I
Somebody ought to know the truth about the Devil's Island affair and I am going to tell it. The truth is generally either better or worse than the stories that get about. In this case it is somewhat better, though I am not proud of it.
It started with a discussion about married women having men friends. I said I thought it was a positive duty—it kept them up to the mark with their clothes and gave a sort of snap to things, without doing any harm. There were six of us on the terrace at the Country Club at the time and we all felt the same way—that it was fun to have somebody that everybody expected to put by one at dinners, and to sit out dances with and like the way one did one's hair, and to say nice things.
"And to slip out on the links for a moonlight chat with you," said Annette, who is rather given to those little pastimes, the most harmless in the world.
We were all awfully bored that Sunday afternoon. Most of the men were golfing; and when you meet the same people all the time—day after day, dinner after dinner, dance after dance—anything new is welcome. Really the only variety we had was a new drink now and then. Some one would come home from his vacation with a brand-new idea in beverages and order one all round, and it was a real sensation.
That was all we had had all summer for excitement, except the time Willie Anderson kissed Sybilla—she was his wife—on a wager. They had been rather cool to each other for a month or so.
We would sit on the terrace and the conversation would be about like this:
"There's the Jacksons' car."
"Why on earth does Ida Jackson wear green?"
"Hello, Ida! When d'you get back?"
"Yesterday. Bully time!"
Just in time to save us from utter boredom somebody would yawn and remark:
"Here comes the Henderson car."
"Jane Henderson's put on weight. She's as big as a house! Hello, Jane!"
"Hello, everybody! My goodness! Why did I come back? Isn't it hot?"
More excitement for a minute and then more yawns. It was Ferd Jackson who suggested the affinity party. He had heard about what I had said on the terrace, and he came to me while Day was playing on the links. Day is my husband.
"Had a nice afternoon?" he asked.
"Only fair. Day's been underfoot most of the time. Why?"
"How'd you like a picnic?"
"I would not!" I said decisively. "I hate cold food and motoring in a procession until you choke with dust—and Day getting jealous and disagreeable and wanting to get home early."
"Poor little girl!" said Ferd, and patted my hand in a friendly way.
Ferd was a good scout always; we got along together pretty well and sat together at dinners whenever we could. He never made love to me or anything like that, but he understood me thoroughly, which Day never took the trouble to do. It is absurd, now that it's all over, to have the others saying he was my affinity or anything of the sort. I never cared for him.
"I didn't mean the usual sort of picnic," Ferd said. "How has it got its pretty hair fixed to-day? Rather nice, lady-love; but why do you hide your pretty ears?"
Lady-love was only a nickname.
"So I won't be able to hear Day bragging about his golf score. What sort of a picnic?"
"It's a peach of an idea!" Ferd said. "It came to me out of a clear sky. Every picnic we've ever had has been a failure—because why? Because they were husband-and-wife picnics. There's no trouble about a picnic where nobody's married, is there?"
"Humph! What's the peach of an idea? To get divorces?"
"Certainly not! Have husbands and wives—only somebody else's husband or somebody else's wife. You and I—do you see?—and Annette and Tom; Jane Henderson and Emerson Riley; Catherine Fredericks and that fellow who's visiting the Moores. How about it?"
"Day would have a convulsion, Ferd."
"Good gracious, Fanny!" he said. "Haven't you any imagination? What has Day got to do with it? You wouldn't tell him, of course!"
Well, that was different. I was rather scared when I got to thinking of it, but it sounded amusing and different. One way and another I see such a lot of Day. He's always around unless there's a golf tournament somewhere else.
"It's moonlight," Ferd said. "The only thing, of course, is to get off. I can stay over at the club or go on a motor trip. It's easy enough for the fellows; but the girls will have to work out something."
So we sat and thought. Day came in from the links just then and stopped by my chair.
"Great afternoon!" he said, mopping his face. "Y'ought to hear what I did to Robson, Fan—I drove off my watch and never touched it. Then he tried it with his. Couldn't even find the case!"
"Go away, Day," I said. "I'm thinking."
"Ferd doesn't seem to interfere with your thinking."
"He's negative and doesn't count," I explained. "You're positive."
That put him in a good humour again and he went off for a shower. I turned to Ferd.
"I believe I've got it," I said—"I'll have a fight with Day the morning of the picnic and I'll not be there when he gets home. I've done it before. Then, when I do go home, he'll be so glad to see me he'll not ask any questions. He'll think I've been off sulking."
"Good girl!" said Ferd.
"Only you must get home by ten o'clock—that's positive. By eleven he'd be telephoning the police."
"Sure I will! We'll all have to get home at reasonable hours."
"And—I'm a wretch, Ferd. He's so fond of me!"
"That's no particular virtue in him. I'm fond of you—and that's mild, Fan; but what's a virtue in Day is a weakness in me, I dare say."
"It's an indiscretion," I said, and got up. Enough is a sufficiency, as somebody said one day, and I did not allow even Ferd to go too far.
Annette and Jane and Catherine were all crazy about it. Annette was the luckiest, because Charles was going for a fishing trip, and her time was her own. And Ferd's idea turned out to be perfectly bully when the eight of us got together that evening and talked it over while the husbands were shooting crap in the grill room.
