Clark's Field Part 12

It was over, and she was alive. At first Adelle felt relieved until she pondered what it meant. Archie would be exposed to the keen shafts of p.u.s.s.y's contempt and to the girls' t.i.tters and snubs. And probably there would be no chance at all for the kissing and all the rest. It was p.u.s.s.y's clever way of effectually disposing of Archie. She understood that.

Adelle stayed awake for several hours, a most unusual occurrence, revolving matters in her confused mind. When she could stand it no longer she got up, dressed herself carefully in her motoring dress, and stole downstairs through the silent house, out to the garage which was at the other end of the garden. Eveline's little Pomeranian squeaked once, but did not arouse the household. Adelle cranked her car feverishly and succeeded at last, after much effort, in starting the engine and in pushing back the garage door. It was by far the most desperate step in life she had ever taken, and she felt ready to faint.

She clambered into the car and released the clutch, more dead than alive, as she thought. With a leap and a whir she was down the road to Archie's cottage.

XXIII

Safely there she felt more composed. Stopping her engine she got out and walked to the window of the room on the ground floor that she knew the young Californian occupied. It was open. Leaning through the rose-vine she called faintly,--"Archie! Archie!" But the young painter slept solidly, and she was forced to take a stick and poke the bunch of bed-clothes in the corner before she could arouse the sleeping Archie.

When he came to the window, she exclaimed,--

"Some thing awful has happened, Archie!"

"What's the row?"

"We're found out. p.u.s.s.y knows and the girls. Irene told 'em!"

That apparently did not seem to Archie the ultimate catastrophe that it did to her. He stood in his pajamas beside the window, ungallantly yawning and rubbing his eyes.

"Well," he observed, "what are you going to do about it?"

Doubtless to his masculine good sense it seemed merely adding folly to folly thus to run away from the villa at midnight and expose them to further trouble.

Adelle did not argue nor explain.

"Put your clothes on," she said, with considerable decision, "and come out to the car."

Thereupon she went back to the car, cranked it afresh, and waited for him to appear. He came out of the rose-covered window, after a reasonable time, and climbed in beside the girl. She seemed to expect it, and there was not anything else to do. Adelle threw in the clutch and started at a lively pace, turning into the broad highroad which ran in a straight line southwards towards the French capital.

"What are you going to do?" Archie asked, now seriously awake and somewhat disturbed.

"I'm never going back to that place again," the girl flamed resolutely.

"Never!"

As if to emphasize a vow she threw one arm around her lover's neck and drew his face to hers so that she could kiss it,--a maneuver she executed at some risk to their safety. "Oh, Archie, I love you so--I can't give you up!" she whispered by way of explanation.

He returned her kiss with good will, though mentally preoccupied, and said, "Of course not, dearest!" and continued to hold her while she steered the car, which was traveling at a lively rate along the empty _route nationale_ in the direction of Paris. And thus they proceeded for mile after mile or rather ten kilometres after ten kilometres. Adelle and the car seemed to be inspired by the same energy and will. Archie realized that they were going rapidly to Paris and felt rather frightened at first. It was one thing to make love to an heiress not yet of age, but another to elope with her across France at night. Archie was not sure, but he thought there might be legal complications in the way of immediate matrimony. He might be getting himself in for a thoroughgoing sc.r.a.pe, which was not much to his liking. But there seemed no way of stopping Adelle or the car.

For Adelle had no doubts. It was the greatest night of her life. She drove the car recklessly, but splendidly. Every now and then she would turn her pale face to her lover and say peremptorily,--"Kiss me, Archie!"--and Archie dutifully gave the kiss, which seemed to be all the stimulant she needed.

The wild rush through the night beside her lover appeased something within her. It answered her craving for romance, newly awakened, for daring and desperation and achievement of bliss. She felt exalted, proud of herself, as if she were vindicating her claim to character.

To-morrow, when p.u.s.s.y Comstock and the girls found that she had gone, they would know that she was no weak fool. And by that time, of course, it would all be over--irrevocable.

"You'll marry me as soon as we get there," she remarked once to Archie in exactly the same tone as she said, "Kiss me, Archie." The young man falteringly replied,--"Of course, if we can."

"Of course we can! Why not?" Adelle replied firmly. "Americans can marry any time."

She felt sure that speedy marriage was an inalienable right that went with American citizenship together with the privilege of getting divorced whenever one cared to. Archie was by no means so sure of this point, but he thought it well not to discuss it until they both had more exact information. So the car bowled along through the night at a good forty miles an hour.

Long before they reached Paris the sun had come up out of the hot meadows along the road and they were forced to stop at Chartres for _petrol_ and breakfast. Adelle wanted to cut the breakfast to a bowl of hot coffee, but Archie firmly insisted that they must be braced with food for the ordeal before them. She yielded to Archie and reluctantly descended from her seat, stiff with fatigue but elated. After breakfast Archie suggested that they should leave the car at the inn and proceed to Paris conventionally by train. But Adelle would not give up one kilometre of her great dash for liberty and Archie. Nor would she consider his going on by train to make arrangements for the marriage.

