I suppose it was a fool arrangement, but anyway we did it; and
Harry Prentiss, who is learning how to be a corporation lawyer
and has specialized on contracts, spent a whole week making it
what he called iron-clad. When it was typewritten it covered
nine pages, and was so excessively iron-clad that nobody could
understand it but Harry. He said it undoubtedly covered the
ground, however, and would be worth all the trouble it cost him
in the friction it would save afterward. You'd hardly know Harry
as the same boy that played Yale full-back, he's grown so cynical
and suspicious, and he's got that lawyer way of looking at you
now, as though you were a liar and he was just about to pounce on
you with the truth. I thought he might have brought Nelly and
himself into the agreement under one head, considering he was
engaged to her and they were only waiting to save a thousand
dollars in order to get married; but he couldn't see it in that
way at all, and spoke about people changing their minds, and how
in law you must be prepared for everything (especially if it were
disagreeable and unexpected) and put supposistious cases till
Nelly broke down and cried.
They had got five hundred toward the thousand when they were both
taken with automobile fever--and taken bad; and then they decided
that, though marriage was all right, they were still young, and
the bubble had the first call. Harry had been secretly taking
the Horseless Age for three months, and as for Nelly--anybody
with a four-cylinder tonneau could have torn her from her happy
home. Not that she didn't love Harry tremendously. She was
crazy about him--but crazier for a bubble. It's an infatuation
like any other, only worse, and I guess I was no better than
Nelly myself, for I used to ride regularly with Lewis Wentz and
you know what Lewis Wentz is. And he only had a wheezy old steam
carriage anyway, and sometimes blue flames would leap up all
around you till you felt like a Christian martyr, and his boiler
was always burning out when he'd try to hold my hand instead of
watching the gage. You paid in every kind of way for riding with
Lewis Wentz, and people talked about you besides--but I always
went just the same. Oh, I know I ought to be ashamed to admit
it, and I said to myself every time should be the last; yet he
only had to double-toot at the front door for me to drop
everything and run. This naturally made him awfully forward and
troublesome, not to speak of complicating me with pa, who didn't
approve of him the least bit, and who used to regale me with
little talks beginning: "I would rather see you lying dead in
your coffin," and winding up with, "Now, won't you promise your
poor old dad?" till I was all broken up. But, as I said before,
Lewis Wentz had only to toot for me to forget my old dad and the
coffin and everything.
With only five hundred dollars to go on, Harry and Nelly, of
course, had to look about for more capital; and that was why they
chose me to go in with them. I didn't have any capital except a
rich father, but I suppose they thought that was the same thing.
People are so apt to--though I never found it the same thing at
all. Then, too, Nelly and I were bosom friends, and they
naturally wanted to give me the first chance. Their original
plan had been to have the bubble held in four equal shares,
taking in Morty Truslow as the fourth. I think there was a
little scheme in that, too, for Morty and I hadn't spoken for
three months, and it was all off between us. There was a time
when I thought there was only one thing in the world, and that
was Morty Truslow--but that was over for good, with nothing left
of it but a great big ache. I can never be grateful enough to
Mrs. Gettridge for putting me on to it, for, however much a girl
cares for a man, her pride won't let her--and she was Josie's
aunt, you know, and if anybody was on the inside track, she
was--and I cut him dead and sent back his letters unopened,
though he wrote and wrote--and it was awfully hard, you know,
because I just had to grit my teeth together to keep from loving
him to death. Nelly said I was just too proud and silly for
anything, and pa looked as depressed as though there was another
slump in Preferred Steel, and mama said he was such a catch that
the first designing girl would snap him up, and Harry said you
wouldn't know Morty now, he was so changed and different.
So that was how it was when Nelly and Harry started the Great
Bubble Syndicate and wanted to take Morty and me into it as
quarter share-holders each. But I wouldn't have joined in a
heavenly chariot on those terms, and so we talked and talked till
finally Morty was eliminated and we settled on a two-third and
one-third basis. The next point was to choose the car, for it
had to be a cheap car and we wanted to get the very best for our
money. Harry said the Model E Fearless runabout at seven hundred
and fifty was the bulliest little car on the market; and that the
Fearless agent was so good and kind and looked so much like Henry
Ward Beecher that you felt uplifted just to be with him; and that
you knew instinctively that his car was sure to be the best car.
