they saw a wild-eyed man in overalls leap down from the bushes
and yell at them.
Sylvia was startled and her first impression was the natural feminine
one of fear--a lonely road, a strange man, excited, perhaps drunk--But
Molly, without an instant's hesitation, ground the car to a stop in a
cloud of dust. "What's the matter?" she shouted as the man sprang up
on the running-board. He was gasping, purple, utterly spent, and for
an instant could only beat the air with his hands. Then he broke out
in a hoarse shout--the sound in that quiet sylvan spot was like a
tocsin: "Fire! An awful fire! Hewitt's pine woods--up that road!" He
waved a wild, bare arm--his shirt-sleeve was torn to the shoulder. "Go
and git help. They need all the men they can git!"
He dropped from the running-board and ran back up the hill through the
bushes. They saw him lurch from one side to the other; he was still
exhausted from his dash down the mountain to the road; they heard the
bushes crash, saw them close behind him. He was gone.
Sylvia's eyes were still on the spot where he had disappeared when she
was thrown violently back against the seat in a great leap forward of
the car. She caught at the side, at her hat, and saw Molly's face. It
was transfigured. The brooding restlessness was gone as acrid smoke
goes when the clear flame leaps up.
"What are you doing?" shouted Sylvia.
"To get help," answered Molly, opening the throttle another notch.
The first staggering plunge over, the car settled down to a terrific
speed, purring softly its puissant vibrant song of illimitable
strength. "Hear her sing! Hear her sing!" cried Molly. In three
minutes from the time the man had left them, they tore into the
nearest village, two miles from the woods. It seemed that in those
three minutes Molly had not only run the car like a demon, but had
formed a plan. Slackening speed only long enough to waltz with the car
on a street-corner while she shouted an inquiry to a passer-by, she
followed the wave of his hand and flashed down a side-street to a
big brick building which proclaimed itself in a great sign, "Peabody
Brush-back Factory."
The car stopped. Molly sprang out and ran as though the car were a
rifle and she the bullet emerging from it. She ran into a large, ugly,
comfortable office, where several white-faced girls were lifting their
thin little fingers from typewriter keys to stare at the young woman
who burst through and in at a door marked "Manager."
"There's a fire on the mountain--a great fire in Hewitt's pine woods,"
she cried in a clear, peremptory voice that sounded like a young
captain leading a charge. "I can take nine men on my car. Will you
come with me and tell which men to go?"
A dignified, elderly man, with smooth, gray hair and a black alpaca
office coat, sat perfectly motionless behind his desk and stared at
her in a petrified silence. Molly stamped her foot. "There's not an
instant to lose," she said; "they need every man they can get."
"Who's the fire-warden of this township?" said the elderly man
foolishly, trying to assemble his wits.
Molly appeared visibly to propel him from his chair by her fury. "Oh,
they need help _NOW_!" she cried. "Come on! Come on!"
Then they stood together on the steps of the office. "Those men
unloading lumber over there could go," said the manager, "and I'll get
three more from the packing-rooms."
"Don't go yourself! Send somebody to get them!" commanded Molly. "You
go and telephone anybody in town who has a car. There'll be sure to be
one or two at the garage."
Sylvia gasped at the prodigy taking place before her eyes, the
masterful, keen-witted captain of men who emerged like a thunderbolt
from their Molly--Molly, the pretty little beauty of the summer
colony!
She had galvanized the elderly New Englander beside her out of his
first momentary apathy of stupefaction. He now put his own competent
hand to the helm and took command.
"Yes," he said, and with the word it was evident that he was aroused.
Over his shoulder, in a quiet voice that carried like the crack of a
gun: "Henderson, go get three men from the packing-room to go to a
forest-fire. Shut down the machinery. Get all the able-bodied men
ready in gangs of seven. Perkins, you 'phone Tim O'Keefe to bring my
car here at once. And get Pat's and Tom's and the two at the hotel."
"Tools?" said Molly.
He nodded and called out to the men advancing with a rush on the car:
"There are hoes and shovels inside the power-house door. Better take
some axes too."
In four minutes from the time they had entered the village (Sylvia had
her watch in her hand) they were flying back, the car packed with men
in overalls and clustered thick with others on the running-board. Back
of them the whistle of the factory shrieked a strident announcement of
disaster. Women and children ran to the doors to stare up and down,
to cry out, to look and with dismayed faces to see the great cloud of
gray smoke pouring up from the side of the mountain. There was no soul
in that village who did not know what a forest-fire meant.
