As she came out of the first hotel of her selection and rejection
Marie Louise asked the car-starter the name of another. He mentioned
the New Willard.
It was not far, and she was there before she had time to recover from
the staggering effect of Lady Clifton-Wyatt's bludgeon-like snub. As
timidly as the waif and estray that she was, she ventured into the
crowded, gorgeous lobby with its lofty and ornate ceiling on its big
columns. At one side a long corridor ran brokenly up a steep hill. It
was populous with loungers who had just finished their dinners or were
waiting for a chance to get into the dining-rooms. Orchestra music was
lilting down the aisle.
When Marie Louise had threaded the crowd and reached the desk a very
polite and eager clerk asked her if she had a reservation. He seemed
to be as regretful as she when she said no. He sighed, "We've turned
away a hundred people in the last two hours."
She accepted her dismissal dumbly, then paused to ask, "I say, do you
by any chance know where Grinden Hall is?"
He shook his head and turned to another clerk to ask, "Do you know of
a hotel here named Grinden Hall?"
The other shook his head, too. There was a vast amount of head-shaking
going on everywhere in Washington. He added, "I'm new here." Nearly
everybody seemed to be new here. It seemed as if the entire populace
had moved into a ready-made town.
Marie Louise had barely the strength to explain, "Grinden Hall is not
an hotel; it is a home, in Rosslyn, wherever that is."
"Oh, Rosslyn--that's across the river in Virginia."
"Do you know, by any chance, Major Thomas Widdicombe?"
He shook his head. Major Widdicombe was a big man, but the town was
fairly swarming with men bigger than he. There were shoals of
magnates, but giants in their own communities were petty nuisances
here pleading with room-clerks for cots and with head waiters for
bread. The lobby was a thicket of prominent men set about like trees.
Several of them had the Congressional look. Later history would record
them as the historic statesmen of titanic debates, men by whose
eloquence and leadership and committee-room toil the Republic would be
revolutionized in nearly every detail, and billions made to flow like
water.
As Marie Louise collected her porter and her hand-luggage for her next
exit she saw Ross Davidge just coming in. She stepped behind a large
politician or something. She forgot that she owed Davidge money, and
she felt a rather pleasurable agitation in this game of hide-and-seek,
but something made her shy of Davidge. For one thing, it was ludicrous
to be caught being turned out of a second hotel.
The politician walked away, and Davidge would have seen Marie Louise
if he had not stopped short and turned a cold shoulder on her, just as
the distant orchestra, which had been crooning one of Jerome Kern's
most insidiously ingratiating melodies, began to blare with all its
might the sonorities of "The Star-spangled Banner."
Miss Webling saw the people in the alley getting to their feet slowly,
awkwardly. A number of army and navy officers faced the music and
stood rigid at attention. The civilians in the lobby who were already
standing began to pull their hats off sheepishly like embarrassed
peasants. People were still as self-conscious as if the song had just
been written. They would soon learn to feel the tremendous importance
of that eternal query, the only national anthem, perhaps, that ever
began with a question and ended with a prayer. Americans would soon
learn to salute it with eagerness and to deal ferociously with
men--and women, too--who were slow to rise.
Marie Louise watched Davidge curiously. He was manifestly on fire with
patriotism, but he was ashamed to show it, ashamed to stand erect and
click his heels. He fumbled his hat and slouched, and looked as if he
had been caught in some guilt. He was indeed guilty of a childish
fervor. He wanted to shout, he wanted to weep, he wanted to fight
somebody; but he did not know how to express himself without striking
an attitude, and he was incapable of being a _poseur_--except as an
American posily affects poselessness.
When the anthem ended, people sank into their chairs with sighs of
relief; the officers sharply relaxed; the civilians straightened up
and felt at home again. Ross Davidge marched to the desk, not noticing
Marie Louise, who motioned to her porter to come along with her
luggage and went to hunt shelter at the Raleigh Hotel. She kept her
taxi now and left her hand-baggage in it while she received the
inevitable rebuff. From there she traveled to hotel after hotel,
marching in with the dismal assurance that she would march right out
again.
The taxi-driver was willing to take her to hotels as long as they and
her money lasted. Her strength and her patience gave out first. At the
Lafayette she advanced wearily, disconsolately to the desk. She saw
Ross Davidge stretched out in a big chair. He did not see her. His hat
was pulled over his eyes, and he had the air of angry failure. If he
despaired, what chance had she?
