"I'm writing him something I don't particularly care to tell him."
He fairly groaned and thrust the thing into his pocket.
"For refined cruelty and absolute selfishness," he said, "commend me to
the woman with nothing to do but to get into mischief."
"Will you promise to mail it?"
"Oh, I'll mail it all right," he said; "but I give you until six o'clock
this evening to think it over. I'm not going to the station until
then."
"To think over what?" I asked, my eyes opened innocently wide. But he
flung away in a fury.
It was rather fun that afternoon. If my party had been dreary on Sunday
it was nothing to Carrie's. They'd clearly all agreed to stay round and
keep Roger and me apart. Everybody sulked, and the men got the Sunday
newspapers and buried themselves in them. Once I caught Roger dropping
into a doze. He had refused the paper and had been playing up well,
sitting back in his chair with his cap over his eyes and gazing at me
until everybody wiggled.
"Roger," I called, when I saw his eyes closing, "are you game for a long
walk?"
Roger tried to look eager.
"Sure," he said.
"Haven't you a particle of humanity?" Carrie demanded. She knew some of
them would have to go along, and nobody wanted to walk. It was boiling.
"He has been up since dawn and he's walked miles."
Roger ignored her.
"To the ends of the world--with you, Clara," he said, and got up.
In the end they all went. It was a tragic-looking party. We walked for
miles and miles, and Carrie was carrying her right shoe when we got
back. It was too late to dress for dinner, and everyone was worn out.
So we went in as we were.
"I'm terribly sorry it's nearly over," I babbled as the soup was coming
in. "It has been the most wonderful success, hasn't it? Ida, won't you
have us all next week? Maybe we can send the husbands to the yacht
races."
"Sorry," said Ida coldly; "I've something else on."
Worried as they were, nobody expected us to run away. How to let them
know what had happened, and put a climax to their discomfiture, was the
question. I solved it at last by telling Powell to come in at midnight
with the sleeping medicine Carrie had given her for me. I knew, when she
found I was not there, she would wait and at last raise the alarm. What
I did not know was that she would come in half an hour early, and cut
off our lead by thirty minutes.
The evening dragged like the afternoon, and so thoroughly was the spice
out of everything for them all, that when I went upstairs at ten-thirty
Ida Elliott was singing Jim's praises to Wilbur Bayne, and Carrie had
got out the children's photographs and was passing them round.
As I went out through the door Roger opened for me, he bowed over my
hand and kissed it.
"Oh, cut it out!" I heard Peter growl, and there was a chorus from the
others.
I had to stop in the hall outside and laugh. It was the last time I
laughed for a good many hours.
By eleven I was ready. Everyone was upstairs, and Carrie had found out
about the telephone by trying to call up her mother to inquire about the
children. I had packed a small suitcase and at Roger's whistle I was to
drop it out the window to him. Things began to go wrong with that, for
just as I was ready to drop it someone rapped at my door. I swung it too
far out, and it caught Roger full in the chest and carried him over
backward. I had just time to see him disappear in the shrubbery with a
sort of dull thud when Alice Warrington knocked again.
She came in and sat on the bed.
"I don't want to be nasty, Clara," she said, "but you know how fond I am
of you, and I don't want you to misunderstand Roger. It's his way to
make violent love to people and then get out. Of course you know he's
being very attentive to Maisie Brown. She's jealous of you now. Somebody
told her Roger used to be crazy about you. If she hears of this----"
"Clara!" said Roger's voice under the window.
Alice rose, with the most outraged face I've ever seen.
"He is positively shameless," she said. "As for you, Clara, I can't tell
you how I feel."
"Clara!" said Roger. "I must speak to you. Just one word."
Alice swept out of the room and banged the door. I went to the window.
"Something seems to have broken in the dratted thing," he said. "It
smells like eau de Cologne. I'm covered with it."
As it developed later it was eau de Cologne. I have never got a whiff of
it since that I don't turn fairly sick. And all of that awful night
Roger fairly reeked with it.
Well, by midnight everything was quiet, and I got downstairs and into
the drive without alarming anyone. Roger was waiting, and for some
reason or other--possibly the knock--he seemed less enthusiastic.
"I hope Harry remembered the letter to Bill," he said. "Whether this
thing is a joke or not depends on the other person's sense of humor.
What in heaven's name made you put scent in your bag?"
He had his car waiting at the foot of the drive, and just as I got in we
heard it thunder.
"How far is it to your mother's?"
"Twelve miles."
"It's going to rain."
"Rain or not, I'm not going back, Roger," I said. "Imagine Bill's
getting that letter for nothing."
He got into the car and it began to rain at once. Everyone knows about
that storm now. We had gone about four miles when the sky fairly opened.
The water beat in under the top and washed about our feet. We drove up
to the hubs in water, and the lights, instead of showing us the way,
only lit up a wall of water ahead. It was like riding into Niagara
Falls. We were pretty sick, I can tell you.
"Why didn't you look at the sky?" I yelled at Roger, above the beating
of the storm. "Bill can always tell when it's going to storm."
"Oh, damn Bill!" said Roger, and the car slid off the road and into a
gully. Roger just sat still and clutched the wheel.
"Aren't you going to do something?" I snapped. "I'm not going to sit
here all night and be drowned."
"Is there anything you could suggest?"
"Can't you get out and push it?"
"I cannot."
But after five minutes or so he did crawl out, and by tying my suitcase
straps round one of the wheels he got the car back into the road. I
daresay I was a trifle pettish by that time.
"I wish you wouldn't drip on me," I said.
"I beg your pardon," he replied, and moved as far from me as he could.
We went on in silence. At last:
"There's one comfort about getting that soaking," he said: "it's washed
that damned perfume off."
There's one thing about Bill, he keeps his temper. And he doesn't raise
the roof when he gets his clothes wet. He rather likes getting into
difficulties, to show how well he can get out of them. But Roger is like
a cat. He always hated to get his feet wet.
"If you had kept the car in the centre of the road you wouldn't have had
to get out," I said shortly.
"Oh, well, if you're going back to first causes," he retorted, "if you'd
never suggested this idiotic thing I wouldn't be laying up a case of
lumbago at this minute."
"Lumbago is middle-aged, isn't it?"
"We're neither of us as young as we were a few years ago."
That was inexcusable. Roger is at least six years older than I am.
Besides, even if it were true, there was no necessity for him to say it.
But there was no time to quarrel, for at that moment we were going
across a bridge over a small stream. It was a river now. The first thing
I knew was that the car shook and rocked and there was a dull groaning
underneath. The next minute we had gone slowly down about four feet and
the creek was flowing over us.
We said nothing at first. The lights went off almost immediately, as
the engine drowned, and there we sat in the flood, and the first thing I
knew I was crying.
"The bridge is broken," said Roger, above the rush of the stream.
"I didn't think you were washing the car," I whimpered. "We'll be
drowned, that's all."
The worst of the storm was over, but as far as I was concerned it might
just as well have been pouring. When Roger got his matches and tried to
light one it only made a sick streak of phosphorescence on the side of
the box. To make things worse, Roger turned round, and where the road
crossed the brow of the hill behind us there was the glow of automobile
lamps. He swore under his breath.
"They're coming, Clara," he said. "That fool of a maid didn't wait until
midnight."
The thought of being found like that, waist-deep in water, drove me to
frenzy. I knew how they'd laugh, how they'd keep on laughing for years.
They'd call us the Water Babies probably, or something equally hateful.
I just couldn't stand the thought.