A picture of the Fearless settled the matter, for it was a real
little beauty--long in the chassis and very low, with wood
artillery wheels and guards and lamps thrown in for nothing.
Harry said it had more power than it knew what to do with and was
a bird on the hills, and that he had a friend who had a friend
who owned one and swore by it. Afterward we met him and towed
him nine miles, and what swearing he did was all the other way;
however, I mustn't get ahead of the story, or anticipate, as they
say in novels.
Getting two hundred and fifty dollars from pa was the next step,
and of all my automobiling experiences it was certainly the
worst. He couldn't see it at all, though I caught him after
dinner and sat on the arm of his chair and rubbed my cheek
against his like the sunny-haired daughter on the stage.
He ought to have reciprocated by doing angel parent, but he
talked horse-sense instead; how he couldn't afford to buy me a
whole car, and how in his experience divided ownership always
ended in the people hating one another ever afterward, and how
dangerous automobiling was anyway, and how much nicer it would be
to have a beautiful little horse.
Then I gave him the iron-clad agreement. He put on his
spectacles and read it, asking me not to breathe on his neck, as
it tickled him. (How different real life is from the stage!)
And he began to giggle at the second page; at the third he could
hardly go on; and finally, when mama came in and asked what was
the matter, he couldn't speak at all, but got up and stamped
about the room till you thought he was going to have a fit. Then
he sat down again and wiped his eyes and asked as a favor whether
he mightn't have a copy for himself. I said I might possibly
manage it if he would come down with the two hundred and fifty.
Then he got kind of serious again; asked if I didn't know any
cheaper way of getting killed; said I might have appendicitis for
the same money and be fashionable. When pa is in the right humor
he can tease awfully, and that agreement had set him off worse
than I had ever remembered. But I stuck to my bubble and wasn't
to be guyed out of the idea, and finally he lit a cigar and
started, in to bargain.
Pa is the worst old skinflint in Connecticut, and never even gave
me a bag of peanut candy without getting a double equivalent.
First of all, I had to give up Lewis Wentz entirely; I wasn't to
speak to him, or bow or bubble or dance or anything. I put up a
good fight for Lewis Wentz--not that I cared two straws for him,
now that I was going to have an automobile of my own, but just to
head pa off from grasping for more. I didn't want to be eaten
out of house and home, you know, and I guess I am too much pa's
daughter to surrender more than I could help.
It was well I did so, for on top of that I had to promise never
to ride in any car except my own, and then he branched off into
my giving up coffee for breakfast, going to bed at ten, only one
dance a week, wearing flannel in winter, minding my mother more,
and Heaven only knows what all. But I said that Lewis Wentz
alone was worth two hundred and fifty, and that I'd draw on the
other things when I needed money for repairs. Then pa suddenly
had a new notion and said he wanted to be in the thing, too;
would take a quarter interest of his own; that we'd change the
syndicate to fourths instead of thirds.
I was almost too thunderstruck to speak. Think of hearing pa
saying he wished to buy in! It was like an evangelist wanting to
take shares in the devil. I could only say "Pa!" like that, and
gasp.
"I know I'm pretty old to change," he said. "But a fellow must
keep up with the procession, you know. And I always liked the
way they smell."
His eyes were dancing and I saw he meant mischief; but, after
all, the bubble was assured now, and that was the great thing.
It wasn't till up to that moment that I felt really safe.
"I read here in the agreement," he went on, "that the automobile
is taken in rotation by every member of the syndicate; and that
when it's my day it's my day, and nobody can say a word or use it
themselves, even if I don't care to."
"That's how we'll save any possibility of friction," I returned.
"For instance, to-day it is absolutely my car; to-morrow it's
yours; day after to-morrow it is Harry's; the day after that it's
Nelly's--and if anything breaks on your day it's up to you to pay
for it."
"Oh, I'm not going to break anything," said pa with the satisfied
look of a person who doesn't know anything about it.
"Don't you be too sure about that," I said. "I've been around
enough with Lewis Wentz to know better."
"Well, you see," said pa, "that depends on how much you use your
automobile. If you never take it out at all you eliminate most
of the bothers connected with it."
"Never take it out at all?" I cried.
"On my day it stays in the barn," he said.
I began to see now what he was smiling at. Wasn't it awful of
him? He simply meant to tie it up for a quarter of the time.