She received the usual regrets from the clerk. As she left the desk
the floor began to wabble. She hurried to an inviting divan and
dropped down, beaten and distraught. She heard some one approach, and
her downcast eyes saw a pair of feet move up and halt before her.
Since Lady Clifton-Wyatt's searing glance and words Marie Louise had
felt branded visibly, and unworthy of human kindness and shelter. She
was piteously grateful to this man for his condescension in saying:
"You'll have to excuse me for bothering you again. But I'm afraid
you're in worse trouble than I am. Nobody seems to be willing to take
you in."
He meant this as a light jocularity, but it gave her a moment's
serious fear that he had overheard Lady Clifton-Wyatt's slashing
remark. But he went on:
"Won't you allow me to try to find you a place? Don't you know anybody
here?"
"I know numbers of people, but I don't know where any of them are."
She told him of her efforts to get to Rosslyn by telephone, by
telegraph, by train or taxicab. Little tears added a sparkle to
laughter, but threatened rain. She ended with, "And now that I've
unloaded my riddles on you, aren't you sorry you spoke?"
"Not yet," he said, with a subtle compliment pleasantly implying that
she was perilous. Everybody likes to be thought perilous. He went on:
"I don't know Rosslyn, but it can't be much of a place for size. If
you have a friend there, we'll find her if we have to go to every
house in Rosslyn."
"But it's getting rather late, isn't it, to be knocking at all the
doors all by myself?"
She had not meant to hint, and it was a mere coincidence that he
thought to say:
"Couldn't I go along?"
"Thank you, but it's out in the country rather far, I'm afraid."
"Then I must go along."
"I couldn't think of troubling you."
The end of it was that he had his way, or she hers, or both theirs. He
made no nonsense of adventure or escapade about it, and she was too
well used to traveling alone to feel ashamed or alarmed. He led her to
the taxi, told the driver that Grinden Hall was their objective and
must be found. Then he climbed in with her, and they rode in a dark
broken with the fitful lightnings of street-lamps and motors.
The taxi glided out M Street. The little shops of Georgetown went
sidelong by. The cab turned abruptly to the left and clattered across
the old aqueduct bridge. On a broad reach of the Potomac the new-risen
moon spread a vast sheet of tin-foil of a crinkled sheen. This was all
that was beautiful about the sordid neighborhood, but it was very
beautiful, and tender to a strange degree.
Once across, the driver stopped and leaned round to call in at the
door:
"This is Rosslyn. Where do yew-all want to go next?"
"Grinden Hall. Ask somebody."
"Ask who? They ain't a soul tew be saw."
They waited in the dark awhile; then Davidge got out and, seeing a
street-car coming down through the hills like a dragon in fiery
scales, he stopped it to ask the motorman of Grinden Hall. He knew
nothing, but a sleepy passenger said that he reckoned that that
was the fancy name of Mr. Sawtell's place, and he shouted the
directions:
"Yew go raht along this road ovah the caw tracks, and unda a bridge
and keep a-goin' up a ridge and ova till yew come to a shawp tu'n to
the raht. Big whaht mansion, ain't it?"
"I don't know," said Davidge. "I never saw it."
"Well, I reckon that's the place. Only 'Hall' I knaow about up heah."
The motorman kicked his bell and started off.
"Nothing like trying," said Davidge, and clambered in. The taxicab
went veering and yawing over an unusually Virginian bad road. After a
little they entered a forest. The driver threw on his search-light,
and it tore from the darkness pictures of forest eerily green in the
glare--old trees slanting out, deep channels blackening into
mysterious glades. The car swung sharply to the right and growled up a
hill, curving and swirling and threatening to capsize at every moment.
The sense of being lost was irresistible.
Marie Louise fell to pondering; suddenly she grew afraid to find
Grinden Hall. She knew that Polly knew Lady Clifton-Wyatt. They might
have met since Polly wrote that letter. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had
perhaps--had doubtless--told Polly all about Marie Louise. Polly would
probably refuse her shelter. She knew Polly: there was no middle
ground between her likes and dislikes; she doted or she hated. She was
capable of smothering her friends with affection and of making them
ancient enemies in an instant. For her enemies she had no use or
tolerance. She let them know her wrath.
