"You'll do nothing of the sort," I said. "They'll know you if they're
from your mill, and they'll know I am not Ida! It will be in the
papers!"
Ferd looked sulky.
"What am I to do, then?" he demanded. "Swim to the bank?"
"Couldn't you swim to the other island and steal one of their boats?"
He did not want to. I could see that; but what else was there to do?
"It's a good way off," he said. "It won't help things any for me to be
drowned, you know."
"It would be better than a scandal, wouldn't it?"
He threw up his hands.
"Oh, if that's the way you feel----"
"That isn't half the way I feel!"
He went off at that in a fury, leaving me alone on the little dock in a
state of frenzy. I kept thinking of Day's getting home sooner than he
expected and finding me gone, and calling up the police; and my
wandering in about daylight with my slippers worn through. I made up a
story--if the worst happened--about having had an attack of loss of
memory, coming to myself seven miles from town and walking in.
There was no sign of Ferd. The puddlers' picnic was noisier than ever;
they had brought a phonograph, too, and were dancing.
When I had waited for what seemed half the night I got frightened about
Ferd. He had said it was a good way to go; and if he was drowned--and
Ida really fond of him, and welcome to him so far as I was concerned--it
was all up with me. Day would loathe the very sight of me. I knew that.
The grass looked snaky in the moonlight and I felt I was taking my life
in my hands; but, somehow or other, with my hair pulled down by
branches, and ankle-deep in mud every now and then, I got to the place
where the two islands faced each other, end to end. There was not a sign
of Ferd.
I just sank down on the ground and hoped for death. There was no way
out. Jane and the others would think we had the boat and could hire a
machine or something to get to the city, and they would not give us
another thought. Even if I hailed the puddlers and told them, they would
never believe my story. And, of course, there was poor Ferd in the river
mud--sure to float in and spoil any story I could make up about loss of
memory.
It was when I had reached that point that pandemonium broke loose on the
other island. I could hear shouting--men and women together--and, in a
pause, the frantic splashing of oars. The next moment a boat appeared
round the corner of the island, with Ferd rowing like mad, and a perfect
pandemonium from the shore. He had stolen their boat and they had found
it out. I was almost crazy. I waded out to my knees and called to him;
and he saw me. There was no other boat after him yet, but some one was
yelling to follow him.
Ferd was rather steadied by the excitement, I think. He reached over and
dragged me in without a word, and the next instant we were pulling for
the shore in the moonlight, with the entire puddlers' picnic on their
bank, calling awful things to us.
That was not all, though. One of the men had got into their other boat
and was coming after us. He could row, too. I implored Ferd to
hurry--hurry. And I kept turning round to see whether he was gaining.
That was how I discovered why they were so wrought up. There were two
dozen quart bottles of champagne in the stern of that boat! We were
carrying off the picnic! I told Ferd. "Throw it overboard!" he said.
"It'll lighten the boat."
So I did, basket after basket; and, whether it lightened the boat or
not, we drew ahead. Ferd rowed like a demon. In the moonlight his face
was white and set, with the queerest expression.
We struck the shore with a bump that sent me on my knees, but Ferd
grabbed my hand and jerked me out.
"Now run--if you ever ran in your life!" he said. "Make for that grove
over there, and bend over. The bushes will hide us."
"I can't," I panted after a minute. "And why should I, Ferd? He's got
his old boat by this time----"
"Run!" gasped Ferd. And I ran.
We crouched down in the grove. My teeth were chattering, but I was
nothing to Ferd. He was pallid. The puddler landed just then. We heard
him throw his oars into the boat and drag it up on the beach, and I knew
he was examining the other boat and finding that the wine was gone. We
could hear him breathing hard, and he even made a start toward us,
beating the bushes with an oar. He was in a red fury, muttering to
himself in the most horrible manner. I had been in Ferd's mill once or
twice, and I remembered the enormous shoulders the men had, and how they
simply toyed with steel rails; and I was paralysed. A puddler turned
Berserk!
