Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries. An Idyll of All Fools' Day An Idyll of All Fools' Day By Josephine Daskam Bacon Author of "Memoirs of a Baby," "The Madness of Philip," etc. _With numerous illustrations_ By R. M. Crosby New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1908 Copyright, 1908, by The Phillips Publishing Co. Copyright, 1908, by Dodd, Mead & Company _Published, October, 1908_ To A. A. B. this bit of busy nonsense is dedicated. J. D. B. ILLUSTRATIONS "Only her shriek of terror saved them from the stone wall" (p, 47) Frontispiece Facing page "'Here we are at last, Nette dear, dressed in our best for you!'" "'On the right,' he began didactically" "The red-headed boy bounded beside them, whooping madly" "At the risk of losing his straight course he stole a rapid glance at her" "'Jump! Jump!' he cried hoarsely" "'Well, here we are!' he said tentatively" "Nette, wringing her hair and murmuring incoherent abnegations" "'Mademoiselle,' he began, 'you are--you are--' he paused, for genuine lack of words" "'This gentleman here will take you down directly'" THE ESCAPE I. THE ESCAPE 'TWAS a bloomy morning, all crocuses and tree buds, and Antony sniffed it into his nostrils thankfully, even while he scowled. "Come, come!" said his Uncle Julius, a wealthy old gentleman buttoned firmly into a white vest, "what a face! It is nothing so terrible that I ask of you! One would think it a hanging matter, to beau a pretty young girl about the place!" "You know that I do not care for schoolgirls, Uncle Julius," said Antony severely. "Fiddlestick!" his Uncle Julius cried, "and what are you sir, but a school boy, I should like to know? What shall we hear next, I wonder?" Antony put on some fresh grey gloves with a sigh. "Schoolgirl! Schoolgirl!" his uncle repeated mimickingly, "she will not be reciting her lessons, I suppose!" Antony buttoned his gloves. "Or if she does, it will be your fault, sir," pursued his uncle. Antony selected a slender walking stick from a rack of many, and reviewed his collar with a critical hand. "The young lady's topics of conversation will be a matter of indifference to me, Uncle Julius," said he, "I assure you." "And I assure _you_," cried Uncle Julius, "that if we were not on this open porch, I should be strongly tempted to apply that stick of yours where, as we used to say, it would do the most good!" Antony adjusted his coat trimly and started down the steps. "But since we are upon this open porch, let us, Uncle Julius," said he, "go where duty calls us. _En avant!_" He strode along the flagged walk with Uncle Julius puffing behind him, loquaciously indignant. "Look at your mates, sir, as we pass them, and notice how enviously they smile," he urged the youth, who replied shortly that he observed them. "In my time, I can tell you," said Uncle Julius, "there was no shilly shallying in these matters. We had more blood. Let any college lad be given a free day--and a fine day, too--and one of the prettiest girls that ever wore a petticoat to enjoy It with him, and he was the envy of all his fellows. And I believe," he ended with a fine optimism, "that it is so now! Not one of these lads but would change places with you at a nod." "But you will not nod, my dear Uncle Julius," Antony responded calmly, "and so these lads--as you so felicitously call them--will never lose the opportunity I would cheerfully relin----" "Hush! there she is!" his uncle whispered, and Antony at once removed his hat with a lordly and accomplished gesture, which Uncle Julius noted with unwilling admiration. "Well, here we are!" he said, with an attempt at prankish levity in which he received no assistance from Antony. "Here we are at last, Nette dear, dressed in our best for you!" "So I see. And this is, I suppose, your young nephew, Mr. Julius?" said the person at whose face Antony had not yet looked. If she had intended to remedy this omission she could not have devised a more efficacious means. Not only did Antony look at her: he stared. From the topmost strand of her braided chestnut hair to the lowest dimple In her olive cheek--for she was of that irritatingly attractive class of females that combines deep-set violet eyes with a gipsy colouring--every curve of her audacious body spelled youth, unmitigated youth, and her tone was correspondingly insulting. "I am truly pleased to meet you," he said with the air of one to whom experience has lent tolerance. "I should truly never have guessed it," she returned promptly with an amused smile. Antony flushed. An impudent chit, this. A girl to be taught her place, and that right early. "I am to have, I believe," he said, with a fine air of disregard for any previous conversation, "the honour of escort--of show--of, er, of entertaining you for the day." "That distinction is indeed yours," she replied gravely, "I have no doubt that I shall be escort--show--er, entertained most agreeably." With this insulting remark she but half concealed a yawn and Antony's blood boiled within him. "Come," chirped Uncle Julius with a fatuous chuckle, "we are getting along famously! What did I tell you? Yes, indeed!" To this idiotic speech neither his nephew nor that nephew's new acquaintance made any further reply than two eloquent but totally ineffective glances. They were ineffective because the glance as a medium of expression had not been included in Uncle Julius's aesthetic training. "And what are you going to do first, hey? Where does the great day begin--see the town sights, I suppose?" this Imbecile old relative maundered on. "It will give me great pleasure, if she wishes to see them," said Antony coldly, "to point out the various objects of local interest to Miss----" "Good gracious!" Uncle Julius interrupted, "what's come over the boy? 