"There's an island up the river," he explained, "where the men from our mill have been camping; and, though the tents are down, they built a wooden pavilion at the edge of the water for a dining hall—and, of course, that's still there. We can leave town at, say, four o'clock and motor up there—you and Tom, Annette and——"
"I've been thinking it over, Ferd," I put in, "and I won't motor. If the car goes into a ditch or turns over you always get in the papers and there's talk. Isn't there a street car?"
"There's a street car; but, for heaven's sake, Fanny——"
"Street car it is," I said with decision. "With a street car we'll know we're going to get back to town. It won't be sitting on its tail lamp in a gully; and we won't be hiding the license plates under a stone and walking home, either."
There was a lot of demur and at first Annette said she wouldn't go that way; but she came round at last.
"I'll send a basket up late in the afternoon," Ferd said, "with something to eat in it. And you girls had better put on sensible things and cut out the high heels and fancy clothes. If you are going in a street car you'd better be inconspicuous."
That was the way we arranged it finally—the men to take one car and the girls another and meet opposite the island on the river bank. We should have to row across and Ferd was to arrange about boats. We set Thursday as the day.
Some sort of premonition made me nervous—and I was sorry about Day too; for though the picnic was only a lark and no harm at all, of course he would have been furious had he known. And he was very nice to me all the week. He sent flowers home twice and on Wednesday he said I might have a new runabout. That made it rather difficult to quarrel with him Thursday, as I had arranged.
I lay awake half the night trying to think of something to quarrel about. I could not find anything that really answered until nearly dawn, when I decided to give him some bills I had been holding back. I fell asleep like a child then and did not waken until eleven o'clock. There was a box of roses by the bed and a note in Day's writing.
"Honey lamb!" he wrote: "Inclosed is a telegram from Waite calling me to Newburyport to the tournament. I'll hardly get back before to-morrow night. I came to tell you, but you looked so beautiful and so sound asleep I did not have the heart to waken you. Be a good girl! Day."
Somehow the note startled me. Could he have had any suspicion? I felt queer and uneasy all the time I was dressing; but after I had had a cup of tea I felt better. There is nothing underhanded about Day. He has no reserves. And if he had learned about the picnic he would have been bleating all over the place.
The weather was splendid—a late summer day, not too warm, with a September haze over everything. We met at the hairdresser's and Jane Henderson was frightfully nervous.
"Of course I'm game," she said, while the man pinned on her net; "but my hands are like ice."
Catherine, however, was fairly radiant.
"There's a sort of thrill about doing something clandestine," she observed, "that isn't like anything else in the world. I feel like eloping with Mr. Lee. You'll all be mad about him. He's the nicest thing!"
Mr. Lee was the Moores' guest.
I had got into the spirit of the thing by that time and I drew a long breath. Day was safely out of the way, the weather was fine, and I had my hair over my ears the way Ferd liked it.
II
Everything went wonderfully—up to a certain point. Have you ever known it to fail? Everything swims along and all is lovely—and the thing, whatever it may be, is being so successful that it is almost a culmination; and then suddenly, out of a clear sky, there is a slip-up somewhere and you want to crawl off into a corner and die.
Ferd had got there early and had a boat ready, all scrubbed out and lined with old carpets. He was just as excited as any of us.
"The trouble with us," he said, as we rowed over to the island, "is that we are all in a rut. We do the same things over and over, at the same places, with the same people. The hoi polloi never make that mistake and they get a lot more out of life. Every now and then the puddlers from the mill come over here and have a great time."
There were two islands, one just above the other, with about a hundred feet of water between them. The upper island was much the nicer and it was there that Ferd had planned the party.
He does things awfully well, really. He had had a decorator out there early in the day and the pavilion was fixed up with plants and vines which looked as if they grew on it. He had the table fixed too, with a mound of roses and the most interesting place cards. Mine had a little jewelled dagger thrust through it, and the card said:
That's as much as to say,
they are fools that marry.
He said the quotation was from Shakespeare and the dagger was for Day.
Annette's card said:
She was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three,
which delighted Annette, she being more than twenty-three.
Ferd's own card said:
Another woman now and then
Is relished by the best of men.
I have forgotten the others. The dagger was a pin, and each card had something pretty fastened to it.
We sat and gossiped while we waited for the others and then we wandered round. The island was not very pretty—flat and weedy mostly, with a good many cans the campers had left, and a muddy shore where a broken dock, consisting of two planks on poles, was the boat landing. But it was only later that I hated it, really. That afternoon we said it was idyllic, and the very place for a picnic.
The other men arrived soon after, and it was really barrels of fun. We made a rule first. No one was to mention an absent husband or wife; and the person who did had to tell a story or sing a song as a forfeit. I was more than proud of Ferd. He had even had a phonograph sent up, with a lot of new music. We danced the rest of the afternoon and the Lee man danced like an angel. I never had a better time. Jane voiced my feelings perfectly.
"It's not that I'm tired of Bill," she said. "I dote on him, of course; but it is a relief, once in a while, not to have a husband in the offing, isn't it? And the most carping critic could not object to anything we are doing. That's the best of all."
The dinner was really wonderful—trust Ferd for that too. We were almost hilarious. Between courses we got up and changed our own plates, and we danced to the side table and back again. Once we had an alarm, however. An excursion boat came up the river and swung in close to the pavilion. We had not noticed it until it was quite near and there was no time to run; so we all sat down on the floor inside the railing, which was covered with canvas, and had our salad there.