"Now, Virgie," he said, "you mustn't think that I am not
stretching a point to promise you what I have. It's too blamed
dangerous and you're all the little girl I have. Well, if you
must do it, I am going to cut the risk by twenty-five per cent
and my automobile days will be blanks."
I flared up at this. It's awful when your father wants to do
something you're ashamed of. It was such a dog-in-the-manger
idea, too, and so unsportsmanlike. But nothing could shake pa,
though I tried and tried, and said things that ought to have
pierced a rhinoceros. But pa ran for governor once, and his
skin's thicker. I felt almost sorry we hadn't taken in Morty
Truslow instead--not really, you know, but just for the moment.
"How can I tell Hairy and Nelly you're such a pig?" I said, half
crying.
"I'm not a pig," said pa, "though now I'm the next thing to it
--an automobilist. And, anyway, it's a straight business
proposition. Take it or leave it."
"Pa," I said, "if you'll stay out of it altogether, I'll take it
back about coffee for breakfast and not minding mama more."
"It's too late," he returned. "I've got the automobile fever now
myself. For two cents I'd buy out Harry and Nelly and keep the
red bug in the family."
Certainly pa has the most ingenious mind of anybody I know. He
ought to have been in the Spanish Inquisition just to think up
new torments. I don't wonder they like him so well on the Stock
Exchange: he probably initiates new members and makes them ride
goats. Anyway, nothing could change him about the automobile,
and I closed the deal quick, lest he might carry out his other
plan and absorb seventy-five per cent of the syndicate's stock.
The Fearless was even prettier than its picture, and there wasn't
a runabout in town in the same class with it. Then our lessons
began, which we took separately, because there was only room on
the seat for two, and nobody wanted the other members of the
syndicate to see him running into the curb or trying to climb
trees. The agent turned out less like Henry Ward Beecher than
Harry had thought, and it was sickening how he lost interest in
us after he got his money. But he threw in a tooter for nothing
and a socket-wrench, and in some ways lived up to the
resemblance. He would not take me out himself, but gave me in
charge of a weird little boy we called the Gasoline Child. The
Gasoline Child was about thirteen, and was so full of tools that
he rattled when he walked, and I guess his head rattled, too--he
knew so much about gas engines. He was the greasiest, messiest,
grittiest and oiliest little boy that ever defied soap; and Harry
always declared he was an automobile variety of coddling-moth or
Colorado beetle or june-bug, who would wind up by spinning a
cotton-waste cocoon in the center of the machinery and hatch out
a million more like himself. Perhaps he was too busy to start
his happy home, for I never saw him at the garage but his little
legs were sticking out of a bonnet, and you could hear him
hammering inside and telling somebody to "Turn it over, will
you?" or "Now, try it that way, Bill."
But with all the heaps he knew, the Gasoline Child was a good
deal like the man who got rich by never spending anything. His
knowledge was imbedded in him like gold in quartz; you could see
it there all right, but couldn't take it out. He tried so hard
to be helpful, too; would plunge his little paw into the greasy
darkness below the seat and say:
"That's a nut you ought to remember now it works on the babbitt
of the counter-shaft"--or something of the kind--"and you must
see to it regular." Or, "Watch your valves, Miss, and be keerful
they don't gum on you." Or, "Them commutators are often the seat
of trouble, for oftentimes they wear down and don't break the
spark right." When I'd grow dizzy with these explanations he
would reassure me by saying that "I'd soon fall into it, like he
did." But I didn't fall into it nearly so well as I could have
wished. On the contrary, the more I learned the more intricate
the whole thing seemed to grow, and I looked forward to taking
the car out alone by myself with the sensations of a prisoner
about to be guillotined. Not that I had lost heart in
automobilism. The elation of those rides was delicious. The
little car ran with a lightness that was almost like flying; it
was as buoyant, swift and smooth as a glorified sledge; one awoke
with joy to the fact that the world contained a new and
irresistible pleasure.