He gave it up just in time, however, and started back for the boat. I
could see him moving about--a huge creature in white flannels. And he
seemed to have cut himself on a branch or something, for he was tying a
handkerchief round his forehead.
We did not dare to move until he had started back and was safely out
from shore. Ferd's voice had lost its strained quality and he looked a
little less like death. We could hear the picnic party calling to the
man in the boat about the wine, and his calling back that we had got
away with it, but for some of them to come over and they could beat the
bushes. They couldn't come, of course, until he took the boat back.
"We've got to get out of here, Fan," Ferd said. "In ten minutes the
whole shooting match will be here. Can you run any more?"
"Not a foot--I'm all in. And I lost a shoe in the water at the island."
Ferd groaned.
"They'll have us up for stealing their champagne," he said. "I suppose
you can walk."
"I can limp along, I dare say." I was wet and cold, and horribly
miserable. "Don't let me detain you. They can't arrest me for stealing
their wine. You did that."
He turned to me suddenly.
"Fan," he said solemnly, "don't ask me why, but we must get out of here
quick. Must! If you can't walk, roll. Now come on!"
There were no houses in sight. The trolley line ends there, and I think
it is a picnic grove. He took my hand and dragged me along. I lost my
other slipper, but he paid no attention when I told him of it; and just
when I was about to sink down and die we reached a road.
"Now," said Ferd, "they came in something--machines probably--for
they'll have to get back, and there are no more cars. Ah, there they
are!"
There were two machines. I gripped Ferd's arm and held him back
desperately.
"The chauffeurs?" I gasped.
"We'll kill 'em, if necessary," he said between clenched teeth.
We were loping down the road toward the machines--Ferd sloshing, rather,
with each step; and we could hear loud calling from the islands and the
banging of oars in oarlocks.
"F-Ferd," I managed to say, "c-can--you--drive--a--car?"
"Why, you can, can't you?"
"I--can--d-drive--my--own car. I d-don't--know about--any other."
"They're all alike. The principle's the same."
"I don't know anything about the principles," I said despairingly. "And
I won't touch a strange machine."
"Oh, very well!" said Ferd sulkily. "We'll make a deuce of a
stir--arrested here for stealing a case of champagne; but never mind.
It'll blow over."
"We can tell the whole story."
"We cannot!" he said gloomily. "We can't tell on Jane and Annette and
Catherine. We'll have to take our medicine, that's all. We needn't give
our own names. That's one thing."
I was perfectly crazed with fright and exhaustion. I leaned up against a
fence, and I remembered the time Lily Slater asked Ollie Haynes to see
her off to Chicago, her husband being out of town; and how Ollie was
carried two hundred miles before the train would stop to let him off;
and how Harry never believed the story and was off shooting big game at
that very minute; and Lily getting gray over her ears as a result, and
not even going out to lunch with anybody for fear there were detectives
watching her.
And, compared with Day, Harry Slater was an angel of mildness.
The boat was almost across by that time and Ferd was wringing the ends
of his trousers. A sort of frenzy seized me. It seemed to me it would be
better to be found crushed under a strange car than to be arrested for
stealing champagne. I started on, rather tottery.
"I'll try it, Ferd," I said. "I think we'll be killed; but come on!"
For once luck was with us. It was a car exactly like my own! I almost
cried for joy. I leaped in and pressed the starter, and the purr of the
engine was joyous, absolutely. I let in the clutch and the darling slid
along without a jerk. We were saved! I could drive that car. I snapped
the gear lever forward into high and the six cylinders leaped to our
salvation. We were off, with the white road ahead; and the puddlers were
only beaching their boat. Ferd sat half turned and watched for pursuit.
"They'll search the bushes first," he said. "They'll not think of the
machines for a few minutes. We can hit it up along the highway for four
or five miles; then we'd better turn into a side road and put out the
lights and take off the license plates. They'll telephone ahead possibly
and give the license number."