By the time dinner was over it was almost dark; and we took a bottle of champagne down to the dock and drank it there, sitting on the boards, with our feet hanging. Ferd had been growing sentimental for the last hour or two and I had had to keep him down. He sat beside me on the boards and kept talking about how he envied Day, and that Ida was a good wife and better than he deserved; but no one had ever got into him the way I had.
"I'm not trying to flatter you, Fanny," he said. "I've always been honest with you. But there's a woman for every man, and you're my woman."
He had come rather close and, anyhow, he was getting on my nerves; so I gave him just the least little bit of a push and he fell right back into the water. I was never so astonished in my life.
The way Jane Henderson told it later was criminally false. I did not push him with all my strength and he had not tried to kiss me. Nobody had had too much to drink. It was a perfectly proper party, and my own mother could not have found a single thing to criticise.
Well, Ferd was wet through and not very agreeable. He said, however, that he had merely overbalanced, and that he would dry out somehow. The only thing was that he had to get back home and he felt he was not looking his best.
The moon came up and was perfectly lovely; but about the time we had settled down to singing soft little songs and the Lee man was saying what a good lot of sports we were, and that he was going to take the idea back home, a lot of puddlers and their wives rowed out from the shore and started toward our island. Ferd was awfully annoyed. He stood up and shouted at them.
"You can't come here!" he called. "This place is taken. Go to the other island."
"Go to the devil!" one of the puddlers bellowed from the boat; nevertheless they turned the boat's nose round and went to the other island. We could hear them yelling and laughing there, and singing in the commonest fashion. It ruined the moonlight for us. From that time the bloom was off, as one may say, and things went from bad to worse.
The last car went at ten o'clock, and at half-past nine we commenced to pack up. Annette insisted on taking the roses; and there was the phonograph and the club's silver and dishes, and almost a boat-load of stuff. We could not all get in, of course, so Ferd and Emerson Riley agreed to wait; but just as I got into the boat I dropped my gold bag overboard.
I would not go without the bag. It was set with diamonds and I did not know when I should get another. I just got out of the boat and refused to stir until it had been fished out.
There was a great deal of excitement. The last car had come and was waiting on the bank for its return trip, and every one was anxious to get off. Ferd, who was wet anyway, waded in, but he could not locate it immediately, and Jane grew hysterical.
"Come on and leave it, Fan!" she begged. "What's a bag compared with one's reputation? That car's moving now!"
"Go on!" I said coldly. "I shall stay here until Ferd finds it. Go on, all of you! You can send a man back with the boat, I dare say."
They did it! I never was more astounded in my life; but they all piled in except Ferd and me, and made for the shore as fast as they could. They said it was all well enough for me, with Day out of town; but the rest of them never had any luck and they had to get that car.
"They're terribly nervous, all at once!" I said. "If that car goes without me, Ferd, I shall jump into the river!"
It was moonlight, but not very bright. I sat on the dock and Ferd fished for the gold bag. He brought up an empty bottle, two tin cans and an old shoe.
"Look here, Fan," he said finally, "I'll buy you a new bag. I'll do anything—only let's get out of this."
"Try once more."
"I'll get neuralgia," he said. "I have to be awfully careful, Fanny. Ida has to watch me like a hawk."
"I should imagine so," I replied coldly.
"I mean about the neuralgia."
"Humph! Day never has anything the matter with him—that's one thing. Try again, Ferd."
He stooped again, and this time he got it. He straightened up with it in his hand. The car was still on the bank and a boat was putting out from the shore. All seemed to be well.
"They'll bribe the motorman to wait," said Ferd. "I told Riley to. So you see, little girl, everything's all right. Here's the bag and there's the boat. Do you like me a little bit again?"
I felt rather queer, alone there on the island with him; and the only thing that occurred to me was to keep him down.
"I'll like you well enough when we get back to civilization," I said shortly.
"You're not like yourself, Fanny. You aren't a bit kind to me."
"Being nice to you with everybody round is one thing. This is another. I'm scared, Ferd."
"Not of me!" he said, getting hold of one of my hands. He looked horrid in the moonlight, with his collar in a crease and his coat stuck to him. He looked awfully thin, too, and his hair was in straggles over his face. "Fan, the boat's coming and I never see you alone. Do say you care a little bit!"
Well, I had to play the game. I am not a quitter. I had let him get up the party and spend a lot of money, and I had pretended for months to be interested in him. What was I to do? You may say what you like—a lot of married women get into things they never meant to simply because they are kind-hearted and hate to be called quitters.
"I've always cared a little," I said, trying not to look at him. "Ferd, you're dripping! Don't touch me!"
"Lady-love!" cried Ferd, very close to my ear; and then: "Good gracious, Fan! Where's the boat?"
It had absolutely disappeared! Ferd stood up on the shaky dock and peered over the water.
"He's gone to the other island," he said after a moment. "They'll tell him he's wrong, but—time's passing!"
He did not start the lady-love business again, and we sat side by side on the dock, with the river, damp and smelly, underfoot. It was very silent, save for the far-away yells of the puddlers on the next island and the drip-drip from Ferd's trouser-ends to the water below.
Somehow the snap was gone out of the whole thing. I hated it, being alone with him there, and his looking so mussy, and my vanity case soaking from the river. I hated the puddlers' picnic; there was nothing I didn't hate. And the boatman did not come. Even Ferd began to get anxious.
"The infernal fool!" he said. "He's probably joined the picnic, and——Hello, there!" he called, with his hands to his mouth.
