The Cup of Fury Part 62

She reached Washington at a little after eleven and Grinden Hall before midnight. Now as she stood on the portico and looked across the river at the night-lit city, she felt such a pride as she had never known.

She waved a salutation to the wraith of a town, her mind, if not her lips, voicing the words:

"You owe me something, old capital. You'll never put up any statues to me or carve my name on any tablets, but I'm doing something for you that will mean more than anybody will ever realize."

She turned and found the black maid gaping at her sleepily and wondering what invisible lover she was waving at. Mamise made no explanation, but went in, feeling a trifle foolish, but divinely so.

Polly got out of bed and came all bundled up to Mamise's room to demand an accounting.

"I was just on the point of telephoning the police to see if you had been found in the river."

Mamise did not bother either to explain her past lies or tell any new ones. She majestically answered:

"Polly darling, I have been engaged in affairs of state, which I am not at liberty to divulge to the common public."

"Rot!" said Polly. "I believe the 'affairs,' but not the 'state.'"

Mamise was above insult. "Some day you will know. You've heard of Helen of Troy, the lady with the face that launched a thousand ships? Well, this face of mine will launch at least half a dozen freight-boats."

Polly yawned. "I'll call my doctor in the morning and have you taken away quietly. Your mind's wandering, as well as the rest of you."

Mamise chuckled like a child with a great secret, and Polly waddled back to her bed.

Next morning Mamise woke into a world warm with her own importance, though the thermometer was farther down than Washington's oldest records. She called Davidge on the long-distance telephone, and there was a zero in his voice that she had never heard before.

"This is Mamise," she sang.

"Yes?" Simply that and nothing more.

She laughed aloud, glad that he cared enough for her to be so angry at her. She forgot the decencies of telephone etiquette enough to sing out:

"Do you really love me so madly?"

He loathed sentimentalities over the telephone, and she knew it, and was always indulging in them. But the fat was on the wire now, and he came back at her with a still icier tone:

"There's only one good excuse for what you've done. Are you telephoning from a hospital?"

"No, from Polly's."

"Then I can't imagine any excuse."

"But you're a business man, not an imaginator," she railed. "You evidently don't know me. I'm 'Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy,' and also 'Joan of Arkansas,' and a few other patriots. I've got news for you that will melt the icicles off your eyebrows."

"News?" he answered, with no curiosity modifying his anger.

"War news. May I come down and tell you about it?"

"This is a free country."

"Fine! You're simply adorable when you try to sulk. What time would be most convenient?"

"I make no more appointments with you, young woman."

"All right. Then I'll wait at my shanty till you come."

"I was going to rent it."

"You just dare! I am coming back to work. The strike is over."

"You'd better come to the office as soon as you get here."

"All right. Give my love to Miss Gabus."

She left the telephone and set about packing her things in a fury.

Polly reminded her that she had appointments for fittings at dressmakers'.

"I never keep appointments," said Mamise. "You can cancel them for me till this cruel war is over. Have the bills sent to me at the shipyard, will you, dear? Sorry to bother you, but I've barely time to catch my train."

Polly called her a once unmentionable name that was coming into fashionable use after a long exile. Women had draped themselves in a certain animal's pelt with such freedom and grace for so many years that its name had lost enough of its impropriety to be spoken, and not too much to express disapproval.

"You skunk!" said Polly. And Mamise laughed. Everything made her laugh now; she was so happy that she began to cry.

"Why the crocodiles?" said Polly. "Because you're leaving me?"

"No, I'm crying because I didn't realize how unhappy I had always been before I am as happy as I am now. I'm going to be useful at last, Polly. I'm going to do something for my country."

She was sharing in that vast national ecstasy which is called patriotism and which turns the flames of martyrdom into roses.

When Mamise reached the end of her journey she found Davidge waiting for her at the railroad station with a limousine.

His manner was studiously insulting, but he was helplessly glad to see her, and the humiliation he had suffered from her failure to keep her engagements with him in Washington was canceled by the tribute of her return to him. The knot of his frown was solved by the mischief of her smile. He had to say:

"Why didn't you meet me at luncheon?"

"How could I prevent the Potomac from putting the old bridge out of commission?" she demanded. "I got there in time, but they wouldn't let me across, and by the time I reached the hotel you had gone, and I didn't know where to find you. Heaven knows I tried."

The simplicity of this explanation deprived him of every excuse for further wrath, and he was not inspired to ask any further questions.

He was capable of nothing better than a large and stupid:

"Oh!"

"Wait till you hear what I've got to tell you."

But first he disclosed a little plot of his own with a comfortable guiltiness:

"How would you like," he stammered, "since you say you have news--how would you like--instead of going to your shanty--I've had a fire built in it--but--how would you like to take a ride in the car--out into the country, you know? Then you could tell me, and n.o.body would hear or interrupt."

She was startled by the similarity of his arrangement to that of Nicky Easton, but she approached it with different dread.