We were going pretty fast by that time and just at that moment I saw a
buggy ahead in the road. Ferd called to me; but it was too late--I had
pressed the siren and the very hills echoed.
"Good heavens, Fan!" he said. "You've done it now!"
We topped a rise just then and Ferd looked back. The puddlers were
running along the road toward the place where they had left their cars.
It was a race for life after that. Ferd bent over and pressed the button
that put out the tail light, and I threw on all the gas I could.
"It's getting pretty serious," Ferd said. "We'll go up for a year or
two for this, probably. Stealing a machine is no joke."
"If it comes to that I'll steer the thing over a bank and die with it!"
I said, with my jaw set. "Ferd, there's something wrong somewhere!
Listen to that knocking!"
The engine was not behaving well. It was not hitting right and it was
telling on our speed. As we topped a long rise Ferd saw the lights of
another car appear over the crest of the last hill. Down in the valley
ahead lay a village, sound asleep. We raced through it like mad. A man
in his shirt-sleeves rushed out of a house and yelled something to us
about stopping, that we were under arrest. We almost went over him.
The race would be over soon, that was clear. The car was making time,
but not better time than the other machine. I do not know how I got the
idea, but we went limping and banging along until we had reached the
edge of the town, and just beyond, beside the road, was a barn, with the
doors open. I turned the car in there, shut off the engine and put out
the lamps. Ferd caught the idea at once and leaped out and closed the
doors.
"Good girl!" he said. "Unless the farmer heard us and comes out to
investigate, this is pretty snug, lady-love. They'll pass us without
even hesitating."
They did not, though. It gives me gooseflesh merely to remember the
next half-hour. We waited inside the door for the car to pass. We could
hear it coming. But just at the barn it stopped and we could hear them
arguing. It seems the road forked there and they were not certain which
way we had gone. My knees were shaking with terror and Ferd was
breathing hard.
When I look back I think I should have noticed how queer Ferd was during
the whole thing; and, when you think of it, why did he steal the boat at
the beginning and not just borrow it? But I was absolutely unsuspicious;
and as for noticing, there was no time.
I lost my courage, I'll admit, when they stopped; and I ran to the back
of the barn. There was a horse there and I squeezed in beside the thing;
it was company anyhow and not running about the country trying to arrest
people who were merely attempting to get home. It seemed uneasy and I
tried to pat its head to soothe it--and it had horns! I almost fainted.
Somehow or other I climbed out, and Ferd was coming toward me.
"Sh!" he whispered. "They've roused the farmer, and--holy
smoke!--they're coming in!"
Somebody had opened one of the doors about six inches. That made a path
of moonlight across the board floor.
"I dunno why they closed the barn doors to-night," said the farmer from
the opening--"mostly we leave 'em open. Now, gentlemen, if you want
water for your automobile there's a pail inside the door here, and the
pump's round the corner in the pig yard."
Ferd clutched my arm. The moonlight path was slowly widening as the door
swung open. "Quick!" he said; and the next minute I was climbing a
ladder to the haymow, with Ferd at my heels.
One thing saved us and one only: the farmer did not come inside to see
the car; and whoever did come clearly thought it belonged to the place
and never even glanced at it. As for us we lay face down in that awful
haymow with openings in the hay big enough to fall through, and watched
and listened. I shall never be the same person again after that
experience.
Whenever I get cocky, as Day would say, and reflect on my own virtues,
and how few things I do that any one could find fault with, not playing
bridge for more than two and a half cents a point, and stopping a
flirtation before it reaches any sort of gossipy stage, I think of Ferd
and myself in that awful haymow, with a man below searching round that
miserable machine for a pail, and Ferd oozing a slow drip-drip on the
floor below that was enough to give us away--like the blood dropping
from the ceiling in that play of David Belasco's.
There was one awful moment before it was all over, when the farmer had
gone back to bed and the man returned the pail. The others were all in
their machine, yelling to be off.