I think they heard us on the bank, for we could hear the trolley bell very faintly. And, immediately after, the car moved off! I had the most awful feeling. We sat on the boards watching it getting smaller and smaller down the river, and neither of us said anything. It had been our one tie, as you may say, to respectability and home—and it had deserted us. After a minute Ferd got up on his feet.
"It's the puddlers, after all!" he said. "We'll have to hail them and get them to send that ass of a boatman. Wouldn't you think that Emerson Riley would have had sense enough to wait and see that we got over safely?"
I fairly clutched at his arm.
"You'll do nothing of the sort," I said. "They'll know you if they're from your mill, and they'll know I am not Ida! It will be in the papers!"
Ferd looked sulky.
"What am I to do, then?" he demanded. "Swim to the bank?"
"Couldn't you swim to the other island and steal one of their boats?"
He did not want to. I could see that; but what else was there to do?
"It's a good way off," he said. "It won't help things any for me to be drowned, you know."
"It would be better than a scandal, wouldn't it?"
He threw up his hands.
"Oh, if that's the way you feel——"
"That isn't half the way I feel!"
He went off at that in a fury, leaving me alone on the little dock in a state of frenzy. I kept thinking of Day's getting home sooner than he expected and finding me gone, and calling up the police; and my wandering in about daylight with my slippers worn through. I made up a story—if the worst happened—about having had an attack of loss of memory, coming to myself seven miles from town and walking in.
There was no sign of Ferd. The puddlers' picnic was noisier than ever; they had brought a phonograph, too, and were dancing.
When I had waited for what seemed half the night I got frightened about Ferd. He had said it was a good way to go; and if he was drowned—and Ida really fond of him, and welcome to him so far as I was concerned—it was all up with me. Day would loathe the very sight of me. I knew that.
The grass looked snaky in the moonlight and I felt I was taking my life in my hands; but, somehow or other, with my hair pulled down by branches, and ankle-deep in mud every now and then, I got to the place where the two islands faced each other, end to end. There was not a sign of Ferd.
I just sank down on the ground and hoped for death. There was no way out. Jane and the others would think we had the boat and could hire a machine or something to get to the city, and they would not give us another thought. Even if I hailed the puddlers and told them, they would never believe my story. And, of course, there was poor Ferd in the river mud—sure to float in and spoil any story I could make up about loss of memory.
It was when I had reached that point that pandemonium broke loose on the other island. I could hear shouting—men and women together—and, in a pause, the frantic splashing of oars. The next moment a boat appeared round the corner of the island, with Ferd rowing like mad, and a perfect pandemonium from the shore. He had stolen their boat and they had found it out. I was almost crazy. I waded out to my knees and called to him; and he saw me. There was no other boat after him yet, but some one was yelling to follow him.
Ferd was rather steadied by the excitement, I think. He reached over and dragged me in without a word, and the next instant we were pulling for the shore in the moonlight, with the entire puddlers' picnic on their bank, calling awful things to us.
That was not all, though. One of the men had got into their other boat and was coming after us. He could row, too. I implored Ferd to hurry—hurry. And I kept turning round to see whether he was gaining. That was how I discovered why they were so wrought up. There were two dozen quart bottles of champagne in the stern of that boat! We were carrying off the picnic! I told Ferd. "Throw it overboard!" he said. "It'll lighten the boat."
So I did, basket after basket; and, whether it lightened the boat or not, we drew ahead. Ferd rowed like a demon. In the moonlight his face was white and set, with the queerest expression.
We struck the shore with a bump that sent me on my knees, but Ferd grabbed my hand and jerked me out.
"Now run—if you ever ran in your life!" he said. "Make for that grove over there, and bend over. The bushes will hide us."
"I can't," I panted after a minute. "And why should I, Ferd? He's got his old boat by this time——"
"Run!" gasped Ferd. And I ran.
We crouched down in the grove. My teeth were chattering, but I was nothing to Ferd. He was pallid. The puddler landed just then. We heard him throw his oars into the boat and drag it up on the beach, and I knew he was examining the other boat and finding that the wine was gone. We could hear him breathing hard, and he even made a start toward us, beating the bushes with an oar. He was in a red fury, muttering to himself in the most horrible manner. I had been in Ferd's mill once or twice, and I remembered the enormous shoulders the men had, and how they simply toyed with steel rails; and I was paralysed. A puddler turned Berserk!
He gave it up just in time, however, and started back for the boat. I could see him moving about—a huge creature in white flannels. And he seemed to have cut himself on a branch or something, for he was tying a handkerchief round his forehead.
We did not dare to move until he had started back and was safely out from shore. Ferd's voice had lost its strained quality and he looked a little less like death. We could hear the picnic party calling to the man in the boat about the wine, and his calling back that we had got away with it, but for some of them to come over and they could beat the bushes. They couldn't come, of course, until he took the boat back.
"We've got to get out of here, Fan," Ferd said. "In ten minutes the whole shooting match will be here. Can you run any more?"
"Not a foot—I'm all in. And I lost a shoe in the water at the island."
Ferd groaned.
"They'll have us up for stealing their champagne," he said. "I suppose you can walk."
"I can limp along, I dare say." I was wet and cold, and horribly miserable. "Don't let me detain you. They can't arrest me for stealing their wine. You did that."
He turned to me suddenly.
