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?"