Safely there she felt more composed. Stopping her engine she got out and
walked to the window of the room on the ground floor that she knew the
young Californian occupied. It was open. Leaning through the rose-vine
she called faintly,--"Archie! Archie!" But the young painter slept
solidly, and she was forced to take a stick and poke the bunch of
bed-clothes in the corner before she could arouse the sleeping Archie.
When he came to the window, she exclaimed,--
"Some thing awful has happened, Archie!"
"What's the row?"
"We're found out. Pussy knows and the girls. Irene told 'em!"
That apparently did not seem to Archie the ultimate catastrophe that it
did to her. He stood in his pajamas beside the window, ungallantly
yawning and rubbing his eyes.
"Well," he observed, "what are you going to do about it?"
Doubtless to his masculine good sense it seemed merely adding folly to
folly thus to run away from the villa at midnight and expose them to
further trouble.
Adelle did not argue nor explain.
"Put your clothes on," she said, with considerable decision, "and come
out to the car."
Thereupon she went back to the car, cranked it afresh, and waited for
him to appear. He came out of the rose-covered window, after a
reasonable time, and climbed in beside the girl. She seemed to expect
it, and there was not anything else to do. Adelle threw in the clutch
and started at a lively pace, turning into the broad highroad which ran
in a straight line southwards towards the French capital.
"What are you going to do?" Archie asked, now seriously awake and
somewhat disturbed.
"I'm never going back to that place again," the girl flamed resolutely.
"Never!"
As if to emphasize a vow she threw one arm around her lover's neck and
drew his face to hers so that she could kiss it,--a maneuver she
executed at some risk to their safety. "Oh, Archie, I love you so--I
can't give you up!" she whispered by way of explanation.
He returned her kiss with good will, though mentally preoccupied, and
said, "Of course not, dearest!" and continued to hold her while she
steered the car, which was traveling at a lively rate along the empty
_route nationale_ in the direction of Paris. And thus they proceeded for
mile after mile or rather ten kilometres after ten kilometres. Adelle
and the car seemed to be inspired by the same energy and will. Archie
realized that they were going rapidly to Paris and felt rather
frightened at first. It was one thing to make love to an heiress not yet
of age, but another to elope with her across France at night. Archie was
not sure, but he thought there might be legal complications in the way
of immediate matrimony. He might be getting himself in for a
thoroughgoing scrape, which was not much to his liking. But there seemed
no way of stopping Adelle or the car.
For Adelle had no doubts. It was the greatest night of her life. She
drove the car recklessly, but splendidly. Every now and then she would
turn her pale face to her lover and say peremptorily,--"Kiss me,
Archie!"--and Archie dutifully gave the kiss, which seemed to be all the
stimulant she needed.
The wild rush through the night beside her lover appeased something
within her. It answered her craving for romance, newly awakened, for
daring and desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud
of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character.
To-morrow, when Pussy Comstock and the girls found that she had gone,
they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course,
it would all be over--irrevocable.
"You'll marry me as soon as we get there," she remarked once to Archie
in exactly the same tone as she said, "Kiss me, Archie." The young man
falteringly replied,--"Of course, if we can."
"Of course we can! Why not?" Adelle replied firmly. "Americans can marry
any time."
She felt sure that speedy marriage was an inalienable right that went
with American citizenship together with the privilege of getting
divorced whenever one cared to. Archie was by no means so sure of this
point, but he thought it well not to discuss it until they both had more
exact information. So the car bowled along through the night at a good
forty miles an hour.
Long before they reached Paris the sun had come up out of the hot
meadows along the road and they were forced to stop at Chartres for
_petrol_ and breakfast. Adelle wanted to cut the breakfast to a bowl of
hot coffee, but Archie firmly insisted that they must be braced with
food for the ordeal before them. She yielded to Archie and reluctantly
descended from her seat, stiff with fatigue but elated. After breakfast
Archie suggested that they should leave the car at the inn and proceed
to Paris conventionally by train. But Adelle would not give up one
kilometre of her great dash for liberty and Archie. Nor would she
consider his going on by train to make arrangements for the marriage.
