Affinities and Other Stories Part 4

"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 c.o.c.ky, 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. .h.i.t 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, f.a.n.n.y."

"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 rea.s.sure 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, f.a.n.n.y," 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.

"d.a.m.nation!" 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 m.u.f.fled 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 b.u.mps, 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 b.u.t.ted it down with the car. The gla.s.s 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!