A NARROW ESCAPE
MR. MILFORD was stretched out in a hammock on the front porch of the
bungalow when the children came back from the dunes with their empty
basket. They could not see him as they climbed up the terrace, the porch
being high above them and draped with vines; and he deep in a new book
was only vaguely conscious of approaching voices.
They were discussing the "Rescues of Rosalind," the play they had seen
the night before on the films. Their shrill, eager tones would have
attracted the attention of anyone less absorbed than Mr. Milford.
"I'll bet you couldn't," Georgina was saying. "If you were gagged and
bound the way Rosalind was, you _couldn't_ get loose, no matter how you
squirmed and twisted."
"Come back in the garage and try me," Richard retorted. "I'll prove it
to you that I can."
"_Always_ an automobile dashes up and there's a chase. It's been that
way in every movie I ever saw," announced Georgina with the air of one
who has attended nightly through many seasons.
"I can do that part all right," declared Richard. "I can run an
automobile."
There was no disputing that fact, no matter how contradictory Georgina's
frame of mind. Only the day before she had seen him take the wheel and
run the car for three miles under the direction of Cousin James, when
they came to a level stretch of road.
"Yes, but you know your Cousin James said you were never to do it unless
he was along himself. You wasn't to dare to touch it when you were out
with only the chauffeur."
"He wouldn't care if we got in and didn't start anything but the
engine," said Richard. "Climb in and play that I'm running away with
you. With the motor chugging away and shaking the machine it'll seem as
if we're really going."
By this time they were inside the garage, with the doors closed behind
them.
"Now you get in and keep looking back the way Rosalind did to see how
near they are to catching us."
Instantly Georgina threw herself into the spirit of the game. Climbing
into the back seat she assumed the pose of the kidnapped bride whose
adventures had thrilled them the night before.
"Play my white veil is floating out in the wind," she commanded, "and
I'm looking back and waving to my husband to come faster and take me
away from the dreadful villain who is going to kill me for my jewels. I
wish this car was out of doors instead of in this dark garage. When I
look back I look bang against the closed door every time, and I can't
make it seem as if I was seeing far down the road."
"Play it's night," suggested Richard. He had put on a pair of goggles
and was making a great pretence of getting ready to start. Georgina,
leaning out as Rosalind had done, waved her lily hand in frantic
beckonings for her rescuers to follow faster. The motor chugged harder
and harder. The car shook violently.
To the vivid imaginations of the passengers, the chase was as exciting
as if the automobile were really plunging down the road instead of
throbbing steadily in one spot in the dim garage. The gas rolling up
from somewhere in the back made it wonderfully realistic. But out on the
open road the smell of burning gasoline would not have been so
overpowering. Inside the little box-like garage it began to close in on
them and settle down like a dense fog.
Georgina coughed and Richard looked back apprehensively, feeling that
something was wrong, and if that queer smoke didn't stop pouring out in
such a thick cloud he'd have to shut off the engine or do something.
Another moment passed and he leaned forward, fumbling for the key, but
he couldn't find it. He had grown queerly confused and light-headed. He
couldn't make his fingers move where he wanted them to go.
He looked back at Georgina. She wasn't waving her hands any more. She
was lying limply back on the seat as if too tired to play any longer.
And a thousand miles away--at least it sounded that far--above the
terrific noise the motor was making, he heard Captain Kidd barking. They
were short, excited barks, so thin and queer, almost as thin and queer
as if he were barking with the voice of a mosquito instead of his own.
And then--Richard heard nothing more, not even the noise of the motor.
His hand dropped from the wheel, and he began slipping down, down from
the seat to the floor of the car, white and limp, overcome like
Georgina, by the fumes of the poisonous gas rolling up from the
carburetor.
Mr. Milford, up in the hammock, had been vaguely conscious for several
minutes of unusual sounds somewhere in the neighborhood, but it was not
until he reached the end of the chapter that he took any intelligent
notice. Then he looked up thinking somebody's machine was making a
terrible fuss somewhere near. But it wasn't that sound which made him
sit up in the hammock. It was Captain Kidd's frantic barking and yelping
and whining as if something terrible was happening to him.
Standing up to stretch himself, then walking to the corner of the porch,
Mr. Milford looked out. He could see the little terrier alternately
scratching on the garage door and making frantic efforts to dig under
it. Evidently he felt left out and was trying desperately to join his
little playmates, or else he felt that something was wrong inside.