"They've had time to be gone twenty miles," one of them snarled. "The
next time we see them, shoot at their tires. It's the only way."
The man with the pail stood in the doorway and glanced in.
"Pipe the car!" he said. "The farmers are the only folks with real money
these days."
He came in with the pail and one of the drops from Ferd's clothes hit
him directly on top of the head! I heard it splat! He stopped as if he
had been shot and looked up. I closed my eyes and waited for the end;
but--nothing happened. He put away the pail and hurried out, and the
machine went on.
It was Ferd who spoke first. He raised himself on an elbow and listened.
Then he drew a long breath, as if he had not breathed for an hour.
"Well," he said, "I may not be a thief and a robber, as well as an
abductor of young married women, but I feel like one." He looked about
the haymow, and at me, crumpled in my corner. "Really, you know," he
said, "this sort of thing isn't done, Fanny."
"If it only doesn't get into the papers!" I wailed. "And if only Day
doesn't hear of it! Ferd, I must look a mess."
He glanced at me. The moonlight was coming through a window.
"You do look rather frowzy," he said.
I think, if there is a psychological moment for such things, that was
the moment. My affair, mild as it was, was dead from that instant. Day
would never have said such a thing. Day never takes his irritation out
on me; the worse I look the more certain Day is to reassure me. For
instance, Day never says that--to him--I am as pretty as the day he
first met me. He says that I am prettier than I ever was, and that every
one thinks so. Day has a positive talent for being married.
Well, we sat in the haymow and quarrelled. We thought it best to let
them go on, give up the search and go back to the island for their women
companions, before venturing out. So we sat and fought.
"It was stupid," I said, "to have stolen the boat and not borrowed it."
"I'd have had to explain you," said Ferd.
"You need not have mentioned me. What is a lie for, if not for such an
emergency? Couldn't you have found that boatman? That would have
explained everything."
"I couldn't find the boatman."
"Did you try?"
He turned sulky.
"I did my best," he said. "I risked my life. I'll probably have a sick
spell as it is. I've got a chill. How did I know the infernal boat had
champagne in it?"
I sat and thought. A lot of things came to me that I had not thought of
before, such as Ferd having got up the party and put me in my present
position, and having been a stupid in more ways than one. And what if
Day had got home unexpectedly? I said this to Ferd.
"Why didn't you think of that sooner?" he demanded brutally.
"What time is it?" I asked, as sweetly as I could.
He held his watch up in the moonlight, but of course it was full of
water and not running. His matches and cigarettes were wet, too, and he
grew more beastly every minute.
"Ferd," I said finally, "I'm afraid lately you've been thinking that
I--that I cared for you. It was my fault. I let you think so. I don't,
really. I only care for one man and I think you ought to know it. I've
been a shameless flirt. That's all."
Instead of being downcast, he rather brightened up at that remark.
"You'll break my heart if you say that," he said, trying not to be too
cheerful.
"There's only one man for me!" I said firmly. "It's not fashionable,
but it's very comforting. It's Day."
"I'll never be the same man again, Fanny," he replied. "Am I not to call
you up, or send you flowers, or look forward to seeing you at the
Country Club on Sunday afternoons? Is life to lose all its joy?"
"Oh, we'll have to meet, of course," I said largely; "but--the other is
off for good, Ferd! I find I can't stand too much of you. You're too
heady."
Well, he was almost blithe over it, and sat talking about Ida, and what
a trump she was about the time he lost so much on copper, and the way
she came home from Nice when he had typhoid. It was stupid; but if you
can understand me it seemed to put a cachet of respectability on our
position. The more we talked about Day and Ida, the more we felt that
the tongue of scandal could never touch us. We made a pact of platonic
friendship, too, and shook hands on it; and it shows how dead the old
affair was when Ferd never even kissed my hand.
