We Can't Have Everything Part 94

"Good-by, Jim. I have been loving you of late with a great love."

There would be no injury done to Kedzie thus, for Charity would speak as a ghost, an impalpable departed one. There would be no sin--only a beautiful expiation by confession. She was enfranchised of earthly restraints, enfranchised as the dead are from mortal obligations.

But the moods that are so holy, so pure, and so vast while they are moods resent words. Words are like tin cups to carry the ocean in. It is no longer an ocean when a bit of it is scooped up. It is only a little brackish water, odious to drink and quenching no thirst.

Charity could not devise the first phrase of her huge and oceanic emotion. It would have been only a proffer of brine that Jim could not have relished from her. He understood better her silence. They went blindly on and on, letting the road lead them and the first whim decide which turn to take and which to pa.s.s.

And so they were eventually lost in the land as they were lost in their mood.

And after a time of wonderful enthusiasms in their common grief the realities began to claim them back. A loud report like a pistol-shot announced that the poetry of motion had become prose.

Jim stopped the car and became a blacksmith while he went through the tool-box, found a jack for the wheel, laboriously unshipped the demountable rim, replaced it with the extra wheel, and set forth again.

The job had not improved the cleanliness of his hands nor spared the chast.i.ty of his shirt-bosom. But the car had four wheels to go on, and they regained a main road at last and found a signboard announcing, "Tiverton, 18 miles." That meant thirty miles to Newport.

Charity looked at her watch. It brought her back from the timelessness of her meditation to the world where the dock had a great deal to say about what was respectable and what not.

"Good Lord!" she groaned. "Mrs. Noxon is home long ago and scared or shocked to death. We must fly!"

They flew, angry, both of them, at having to hurry back to school and a withering reprimand, as if they were still mere brats. Gradually the car began to refuse the call for haste. Its speed sickened, gasped, died.

Jim swore quite informally, and raged: "I told that infernal hound to fill the tank. He forgot! The gas is gone."

Charity shrugged her shoulders. "I deserved it," she said. "I only hope I don't get you into trouble. What will your wife say?"

"What won't she say? But I'm thinking about you."

"It doesn't matter about me. I've got n.o.body who cares enough to scold me."

They were suddenly illumined by the headlights of an approaching car.

They shielded their faces from the glare instinctively. They felt honest, but they did not look honest out here together.

The car was checked and a voice called from the blur, "Want any help?"

"No, thanks," Jim answered from his shadow.

The car rolled on. While Jim made a vain post-mortem examination of the car's machinery Charity looked about for a guide-post. She found a large signboard proclaiming "Viewcrest Inn, 1 mile." She told Jim.

He said: "I know of it. It has a bad name, but so long as the gasolene is good--I'll go get some. Make yourself at home." He paused. "I can't leave you alone here in the wilderness at midnight."

"I'll go along."

"In those high-heeled shoes?"

"And these low-necked gown," sighed Charity. "Oh, what a fool, what a stupid fool I've been!"

But she set forth. Jim offered his arm. She declined it at first, but she was glad enough of it later. They made an odd-looking couple, both in evening dress, promenading a country road. All the wealth of both of them was insufficient to purchase them so much as a street-car ride.

They were paupers--the slaves, not the captains, of their fate. Charity stumbled and tottered, her ankles wrenched by the ruts, her stilted slippers going to ruin. Jim offered to carry her. She refused indignantly. She would have accepted a lift from any other vehicle now, but none appeared. The only lights were in the sky, where a storm was practising with fireworks.

"Just our luck to get drenched," said Jim.

It was about the only bad luck they escaped, but the threat of it lent Charity speed. They pa.s.sed one farm, whose dogs rushed out and bayed at them carnivorously.

"That's the way people will bark when they find out about our innocent little picnic," said Charity.

"They're not going to find out," said Jim.

"Trying to keep it secret gives it a guilty look," said Charity.

"What people don't know won't hurt 'em," said Jim.

"What they do imagine will hurt us," said Charity.

At the top of a knoll in a clandestine group of trees they found "Viewcrest Inn." It was dark but for a dim light in the office. The door of that was locked.

Trade was dull, now that the Newport season was over, and only an occasional couple from Fall River, Providence, or New Bedford tested the diminished hospitality. But to-night there had been a concurrence of visitors. Jim rattled at the door. A waiter appeared, yawning candidly.

He limped to the door with a gait that Kedzie would have recognized.

He peered out and shook his head, waving the intruders away. Jim shook the k.n.o.b and glowered back.

The waiter, who, in the cla.s.sic phrase, was "none other than" Skip Magruder, unlocked the door.

"Nothin' doin', folks," said Skip. "Standin' room only. Not a room left."

"I don't want any of your dirty rooms," said Jim. "I want some gasolene."

"Bar's closed," said Skip, who had a nimble wit.

"I said gasolene!" said Jim, menacingly.

"Sorry, boss, but the last car out took the last drop we had in the pump. We'll have some more to-morrow mornin'."

"My G.o.d!" Jim whispered.

Then the storm broke. A thunder smash like the bolt of an indignant Heaven. It turned on all the faucets above.

"Where's the telephone?" Jim demanded.

"T.D.," said Skip.

"What's that?"

"Temporary discontinued." Skip grew confidential. "The boss was a little slow on the pay and they shut him off. We're takin' in a lot of dough to-night, though, and he'll prob'ly get it goin' to-morrow all right."

To-morrow again! Jim snarled back at the pack of wolfish circ.u.mstances closing in on him. He turned to Charity.

"We've got to stay here."

Charity "went white," as the saying is. The rain streamed down.