"Fan," he said solemnly, "don't ask me why, but we must get out of here quick. Must! If you can't walk, roll. Now come on!"
There were no houses in sight. The trolley line ends there, and I think it is a picnic grove. He took my hand and dragged me along. I lost my other slipper, but he paid no attention when I told him of it; and just when I was about to sink down and die we reached a road.
"Now," said Ferd, "they came in something—machines probably—for they'll have to get back, and there are no more cars. Ah, there they are!"
There were two machines. I gripped Ferd's arm and held him back desperately.
"The chauffeurs?" I gasped.
"We'll kill 'em, if necessary," he said between clenched teeth.
We were loping down the road toward the machines—Ferd sloshing, rather, with each step; and we could hear loud calling from the islands and the banging of oars in oarlocks.
"F-Ferd," I managed to say, "c-can—you—drive—a—car?"
"Why, you can, can't you?"
"I—can—d-drive—my—own car. I d-don't—know about—any other."
"They're all alike. The principle's the same."
"I don't know anything about the principles," I said despairingly. "And I won't touch a strange machine."
"Oh, very well!" said Ferd sulkily. "We'll make a deuce of a stir—arrested here for stealing a case of champagne; but never mind. It'll blow over."
"We can tell the whole story."
"We cannot!" he said gloomily. "We can't tell on Jane and Annette and Catherine. We'll have to take our medicine, that's all. We needn't give our own names. That's one thing."
I was perfectly crazed with fright and exhaustion. I leaned up against a fence, and I remembered the time Lily Slater asked Ollie Haynes to see her off to Chicago, her husband being out of town; and how Ollie was carried two hundred miles before the train would stop to let him off; and how Harry never believed the story and was off shooting big game at that very minute; and Lily getting gray over her ears as a result, and not even going out to lunch with anybody for fear there were detectives watching her.
And, compared with Day, Harry Slater was an angel of mildness.
The boat was almost across by that time and Ferd was wringing the ends of his trousers. A sort of frenzy seized me. It seemed to me it would be better to be found crushed under a strange car than to be arrested for stealing champagne. I started on, rather tottery.
"I'll try it, Ferd," I said. "I think we'll be killed; but come on!"
For once luck was with us. It was a car exactly like my own! I almost cried for joy. I leaped in and pressed the starter, and the purr of the engine was joyous, absolutely. I let in the clutch and the darling slid along without a jerk. We were saved! I could drive that car. I snapped the gear lever forward into high and the six cylinders leaped to our salvation. We were off, with the white road ahead; and the puddlers were only beaching their boat. Ferd sat half turned and watched for pursuit.
"They'll search the bushes first," he said. "They'll not think of the machines for a few minutes. We can hit it up along the highway for four or five miles; then we'd better turn into a side road and put out the lights and take off the license plates. They'll telephone ahead possibly and give the license number."
We were going pretty fast by that time and just at that moment I saw a buggy ahead in the road. Ferd called to me; but it was too late—I had pressed the siren and the very hills echoed.
"Good heavens, Fan!" he said. "You've done it now!"
We topped a rise just then and Ferd looked back. The puddlers were running along the road toward the place where they had left their cars. It was a race for life after that. Ferd bent over and pressed the button that put out the tail light, and I threw on all the gas I could.
"It's getting pretty serious," Ferd said. "We'll go up for a year or two for this, probably. Stealing a machine is no joke."
"If it comes to that I'll steer the thing over a bank and die with it!" I said, with my jaw set. "Ferd, there's something wrong somewhere! Listen to that knocking!"
The engine was not behaving well. It was not hitting right and it was telling on our speed. As we topped a long rise Ferd saw the lights of another car appear over the crest of the last hill. Down in the valley ahead lay a village, sound asleep. We raced through it like mad. A man in his shirt-sleeves rushed out of a house and yelled something to us about stopping, that we were under arrest. We almost went over him.
The race would be over soon, that was clear. The car was making time, but not better time than the other machine. I do not know how I got the idea, but we went limping and banging along until we had reached the edge of the town, and just beyond, beside the road, was a barn, with the doors open. I turned the car in there, shut off the engine and put out the lamps. Ferd caught the idea at once and leaped out and closed the doors.
"Good girl!" he said. "Unless the farmer heard us and comes out to investigate, this is pretty snug, lady-love. They'll pass us without even hesitating."
They did not, though. It gives me gooseflesh merely to remember the next half-hour. We waited inside the door for the car to pass. We could hear it coming. But just at the barn it stopped and we could hear them arguing. It seems the road forked there and they were not certain which way we had gone. My knees were shaking with terror and Ferd was breathing hard.
When I look back I think I should have noticed how queer Ferd was during the whole thing; and, when you think of it, why did he steal the boat at the beginning and not just borrow it? But I was absolutely unsuspicious; and as for noticing, there was no time.
I lost my courage, I'll admit, when they stopped; and I ran to the back of the barn. There was a horse there and I squeezed in beside the thing; it was company anyhow and not running about the country trying to arrest people who were merely attempting to get home. It seemed uneasy and I tried to pat its head to soothe it—and it had horns! I almost fainted. Somehow or other I climbed out, and Ferd was coming toward me.
"Sh!" he whispered. "They've roused the farmer, and—holy smoke!—they're coming in!"
Somebody had opened one of the doors about six inches. That made a path of moonlight across the board floor.