Then in a flash the car had left the village and was rushing along the
dusty highroad, the huge, ominous pillar of smoke growing nearer. The
men stared up at it with sober faces. "Pretty hot fire!" said one
uneasily.
They reached the place where the man had yelled to them--ten minutes
exactly since they had left it. Molly turned the car into the steep
sandy side-road which led up the mountain. The men shouted out in
remonstrance, "Hey, lady! You can't git a car up there. We'll have to
walk the rest of the way. They don't never take cars there."
"This one is going up," sang out Molly gallantly, almost gaily,
opening the throttle to its fullest and going into second speed.
The sound of the laboring engine jarred loudly through all the still,
hot woods; the car shook and trembled under the strain on it. Molly
dropped into low. A cloud of evil-smelling blue gasoline smoke rose
up from the exhaust behind, but the car continued to advance. Rising
steadily, coughing and choking, up the cruelly steep grades,
bumping heavily down over the great water-bars, smoking, rattling,
quivering--the car continued to advance. A trickle of perspiration ran
down Molly's cheeks. The floor was hot under their feet, the smell of
hot oil pungent in their nostrils.
They were eight minutes from the main road now, and near the fire.
Over the trail hung a cloud of smoke, and, as they turned a corner and
came through this, they saw that they had arrived. Sylvia drew back
and crooked her arm over her eyes. She had never seen a forest fire
before. She came from the plain-country, where trees are almost
sacred, and her first feeling was of terror. But then she dropped her
arm and looked, and looked again at the glorious, awful sight which
was to furnish her with nightmares for months to come.
The fire was roaring down one side of the road towards them, and away
to the right was eating its furious, sulphurous way into the heart of
the forest. They stopped a hundred feet short, but the blare of heat
struck on their faces like a blow. Through the dense masses of smoke,
terrifying glimpses of fierce, clean flame; a resinous dead stump
burning like a torch; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr at
the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of fire....
Along the front of this whirlpool of flame toiled, with despairing
fury, four lean, powerful men. As they raised their blackened,
desperate faces and saw the car there, actually there, incredibly
there, black with its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout of
relief, though they did not for an instant stop the frantic plying of
their picks and hoes. The nine men sprang out, their implements in
their hands, and dispersed along the fighting-line.
Molly backed the car around, the rear wheels churning up the sand, and
plunged down the hill into the smoke. Through the choking fumes of
this, Sylvia shouted at her, "Molly! Molly! You're _great_!" She felt
that she would always hear ringing in her ears that thrilling, hoarse
shout of relief.
Molly shouted in answer, "I could scream, I'm so happy!" And as they
plunged madly down the mountain road, she said: "Oh, Sylvia, you don't
know--I never was any use before--never once--never! I got the first
load of help there! How they shouted!"
At the junction of the side-road with the highway, a car was
discharging a load of men with rakes and picks. "_I_ took my car up!"
screamed Molly, leaning from the steering wheel but not slackening
speed as she tore past them.
The driver of the other car, a young man with the face of a fighting
Celt, flushed at the challenge and, motioning the men back into the
car, started up the sandy hill. Molly laughed aloud. "I never was so
happy in my life!" she said again.
Both girls had forgotten the existence of Felix Morrison.
They passed cars now, many of them, streaming south at breakneck
speed, full to overflowing with unsmiling men in working clothes,
bristling with long-handled implements. But as they fled down the
street to the factory they saw, waiting still, some twenty or more men
in overalls drawn up, ready, armed, resolute....
"How strong men are!" said Molly, gazing in ecstasy at this array of
factory hands. "I love them!" She added under her breath, "But _I_
take them there!"
While the men were swarming into the car, the gray-haired manager
came out to report, as though to an officer equal in command, "I've
telephoned to Ward and Howe's marble-works in Chitford," he said.
"They've sent down fifty men from there. About seventy-five have gone
from this village. I suppose all the farmers in that district are
there by this time."
"Will they ever stop it!" asked Sylvia despairingly, seeing wherever
she looked nothing but that ravening, fiery leap of the flames,
feeling that terrible hot breath on her cheek.
The question and accent brought the man for the first time to a
realization of the girls' youth and sex. He shifted to paternal
reassurance. "Oh yes, oh yes," he said, looking up the valley
appraisingly at the great volume of the smoke, "with a hundred and
fifty men there, almost at once, they'll have it under control before
long. Everything with a forest fire depends on getting help there
_quickly_. Ten men there almost at once do more than fifty men an hour
later. That's why your friend's promptness was so important. I guess
it might have been pretty bad if they'd had to wait for help till one
of them could have run to the village. A fire, a bad fire like that,
gets so in an hour that you can't stop it--can't stop it till it gets
out where you can plow a furrow around it. And that's a terrible place
for a fire up there. Lots of slash left."
