"There"s--there"s a house near here on the hill," he said. Afterward I remembered how he hesitated over it. "We could get up there, I"m pretty sure."
He looked back.
"They seem to have stopped," he said. "Perhaps the other bridge has gone."
He lifted me out and set me on the bank. He was not particularly gentle about it, and I was all he could carry. That"s one thing about Bill--he"s as strong as an ox and as gentle as a young gazelle.
Well, we scurried up the bank, the water pouring off us, and I lost a shoe. Roger wouldn"t wait until I found it, but dragged me along, panting. Suddenly I knew that I hated him with a deadly hatred. The thought of how nearly I had married him made me shiver.
"I wish you"d let go of me," I said.
"Why? You can"t climb alone in the silly clothes you wear."
"Perhaps not, but I don"t like you to touch me."
"Oh, if you feel like that----" He let me go, and I almost fell. "You know, Clara, I am trying hard to restrain myself, but--this is all your doing."
"I suppose I broke the bridge down," I said bitterly, "and brought on the rain, and all the rest of it."
"Now I recognise the Clara I used to know," he had the audacity to say, "always begging the question and shifting the responsibility. For heaven"s sake don"t stop to quarrel! They"ve probably found the car by this time."
We got to the house and I fell exhausted on the steps. To my surprise Roger got out a bunch of keys and fitted one to the lock.
"I know these people," he said. "I--I sometimes come out in the fall for a bit of shooting. Place is closed now."
The interior looked dark and smelled musty. I didn"t want to go in, but it was raining again and there was nothing else to do.
"Better overcome your repugnance and give me your hand," he said. "If we turn on a light they"ll spot us."
Oh, it is all very well to say, looking back, that we should have sat in the car until we were found, and have carried it all off as a part of the joke. I couldn"t, that"s flat. I couldn"t have laughed if I"d been paid to.
We b.u.mped into a square hall and I sat down. It was very quiet all at once, and the only thing to be heard was the water dripping from us to the hardwood floor.
"If that"s a velvet chair you"re on it will be ruined," said Roger"s voice out of the darkness.
"I hope it is. Where is the telephone?"
"There is a telephone closet under the stairs."
"You know a lot about this house. Whose is it?"
"It"s the Brown place. You know it."
"Maisie Brown"s!"
"Yes." He was quite sullen.
"And you have a key like one of the family! Roger, you are engaged to her!"
"I was," he said. "The chances are when this gets out I won"t be."
I don"t know why now, but it struck me as funny. I sat and laughed like a goose, and the more I laughed the harder Roger breathed.
"You"ve got to see me through this, Clara," he said at last. "You can"t telephone Carrie--you"ve fixed all that. But you can get your mother.
Tell her the circ.u.mstances and have her send a car for you. I"ll stay here to-night. And if you take my advice you"ll meet Bill at the train to-morrow morning and beat Carrie to it. She"ll be in town with a line of conversation by daybreak."
He found some dry matches and led me to the telephone. Something in the way I dripped, or because I padded across the floor in one stocking foot, made him a trifle more human.
"I"ll close the curtains and light the log fire," he said. "Things are bad enough without your taking pneumonia."
The moment I took the receiver off the hook I knew the wires were down somewhere. I sat for a moment, then I opened the door. Roger was on his knees lighting the fire. He looked very thin, with his clothes stuck to him, and the hair that he wore brushed over the bare place had been washed down, and he looked almost bald.
"Roger," I said, with the calmness of despair, "the wires are down!"
"Hush," said Roger suddenly. "And close that door."
It seemed rather foolish to me at the time. Since they had followed us, they"d know perfectly well that if Roger was there I was.
_In walked Maisie Brown and about a dozen other people!_
I can still hear the noise they made coming in, and then a silence, broken by Maisie"s voice.
"Why, Roger!" she said.
"Awfully surprising to see you here--I mean, I expect you are surprised to see me here," said Roger"s voice, rather thin and stringy. "The fact is, I was going by, and--it was raining hard, and I----"
"Then that was your car in the creek?"
"Well, yes," Roger admitted, after a hesitation. He was evidently weighing every word, afraid of committing himself to anything dangerous.
"I thought you were at Carrie Smith"s."
"I was on my way home."
Everybody laughed. It was about a dozen miles to Roger"s road home from Carrie"s.
"Come on, now, there"s a mystery. Own up," said a man"s voice. "Where"s the beautiful lady? Drowned?"
Luckily no one waited for an answer. They demanded how he had got in, and when he said he had a key they laughed again. Some one told Maisie she might as well confess. If Roger had a key to the house it required explanation.
If ever I heard cold suspicion in a girl"s voice, it was in Maisie"s when she answered:
"Oh, we"re engaged all right, if that"s what you mean," she said. "But I think Roger and I----"
They didn"t give her a chance to finish, the idiots! They gave three cheers, and then, as nearly as I could make out, they formed a ring and danced round them. They"d been to a picnic somewhere, and as the bridges were down they were there for the night.
Do you think they went to bed?
Not a bit of it. They found some canned things in a pantry, and fixed some hot drinks and drank to Maisie and Roger. And I sat in the telephone closet and tried not to sneeze.