As I went out through the door Roger opened for me, he bowed over my hand and kissed it.
"Oh, cut it out!" I heard Peter growl, and there was a chorus from the others.
I had to stop in the hall outside and laugh. It was the last time I laughed for a good many hours.
By eleven I was ready. Everyone was upstairs, and Carrie had found out about the telephone by trying to call up her mother to inquire about the children. I had packed a small suitcase and at Roger"s whistle I was to drop it out the window to him. Things began to go wrong with that, for just as I was ready to drop it someone rapped at my door. I swung it too far out, and it caught Roger full in the chest and carried him over backward. I had just time to see him disappear in the shrubbery with a sort of dull thud when Alice Warrington knocked again.
She came in and sat on the bed.
"I don"t want to be nasty, Clara," she said, "but you know how fond I am of you, and I don"t want you to misunderstand Roger. It"s his way to make violent love to people and then get out. Of course you know he"s being very attentive to Maisie Brown. She"s jealous of you now. Somebody told her Roger used to be crazy about you. If she hears of this----"
"Clara!" said Roger"s voice under the window.
Alice rose, with the most outraged face I"ve ever seen.
"He is positively shameless," she said. "As for you, Clara, I can"t tell you how I feel."
"Clara!" said Roger. "I must speak to you. Just one word."
Alice swept out of the room and banged the door. I went to the window.
"Something seems to have broken in the dratted thing," he said. "It smells like eau de Cologne. I"m covered with it."
As it developed later it was eau de Cologne. I have never got a whiff of it since that I don"t turn fairly sick. And all of that awful night Roger fairly reeked with it.
Well, by midnight everything was quiet, and I got downstairs and into the drive without alarming anyone. Roger was waiting, and for some reason or other--possibly the knock--he seemed less enthusiastic.
"I hope Harry remembered the letter to Bill," he said. "Whether this thing is a joke or not depends on the other person"s sense of humor.
What in heaven"s name made you put scent in your bag?"
He had his car waiting at the foot of the drive, and just as I got in we heard it thunder.
"How far is it to your mother"s?"
"Twelve miles."
"It"s going to rain."
"Rain or not, I"m not going back, Roger," I said. "Imagine Bill"s getting that letter for nothing."
He got into the car and it began to rain at once. Everyone knows about that storm now. We had gone about four miles when the sky fairly opened.
The water beat in under the top and washed about our feet. We drove up to the hubs in water, and the lights, instead of showing us the way, only lit up a wall of water ahead. It was like riding into Niagara Falls. We were pretty sick, I can tell you.
"Why didn"t you look at the sky?" I yelled at Roger, above the beating of the storm. "Bill can always tell when it"s going to storm."
"Oh, d.a.m.n Bill!" said Roger, and the car slid off the road and into a gully. Roger just sat still and clutched the wheel.
"Aren"t you going to do something?" I snapped. "I"m not going to sit here all night and be drowned."
"Is there anything you could suggest?"
"Can"t you get out and push it?"
"I cannot."
But after five minutes or so he did crawl out, and by tying my suitcase straps round one of the wheels he got the car back into the road. I daresay I was a trifle pettish by that time.
"I wish you wouldn"t drip on me," I said.
"I beg your pardon," he replied, and moved as far from me as he could.
We went on in silence. At last:
"There"s one comfort about getting that soaking," he said: "it"s washed that d.a.m.ned perfume off."
There"s one thing about Bill, he keeps his temper. And he doesn"t raise the roof when he gets his clothes wet. He rather likes getting into difficulties, to show how well he can get out of them. But Roger is like a cat. He always hated to get his feet wet.
"If you had kept the car in the centre of the road you wouldn"t have had to get out," I said shortly.
"Oh, well, if you"re going back to first causes," he retorted, "if you"d never suggested this idiotic thing I wouldn"t be laying up a case of lumbago at this minute."
"Lumbago is middle-aged, isn"t it?"
"We"re neither of us as young as we were a few years ago."
That was inexcusable. Roger is at least six years older than I am.
Besides, even if it were true, there was no necessity for him to say it.
But there was no time to quarrel, for at that moment we were going across a bridge over a small stream. It was a river now. The first thing I knew was that the car shook and rocked and there was a dull groaning underneath. The next minute we had gone slowly down about four feet and the creek was flowing over us.
We said nothing at first. The lights went off almost immediately, as the engine drowned, and there we sat in the flood, and the first thing I knew I was crying.
"The bridge is broken," said Roger, above the rush of the stream.
"I didn"t think you were washing the car," I whimpered. "We"ll be drowned, that"s all."
The worst of the storm was over, but as far as I was concerned it might just as well have been pouring. When Roger got his matches and tried to light one it only made a sick streak of phosph.o.r.escence on the side of the box. To make things worse, Roger turned round, and where the road crossed the brow of the hill behind us there was the glow of automobile lamps. He swore under his breath.
"They"re coming, Clara," he said. "That fool of a maid didn"t wait until midnight."
The thought of being found like that, waist-deep in water, drove me to frenzy. I knew how they"d laugh, how they"d keep on laughing for years.
They"d call us the Water Babies probably, or something equally hateful.
I just couldn"t stand the thought.
I got up.
"Let them think we"re drowned--anything," I said desperately. "I will not be found like this."
Roger looked about like a hunted animal.