What he did was to eat his scallops à la King with appetite, fraternize
cheerfully with Lucille's friend, whose name was Tommy Burke, and who
was an old acquaintance of his, speak to Marjorie occasionally in the
most natural way in the world, and altogether behave entirely as if it
really was his party, and he was very glad that there was a party. It
is to be said that he ignored Logan rather more than politeness
demanded. But Logan was so used to being petted that he never knew it.
Marjorie did, and lavished more attention on him defiantly to try to
make up for it. She thought that the evening never would end.
After the food was finished it was to be expected that Lucille would go
to the piano, and play some more, and that the men would sit about
smoking on the davenport and the taborets, and that every one would be
pleasantly quiet. But Lucille did not. Instead, she and Francis
retired to the back room, leaving Marjorie and the others to amuse each
other, and talk for what seemed to Marjorie's strained nerves an
eternity of time. It was Francis who had called Lucille, moreover, and
not Lucille who had summoned Francis, as could have been expected.
Finally the other men rose to go. Francis came out of the inner room
and went with them. Before he went he stopped to say to Marjorie:
"I told you I wanted to talk things over with you. I'll be back in a
half-hour. You seem to be so popular that the only way to see you
alone is to get you in a motor-car, so if you aren't too tired to drive
around with me to-night, to a place where I have to go, I'll bring you
home safely. . . . I didn't mean to speak so sharply to you, Marjorie,
over the telephone. Please forgive me."
"Certainly," said Marjorie coldly and tremulously. It could be seen
that she did not forgive him in the least.
He went downstairs with the others, laughing with Burke, who had a
dozen army reminiscences to exchange with him, and bidding as small a
good-by as decency permitted to Logan. Marjorie heard him dash up
again, and then run down, as if he had left something outside the door
and forgotten it. Lucille came over to her and began to fuss at her
about changing her frock for a heavier one, and taking enough wraps.
"Why, it's only a short drive," Marjorie expostulated. "And I'm not
sure that I want to go, anyway. I don't think there's anything more to
be said than we have said."
Francis, with that disconcerting swiftness which he possessed, had come
back as she spoke.
He came close to her, and spoke softly.
"You used to like the boy you married, Marjorie. For his sake won't
you do this one thing? Give me a hearing--one more hearing."
Lucille had come back again with a big loose coat, and she was wrapping
it round her friend with a finality that meant more struggle than poor
tired Marjorie was capable of making. After all, another half-hour of
discussion would not matter. The end would be the same. She went down
with them to the big car that stood outside, and even managed to say
something flippant about its looking like a traveling house, it was so
big. Francis established her in the front seat, by him, tucked a rug
around her, for the night was sharp for May, and drove to Fifth Avenue,
then uptown.
She waited, wearily and immovable, for him to argue with her further,
but he seemed in no hurry to commence. They merely drove on and on,
and Marjorie was content not to talk. It was a clear, beautiful night,
too late for much traffic, so they went swiftly. The ride was
pleasant. All that she had been through had tired her so that she
found the silence and motion very pleasant and soothing.
Finally he turned to her, and she braced herself for whatever he might
want to say.
"Would you mind if we drove across the river for a little while?" he
asked.
"Why--no," she said idly. "Out in the country, you mean?"
He assented, and they drove on, but not to the ferry. They turned, and
went up Broadway, far, far again.
"Where are we?" asked Marjorie finally. "Isn't it time you turned
around and took me back? And didn't you have something you wanted to
say to me?"
"Yes----" he said absently. "No, we have all the time in the world.
There's no scandal possible in being out motoring with your husband,
even if you shouldn't get home till daylight."
"But where _are_ we?" demanded Marjorie again.
"The Albany Post Road," said Francis. This meant very little to
Marjorie, but she waited another ten minutes before she asked again.
"Just the same post road as before," said Francis preoccupiedly,
letting the machine out till they were going at some unbelievable speed
an hour. "The Albany. Not the Boston."
"Well, it doesn't matter to me _what_ post road," remonstrated
Marjorie, beginning rather against her will to laugh a little, as she
had been used to do with Francis. "I want to go home."
"You are," said he.
"Oh, is this one of those roads that turns around and swallows its own
tail?" she demanded, "and brings you back where you started?"
"Just where you started," he assented, still in the same preoccupied
voice.