Then it came to Mr. Milford in a flash that something _was_ wrong
inside. Nobody ever touched that machine but himself and the chauffeur,
and the chauffeur, who was having a day off, was half-way to Yarmouth by
this time. He didn't wait to go down by the steps. With one leap he was
over the railing, crashing through the vines, and running down the
terrace to the garage.
As he rolled back one of the sliding doors a suffocating burst of gas
rushed into his face. He pushed both doors open wide, and with a hand
over his mouth and nose hurried through the heavily-charged atmosphere
to shut off the motor. The fresh air rushing in, began clearing away the
fumes, and he seized Georgina and carried her out, thinking she would be
revived by the time he was back with Richard. But neither child stirred
from the grass where he stretched them out.
As he called for the cook and the housekeeper, there flashed into his
mind an account he had read recently in a New York paper, of a man and
his wife who had been asphyxiated in just such a way as this. Now
thoroughly alarmed, he sent the cook running down the Green Stairs to
summon Richard's father from the studio, and the housekeeper to
telephone in various directions. Three doctors were there in a
miraculously short time, but despite all they could do at the end of
half an hour both little figures still lay white and motionless.
Then the pulmotor that had been frantically telephoned for arrived from
the life-saving station, and just as the man dashed up with that, Mrs.
Triplett staggered up the terrace, her knees shaking so that she could
scarcely manage to climb the last few steps.
Afterwards, the happenings of the day were very hazy in Georgina's mind.
She had an indistinct recollection of being lifted in somebody's arms
and moved about, and of feeling very sick and weak. Somebody said
soothingly to somebody who was crying:
"Oh, the worst is over now. They're both beginning to come around."
Then she was in her own bed and the wild-cat from the banks of the
Brazos was bending over her. At least, she thought it was the wild-cat,
because she smelled the liniment as strongly as she did when she climbed
up in the wagon beside it. But when she opened her eyes it was Tippy who
was bending over her, smoothing her curls in a comforting, purry way,
but the smell of liniment still hung in the air.
Then Georgina remembered something that must have happened before she
was carried home from the bungalow.--Captain Kidd squirming out of
Tippy's arms, and Tippy with the tears streaming down her face trying
to hold him and hug him as if he had been a person, and the Milford's
cook saying: "If it hadn't been for the little beast's barkin' they'd
have been dead in a few minutes more. Then there'd have been a double
funeral, poor lambs."
Georgina smiled drowsily now and slipped off to sleep again, but later
when she awakened the charm of the cook's phrase aroused her thoroughly,
and she lay wondering what "a double funeral" was like. Would it have
been at her house or Richard's? Would two little white coffins have
stood side by side, or would each have been in its own place, with the
two solemn processions meeting and joining at the foot of the Green
Stairs. Maybe they would have put on her tombstone, "None knew her but
to love her." No, that couldn't be said about her. She'd been wilfully
disobedient too often for that, like the time she played with the
Portuguese children on purpose to spite Tippy. She was sorry for that
disobedience now, for she had discovered that Tippy was fonder of her
than she had supposed. She had proved it by hugging Captain Kidd so
gratefully for saving their lives, when she simply _loathed_ dogs.
Somehow Georgina felt that she was better acquainted with Mrs. Triplett
than she had ever been before, and fonder of her. Lying there in the
dark she made several good resolutions. She was going to be a better
girl in the future. She was going to do kind, lovely things for
everybody, so that if an early tomb should claim her, every heart in
town would be saddened by her going. It would be lovely to leave a
widespread heartache behind her. She wished she could live such a life
that there wouldn't be a dry eye in the town when it was whispered from
house to house that little Georgina Huntingdon was with the angels.
She pictured Belle's grief, and Uncle Darcy's and Richard's. She had
already seen Tippy's. But it was a very different thing when she thought
of Barby. There was no pleasure in imagining Barby's grief. There was
something too real and sharp in the pain which darted into her own heart
at the thought of it. She wanted to put her arms around her mother and
ward off sorrow and trouble from her and keep all tears away from those
dear eyes. She wanted to grow up and take care of her darling Barby and
protect her from the Tishbite.
Suddenly it occurred to Georgina that in this escape she had been kept
from the power of that mysterious evil which had threatened her ever
since she called it forth by doing such a wicked thing as to use the
"Sacred Book" to work a charm.
She had been put to bed in the daytime, hence her evening petitions were
still unsaid. Now she pulled the covers over her head and included them
all in one fervent appeal:
"And keep on delivering us from the Tishbite, forever and ever, Amen!"