The Gasoline Child soon taught me to run it for myself. With him
by my side I was as brave as a lion, and I took the corners and
shaved eternity in a way to make him gasp. He said he had never
been really scared in an automobile before, and he used to look
at me with a ready-to-jump expression, as though I were a baby
playing with a gun. You see, I had graduated on Lewis Wentz's
steamer and a twenty-mile clip didn't feaze me any, though there
were times when I'd forget which things to pull, and this always
seemed to rattle his little nerves. It was strange, however, what
a coward I was when I first went out by myself. There was no
devil left in me at all, and I was certainly the crawly-crawliest
bubbler you ever saw, and I teetered at street-car crossings till
everybody went mad. It might have been worse than it was,
though, for the only real trouble I had was chipping the tail
off a milk wagon and ramming a silly horse on Eighth Avenue.
When his friends helped him up (he had been standing still at the
time, and I had forgotten the low gear always started with a
jump) they said his front legs were barked flve dollars' worth.
I wouldn't have minded if he had got the five dollars,
poor thing, for after ramming him once I became confused at the
notoriety I attracted, and, instead of reversing, I threw in the
highspeed clutch and rammed him some more. Oh, yes, he had some
right to have a kick coming, though all he did was to look at me
reproachfully and then lie down. He was an Italian vegetable
horse, and from the way his friends vociferated they must have
thought a lot of him.
Of course, Harry and Nelly were taking their lessons, too, and
getting into their individual scrapes in the intervals of my
getting into mine. Pa was the only stock-holder who never came
to time, though he used to walk round to the garage on his day to
make sure the bubble was at home. He was awfully mean about his
rights and explained the syndicate principle to Mr. Hoover, the
head of the establishment, and tipped right and left, so that
there shouldn't be any doubt about the blanks being blanks. I
tried to bluff Mr. Hoover once and take out the car on pa's day,
but I bumped into a regular stone wall. Pa had given everybody
there a typewritten schedule with his days marked in red ink, and
the whole thing had become the joke of the garage, till even the
wipers grinned when the foreman would call out: "Syndicate car
there, for Miss Lockwood."
In fact, that car seemed to make everybody mean who was in the
least way connected with it. I was a perfect pig myself, and
Harry and Nelly were positively worse. It was one of our rules
that the rider of the day should be answerable for any troubles
or breakages that occurred when be (or she) was running the car.
Naturally, there had to be some understanding of this kind, for
personality counts a lot in automobiling, and often the chauffeur
is more to blame than the machine. But it was awful what fibs it
tempted us into, and how we were always "passing the buck," as
they say in poker. Nelly got so treacherous that once she told
me she didn't care to use the wagon that day, and would I like
to? She had chewed up the bearings in a front wheel and if I
hadn't suspected her generosity and taken a good look beforehand
it would have cost me six dollars!
I guess I wasn't any better myself, and quite a coolness sprang
up all around.
The repair bills came to a good deal of money, and the eighteen
dollars a month we paid at the garage was the least of the total.
The Henry Ward Beecher agent had told Harry it cost a cent a mile
to run a Fearless, but if he had said a dollar-eighty he would
have been nearer the mark. Mr. Hoover said cheerfully he knew
only one person who had got automobiling down to bed-rock, and
that was pa! But for the rest of the syndicate it was their
life's blood. It began to dawn on Harry and Nelly that they
could never get married at all, as long as they stayed in the
combine. It had cost them all the money they had saved to come
in, and now it was taking every cent they had to stay in. Nelly
used to cry about it, though I never noticed that it made any
difference in her taking out the car, which she did regularly,
and didn't let me ride with her unless I paid a dollar each time
in advance. She said she didn't know any other way of saving
money.
Altogether, you wouldn't have known us for the same three people,
we had all grown so horrid and changed and mercenary. Nelly was
hankering to get married, while I was crazy to put in a radiator
with a forced water circulation (ours was a silly old kind that
boiled on you), and Harry wobbled one way and the other as though
he couldn't make up his mind--sometimes agreeing with her, and
sometimes frantic for a radiator. It looked as though the
Fearless was going to make it a lifetime engagement, and Harry,
said ruefully that their marriage was not only, made in Heaven,
but would probably take place there. I should have felt sorrier
for them if they hadn't been so horrid to me about it. From the
way they talked, you'd think I had started the syndicate idea
myself and had lured them into it against their own better
judgment. They were nasty about pa, too, and said he was acting
dishonorably with his blank days, and that as a new machine
always had to be broken in and notoriously cost more for repairs
the first year than ever afterward, he was meanly benefiting
himself at our expense. Harry called it pa's "unearned
increment" and seemed to think it was an outrage.