She accepted this quietly for the moment.
"Francis," she said presently, "I mean it. I want to go home."
"You are going home," said Francis. "But not just yet."
It seemed undignified to row further. She was so tired--so very tired!
Francis did not speak again, and after a little while she must have
dropped off to sleep; for when she came to herself again the road was a
different one. They were traveling along between rows of pines, and
the road stretched ahead of them, empty and country-looking. She
turned and asked sleepily, "What time is it, Francis, please?"
He bent a little as he shot his wrist-watch forward enough to look at
the phosphorescent dial.
"Twenty minutes past three," he said as if it was the most commonplace
hour in the world to be driving through a country road.
For a moment she did not take it in. Then she threw dignity to the
winds. She was rested enough to have some fight in her again.
"I'm going home! I'm going home if I have to walk!" she said wildly.
She started to spring up in the car, with some half-formed intention of
forcing him to stop by jumping out.
"Now, Marjorie, don't act like a movie-heroine," he said
commonplacely--and infuriatingly. He also took one hand off the
steering-wheel and put it around her wrist. "You can't go back to New
York unless I take you. We're fifty miles up New York State, and there
isn't a town near at all."
Marjorie sat still and looked at him. The car went on.
"I don't understand," she said. "You can't be going to abduct me,
Francis?"
Francis, set as his face was, smiled a little at this.
"That isn't the word, because you don't abduct your lawful wife. But I
do want you to try me out before you discard me entirely. And
apparently this is the only way to get you to do it."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"Want the cards on the table?"
She nodded.
"All the cards--now? Or would you rather take things as they come?"
All this time the car was going ahead full speed in the moonlight.
"Everything--now!" she said tensely.
He never looked at her as he talked. His eyes were on the road ahead.
"Just now--as soon as we get to a spot where it seems likely to be
comfortable, we're going to unship a couple of pup-tents from the back
of the car, and sleep out here. I have all your things in the back of
the car. If you'd rather, you can sleep in the car; you're little and
I think you could be comfortable on the back seat."
She interrupted him with a cry of injury.
"My things? Where did you get them?"
"Lucille packed them. She worked like a demon to get everything ready.
She was thrilled."
"Thrilled!" said Marjorie resentfully. "I'm so sick of people being
thrilled I don't know what to do. _I'm_ not thrilled. . . . I might
have known it. It's just the sort of thing Lucille would be crazy over
doing. I suppose she feels as if she were in the middle of a
melodrama."
"I'm sorry, Marjorie, but there's something about you that always makes
people feel romantic. . . ." His voice softened. "I remember the
first time I saw you, coming into that restaurant a little behind
Lucille, it made me feel as if the fairy-stories I'd stopped believing
in had come true all over again. You were so little and so graceful,
and you looked as if you believed in so many wonderful things----"
"Stop!" said Marjorie desperately. "It isn't fair to talk that way to
me. I won't have it. If you feel that way you ought to take me back
home."
"On the contrary, just the reverse," quoted Francis, who seemed to be
getting cooler as Marjorie grew more excited. "You said you'd listen.
Be a sport, and do listen."
"Very well," said Marjorie sulkily. She _was_ a sport by nature, and
she was curious.
"I've taken a job in Canada--reforesting of burned-over areas. I had
to go to-night at the latest. It seemed to me that we hadn't either of
us given this thing a fair try-out. I hadn't a chance with you unless
I took this one. My idea is for you to give me a trial, under any
conditions you like that include our staying in the same house a couple
of months. I'm crazy over you. I want to stay married to you the
worst way. You're all frightened of me, and marriage, and everything,
now. But it's just possible that you may be making a mistake, not
seeing it through. It's just possible that I may be making a mistake,
thinking that you and I would be happy."
Marjorie gave a little tense jerk of outraged pride at this rather
tactless speech. It sounded too much as if Francis might possibly tire
of _her_--which it wasn't his place to do.
"And so," Francis went on doggedly, "my proposition is that you go up
to Canada with me. There's a fairly decent house that goes with the
job. There won't be too much of my society. You need a rest anyhow.
I won't hurry you, or do anything unfair. Only let us try it out, and
see if we wouldn't like being married, exactly as if we'd had a chance
to be engaged before."
"And if we don't?" inquired Marjorie.