'Miss,' indeed! Didn't I tell you that this is my old godmother's own daughter's stepdaughter? 'Miss!' Her name is Nette." "Ah," said Antony. "And his," continued Uncle Julius, with a flip of his finger at his nephew and a wink at the young lady, "is Tony. Let's have no formality among chicks of your age. No, no; Tony's his name." "Indeed!" the young lady observed, gazing critically at the embarrassed possessor of the cognomen, "and a quaint little name, I am sure." She smiled with a perfunctory brightness and continued in some inexplicable manner to look down at her escort--though had she been presented with ten thousand dollars for every one of the inches over five feet in her height she would not have appeared before the world as any considerable heiress. The object of this remarkably achieved envisagement writhed inwardly. Uncle Julius rubbed his hands in maudlin delight at her appreciation of his nephew's baptismal acquirements, and she continued, prettily stifling a second yawn between her white little pointed teeth: "Since our young friend naturally pants to show us the beauties of his Alma Mater, let us by all means begin with them," _and get them over_, said the strangled yawn. Antony bit his tongue in his seething rage and the pain turned him crimson and wet-eyed. This did not escape the intolerable chit and her deep-set violet eyes twinkled maliciously. "It will not be at all necessary to see"--he began, when Uncle Julius's round, astonished eyes interrupted them. "He is not going to show 'us' at all," explained this worthy but misguided man, "he is going to show you, my dear. I knew all these sights well forty years ago. Dear, dear! yes, indeed." Antony could have choked him for the apprehension that passed over his young charge's face. "You will not desert me, Mr. Julius?" she cried with a melting glance that visibly warmed the cockles of his infatuated old heart, "you can't mean to leave me"--_to the awkward attentions of this red faced boy!_ her eyebrows continued the appeal, intelligible only to Antony. "But that's just what I do mean, Miss Nette," he assured her, winking incredibly, "I am this moment due at my trustees' meeting. I'm off directly. You must"--and he flapped his hand with airy abandon--"endure the time without me!" Here he smiled with disgusting coquetry and pattered like a plump white rabbit down the shady brick path. As they stared blankly after him he turned and waved his stick at them. "Oh, I'm no spoil-sport!" he crowed, and rounded his corner. They were left alone. "Silly old ass!" Antony muttered, and then glared angrily at the spot the buxom gentleman had quitted. "I beg your pardon?" said the young lady, "did you speak?" "Not to you," he replied briefly. She shook out a fluffy white parasol and under its becoming shadow looked curiously about her. "Indeed--to whom, then," she inquired. Antony was silent. "Minx!" he thought. "You are not at all like your uncle, are you?" she began, after a moment of this pregnant silence. Then after another moment she added absently, "he has such pleasant, easy manners!" Antony settled his fleckless straw hat firmly upon his head and tightened his grip on his stick. "My uncle," he began with great control, "is an estimable man. His intentions are of the best--that is to say, I have always believed them to be--but like too many others he does not always carry out his intentions. Take, for instance, this present situation. It was evidently his intention to give you (and me) a pleasurable day. It is quite obvious to me, at least, that he has failed in his intention--to a certain extent," he added politely, for he had by now talked himself into his usual superior calm. His eyes were fixed upon the tip of the young lady's parasol, some distance below him, as she sat on the brick steps of the old porch before which he stood, her slender figure leaning against a white pillar. "Now, I have a suggestion to make," he continued, quite pleasantly by this time. "I can plainly see that my uncle's somewhat Philistine scheme for my showing you about the place is likely to bore you extremely. Let us, then, omit that part of the programme altogether. We must try to think of something that will attract you, however," Antony had by this time a fairly paternal interest in the