They struck a whole row of troubles about this time,
too--stripping a gear, losing a front wheel on the main street
and winding up by fracturing the whole transmission into finders.
Nelly would hardly speak to me on the street, and the Gasoline
Child told me they would be cheaply out of it at eighty dollars.
Pa was the only person who didn't share the general depression.
In fact, he never seemed to be so happy as when the car was
stripped in the shop and sure to stay there. He used to go
around there occasionally and tell them they needn't hurry--and
they didn't!
The new transmission was of a better model than the old one, and
I foresaw I might have trouble about it with the syndicate. It
would be just like Harry to talk about "unearned increment" and
rope me in to pay part. But I still owed on my leather coat and
wasn't in the humor to hand out a cent. What is the good of
iron-clad agreements, anyway, if people don't live up to them
--and as for the transmission, I was quite satisfied with the old
one till they broke it. So when Nelly came around one night, all
smiles and friendliness, I suspected trouble and didn't kiss her
very hard back. But she was in too high spirits to notice
anything, and hugged me and hugged me till I inwardly relented
ten dollars' worth on the transmission--for Nelly and I had been
good chums before we went into the syndicate, and there was a
time when we would have shared our last chocolate cream.
"Virgie, you can't guess!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing.
"The makers will do the right thing and won't charge for it?"
This brought her back again to earth at once.
"It--it isn't the transmission at all," she said. "I am going to
get married next month!"
"I thought they insisted that Harry had to save a thousand
dollars first."
"He's got it! He's got it!" she cried delightedly.
I was nearly as happy as she was, for it had looked terribly
hopeless up till then, what with all the money they had put into
the syndicate and the way the bubble was gobbling us up.
"Oh, Nelly, I am so glad," I said. "I'll put in that forced
water circulation at once, and I'll make your and Harry's share
of it a wedding present!"
"Oh, I'm out of the syndicate," she said. "I guess we'd prefer
something for the flat."
"Out of the syndicate?" I cried.
"Yes," she returned brazenly. "Sold out!"
It took me a moment to pull myself together. I felt premonitions
running all over me. I didn't feel so enthusiastic about their
marriage as I had at first thought I was.
"Oh, Virgie, darling, you won't hate me?" she asked.
"Not till I hear more about it," I said.
She thought to make it up by squeezing my hands. But it wasn't
squeezing that I wanted, it was facts. I drew away a bit and
waited for them.
"Losing that front wheel was bad enough," she said, "especially
as I went over the dashboard in my dotted muslin and Harry has
limped ever since; but when the transmission broke it seemed as
though it was both our hearts. Harry said we had come to a place
where we had to choose between owning an automobile or getting
married. It was perfectly plain we couldn't do both. $e said he
didn't want to influence me either way, but that there was no
good drifting on and on, deceiving ourselves and thinking it
would all come out right. Of course, when he put it to me like
that the bubble wasn't in it--and so we towed home for the last
time and Harry, went around to close out our interest in the
syndicate."
She paused here and looked at me, quite frightened.
"Around where, exactly?" I demanded.
"Well," she went on, "your father was always dropping hints that
he would buy us out at the price we paid, and so Harry went to
his office and tried to make a deal. But your father said it
wasn't reasonable to expect him to pay for the new transmission,
too--and as Harry didn't want to, and couldn't, the whole thing
hung fire till Harry ran into Morty Truslow on the street. Morty
offered him a thousand dollars right off for his half-interest,"
continued Nelly; "you know how free-handed be is, and rich, and
Harry just jumped at it and walked off with the check."
"But you only paid half of seven hundred and fifty dollars in the
first place!" I exclaimed.
"Well, you see," said Nelly, "that car has gone up since. It's
'appreciated,' as Harry calls it. And just think what a fortune
it has stood us in for repairs!"
"It's the most horrid, mean, treacherous thing one person ever
did to another!" I cried; "you know I wouldn't speak to Morty
Truslow if be had the only monkey-wrench in the world and I was
carbonized on a country road. I think you have acted detestably,
and so has he, and I consider it downright caddish for him to buy
a half-interest in anything I am connected with"
"Oh, Virgie, you don't know how bad be feels!" said Nelly. "He
told me be had just been breaking his heart, and that you
wouldn't answer his letters or anything, and if you would only
let him talk for fifteen minutes he'd explain everything and
you'd take him back."