"I dunno why they closed the barn doors to-night," said the farmer from the opening—"mostly we leave 'em open. Now, gentlemen, if you want water for your automobile there's a pail inside the door here, and the pump's round the corner in the pig yard."
Ferd clutched my arm. The moonlight path was slowly widening as the door swung open. "Quick!" he said; and the next minute I was climbing a ladder to the haymow, with Ferd at my heels.
One thing saved us and one only: the farmer did not come inside to see the car; and whoever did come clearly thought it belonged to the place and never even glanced at it. As for us we lay face down in that awful haymow with openings in the hay big enough to fall through, and watched and listened. I shall never be the same person again after that experience.
Whenever I get cocky, as Day would say, and reflect on my own virtues, and how few things I do that any one could find fault with, not playing bridge for more than two and a half cents a point, and stopping a flirtation before it reaches any sort of gossipy stage, I think of Ferd and myself in that awful haymow, with a man below searching round that miserable machine for a pail, and Ferd oozing a slow drip-drip on the floor below that was enough to give us away—like the blood dropping from the ceiling in that play of David Belasco's.
There was one awful moment before it was all over, when the farmer had gone back to bed and the man returned the pail. The others were all in their machine, yelling to be off.
"They've had time to be gone twenty miles," one of them snarled. "The next time we see them, shoot at their tires. It's the only way."
The man with the pail stood in the doorway and glanced in.
"Pipe the car!" he said. "The farmers are the only folks with real money these days."
He came in with the pail and one of the drops from Ferd's clothes hit him directly on top of the head! I heard it splat! He stopped as if he had been shot and looked up. I closed my eyes and waited for the end; but—nothing happened. He put away the pail and hurried out, and the machine went on.
It was Ferd who spoke first. He raised himself on an elbow and listened. Then he drew a long breath, as if he had not breathed for an hour.
"Well," he said, "I may not be a thief and a robber, as well as an abductor of young married women, but I feel like one." He looked about the haymow, and at me, crumpled in my corner. "Really, you know," he said, "this sort of thing isn't done, Fanny."
"If it only doesn't get into the papers!" I wailed. "And if only Day doesn't hear of it! Ferd, I must look a mess."
He glanced at me. The moonlight was coming through a window.
"You do look rather frowzy," he said.
I think, if there is a psychological moment for such things, that was the moment. My affair, mild as it was, was dead from that instant. Day would never have said such a thing. Day never takes his irritation out on me; the worse I look the more certain Day is to reassure me. For instance, Day never says that—to him—I am as pretty as the day he first met me. He says that I am prettier than I ever was, and that every one thinks so. Day has a positive talent for being married.
Well, we sat in the haymow and quarrelled. We thought it best to let them go on, give up the search and go back to the island for their women companions, before venturing out. So we sat and fought.
"It was stupid," I said, "to have stolen the boat and not borrowed it."
"I'd have had to explain you," said Ferd.
"You need not have mentioned me. What is a lie for, if not for such an emergency? Couldn't you have found that boatman? That would have explained everything."
"I couldn't find the boatman."
"Did you try?"
He turned sulky.
"I did my best," he said. "I risked my life. I'll probably have a sick spell as it is. I've got a chill. How did I know the infernal boat had champagne in it?"
I sat and thought. A lot of things came to me that I had not thought of before, such as Ferd having got up the party and put me in my present position, and having been a stupid in more ways than one. And what if Day had got home unexpectedly? I said this to Ferd.
"Why didn't you think of that sooner?" he demanded brutally.
"What time is it?" I asked, as sweetly as I could.
He held his watch up in the moonlight, but of course it was full of water and not running. His matches and cigarettes were wet, too, and he grew more beastly every minute.
"Ferd," I said finally, "I'm afraid lately you've been thinking that I—that I cared for you. It was my fault. I let you think so. I don't, really. I only care for one man and I think you ought to know it. I've been a shameless flirt. That's all."
Instead of being downcast, he rather brightened up at that remark.
"You'll break my heart if you say that," he said, trying not to be too cheerful.
"There's only one man for me!" I said firmly. "It's not fashionable, but it's very comforting. It's Day."
"I'll never be the same man again, Fanny," he replied. "Am I not to call you up, or send you flowers, or look forward to seeing you at the Country Club on Sunday afternoons? Is life to lose all its joy?"
"Oh, we'll have to meet, of course," I said largely; "but—the other is off for good, Ferd! I find I can't stand too much of you. You're too heady."
Well, he was almost blithe over it, and sat talking about Ida, and what a trump she was about the time he lost so much on copper, and the way she came home from Nice when he had typhoid. It was stupid; but if you can understand me it seemed to put a cachet of respectability on our position. The more we talked about Day and Ida, the more we felt that the tongue of scandal could never touch us. We made a pact of platonic friendship, too, and shook hands on it; and it shows how dead the old affair was when Ferd never even kissed my hand.
About an hour afterward the other car went back toward the island and we got up stiffly and crawled down the ladder. Ferd had had a nap, and he slept with his mouth open!
We slipped out of the barn in the moonlight and reconnoitered. There was no one in sight and the house across the road was dark. Ferd took off the license plates and put them under one of the seat cushions and I looked for the short circuit. I found it at last, and Ferd fixed it with his pen-knife. Then he threw the doors open and we backed into the road. The last thing I remember is that as we started off a window was raised in the farmhouse and somebody yelled after us to stop.