young lady, "and if you will help me out, no doubt we can. Perhaps," he concluded tentatively, "you would really prefer to remain by yourself, and not be entertained at all?" He paused, and as no reply appeared to be forthcoming, slowly lowered his eyes along the fluffy parasol till they reached the level of those deep-set violet ones. He could not have recognised them by their colour, however, for they were closed; the gentle rise and fall of the young lady's breast, the placid and uncharacteristic kindness of her half-smile made the reason for this closing only too obvious. She was sleeping. Antony swallowed hard. Sheer rage choked him and his collar became intolerably tight. His fingers itched along the supple stick he carried and a longing to employ it in an absolutely unheard of manner nearly flooded him off his feet. "Where it would do the most good"--the obnoxious phrase flashed luminously across his mind. The sudden silence had its natural effect upon the young person on the brick steps. Slowly, inquiringly, her eyelids lifted, and the peculiar, rain-washed effect of those dark blue eyes, so startling above her olive cheeks, was not lost upon Antony. "Not entertained at all?" she repeated vaguely, diving under the ruffles of the parasol to cover the positively unconcealable paroxysm of the third yawn, "oh, on the contrary! Really. I am delightfully entertained, Mr.--Mr. Tony!" "So it appears," he returned acidly. A soft dark colour suffused her gipsy cheeks, but she brazened it out. She seemed to possess no sense of shame whatever. "This sun makes one almost sleepy," she said calmly, "and I sat up quite late last night, too--playing picquet with your uncle. He is a poor sleeper." "Indeed. I am not acquainted with his habits," Antony responded. "We will look at the buildings now, I think, if you are sufficiently rested." A fell purpose had suddenly found itself in his humiliated breast. This insolent young puss should have cause indeed for drowsiness. She sprang instantly to her feet with a quick and pleasing muscular co-ordination, which, again, was not lost upon Antony. She wore a white flannel costume dotted with a dull blue--the blue of Canton china. Of this colour, too, was the silk stocking that flashed down the steps above her low-cut shoes. A ludicrous and daring colour for a brunette--until you encountered her eyes. "I am quite ready," she said demurely, and Antony started briskly down the street. "On the right," he began didactically, "you will see Wadsworth Hall, the building of applied sciences. It was presented by the two sons of Mr. Ezra Bement Wadsworth in memory of their father, a prominent graduate. It cost three hundred thousand dollars and is one of the most completely equipped buildings of its kind in the country, I believe." "How interesting!" she murmured. "Yes," Antony agreed, "it _is_ interesting." "To what are the sciences applied?" she inquired placidly. "To--er, to--really, I have never gone into it so far as that," Antony returned, biting his lip, "I am not interested in science myself. But that is what it is generally called: it is on a bronze tablet on the corner. It is probably only an expression." "Ah, yes, probably," she assented. "Beyond it and a shade to the left you will see," he continued, with a wave of his stick, "Mansfield Hall. It is a dormitory, occupied by sophomores." "And who presented that?" his companion inquired, gazing respectfully at the end of his stick. "I do not know," he informed her briefly. "Oh, you do not know," she repeated in her low voice. Something in the falling inflection caused her guide to wriggle uneasily. "Nobody knows," he added, rashly. "I should think nobody would want to, it is so hideous." "To be sure," she said. "And sophomores live there. Are you perhaps a sophomore, Mr. Tony?" "I?" Antony exclaimed; then in level tones, "I am a senior." "Really!" she murmured. "I suppose that means that you are one of the older pupils, then? In the first class?" "It does," he assented grimly, adding as a cutting afterthought, "a sophomore, I suppose, would be beneath your notice?" She smiled sweetly. "Oh, dear me, no!" she assurred him, "not in the least--it is all the same to me, you see, Mr. Tony!" Antony should have realised by this time the folly of any further tilting, but he did not. "Your interest naturally turns, then, to men of my uncle's age?" he inquired caustically. She considered this with a pretty seriousness. "N-no, hardly that," she said at length. "It is only that I do not-- that I am not--somehow, young men (_and such very young men!