"I won't take him back," I said.
"He wears a little flower you gave him next his heart," continued
Nelly, "and when he speaks about you it is with tears in his
eyes, and if you weren't made of flint and rock candy you'd feel
so sorry for him you couldn't sleep!"
"What did be offer you to say all this, Nelly?" I demanded.
"Only a pearl horseshoe," she returned, quite unabashed. "Said I
might choose it for myself at Helbe's if I could persuade you to
give him a fifteen minutes' talk"
"I am sorry about the pearl horseshoe," I said ironically, "but
you might as well give up the idea right now. And if he talked
forty times fifteen minutes it wouldn't make the least difference
in the world. He thinks he's so handsome and so well off and
that so many girls are crazy about him that he only, has to
whistle for you to come!"
"If it wasn't for Harry I would," she said; "that is, if he
whistled loud enough and there wasn't too much of a crowd
thinking he meant them! Oh, Virgie, it's just like Faversham to
hear him talk, and I can't think how anybody could be such a
little fool as to say no!"
"If you call that being a little fool I guess I am," I said,
"though for a year he was the one man in my life, and if it
hadn't been for Mrs. Gettridge--well, it's all off, now, and it's
going to stay off,--and his owning half the bubble won't make the
least difference in the world!"
"But you'll come to my wedding and be one of the bridesmaids?"
she pleaded. "And you won't blame me too much for getting out of
the syndicate as I did? I knew it wasn't right and I felt
awfully about it--but then, Harry and I couldn't have managed
otherwise, and it takes years and years to save a thousand
dollars!" she looked so sweet and pitiful and contrite as she
said this that I forgave her everything and hugged her till she
choked. It seemed a shame to spoil her happiness with
reproaches, and I couldn't but think how I'd have felt myself if
it had been Mor-- Not that I cared a row of pins for him now,
and would have despised myself if I did--but everybody has
moments of looking back--and girls are such fools anyway. And,
of course, deep down somewhere I was pleased that he still cared.
I felt quite twittery when I first went to the garage after that,
for I thought Morty might pop out at me from somewhere, and
though I wasn't afraid to meet him and would have cut him if I
had, it would inevitably be embarrassing and upsetting. But he
had the good taste to stay away on my days, and I never saw as
much as a pin-feather of him. But he was awfully artful, even if
he didn't let himself be seen, and the things he did to the car
went straighter to my heart than any words he could have spoken.
He put in a radiator, a new battery with a switch, three twisted
cowhide baskets, two fifty-dollar acetylene lamps, an odometer, a
spark gap, a little clock on the dashboard, and changed the
tooter for a splendid French horn. My repair bills, too, stopped
as though by magic, and the bubble ran so well I guess people
must have sat up nights with it! The engine would start at the
half-turn of the crank; the clutches were adjusted to a hair; she
speeded up to twenty now on the open throttle, which she had
never done before except in the advertisement; she was the
showiest, smartest, fastest little car in town, and when she
miraculously went into red leather, edged with gold stampings,
people used to fall over one another on the street. I believe
those two months were the happiest months of my life. It was
automobile Heaven, and if it hadn't been for pa's blanks and
Morty's half-interest I should have been deliriously happy every
day instead of every fourth.