"And if we don't, I'll give you the best divorce procurable this side
of the water."
"You sound as if it was a Christmas present," said Marjorie.
She thought she was temporizing, but Francis accepted it as willingness
to do as he suggested.
"Then you will?" he asked.
"But--it's such an awful step to take!"
Francis leaned back--she could feel him do it, in the dark--and began
to argue as coolly as if it were not three o'clock in the morning, on
an unfrequented road.
"The most of the step is taken. You haven't anything to do but just go
on as you are--no packing or walking or letter-writing or anything of
the sort. Simply stay here in the car with me and end at the place in
Canada, live there and let me be around more or less. If there's
anything you want at home that Lucille has forgotten----"
"Knowing Lucille, there probably is," said Marjorie.
"----we'll write her and get it. . . . Well?"
Marjorie took a long breath, tried to be very wide-awake and firm, and
fell silent, thinking.
She was committed, for one thing. People would think it was all right
and natural if she went on with Francis, and be shocked and upset and
everything else if she didn't. Cousin Anna Stevenson would write her
long letters about her Christian duty, and the office would be
uncomfortable. And Lucille--well, Lucille was a blessed comfort. She
didn't mind what you did so long as it didn't put her out personally.
She at least--but Lucille had packed the bag! And you couldn't go and
fling yourself on the neck of as perfidious a person as _that_.
And--it would be an adventure. Francis was nice, or at least she
remembered it so; a delightful companion. He wasn't rushing her. All
he wanted was a chance to be around and court her, as far as she could
discover. True, he was appallingly strange, but--it seemed a
compromise. And she had always liked the idea of Canada. As for
eventually staying with Francis, that seemed very far off. It did not
seem like a thing she could ever do. Being friends with him she might
compass. Of course, you couldn't say that it was a fair deal to
Francis, but he was bringing it on himself, and really, he deserved the
punishment. For of course, Marjorie's vain little mind said
irrepressibly to itself, he would be fonder of her at the end of the
try-out than at the beginning. . . . And then a swift wave of anger at
him came over her, and she decided on the crest of it. She would never
give in to Francis's courtship. He wasn't the sort of man she liked.
He wasn't congenial. She had grown beyond him. But he deserved what
he was going to get. . . . And she spoke.
"It isn't fair to you, Francis, because it isn't going to end the way
you hope. But I'll go to Canada with you . . ."
For a moment she was very sorry she had said it, because Francis forgot
himself and caught her in his arms tight, and kissed her hard.
"If you do that sort of thing I _won't_!" she said. "That wasn't in
the bargain."
"I know it wasn't," said Francis contritely. "Only you were such a
good little sport to promise. I won't do it again unless you say I
may. Honestly, Marjorie. Not even before people."
This sounded rather topsy-turvy, but after awhile it came to Marjorie
what he meant--just about the time she climbed out of the car, sat on
its step, and watched Francis competently unfurling and setting up two
small and seemingly inadequate tents and flooring them with balsam
boughs. He meant that there would have to be at least a semblance of
friendliness on account of the people they lived among. She felt more
frightened than ever.
Francis came up to her as if he had felt the wave of terror that went
over her.
"Now you aren't to worry. I'm going to keep my word. You're safe with
me, Marge. I'm going to take care of you as if I were your brother and
your father and your cousin Anna----"
She broke in with an irrepressible giggle.
"Oh, please don't go that far! Two male relatives will be
plenty. . . . I--I really got all the care from Cousin Anna that I
wanted."
He looked relieved at her being able to laugh, and bent over the tents
again in the moonlight.
"There you are. And here are the blankets. We're near enough to the
road so you won't be frightened, and enough in the bushes so we'll be
secluded. Good-night. I'll call you to-morrow, when it's time to go
on. I know this part of the country like my hand, and here's some
water in case you're thirsty in the night. Oh, and here are towels."
This last matter-of-fact touch almost set Marjorie off again in
hysterical laughter. Being eloped with by a gentleman who thoughtfully
set towels and water outside her door was really _too_ much. She
pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped off some of her
clothes--it did not seem enough like going to bed to undress
altogether, and she mistrusted the balsam boughs with blankets over
them that pretended to be a bed in the corner--and flung herself down
and laughed and laughed and laughed till she nearly cried.