_ her eyes added) do not exactly . . ." "You need not trouble to explain yourself any further," Antony broke in coldly. "It is somewhat unfortunate," he continued, enunciating carefully, with averted eyes, "that I, of all people, should have been selected for your escort this morning." He had never said anything so nearly rude to a woman; but then he had never to his recollection been so thoroughly annoyed by one, since the dimly distant days when a series of deprecating aunts and spying nurses had darkened his youthful horizon. "Indeed. And why is that?" she asked pleasantly. She had, when she chose, an exceedingly pleasant manner. "Because," he returned, astonished at himself, but firm nevertheless, "I am not sufficiently accustomed to the society of young ladies to be certain of my ability to entertain even the ordinary variety--much less those who prefer the society of eccentric old gentlemen." _Come_, he reflected, _that's not half bad. Perhaps that will teach her a thing or two!_ It seemed to him that there was a flash of respect in her eyes, but he could not be sure, it was so fleeting. "I suppose your studies take up so much of your time that you have no leisure for society," she said kindly, "but you must not let yourself grow shy: ladies are not very difficult to entertain, really!" To this remark Antony made no reply, perhaps because he could not think of one which combined the expression of his feelings with anything remotely resembling propriety. They walked on, therefore, in utter silence. The village through which they took their way was but a tiny one, a green and sheltered cradle for the warm brick walls and lichened chapel of the old college; and soon the grass-grown flagged walk gave way to one of trodden earth, the houses grew sparser and smaller, the trees thicker and less carefully tended. They were in the country. The season was well forward: though the calendar marked April, the warm blue sky, the odorous earth, the fresh, full grass, all smelled of May. The early flowers were out long before their wonted times; the birds, misled by the generous sun, were already nesting musically; shock-headed urchins, those most delicate barometers of the real seasons, had bravely cast off their shoes and stockings and renewed the year in the splashing puddles of some recent rain. All the scene spoke peace and promise of better to come--all, I say, but those two fractious young souls who walked diverse among the lovely unity of the pleasant world about them. Antony strode on, his eyes fixed on the winding road, though it is to be doubted if he saw it. Who would have thought to find him, Antony, in such a baited, hot-necked frame? The day had gone hideously awry from the beginning, and it was all the fault of this blue-eyed, brown-cheeked chit. She, for her part, moved easily and it must be admitted, gracefully, beside him. Her step shot out from the hip, elastic as a boy's; only the faintest shade of red under her skin confessed to the pace he drove her; she drew regular breaths, through her small nostrils. Though she could not match his stride, she yet fell into a sort of rythmical accompaniment to it; evidently she was an accomplished and enduring dancer. They swung around a sharp corner under a great sprawling oak and fairly mowed down an unattractive red-headed boy, insufficiently attired and freckled beyond belief, who was hurrying frantically in a direction only too obviously opposed to their own. Conscious of a distinct relief at the necessity for constructive action, Antony stooped and raised the howling and resentful creature, who dug his grimy knuckles into his eyes and yelled the louder at each polite query as to his injuries. After a few minutes of this fruitless performance, Antony, irritated at his failure to bring even this sordid incident to a triumphant conclusion, was about to produce a coin and leave his victim to the sovereign solace of Time, that great healer, when his companion, who had stood, hitherto, discreetly aside from the business, now stepped forward and laid a small brown hand on the heaving shoulder of the injured infant. "Where were you going, Bubby?" she asked abruptly. He looked up from his bent and screening arm, stared a moment, and replied in a matter-of-fact tone, without a trace of the sobs that still echoed about them: "To see the big snake!" "The snake?" She shuddered involuntarily. Had the child mentioned Leviathan, the monster would not have seemed more exotic to this rural and domestic spot. By judicious questioning they elicited from the suddenly secretive imp the successive facts of the spectacular and recent arrival of an enormous foreign reptile; its display under a tent on the outskirts of the village, very near their present station; the establishment of a tariff of fifteen cents for one view, or two separate opportunities for excitement at the comparatively small sum of a quarter of a dollar; and lastly, the cruel certainty that the delay occasioned by this unexpected and sudden meeting had undoubtedly cost their informant his only possible view of the monster, since the price of his admission, though offered voluntarily by his maternal uncle, was contingent upon his arrival at the tent ahead of his cousin, who, in case of a previous appearance, was to receive the prize. Overcome afresh by the bitterness of his lot, the red-headed boy would have renewed his unpleasant and gulping demonstrations, had not Antony hastily produced a coin of sufficient