Molly called over her shoulder to the men climbing on the car, "All
ready there?" and was off, a Valkyr with her load of heroes.
Once more the car toiled and agonized up the execrable sandy steepness
of the side-road; but in the twenty minutes since they had been there
the tide had turned. Sylvia was amazed at the total shifting of
values. Instead of four solitary workers, struggling wildly against
overwhelming odds, a long line of men, working with a disciplined,
orderly haste, stretched away into the woods. Imperious and savage,
the smoke and swift flames towered above them, leaping up into the
very sky, darkening the sun. Bent over their rakes, their eyes on the
ground, mere black specks against the raging glory of the fire, the
line of men, with an incessant monotonous haste, drew away the dry
leaves with their rakes, while others who followed them tore at the
earth with picks and hoes. It was impossible to believe that such
ant-labors could avail, but already, near the road, the fire had burnt
itself out, baffled by its microscopic assailants. As far as the girls
could see into the charred underbrush, a narrow, clean line of freshly
upturned earth marked where the fiercest of all the elements had
been vanquished by the humblest of all the tools of men. Bewildered,
Sylvia's eyes shifted from the toiling men to the distance, across the
blackened desolation near them, to where the fire still tossed its
wicked crest of flames defiantly into the forest. She heard, but
she did not believe the words of the men in the car, who cried out
expertly as they ran forward, "Oh, the worst's over. They're shutting
down on it." How could the worst be over, when there was still that
whirling horror of flame and smoke beyond them?
Just after the men had gone, exultant, relieved, the girls turned
their heads to the other side of the road, and there, very silent,
very secret and venomous, leaped and glittered a little ring of
flames. An hour before, it would have looked a pretty, harmless sight
to the two who now sat, stricken by horror into a momentary frozen
stillness. The flames licked at the dry leaves and playfully sprang up
into a clump of tall dry grass. The fire was running swiftly towards a
bunch of dead alders standing at the edge of the forest. Before it had
spread an inch further, the girls were upon it, screaming for help,
screaming as people in civilization seldom scream, with all their
lungs. With uplifted skirts they stamped and trod out, under swift and
fearless feet, the sinister, silent, yellow tongues. They snatched
branches of green leaves and beat fiercely at the enemy. It had been
so small a spot compared to the great desolation across the road, they
stamped out the flames so easily, that the girls expected with every
breath to see the last of it. To see it escape them, to see it
suddenly flare up where it had been dead, to see it appear behind
them while they were still fighting it in front, was like being in a
nightmare when effort is impossible. The ring widened with appalling,
with unbelievable rapidity. Sylvia could not think it possible that
anything outside a dream could have such devouring swiftness. She trod
and snatched and stamped and screamed, and wondered if she were indeed
awake....
Yet in an instant their screams had been heard, three or four
smoke-blackened fire-fighters from beyond the road ran forward with
rakes, and in a twinkling the danger was past. Its disappearance was
as incredible as its presence.
"Ain't that just like a fire in the woods?" said one of the men, an
elderly farmer. He drew a long, tremulous breath. "It's so tarnation
_quick_! It's either all over before you can ketch your breath, or
it's got beyond you for good." It evidently did not occur to him to
thank the girls for their part. They had only done what every one did
in an emergency, the best they could. He looked back at the burned
tract on the other side of the road and said: "They've got the best
of that all right, too. I jest heard 'em shoutin' that the men from
Chitford had worked round from the upper end. So they've got a ring
round it. Nothin' to do now but watch that it don't jump. My! 'Twas a
close call. I've been to a lot of fires in my day, but I d'know as I
ever see a _closeter_ call!"
"It can't be _over_!" cried Sylvia, looking at the lurid light across
the road. "Why, it isn't an hour since we--"
"Land! No, it ain't _over!_" he explained, scornful of her
inexperience. "They'll have to have a gang of men here watchin' it all
night--and maybe all tomorrow--'less we have some rain. But it won't
go no further than the fire-line, and as soon as there're men enough
to draw that all around, it's _got_ to stop!" He went on to his
companion, irritably, pressing his hand to his side: "There ain't no
use talkin', I got to quit fire-fightin'. My heart 'most gi'n out on
me in the hottest of that. And yit I'm only sixty!"