"Damnation!" said Ferd between his teeth. "He'll telephone ahead and they'll cut us off!"
"We needn't stick to the main road. We can go back through the country."
We found a lane leading off half a mile farther along and I turned into it. It was rough, but its very condition argued for safety. As Ferd said, no one in his sane mind would choose such a road. The secret of the lane came out a mile or so farther on, however, when it came to an end in a barnyard. It was a blow, really. We did not dare to go back and we could not possibly go ahead.
"I can go up to the house and ask about the road," Ferd said. "The old stage road ought to be round here somewhere. If we can't find it there's nothing to do but to walk, Fan."
"I can't walk," I said, "and I won't walk. I'm in my stocking feet. I'm through. Let's just go back and get arrested and have it over. I can't stand much more."
"It's only twelve miles or so to town."
"I couldn't walk twelve miles to escape hanging!"
Ferd crawled out of the car and through a pig yard. I heard the pigs squealing. And then for five awful minutes I heard nothing except his distant knock and muffled voices. Then there was a silence, and out of it came Ferd headlong. He fell over the fence and landed in the mud beside the car.
"Quick!" he panted. "Turn round and get back to the main road. They've got him on the telephone, and in another minute——"
Did you ever try to turn an automobile in a panic and a small barnyard, with broken mowing machines and old wagons everywhere? I just could not do it. I got part way round, with Ferd begging me for Heaven's sake to get some speed on, when we heard people coming from the house on a run, and a woman yelling from a window that she could see us and to shoot quick.
There was a field next the barnyard—a pasture, I suppose—and the bars were down that led into it. I just headed the car for it and shut my eyes. Then we were shooting forward in a series of awful bumps, with Ferd holding on with both hands, and the noise behind was dying away.
I do not recall the details of that part of the trip. Ferd says we went through two creeks and a small woods, and entirely through and over a barbed-wire fence, which was probably where we got our punctures. However that may be, in five minutes or so we drew up just inside a fence on the other side of which was a road. And we had two flat tires.
Ferd tried to take the fence down, but he could not; so I did the only thing I could think of, and butted it down with the car. The glass in the lamps was smashed, but we were too far gone by that time to care. I had just one thought; if the gas only held out!
Ferd was quite sure he knew the way to town, but it turned out he did not. For hours and hours we bumped along on two tires and two rims, until my shoulders felt torn from their sockets. The worst of it was the noise we made. Every now and then we passed a farmhouse where the lights were going and everybody had been roused for the automobile thieves; and, instead of slipping past, we bumped by like a circus parade with a calliope.
The moon was gone by that time; and, our lamps being broken, more than once we left the road entirely and rolled merrily along in a field until we brought up against something. And, of course, we met a car. We heard it coming, but there was nothing to do but bump along. It was a limousine, and it hailed us and drew up so we could not pass.
"In trouble?" a man called.
"Nothing serious," Ferd said peevishly.
"Glad to give you a hand. You're cutting your tires to bits."
"No; thanks."
"I can take you back to town if you like."
It was Bill Henderson, Jane's husband, on his way from the club to his mother's in the country! I could not even breathe. Ferd knew it too, that minute.
"We are getting along all right," he snapped, trying to disguise his voice. "If you'll get your car out of the way——"
"Oh, all right, Ferd, old chap!" said Bill, and signalled his man to go on.
We sat as if petrified. Bill was Ida's cousin! The way of the transgressor is hard; though why one should have to lose a reputation built up by years of careful living just for one silly indiscretion is what gets me. I put a hand on Ferd's arm.
"I'm gone!" I wailed. "It will be all over town to-morrow. Bill's the worst old gossip. Oh, Ferd!"
"He didn't see you," Ferd snapped. "For goodness' sake, Fan, shut up! This is my mess. There isn't any limit to the things he can say about me."
We bumped on a little farther. I was crying, I'll admit; my head ached and my spine was jarred numb.
"You'll have to do one thing," he said at last. "You'll have to tell Ida it was you. Heaven knows what she'll think."
"I'll die first!" I snapped.
Well, we got into town finally and it was three-thirty by the first clock we saw. Ferd got out and looked at the car, and then climbed in again.
"Better get along a few blocks and then leave it," he said. "It looks something fierce, and so do we."
And at that instant, before I could even start the engine, we were arrested for stealing the miserable thing!
"There is some mistake," Ferd said loftily, but looking green in the electric light. "This is Mrs. Day Illington and this is her own machine."
"Are you Mr. Illington?"
"Yes!" said Ferd.
The man looked very strange, as well he might, considering—well, considering the facts that came out later.
"I'll have to trouble you to come with me," he said, politely enough. "It will be only a short delay and we'll get this straightened out. But a car answering this description was stolen out the road a few miles and headed toward town, and there's a reward offered."
He stood on the step and I drove to the station house. I had it fixed in my own mind to go home and write a letter to Day confessing all, and then pack a few things and hide my wretched self for the rest of my life. I even planned what to take; my jewelry and my checkbook, and only a dinner dress or two; and I wrote the letter to Day—in my mind—and one to Ida, telling her it was only a lark, but it had gone wrong without any fault of mine. Then we drew up at the station.
Ferd got out and went in, and the officer turned on the pavement to help me out. But it was my chance and I took it; I just threw on the gas full and shot ahead down the street. He yelled after me and then began shooting. One bullet must have struck the good rear tire, for it collapsed and almost turned the car round. But I was desperate. I never looked back. I just drove for all I was worth down the street to its end, and after that down other streets, and still others. All the time I was saying I would rather die, and going round corners on two wheels, or one wheel and a rim.