I can't think how it happened, but finally I got confused and
lost count. I had been away at my grandmother's for a week and
somehow that threw me out. But it was a Thursday afternoon, I
remember, and a beautiful autumn day, and I walked along to the
garage with that delicious feeling of anticipation--that tingle
of happiness to come--that made my heart bound with love of the
little red wagon. (The horse, for all his prancing and social
position, never roused a sensation like that and never will.) I
dodged a big touring-car coming out, and then went in on the
floor to order my car. I was just telling Bert to get it out
when I turned around, and there was Morty sitting in it not four
feet away from me. He had his cap on and his leather coat, and I
saw at once that I had made a terrible mistake. Before I could
even think what to do he saw my predicament and leaped out,
insisting that I--should take his place. I murmured something
about being sorry and tried to move away, but he caught my arm
and wouldn't let go. He was so eager and excited and made such a
scene that I allowed myself to be bundled into the car rather
than attract everybody's attention--for there was a Packard and a
waterless Knox looking on. Bert started up the engine and I was
just engaging the low-gear clutch, when Morty gave me such a look
that I stopped dead. It seemed too horribly mean to rob him of
his afternoon--besides, when you've been awfully in love with a
man--and his face--
"Mr. Truslow," I said, speaking loud, so as not to be drowned by
the engine, "if you promise on your honor not to speak a single
word to me--you can come, too!" I had to say it twice before he
understood, and then, didn't he bound in! I suppose it was an
awfully reckless thing to do, for whatever they say about absence
making the heart grow fonder, sitting close is lots more
dangerous, and I began to feel all my pride and determination
oozing out of my shoes. It came over me in waves that I loved
him better than ever, and I stole little sidewise peeps at him
--and every peep seemed to make it worse. He belonged to a
splendid type--I had to admit that, even if I didn't forgive him
--big, clear-eyed, ruddy and broad-shouldered--and there was
something tremendously compelling and manly about him that seemed
to sweep me off my feet. This only made me hate him more, for I
didn't see how I could ever love anybody else, and it's dreary
for a girl to have only a single man in her life and not even be
on speaking terms with that one! It leaves her with no outlook
or anything, and one might as well be dead right off. But you
can't be long miserable in a bubble, even if you try--that is, if
it is running nicely, developing full power and you have a fat,
rich spark--and though I looked as cold and distant as I could,
secretly I think I never was so happy in my life.
Morty behaved properly for quite a while--much longer, in fact,
than I could have believed possible. Then he brought out a
pencil and began to write things on the beck of an envelope. I
never moved an eyelash and didn't seem to understand at all till
he handed me what he had written. I promptly tore it up and
threw it away. But he found another envelope and did it again,
this time holding to it tight and moving it before my eyes. I
nearly ditched the car, for I was running with an open throttle
and the grade was in our favor. Then he bent over and kissed my
cloth sleeve. I pulled up short and gave him his choice of
either getting out or comporting himself like a civilized being.
He indicated that he would try to do the latter, though be looked
awfully savage and folded his arms, and moved as far away from me
as the seat would allow. I didn't care, besides he was safer
like that than when he was nice--and so I just looked cross, too,
and speeded up.
I laid out about a twenty-five mile spin, cut cutting Deering
Avenue midway, and branching off where the Italians are working
at the new trolley, toward Menlo, Hatcherly and the road through
the woods. We turned at the Trocadero, climbed the long hill,
and took the river-drive home. You know how steep it is, the
river miles below and nothing but the sheerest wall on the other
side. But there is no finer road in Europe, and it's straight
enough to see everything ahead, so you are free to coast as fast
as you please. I let her out at the top, for knew my breaks had
been taken up, and there were cotter pins in every bolt of the
steering gear; and, as I said before, there was always plenty of
room to pull up in if you happened to meet a team. Well, off we
went with a rush that made our ears sing, the little car humming
like a top.
When we were more than two-thirds down and going like the wind I
saw a nurse-girl near the bottom pushing a baby in a baby
carriage and coming uphill, with two lithe tots in red dresses
walking on either side of her. They saw us the same moment we
saw them and lined up against the side--fiery sensibly, as I
thought--and it was all so plain and right that I held on without
a thought of danger. When I was about ten yards from them and
allowing them an ample four feet to the good--I mean from the
steep side, where they stuck in a row like barnaeles--what did
the little idiots do but rush across the road like a covey of
partridges, while the nurse-girl stayed where she was with the
baby! If ever a person's blood ran cold it was mine. There was
no time, no room, no anything--and the bubble going at forty
miles an hour! It seemed like a choice between their lives or
our own. But, thank God, I was game, and I just screamed out the
one word "jump!" to Morty and turned the machine over the edge.