So they resumed their rapid flight, but mishaps with tires began, and it was noon before they entered the Porte Maillot. As they drove past the Villa Ponitowski, Adelle looked furtively up at the shutters as if she expected to see p.u.s.s.y's severe face lurking there. She guided the machine to the Rue de l'Universite and stopped beneath Miss Baxter's studio windows. If Archie had proposed it, she would have gone at once to a hotel with him and registered, but he prudently suggested the studio, where he hoped to find Cornelia Baxter. But the sculptress had gone away somewhere, and the big room was empty--also hot and dusty.

They sat down before the fireless stove and looked at each other.

Adelle was very tired and on the verge of hysterical tears. Archie had not been very efficient in the tire trouble. She felt that now, at any rate, he should take hold of their situation and manage. But Archie seemed helpless, was not at home in the situation. (If Adelle had had more experience she might have been chilled even now by his conduct and managed her life differently.)

"I'm so tired," she moaned, throwing herself down on the divan. "Don't you love me, Archie?"

Of course he did, but he did not offer to embrace her, and she was obliged to go over to where he sat in a wilted att.i.tude and embrace him.

"You are mine now for always," she said, almost solemnly.

"Yes," he admitted, as if he did not exactly like the form in which the sentiment had been expressed.

"What are we going to do?"

"Get some food first. I'm starved, aren't you?"

Adelle, weary as she was, might not consider food as of the first importance in this crisis, but recognizing Archie's greater feebleness, she yielded to his desire for refreshment. So they drove to Foyot's and consumed two hours more in lunching delectably. Archie seemed somewhat aimless after _dejeuner_, perhaps he did not know just how to attack his formidable problem. It was Adelle who suggested that they drive to her banker's and inquire how to get married in American fashion in France.

Adelle felt that bankers knew everything. It was a very elegant and bewildered young Frenchman whom they found alone in this vacation season at the bank which Adelle used. After he understood what they wanted he directed them to their consul. Adelle knew the American consulate because she had been there to sign papers, and turned the car into the Avenue de l'Opera with renewed hope. They stopped before the building from which the American flag was languidly floating and mounted the stairs to the offices. In the further room, beyond the a.s.sortment of deadbeats that own allegiance to the great American nation, was a little Irish clerk, who in the absence of the consul and his chief a.s.sistant held up the dignity of the United States. He was a political appointee from the great State of Illinois, and after an apprenticeship in the City Hall of Chicago was much more familiar with hasty matrimony than either of the two fl.u.s.tered young persons who demanded his advice. To Adelle's blunt salutation, "We want to get married, please!" and then, as if not sufficiently impressive,--"Now--right off!" he replied agreeably, not taking the time to remove the cigarette from his mouth,--"Sure! That's easy."

And he made it easy for them. He found the necessary blank forms in an office desk and filled them out according to the information the couple gave him. Adelle in deference to Archie's scruples stretched a point and made herself of age. When the formalities had been completed, the young Irishman called in from the outer office one of the hangers-on who happened to be a seedy minister of the gospel and who looked as if he were in Paris by mistake.

Thus almost before Archie knew it he had taken to himself Adelle Clark as wife, the ceremony being witnessed by the consular clerk,--Morris McBride of Chicago,--and an ex-sailor on his way back to New York of the name of Harrington. Adelle distributed the remaining pieces of gold in her purse in the way of _pour-boires_, and then the two found themselves in the runabout on the Avenue de l'Opera--married.

"I didn't know it could be done so easily," Archie observed breathlessly.

"Anything can be done when you want to, if you have the money," Adelle replied, evincing how thoroughly she had mastered the philosophy of the magic lamp.

"And what shall we do now?" her husband inquired.

(They say that in marriage the first trivial events are significant of what will happen thereafter, like straws upon the stream betraying which way the current flows. Possibly Archie's question indicates the quality of this marriage, also the fact that presently Adelle set their course.)

The consular clerk, judging that his compatriots were affluent, had hinted at the propriety of a wedding feast at the Cafe de Paris; but Adelle, who hated dinners, vetoed the suggestion. Archie was for returning unsentimentally to the empty studio for their wedding night, as they were short of cash and it was after banking hours. But Adelle had not dashed madly across half of France in the night to spend the first hours of her honeymoon in a dusty, hot studio on the Rue de l'Universite. She turned the car into the great Avenue and swept on past the Arch, through the Bois, out into the open country. Ultimately the lack of _petrol_ stopped them at a little wayside _cabaret_ some miles outside of the fortifications, where, too exhausted to proceed farther, they decided to spend the night.

XXIV

Fortunately Adelle was not of an imaginative habit of mind. She rarely envisaged with keenness anything of the future, and thus escaped many of the perplexities and annoyances of life, with some of its pleasures.

Hers was always a single road,--from desire to the gratification of desire,--as it had been with Archie. Thus far her nature had developed few disturbing impulses, which accounts for the simple, not to say dull, character of her story up to the present. Even the supreme desire of woman's heart had come to her in a commonplace way and had been fulfilled precipitately, as the desires of the untutored usually are, but uncomplexly. As she fondly contemplated her husband the next morning, she did not realize that in one swift day she had accomplished the main drama of her existence and henceforth must be content with the humdrum course of life. Archie was scarcely more concerned with mental complexities.

"Won't p.u.s.s.y Comstock be jarred!" was about the depth of his reaction to the momentous step they had taken.