size to insure two periods of ecstasy and offered it in reparation for what he handsomely described as his clumsiness. Staggered by this princely generosity, the urchin balanced the silver piece doubtfully, then with a shy and unlooked-for courtesy suggested that they should use it together. "And what should I do, then?" asked the young lady with a smile--I have mentioned that she had, when she saw fit to employ it, an exceedingly pleasant manner. The boy hesitated. "Girls don't like snakes," he finally mumbled; "you could wait outside!" "Where is that tent?" she demanded indignantly, and they hurried on, one on each side of their unconscious guide. No kindly premonition laid a thrilling chill along Antony's stiff spine; no wholesome doubts as to the successful issue of that doomed expedition slowed the springing step of his companion. They hurried on, I say, each with a hand upon the earth-stained, ragged shoulder of that freckled imp whom Fate had selected as the instrument of their destiny, and in ironic rivalry they literally urged him on, and shot him, panting, through the roped enclosure that protected the elect possessors of the admission price from contact with the envious herd. With the curt direction to their guide to invite, if he pleased, a friend to enter with him, Antony slapped down a coin on the improvised counter, received two greasy green cardboard slips and strode towards the canvas flap of the small tent. The mingled odour of tobacco smoke, crushed grass, and tethered horses, the cheerful, chattering crowd, the honk and blare of a great claret-coloured motor-car, hurtling inquiringly up the slope, all imparted a festival air, a holiday spirit; and it was with a mild excitement that Antony pushed into the close tent, clearing the way punctiliously for his companion. In the middle, under the opening, was a standard painted a dull, forbidding red, and on this, in a cage of twisted iron, lay a monstrous, coiled thing, hideously and brilliantly mottled, his blunt, flattened head lazily resting on his topmost ring, his malignant, weary eyes fixed in a listless stare, that drooped over the human mushrooms around him, over the seas he had travelled, back to the old gods and the beginnings of things. The inked diamonds along his great length gleamed in a dreadful, supple pattern; the eye, entranced in a seductive terror, followed the massive rounds of those murderous coils, longing, yet dreading, to trace them to their horrid head: it seemed that a faint, uncanny odour, a hint of dead spices, like the secret wrapping cloths of old mummies, hung in the air. Now Antony knew, or supposed he knew, that cobras exhale no such odour, and in a disgusted curiosity he peered about for the source of it, but found nothing in the stained and faded tent, nor any nook or cranny in the obvious bareness where the source of it could lurk. The scene was a strange one; no officious showman called attention, in a raucous voice, to the ugly thing in the middle. There appeared to be no director, no advertisement of any kind, no appeal to a credulous or morbid crowd. The tent could contain but a score of visitors simultaneously, and they pushed in, fairly quiet as soon as they had entered, slowly encircled the scornful, wicked-eyed heap on the standard, discussed it in low tones and went out through another flap to make room for the next group. Indeed, the accustomed ease with which they performed these evolutions awoke in Antony the wonder whether they had not rehearsed them many times, and he involuntarily mentioned this idea to the girl, who gazed, at once fascinated and repelled, as Eve at the Seducer. "I suppose," she returned musingly, "they keep coming to see if it will by any chance bite some one." At this precise moment there pushed through the entrance-flap one who by his distinctive dress showed himself the mechanician of the claret-coloured motorcar. He was as obviously a foreigner, and among the simple rural types that filled the tent his mustachioed personality stood out as startlingly as the great cobra's. Elbowing his way through the little crowd he made himself a place directly beside Antony and the freckled boy, who had attached himself definitely to his patron, and smiled at the young man in easy cosmopolitan contempt of the rustics, conveying at the same time, In a graphic Continental hint of respectful salutation, his duty to the young lady. Antony accepted the smile with a lordly nod, expressive of his familiarity with mechanicians as a class and his appreciation of their place in the general scheme of things, and the two men surveyed the reptile in silence. "I know heem well," volunteered the big fellow in the leather suit, at last. "_C'est Monsieur le Cobra_, zat one. We have take ze car all s'rough 'is country. Wait--I will amuse Mademoiselle. Watch heem!" Lowering his head till the great goggles on his cap fronted the slitted eyes in the cage he emitted a long, piercing hiss, a nerve racking, whistling call. Everyone in the tent jumped backward