"It ain't no job for old folks," said the other bitterly. "If it had
ha' gone a hundred feet further that way, 'twould ha' been in where
Ed Hewitt's been lumberin', and if it had got into them dry tops and
brush--well, I guess 'twould ha' gone from here to Chitford village
before it stopped. And 'twouldn't ha' stopped there, neither!"
The old man said reflectively: "'Twas the first load of men did the
business. 'Twas nip and tuck down to the last foot if we could stop it
on that side. I tell you, ten minutes of that kind o' work takes about
ten years off'n a man's life. We'd just about gi'n up when we saw 'em
coming. I bet I won't be no gladder to see the pearly gates than I was
to see them men with hoes."
Molly turned a glowing, quivering face of pride on Sylvia, and then
looked past her shoulder with a startled expression into the eyes of
one of the fire-fighters, a tall, lean, stooping man, blackened
and briar-torn like the rest. "Why, Cousin Austin!" she cried with
vehement surprise, "what in the world--" In spite of his grime, she
gave him a hearty, astonished, affectionate kiss.
"I was just wondering," said the man, smiling indulgently down on her,
"how soon you'd recognize me, you little scatter-brain."
"I thought you were going to stick in Colorado all summer," said
Molly.
"Well, I heard they were short of help at Austin Farm and I came on
to help get in the hay," said the man. Both he and Molly seemed to
consider this a humorous speech. Then, remembering Sylvia, Molly went
through a casual introduction. "This is my cousin--Austin Page--my
_favorite_ cousin! He's really awfully nice, though so plain to look
at." She went on, still astonished, "But how'd you get _here?_"
"Why, how does anybody in Vermont get to a forest fire?" he answered.
"We were out in the hayfield, saw the smoke, left the horses, grabbed
what tools we could find, and beat it through the woods. That's the
technique of the game up here."
"I didn't know your farm ran anywhere near here," said Molly.
"It isn't so terribly near. We came across lots tolerable fast. But
there's a little field, back up on the edge of the woods that isn't so
far. Grandfather used to raise potatoes there. I've got it into hay
now," he explained.
As they talked, the fire beyond them gave definite signs of yielding.
It had evidently been stopped on the far side and now advanced
nowhere, showed no longer a malign yellow crest, but only rolling
sullenly heavenward a diminishing cloud of smoke. The fire-fighters
began to straggle back across the burned tract towards the road, their
eyeballs gleaming white in their dark faces.
"Oh, they mustn't walk! I'll take them back--the darlings!" said
Molly, starting for her car. She was quite her usual brisk,
free-and-easy self now. "Cracky! I hope I've got gas enough. I've
certainly been going _some!_"
"Why don't you leave me here?" suggested Sylvia. "I'll walk home.
That'll leave room for one more."
"Oh, you can't do that!" protested Molly faintly, though she was
evidently at once struck with the plan. "How'd you find your way
home?" She turned to her cousin. "See here, Austin, why don't _you_
take Sylvia home? You ought to go anyhow and see Grandfather. Hell be
awfully hurt to think you're here and haven't been to see him." She
threw instantly into this just conceived idea the force which always
carried through her plans. "Do go! I feel so grateful to these men I
don't want one of them to walk a step!"
Sylvia had thought of a solitary walk, longing intensely for
isolation, and she did not at all welcome the suggestion of adapting
herself to a stranger. The stranger, on his part, looked a very
unchivalrous hesitation; but this proved to be only a doubt of
Sylvia's capacity as a walker.
"If you don't mind climbing a bit, I can take you over the gap between
Hemlock and Windward Mountain and make a bee-line for Lydford. It's
not an hour from here, that way, but it's ten miles around by the
road--and hot and dusty too."
"Can she _climb_!" ejaculated Molly scornfully, impatient to be off
with her men. "She went up to Prospect Rock in forty minutes."
She high-handedly assumed that everything was settled as she wished
it, and running towards the car, called with an easy geniality to the
group of men, starting down the road on foot, "Here, wait a minute,
folks, I'll take you back!"
She mounted the car, started the engine, waved her hand to the two
behind her, and was off.
The lean, stooping man looked dubiously at Sylvia. "You're sure you
don't mind a little climb?" he said.
"Oh no, I like it," she said listlessly. The moment for her was of
stale, wearied return to real life, to the actual world which she was
continually finding uglier than she hoped. The recollection of Felix
Morrison came back to her in a bitter tide.
"All ready?" asked her companion, mopping his forehead with a very
dirty handkerchief.
"All ready," she said and turned, with a hanging head, to follow him.