So they resumed their rapid flight, but mishaps with tires began, and it
was noon before they entered the Porte Maillot. As they drove past the
Villa Ponitowski, Adelle looked furtively up at the shutters as if she
expected to see Pussy's severe face lurking there. She guided the
machine to the Rue de l'Universite and stopped beneath Miss Baxter's
studio windows. If Archie had proposed it, she would have gone at once
to a hotel with him and registered, but he prudently suggested the
studio, where he hoped to find Cornelia Baxter. But the sculptress had
gone away somewhere, and the big room was empty--also hot and dusty.
They sat down before the fireless stove and looked at each other.
Adelle was very tired and on the verge of hysterical tears. Archie had
not been very efficient in the tire trouble. She felt that now, at any
rate, he should take hold of their situation and manage. But Archie
seemed helpless, was not at home in the situation. (If Adelle had had
more experience she might have been chilled even now by his conduct and
managed her life differently.)
"I'm so tired," she moaned, throwing herself down on the divan. "Don't
you love me, Archie?"
Of course he did, but he did not offer to embrace her, and she was
obliged to go over to where he sat in a wilted attitude and embrace him.
"You are mine now for always," she said, almost solemnly.
"Yes," he admitted, as if he did not exactly like the form in which the
sentiment had been expressed.
"What are we going to do?"
"Get some food first. I'm starved, aren't you?"
Adelle, weary as she was, might not consider food as of the first
importance in this crisis, but recognizing Archie's greater feebleness,
she yielded to his desire for refreshment. So they drove to Foyot's and
consumed two hours more in lunching delectably. Archie seemed somewhat
aimless after _dejeuner_, perhaps he did not know just how to attack his
formidable problem. It was Adelle who suggested that they drive to her
banker's and inquire how to get married in American fashion in France.
Adelle felt that bankers knew everything. It was a very elegant and
bewildered young Frenchman whom they found alone in this vacation season
at the bank which Adelle used. After he understood what they wanted he
directed them to their consul. Adelle knew the American consulate
because she had been there to sign papers, and turned the car into the
Avenue de l'Opera with renewed hope. They stopped before the building
from which the American flag was languidly floating and mounted the
stairs to the offices. In the further room, beyond the assortment of
deadbeats that own allegiance to the great American nation, was a little
Irish clerk, who in the absence of the consul and his chief assistant
held up the dignity of the United States. He was a political appointee
from the great State of Illinois, and after an apprenticeship in the
City Hall of Chicago was much more familiar with hasty matrimony than
either of the two flustered young persons who demanded his advice. To
Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then,
as if not sufficiently impressive,--"Now--right off!" he replied
agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his
mouth,--"Sure! That's easy."
And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an
office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple
gave him. Adelle in deference to Archie's scruples stretched a point and
made herself of age. When the formalities had been completed, the young
Irishman called in from the outer office one of the hangers-on who
happened to be a seedy minister of the gospel and who looked as if he
were in Paris by mistake.
Thus almost before Archie knew it he had taken to himself Adelle Clark
as wife, the ceremony being witnessed by the consular clerk,--Morris
McBride of Chicago,--and an ex-sailor on his way back to New York of the
name of Harrington. Adelle distributed the remaining pieces of gold in
her purse in the way of _pour-boires_, and then the two found themselves
in the runabout on the Avenue de l'Opera--married.
"I didn't know it could be done so easily," Archie observed
breathlessly.
"Anything can be done when you want to, if you have the money," Adelle
replied, evincing how thoroughly she had mastered the philosophy of the
magic lamp.
"And what shall we do now?" her husband inquired.
(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of
what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which
way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality
of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.)
The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had
hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Cafe de Paris; but
Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for
returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night,
as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle
had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the
first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de
l'Universite. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past
the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the
lack of _petrol_ stopped them at a little wayside _cabaret_ some miles
outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther,
they decided to spend the night.