I must have jumped, too, though I have no recollection of it, for
when I came to myself my head was lying on Morty's knee and on
looking about I saw we were still on the road. The machine? Oh,
it was two hundred feet below, smashed to smithereens, and if we
both hadn't lit out like lightning--
I wasn't a bit hurt, only bruised and giddy, and Morty was
throwing the baby's milk in my face to revive me, while the baby
looked on and roared with displeasure at its being wasted. Morty
wasn't hurt, either, and if there were ever two people well out
of a bad scrape it was he and I. He had been so frightened about
me he was crying; and I guess his tears were like the recording
angel's, because they seemed to blot out all the old quarrel
between us. At least, when we got up and began to limp home
it seemed to me I didn't mind anything so long as he was close
to me. He was shameless enough to kiss me right before the
nurse-girl, who was demanding our names and addresses and our
blood--and all I did was to kiss back. I didn't have any fight left,
and for once he had everything his own way. Of course, it didn't
last long--it wouldn't have been good for him if it had--but even
in six minutes I managed to lose the results of six months'
coldness. Yet I was glad it was gone; glad just to be alive; and
we'd look at each other and laugh like children. You don't
realize what a good old place the world is until you've taken a
chance on leaving it and weighed against death itself; all our
little jealousies and misunderstandings seemed too trivial to
count. It seemed enough that I loved him and that he loved me
and that neither of us had broken anything--bones, I mean. It
was sad, though, to think the poor little bubble was a goner and
that we'd never hear its honest little pant again.
"If we had lived up to the comic papers, Morty," I said, "we
would have spiflicated a red child, given a merry toot and
disappeared in a cloud of dust!"
"I'm almost sorry we didn't," said Morty, who was dreadfully pale
and always hated walking. "We'll know better next time."
"There'll be no next time for that bubble," I said sadly.
"It's sparked its last spark and will never choo-choo again!
"I mean our next car, of course," said Morty (it was awfully
sweet to hear him say "our." And it took the sting out of losing
the little bubble, especially now that we're going to have
another).
"Yesterday Forbes Mason offered me his new four-cylinder
Lafayette for twenty-eight hundred dollars," said Morty; "it's
only been run five hundred miles, and I told him I'd think about
it."
"It's suspiciously cheap," I said. "Sure he hasn't cut the
cylinders?"
"Well, you see, he broke his arm cranking. It backfired on him,
and his wife is such a little fool that he had to promise to give
up automobiling."
"They are splendid cars, with a record of fifty miles on the
track, unstripped and out of stock!"
"And you shall have half-interest in it, Virgie!"
"I never could pay fourteen hundred dollars, Morty, and I don't
want any more of pa's blanks. It's too exasperating."
"Oh, I meant for nothing!"
"Then it's a present--and there's always a string to your
presents."
"Isn't there to everybody's?"
"Besides, it's an air-cooled motor," I said, not wanting to
appear too eager. "Don't they always overheat in time and stick
the pistons?"
"Not the Lafayette!"
"Don't tempt me," I said. "You know I couldn't take it on any
terms."
"Forced feed lubrication and direct drive on the fourth speed," he
continued, like a stage villain offering diamonds to the heroine.
"What kind of a string?"
"Oh, Virgie, it was all a lie about Josie Felton."
"I had it straight from Mrs. Gettridge and she's Josie's aunt and
she ought to know, I guess."
"Mrs. Gettridge is a social assassinator belongs to a regular
Mafia of mischief-makers and old cats--you know you used to care
once."
"Oh, I did, Morty, I did. It nearly broke my heart, and I just
wanted to throw myself away--become a trained nurse or go in for
settlement work!"
"Couldn't it ever be as it used to be?"
"I should want all the bushings of phosphor bronze."
"They are that already--and it's patent-lock nutted throughout,
and the engine is that new kind that interlocks. I'll draw it
for you when I get home . . . and we'll be married at the same
time as Harry and Nelly."
"And one of those French brass gasoline tanks that set flat
against the dash-board and hold a two-gallon extra supply."
"You shall have it!"
"But she said she had actually, seen the letter!"
"It was all a lie, every word of it," he broke out. "We'll go
straight to her now if you like and have it out, and then you'll
see whom to believe! There never was any letter or anything,
except that she made up her mind I was to have her niece whether
I wanted to or not. I told you that fifty million times in the
letters you wouldn't read and sent back unopened. And it wasn't
the kind of message I could give anybody else to take to you. I
had to think of the girl, of course, and I know she liked me."
"French tires, of course?"
"Every blessed thing just the way you want it. The only thing I
can't see my way to change is the chauffeur, a poor devil named
Truslow, who's really an awful decent kind of fellow when you get
to know him!"
"Oh, dear," I said, "I never dreamed the Great Bubble Syndicate
was going to end like this!"
"End?" cried Morty, putting his arm around my waist as though he
now had a right to. "It's only the reorganization of a splendid
old concern, and for fourteen hundred kisses I am going to let
you in on the ground floor!"