About an hour afterward the other car went back toward the island and we
got up stiffly and crawled down the ladder. Ferd had had a nap, and he
slept with his mouth open!
We slipped out of the barn in the moonlight and reconnoitered. There was
no one in sight and the house across the road was dark. Ferd took off
the license plates and put them under one of the seat cushions and I
looked for the short circuit. I found it at last, and Ferd fixed it with
his pen-knife. Then he threw the doors open and we backed into the road.
The last thing I remember is that as we started off a window was raised
in the farmhouse and somebody yelled after us to stop.
"Damnation!" said Ferd between his teeth. "He'll telephone ahead and
they'll cut us off!"
"We needn't stick to the main road. We can go back through the country."
We found a lane leading off half a mile farther along and I turned into
it. It was rough, but its very condition argued for safety. As Ferd
said, no one in his sane mind would choose such a road. The secret of
the lane came out a mile or so farther on, however, when it came to an
end in a barnyard. It was a blow, really. We did not dare to go back and
we could not possibly go ahead.
"I can go up to the house and ask about the road," Ferd said. "The old
stage road ought to be round here somewhere. If we can't find it there's
nothing to do but to walk, Fan."
"I can't walk," I said, "and I won't walk. I'm in my stocking feet. I'm
through. Let's just go back and get arrested and have it over. I can't
stand much more."
"It's only twelve miles or so to town."
"I couldn't walk twelve miles to escape hanging!"
Ferd crawled out of the car and through a pig yard. I heard the pigs
squealing. And then for five awful minutes I heard nothing except his
distant knock and muffled voices. Then there was a silence, and out of
it came Ferd headlong. He fell over the fence and landed in the mud
beside the car.
"Quick!" he panted. "Turn round and get back to the main road. They've
got him on the telephone, and in another minute----"
Did you ever try to turn an automobile in a panic and a small barnyard,
with broken mowing machines and old wagons everywhere? I just could not
do it. I got part way round, with Ferd begging me for Heaven's sake to
get some speed on, when we heard people coming from the house on a run,
and a woman yelling from a window that she could see us and to shoot
quick.
There was a field next the barnyard--a pasture, I suppose--and the bars
were down that led into it. I just headed the car for it and shut my
eyes. Then we were shooting forward in a series of awful bumps, with
Ferd holding on with both hands, and the noise behind was dying away.
I do not recall the details of that part of the trip. Ferd says we went
through two creeks and a small woods, and entirely through and over a
barbed-wire fence, which was probably where we got our punctures.
However that may be, in five minutes or so we drew up just inside a
fence on the other side of which was a road. And we had two flat tires.
Ferd tried to take the fence down, but he could not; so I did the only
thing I could think of, and butted it down with the car. The glass in
the lamps was smashed, but we were too far gone by that time to care. I
had just one thought; if the gas only held out!
Ferd was quite sure he knew the way to town, but it turned out he did
not. For hours and hours we bumped along on two tires and two rims,
until my shoulders felt torn from their sockets. The worst of it was the
noise we made. Every now and then we passed a farmhouse where the lights
were going and everybody had been roused for the automobile thieves;
and, instead of slipping past, we bumped by like a circus parade with a
calliope.
The moon was gone by that time; and, our lamps being broken, more than
once we left the road entirely and rolled merrily along in a field until
we brought up against something. And, of course, we met a car. We heard
it coming, but there was nothing to do but bump along. It was a
limousine, and it hailed us and drew up so we could not pass.
"In trouble?" a man called.
"Nothing serious," Ferd said peevishly.
"Glad to give you a hand. You're cutting your tires to bits."
"No; thanks."
"I can take you back to town if you like."
It was Bill Henderson, Jane's husband, on his way from the club to his
mother's in the country! I could not even breathe. Ferd knew it too,
that minute.
"We are getting along all right," he snapped, trying to disguise his
voice. "If you'll get your car out of the way----"
"Oh, all right, Ferd, old chap!" said Bill, and signalled his man to go
on.
