The Cup of Fury Part 20

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.

CHAPTER III

How would she take it?

That was what interested Davidge most. What was she really like? And what would she do with this intractable situation? What would the situation do with her? For situations make people as well as people situations.

Now was the time for an acquaintance of souls. An almost absolute dark erased them from each other's sight. Their eyes were as useless as the useless eyes of fish in subterrene caverns. Miss Webling could have told Davidge the color of his eyes, of course, being a woman. But being a man, he could not remember the color of hers, because he had noted nothing about her eyes except that they were very eye-ish.

He would have blundered ridiculously in describing her appearance. His information of her character was all to gain. He had seen her wandering about Washington homeless among the crowds and turned from every door. She had borne the ordeal as well as could be asked. She had accepted his proffer of protection with neither terror nor a.s.surance.

He supposed that in a similar plight the old-fashioned woman--or at least the ubiquitous woman of the special eternal type that fictionists call "old-fashioned"--would have been either a bleating, tremulous gazelle or a brazen siren. But Miss Webling behaved like neither of these. She took his gallantry with a matter-of-fact reasonableness, much as a man would accept the offer of another man's companionship on a tiresome journey. She gave none of those mult.i.tudinous little signals by which a woman indicates that she is either afraid that a man will try to hug her or afraid that he will not. She was apparently planning neither to flirt nor to faint.

Davidge asked in a matter-of-fact tone: "Do you think you could walk to town? The driver says it's only three-fo' miles."

She sighed: "My feet would never make it. And I have on high-heeled boots."

His "Too bad!" conveyed more sympathy than she expected. He had another suggestion.

"You could probably get back to the home of Mrs. Widdicombe. That isn't so far away."

She answered, bluntly, "I shouldn't think of it!"

He made another proposal without much enthusiasm.

"Then I'd better walk in to Washington and get a cab and come back for you."

She was even blunter about this: "I shouldn't dream of that. You're a wreck, too."

He lied pluckily, "Oh, I shouldn't mind."

"Well, I should! And I don't fancy the thought of staying here alone with that driver."

He smiled in the dark at the double-edged compliment of implying that she was safer with him than with the driver. But she did not hear his smile.

She apologized, meekly: "I've got you into an awful mess, haven't I? I usually do make a mess of everything I undertake. You'd better beware of me after this."

His "I'll risk it" was a whole cyclopedia of condensed gallantry.

They sat inept for a time, thinking aimlessly, seeing nothing, hearing only the bated breath of the night wind groping stealthily through the tree-tops, and from far beneath, the still, small voice of a brook feeling its way down its unlighted stairs.

At last her voice murmured, "Are you quite too horribly uncomfortable for words?"

His voice was a deep-toned bell somehow articulate: "I couldn't be more comfortable except for one thing. I'm all out of cigars."

"Oh!" He had a vague sense of her mental struggle before she spoke again, timidly:

"I fancy you don't smoke cigarettes?"

"When I can't get cigars; any tobacco is better than none."

Another blank of troubled silence, then, "I wonder if you'd say that of mine."

Her voice was both defiant and trepidate. He laughed. "I'll guarantee to."

A few years before he would have accepted a woman's confession that she smoked cigarettes as a confession of complete abandonment to all the other vices. A few years farther back, indeed, and he would have said that any man who smoked cigarettes was worthless. Since then he had seen so many burly heroes and so many unimpeachable ladies smoke them that he had almost forgotten his old prejudice. In some of the United States it was then against the law for men (not to say women and children) to sell or give away or even to possess cigarettes.

After the war crusades would start against all forms of tobacco, and at least one clergyman would call every man who smoked cigarettes a "drug-addict." It is impossible for anybody to be moral enough not to be immoral to somebody.