I've Married Marjorie Part 4

What he did was to eat his scallops a la King with appet.i.te, fraternize cheerfully with Lucille's friend, whose name was Tommy Burke, and who was an old acquaintance of his, speak to Marjorie occasionally in the most natural way in the world, and altogether behave entirely as if it really was his party, and he was very glad that there was a party. It is to be said that he ignored Logan rather more than politeness demanded. But Logan was so used to being petted that he never knew it.

Marjorie did, and lavished more attention on him defiantly to try to make up for it. She thought that the evening never would end.

After the food was finished it was to be expected that Lucille would go to the piano, and play some more, and that the men would sit about smoking on the davenport and the taborets, and that every one would be pleasantly quiet. But Lucille did not. Instead, she and Francis retired to the back room, leaving Marjorie and the others to amuse each other, and talk for what seemed to Marjorie's strained nerves an eternity of time. It was Francis who had called Lucille, moreover, and not Lucille who had summoned Francis, as could have been expected.

Finally the other men rose to go. Francis came out of the inner room and went with them. Before he went he stopped to say to Marjorie:

"I told you I wanted to talk things over with you. I'll be back in a half-hour. You seem to be so popular that the only way to see you alone is to get you in a motor-car, so if you aren't too tired to drive around with me to-night, to a place where I have to go, I'll bring you home safely. . . . I didn't mean to speak so sharply to you, Marjorie, over the telephone. Please forgive me."

"Certainly," said Marjorie coldly and tremulously. It could be seen that she did not forgive him in the least.

He went downstairs with the others, laughing with Burke, who had a dozen army reminiscences to exchange with him, and bidding as small a good-by as decency permitted to Logan. Marjorie heard him dash up again, and then run down, as if he had left something outside the door and forgotten it. Lucille came over to her and began to fuss at her about changing her frock for a heavier one, and taking enough wraps.

"Why, it's only a short drive," Marjorie expostulated. "And I'm not sure that I want to go, anyway. I don't think there's anything more to be said than we have said."

Francis, with that disconcerting swiftness which he possessed, had come back as she spoke.

He came close to her, and spoke softly.

"You used to like the boy you married, Marjorie. For his sake won't you do this one thing? Give me a hearing--one more hearing."

Lucille had come back again with a big loose coat, and she was wrapping it round her friend with a finality that meant more struggle than poor tired Marjorie was capable of making. After all, another half-hour of discussion would not matter. The end would be the same. She went down with them to the big car that stood outside, and even managed to say something flippant about its looking like a traveling house, it was so big. Francis established her in the front seat, by him, tucked a rug around her, for the night was sharp for May, and drove to Fifth Avenue, then uptown.

She waited, wearily and immovable, for him to argue with her further, but he seemed in no hurry to commence. They merely drove on and on, and Marjorie was content not to talk. It was a clear, beautiful night, too late for much traffic, so they went swiftly. The ride was pleasant. All that she had been through had tired her so that she found the silence and motion very pleasant and soothing.

Finally he turned to her, and she braced herself for whatever he might want to say.

"Would you mind if we drove across the river for a little while?" he asked.

"Why--no," she said idly. "Out in the country, you mean?"

He a.s.sented, and they drove on, but not to the ferry. They turned, and went up Broadway, far, far again.

"Where are we?" asked Marjorie finally. "Isn't it time you turned around and took me back? And didn't you have something you wanted to say to me?"

"Yes----" he said absently. "No, we have all the time in the world.

There's no scandal possible in being out motoring with your husband, even if you shouldn't get home till daylight."

"But where _are_ we?" demanded Marjorie again.

"The Albany Post Road," said Francis. This meant very little to Marjorie, but she waited another ten minutes before she asked again.

"Just the same post road as before," said Francis preoccupiedly, letting the machine out till they were going at some unbelievable speed an hour. "The Albany. Not the Boston."

"Well, it doesn't matter to me _what_ post road," remonstrated Marjorie, beginning rather against her will to laugh a little, as she had been used to do with Francis. "I want to go home."

"You are," said he.

"Oh, is this one of those roads that turns around and swallows its own tail?" she demanded, "and brings you back where you started?"

"Just where you started," he a.s.sented, still in the same preoccupied voice.

She accepted this quietly for the moment.

"Francis," she said presently, "I mean it. I want to go home."

"You are going home," said Francis. "But not just yet."

It seemed undignified to row further. She was so tired--so very tired!

Francis did not speak again, and after a little while she must have dropped off to sleep; for when she came to herself again the road was a different one. They were traveling along between rows of pines, and the road stretched ahead of them, empty and country-looking. She turned and asked sleepily, "What time is it, Francis, please?"

He bent a little as he shot his wrist-watch forward enough to look at the phosph.o.r.escent dial.

"Twenty minutes past three," he said as if it was the most commonplace hour in the world to be driving through a country road.

For a moment she did not take it in. Then she threw dignity to the winds. She was rested enough to have some fight in her again.

"I'm going home! I'm going home if I have to walk!" she said wildly.

She started to spring up in the car, with some half-formed intention of forcing him to stop by jumping out.

"Now, Marjorie, don't act like a movie-heroine," he said commonplacely--and infuriatingly. He also took one hand off the steering-wheel and put it around her wrist. "You can't go back to New York unless I take you. We're fifty miles up New York State, and there isn't a town near at all."

Marjorie sat still and looked at him. The car went on.

"I don't understand," she said. "You can't be going to abduct me, Francis?"

Francis, set as his face was, smiled a little at this.

"That isn't the word, because you don't abduct your lawful wife. But I do want you to try me out before you discard me entirely. And apparently this is the only way to get you to do it."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Want the cards on the table?"

She nodded.

"All the cards--now? Or would you rather take things as they come?"

All this time the car was going ahead full speed in the moonlight.

"Everything--now!" she said tensely.

He never looked at her as he talked. His eyes were on the road ahead.

"Just now--as soon as we get to a spot where it seems likely to be comfortable, we're going to unship a couple of pup-tents from the back of the car, and sleep out here. I have all your things in the back of the car. If you'd rather, you can sleep in the car; you're little and I think you could be comfortable on the back seat."

She interrupted him with a cry of injury.

"My things? Where did you get them?"