She did not quite cry. The boughs proved to have been arranged by a
master hand, and she was very tired and exceedingly sleepy. She pulled
hairpins out of her hair in a half-dream, so that they had to be sought
for painstakingly next morning when she woke. She burrowed into the
blankets, and knew nothing of the world till nine next morning.
"I can't knock on a tent-flap," said Francis's buoyant voice outside
then. "But it's time we were on our way, Marjorie. There ought to be
a bathrobe in that bundle of Lucille's. Slip it on and I'll show you
the brook."
She reached for a mirror, which showed that, though tousled, she was
pretty, took one of the long breaths that seemed so frequently
necessary in dealing with Francis, said "in for a penny, in for a
pound," and did as she was directed. The bath-robe wasn't a bath-robe,
but something rather more civilized, which had been, as a matter of
fact, part of her trousseau, in that far-off day when trousseaux were
so frequently done, and seemed such fun to buy. She came out of the
tent rather timidly. "Good gracious, child, that wasn't what I meant!"
exclaimed Francis, seeming appallingly dressed and neat and ready for
life. "It's too cold for that sort of thing. Here!"
He picked up one of the blankets, wrapped it around her, gave her a
steer in a direction away from the road, and vanished.
She went down the path he had pushed her toward, holding the towels
tight in one hand and her blanket around her in the other. It was
fresh that morning, though it was warm for May. And Francis seemed to
think that she was going to take a bath in the brook, which even he
could not have had heated. She shivered at the idea as she came upon
it.
It was an alluring brook, in spite of its unheated state. It was very
clear and brown, with a pebbled bottom that you could see into, and a
sort of natural round pool, where the current was partly dammed, making
it waist-deep. She resolved at first to wash just her face and hands;
then she tried an experimental foot, and finished by making a bold
plunge straight into the ice-cold middle of it. She shrieked when she
was in, and came very straight out, but by the time she was dry she was
warmer than ever. She ran back to the tent, laughing in sheer
exuberance of spirits, and dressed swiftly. The plunge had stimulated
her so that when Francis appeared again she ran toward him, feeling as
friendly as if he weren't married to her at all.
"It was--awfully cold--but I'm just as hungry as I can be!" she called.
"Was there anything to eat in the car, along with the towels?"
Francis seemed unaccountably relieved by her pleasantness. This had
been something of a strain on him, after all, though it was the first
time such a thought had occurred to Marjorie. His thin, dark face
lighted up.
"Everything, including thermos bottles," he called back. "We won't
stop to build a fire, because we have to hurry; but Lucille----"
"Lucille!" said Marjorie. "Well, I certainly never knew what a wretch
that girl was."
"Oh, not a wretch. Only romantic," said Francis, grinning. "I tell
you again, Marjorie, you have a fatal effect on people. Look at me--a
matter-of-fact captain of doughboys--and the minute I see that you
won't marry me--stay married to me, I mean--I elope with you in a coach
and four!"
"I don't think you ought to laugh about it," said Marjorie, sobering
down and stopping short in her tracks.
"Well, I shouldn't," said Francis penitently. "Only I'm relieved, and
a little excited, I suppose. You see, I like your society a lot, and
the idea of having it for maybe three months, on any terms you like, is
making me so pleased I'm making flippant remarks. I won't any more, if
I remember."
And he apparently meant it, for he busied himself in exploring the car,
which seemed as inexhaustible as the Mother's Bag in the Swiss Family
Robinson, for the food he had spoken of. There was a large basket,
which he produced and set on a stump, and from which he took
sandwiches, thermos flasks, and--last perfidy of Lucille!--a tin box of
shrimps à la King, carefully wrapped, and ready for reheating. He did
it in a little ready-heat affair which also emerged from the basket,
and which Marjorie knew well. It was her own, in fact. Reheated
shrimps should have killed them both, more especially for breakfast.
But they never thought of that till some days later. Marjorie was so
overcome by finding her own shrimps facing her, so to speak, that
nothing else occurred to her--except to eat them. They made a very
good breakfast, during which Francis was never flippant once. They
talked decorously about the natural scenery--fortunately for the
conversation there was a great deal of natural scenery in their
vicinity--and somewhat about pup-tents, and a little about how nice the
weather was. After that they cleared up the pieces, repacked
everything like magic, and went on their way very amicably.