Finally I got into a part of town I knew and pulled up half a block from my own house. I recall that and leaving the engine still going, and that hideous nightmare of a machine standing by the curb, with its tires lying out on the road in ribbons and its lamps smashed; and I remember going up the steps and finding the hall door unlocked. Then I recall nothing more for a while. I fainted.
It was Martha, one of the housemaids, who found me, I believe, as she was going out to early mass. They got me upstairs to bed and there was no use trying to run away that night; I could hardly stand. They got me some hot tea and a doctor and a trained nurse, and in the morning before breakfast Day came back. He tiptoed into my room and tried to kiss me, looking awfully frightened; but I would not let him.
"Send the nurse out!" I whispered. So he did; and still I would not let him kiss me. "Not until I've told you something," I said feebly. "You may not care to when you've heard it all."
He looked so big and so dependable and so worried that I could have screamed; but I had to tell him. Bill Henderson might have recognised me; and Ferd, as like as not, would be goose enough to tell Ida the whole story. And, anyhow, there's nothing like perfect honesty between husband and wife.
"Day," I said tremulously, "I'm a felon—a thief! I—I stole a lot of champagne last night and an automobile, and broke down fences, and almost ran over a policeman, and was arrested—or Ferd was—Day, don't look like that!" For his face was terrible. He had gone quite white.
"You!" he said.
"Get up and stand by the window, looking out," I implored him. "I can tell you better if I can't see your eyes."
So he did and I told him the whole thing. He never moved, and I kept getting more and more frightened. It sounded worse, somehow, when I told it. When I had finished he did not come to me as I had hoped. He said:
"I'd like a few minutes to get used to it, Fan. I'll go out and walk about a bit. It's—it's just a little hard to grasp, all at once."
So he went out, and I lay and cried into my pillow; but when the nurse had brought me some tea and raised the shades, and the sun came in, I felt a little better. He had not been noisy, anyhow; and in time perhaps he would forgive me, though probably he would never really trust me again. I got up in a chair and had my hair tied with a ribbon and my nails done, and put on my new negligée with lace sleeves; and I felt pretty well, considering.
At nine o'clock the policeman on the beat asked to see me. I sent down word that I was indisposed; but he said it was urgent and would only take a moment. The nurse put a blanket over my knees and a pillow behind me, and the officer came in. I was frightened; but after all my only real fear had been Day, and now that he knew, Fate could hardly have a fresh blow. But it had, all right.
"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am," said the officer, "but it's about your car."
"Yes?" My lips were trembling.
"It's been found; I found it—and only a block or so away, ma'am; but it's in bad shape—lamps smashed and tires chewed to ribbons. It's a sight, for sure!"
"But that's not my car!" I exclaimed, forgetting caution.
"I guess there's no mistake about it, ma'am. Those fellows that stole it, up the river, must have climbed fences with it."
"How do you know it is my car?" I was absolutely bewildered.
"These are your license plates, aren't they? I found them under the seat."
They were my license plates!
Day came in shortly after and tiptoed into the room. The nurse was out. He came over to me and stooped down.
"It took me a little by surprise, honey," he said; "but that's over now. You've been foolish, but you've had your lesson. Let's kiss and be friends again."
"Just a moment, Day," I said calmly. "Have you had your lesson?"
"Just what do you mean?"
He followed my eyes to the table and the license plates were there. He actually paled.
"Where did you get them?"
"Under the seat of the car Ferd and I stole last night at Devil's Island—my car, which you said was being overhauled!"
He drew a long breath. Then he got down on his knees and put his head in my lap.
"I've had my lesson—honest, honey!" he said. "Some darned fool suggested a picnic on one of those islands—mixed couples—and I was ass enough to agree. I took Ida Jackson. We didn't have any picnic—the champagne was stolen——"
"Ferd and I——" I put in.
"And then my car went——"
"My car—and I took it."
"And we spent all the evening and part of the night chasing the thing for fear you'd hear of it!" He looked up at me and there were dark circles round his eyes. "I haven't been to bed at all, honey," he said humbly. "It's been a rotten night! I've had enough affinity for the rest of my life. There's nobody like you!"
I would not kiss him just then, but I let him lie down on my couch and hold my hand until he dropped asleep. Somehow the words of Ferd's silly card kept running through my head:
Another woman now and then
Is relished by the best of men.
My little affair with Ferd had seemed harmless enough and the picnic had been a lark; but Day and Ida had had a picnic and it had been a lark—only the shoe was on the other foot, and it hurt!
And somehow, as I sat there, it seemed to me that the affinity business was only fun because it was dangerous. We were all children, and life was a Fourth of July, enchanting because it was risky.
Day was sleeping, with his mouth shut! I leaned over and kissed him as he dozed.
Sitting there, with Day asleep, I went over the events of the night, and I knew that Ferd had had his lesson, too, and that, having been burnt, he would not play with fire again—at least not until the blister had healed; for Ferd had seen the island picnickers and had learned that they were not puddlers. He had seen Ida and Day and, worst of all, he had known that it was Day who was pursuing us.
I thought of that hour in the haymow, with Day and the others below, and Ferd dripping; and very quietly, so as not to waken my husband, I went into a paroxysm of mirth.