We sat as if petrified. Bill was Ida's cousin! The way of the
transgressor is hard; though why one should have to lose a reputation
built up by years of careful living just for one silly indiscretion is
what gets me. I put a hand on Ferd's arm.
"I'm gone!" I wailed. "It will be all over town to-morrow. Bill's the
worst old gossip. Oh, Ferd!"
"He didn't see you," Ferd snapped. "For goodness' sake, Fan, shut up!
This is my mess. There isn't any limit to the things he can say about
me."
We bumped on a little farther. I was crying, I'll admit; my head ached
and my spine was jarred numb.
"You'll have to do one thing," he said at last. "You'll have to tell
Ida it was you. Heaven knows what she'll think."
"I'll die first!" I snapped.
Well, we got into town finally and it was three-thirty by the first
clock we saw. Ferd got out and looked at the car, and then climbed in
again.
"Better get along a few blocks and then leave it," he said. "It looks
something fierce, and so do we."
And at that instant, before I could even start the engine, we were
arrested for stealing the miserable thing!
"There is some mistake," Ferd said loftily, but looking green in the
electric light. "This is Mrs. Day Illington and this is her own
machine."
"Are you Mr. Illington?"
"Yes!" said Ferd.
The man looked very strange, as well he might, considering--well,
considering the facts that came out later.
"I'll have to trouble you to come with me," he said, politely enough.
"It will be only a short delay and we'll get this straightened out. But
a car answering this description was stolen out the road a few miles and
headed toward town, and there's a reward offered."
He stood on the step and I drove to the station house. I had it fixed in
my own mind to go home and write a letter to Day confessing all, and
then pack a few things and hide my wretched self for the rest of my
life. I even planned what to take; my jewelry and my checkbook, and only
a dinner dress or two; and I wrote the letter to Day--in my mind--and
one to Ida, telling her it was only a lark, but it had gone wrong
without any fault of mine. Then we drew up at the station.
Ferd got out and went in, and the officer turned on the pavement to help
me out. But it was my chance and I took it; I just threw on the gas full
and shot ahead down the street. He yelled after me and then began
shooting. One bullet must have struck the good rear tire, for it
collapsed and almost turned the car round. But I was desperate. I never
looked back. I just drove for all I was worth down the street to its
end, and after that down other streets, and still others. All the time I
was saying I would rather die, and going round corners on two wheels, or
one wheel and a rim.
Finally I got into a part of town I knew and pulled up half a block from
my own house. I recall that and leaving the engine still going, and that
hideous nightmare of a machine standing by the curb, with its tires
lying out on the road in ribbons and its lamps smashed; and I remember
going up the steps and finding the hall door unlocked. Then I recall
nothing more for a while. I fainted.
It was Martha, one of the housemaids, who found me, I believe, as she
was going out to early mass. They got me upstairs to bed and there was
no use trying to run away that night; I could hardly stand. They got me
some hot tea and a doctor and a trained nurse, and in the morning before
breakfast Day came back. He tiptoed into my room and tried to kiss me,
looking awfully frightened; but I would not let him.
"Send the nurse out!" I whispered. So he did; and still I would not let
him kiss me. "Not until I've told you something," I said feebly. "You
may not care to when you've heard it all."
He looked so big and so dependable and so worried that I could have
screamed; but I had to tell him. Bill Henderson might have recognised
me; and Ferd, as like as not, would be goose enough to tell Ida the
whole story. And, anyhow, there's nothing like perfect honesty between
husband and wife.
"Day," I said tremulously, "I'm a felon--a thief! I--I stole a lot of
champagne last night and an automobile, and broke down fences, and
almost ran over a policeman, and was arrested--or Ferd was--Day, don't
look like that!" For his face was terrible. He had gone quite white.
"You!" he said.
"Get up and stand by the window, looking out," I implored him. "I can
tell you better if I can't see your eyes."