The car stopped. The driver got down and went forward to a narrow lane
opening from the narrow road. There was a sign-board there. He read it
by the light of the moon and a few matches. He came back and said:
"Here she is. Grinden Hall is what she says on that theah sign-bode."
Marie Louise was in a flutter. "What time is it?" she asked.
Davidge held his watch up and lighted a match.
"A little after one."
"It's awfully late," she said.
The car was turning at right angles now, and following a narrow track
curling through a lawn studded with shrubbery. There was a moment's
view of all Washington beyond the valley of the moon-illumined river.
Its lights gleamed in a patient vigilance. It had the look of the holy
city that it is. The Capitol was like a mosque in Mecca, the Mecca of
the faithful who believe in freedom and equality. The Washington
Monument, picked out from the dark by a search-light, was a lofty
steeple in a dream-world.
Davidge caught a quick breath of piety and reverence. Marie Louise was
too frightened by her own destiny to think of the world's anxieties.
The car raced round the circular road. Her eyes were snatched from the
drowsy town, small with distance, to the imminent majesty of a great
Colonial portico with columns tall and stately and white, a temple of
Parthenonian dignity in the radiance of the priestly moon. There was
not a light in any window, no sign of life.
The car stopped. But-- Marie Louise simply dared not face Polly and
risk a scene in the presence of Davidge. She tapped on the glass and
motioned the driver to go on. He could not believe her gestures. She
leaned out and whispered:
"Go on--go on! I'll not stop!"
Davidge was puzzled, but he said nothing; and Marie Louise made no
explanation till they were outside again, and then she said:
"Do you think I'm insane?"
"This is not my party," he said.
She tried to explain: "There wasn't a light to be seen. They couldn't
have got my telegram. They weren't expecting me. They may not have
been at home. I hadn't the courage to stop and wake the house."
That was not her real reason, but Davidge asked for no other. If he
noted that she was strangely excited over a trifle like getting a few
servants and a hostess out of bed, he made no comment.
When she pleaded, "Do you mind if I go back to Washington with you?"
he chuckled: "It's certainly better than going alone. But what will
you do when you get there?"
"I'll go to the railroad station and sit up," Marie Louise announced.
"I'm no end sorry to have been such a nuisance."
"Nuisance!" he protested, and left his intonation to convey all the
compliments he dared not utter.
The cab dived into another woods and ran clattering down a roving
hill road. Up the opposite steep it went with a weary gait. It crawled
to the top with turtle-like labor. Davidge knew the symptoms, and he
frowned in the shadow, yet smiled a little.
The car went banging down, held by a squealing brake. The light grew
faint, and in the glimmer there was a close shave at the edge of a
hazardous bridge over a deep, deep ravine. The cab rolled forward on
the rough planks under its impetus, but it picked up no speed.
Half-way across, it stopped.
"Whatever is the matter?" Marie Louise exclaimed.
Davidge leaned out and called to the driver, "What's the matter now?"
though he knew full well.
"Gas is gone, I reckon," the fellow snarled, as he got down. After a
moment's examination he confirmed his diagnosis. "Yep, gas is all
gone. I been on the go too long on this one call."
"In Heaven's name, where can you get some more gasolene?" said Marie
Louise.
"Nearest garodge is at Rosslyn, I reckon, lady."
"How far is that?"
"I'd hate to say, lady. Three, fo' mahls, most lahkly, and prob'ly
closed naow."
"Go wake it up at once."
"No thanky, lady. I got mahty po' feet for them hills."
"What do you propose to do?"
"Ain't nothin' tew dew but wait fo' somebody to come along."
"When will that be?"
"Along todes mawnin' they ought to be somebody along, milkman or
somethin'."
"Cheerful!" said Marie Louise.
"Batt'ries kind o' sick, tew, looks lahk. I was engaged by the houah,
remember," the driver reminded them as he clambered back to his place,
put his feet up on the dashboard and let his head roll into a position
of ease.
The dimming lights waned and did not wax. By and by they went where
lights go when they go out. There was no light now except the moonset,
shimmering mistily across the tree-tops of the rotunda of the forest,
just enough to emphasize the black of the well they were in.