So he did and I told him the whole thing. He never moved, and I kept
getting more and more frightened. It sounded worse, somehow, when I told
it. When I had finished he did not come to me as I had hoped. He said:
"I'd like a few minutes to get used to it, Fan. I'll go out and walk
about a bit. It's--it's just a little hard to grasp, all at once."
So he went out, and I lay and cried into my pillow; but when the nurse
had brought me some tea and raised the shades, and the sun came in, I
felt a little better. He had not been noisy, anyhow; and in time perhaps
he would forgive me, though probably he would never really trust me
again. I got up in a chair and had my hair tied with a ribbon and my
nails done, and put on my new negligée with lace sleeves; and I felt
pretty well, considering.
At nine o'clock the policeman on the beat asked to see me. I sent down
word that I was indisposed; but he said it was urgent and would only
take a moment. The nurse put a blanket over my knees and a pillow behind
me, and the officer came in. I was frightened; but after all my only
real fear had been Day, and now that he knew, Fate could hardly have a
fresh blow. But it had, all right.
"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am," said the officer, "but it's about your
car."
"Yes?" My lips were trembling.
"It's been found; I found it--and only a block or so away, ma'am; but
it's in bad shape--lamps smashed and tires chewed to ribbons. It's a
sight, for sure!"
"But that's not my car!" I exclaimed, forgetting caution.
"I guess there's no mistake about it, ma'am. Those fellows that stole
it, up the river, must have climbed fences with it."
"How do you know it is my car?" I was absolutely bewildered.
"These are your license plates, aren't they? I found them under the
seat."
They were my license plates!
* * * * *
Day came in shortly after and tiptoed into the room. The nurse was out.
He came over to me and stooped down.
"It took me a little by surprise, honey," he said; "but that's over now.
You've been foolish, but you've had your lesson. Let's kiss and be
friends again."
"Just a moment, Day," I said calmly. "Have you had your lesson?"
"Just what do you mean?"
He followed my eyes to the table and the license plates were there. He
actually paled.
"Where did you get them?"
"Under the seat of the car Ferd and I stole last night at Devil's
Island--my car, which you said was being overhauled!"
He drew a long breath. Then he got down on his knees and put his head in
my lap.
"I've had my lesson--honest, honey!" he said. "Some darned fool
suggested a picnic on one of those islands--mixed couples--and I was ass
enough to agree. I took Ida Jackson. We didn't have any picnic--the
champagne was stolen----"
"Ferd and I----" I put in.
"And then my car went----"
"My car--and I took it."
"And we spent all the evening and part of the night chasing the thing
for fear you'd hear of it!" He looked up at me and there were dark
circles round his eyes. "I haven't been to bed at all, honey," he said
humbly. "It's been a rotten night! I've had enough affinity for the rest
of my life. There's nobody like you!"
I would not kiss him just then, but I let him lie down on my couch and
hold my hand until he dropped asleep. Somehow the words of Ferd's silly
card kept running through my head:
_Another woman now and then
Is relished by the best of men._
My little affair with Ferd had seemed harmless enough and the picnic had
been a lark; but Day and Ida had had a picnic and it had been a
lark--only the shoe was on the other foot, and it hurt!
And somehow, as I sat there, it seemed to me that the affinity business
was only fun because it was dangerous. We were all children, and life
was a Fourth of July, enchanting because it was risky.
Day was sleeping, with his mouth shut! I leaned over and kissed him as
he dozed.
Sitting there, with Day asleep, I went over the events of the night, and
I knew that Ferd had had his lesson, too, and that, having been burnt,
he would not play with fire again--at least not until the blister had
healed; for Ferd had seen the island picnickers and had learned that
they were not puddlers. He had seen Ida and Day and, worst of all, he
had known that it was Day who was pursuing us.
I thought of that hour in the haymow, with Day and the others below, and
Ferd dripping; and very quietly, so as not to waken my husband, I went
into a paroxysm of mirth.