spasmodically; Antony threw out his arm and pushed the girl behind him before he realised that there was no danger. Upon the great snake the effect of the sudden noise was even more appalling. His ugly flat head appeared suddenly high above his writhing folds; no one saw the movement, for it was too lightning-quick for sight, but it was undoubtedly the fact that his head was no longer pillowed. The symmetrical turban on his forehead puffed and quivered, his cold eye caught every eye in the tent with a swift, horrible glance; and every eye shrank, terrified, from his. "A very unpleasant old party, that snake," Anthony remarked, "I trust our friend won't think it advisable to repeat----" In the middle of his sentence the Frenchman hissed again. The cobra, irritated beyond further endurance, threw its massive weight against the side of the cylindrical cage, which swayed slightly and then dropped forward into the panic-stricken crowd. Antony felt a soft, sighing breath on his neck and caught his companion as she fell; he heard the ribs of her fluffy parasol crack under somebody's stamping feet and braced himself to meet the crushing, struggling rush of the frightened crowd. Through the oaths and shrieks of the nightmare moment piped shrill the voice of the red-headed boy. "Mister, the cover's on! The cover's on tight." Between the grovelling legs of two infuriated men, fighting like demons for leeway from the horrid cage, Antony caught a glimpse of it and realised that it was, indeed, completely fastened. Though it rolled and bounded under the lashings of its excited occupant, it was securely padlocked, and another moment of frenzied struggle for the door-flaps emptied the tent sufficiently to give passage to two angry men who threw a heavy canvas over the cage and righted it, breathing hard. One of these as he rose to his feet met Antony's eyes, shifted his gaze to the fainting girl on his arm, and thrust his hand into the capacious pocket of his flapping linen coat. "Try her with this," he said shortly, "I've got the crowd to settle. Then we'll kill the Frenchy, and then we'll leave!" Antony forced the offered flask into the girl's mouth and dragged her backward through the open flap. As the air reached her she gasped and choked, gulping down the strong spirit nervously, then stiffening herself in his arm and adjusting her hat. "Your town is not dull, at any rate, Mr. Tony!" she observed, and the observation, though a little breathless, was almost perfectly under her control. Antony felt his admiration rise into his eyes, nor did he seek to conceal it. "You are a brave, sensible--for heaven's sake, what's the matter now?" he cried anxiously, staring at a point behind her. Involuntarily she turned and looked in the same direction. The greater part of the crowd had scattered and fled far down the long hill; only a few groups of the most hardy and venturesome among the villagers remained at varying distances from the deserted tent. The most important of these groups now fell apart slightly, disclosing as its centre a large and writhing human figure, prone on the grass. The light box coat, the great goggles, proclaimed this figure the ill-fated mechanician. Even as he sprawled and twisted, the men who surrounded him turned and looked at Antony and his companion, and there was an unpleasant fixity, an unmistakable threatening, in their regard that chilled the young gentleman slightly, though he was utterly at a loss as to its import. Presently one of the men caught his eye and beckoned commandingly. "They seem to want me over there," he said to the girl, with an attempt at unconcern, "perhaps I'd better step over a moment--I'll return immediately. You don't object?" She looked at him with a curious vague smile, then shook her head slowly. This he took for acquiescence to his request, and as she said nothing, he left her and joined the group about the prostrate foreigner. She stared idly at him, but appeared little impressed by his irritated and repeated pantomimic denials of what was, to judge from the faces of the men, a grave charge of some sort. Even when he threw off a hand on his arm and hastened angrily back to her, his countenance dark with angry concern, she did not alter that vague smile, and this vexed him still further, as he began to explain their situation. "I am very, very sorry Miss--Miss Nette," he began, his voice fairly trembling with irritation, "but a most absurd and disgusting complication has arisen. This French fellow swears he has been bitten, and they think he is accusing you of hissing at the snake. I don't think he is really such a cad as all that, but he is practically hysterical, and now I don't believe he knows what he is saying. There is certainly some mark on his wrist and one of the men says that he saw the snake's head touch him, and they have filled him so thoroughly with whisky that he really is not responsible for what he says. I think,"--he marvelled at her lack of fright or emotion of any kind--"indeed, I am sure, that they have merely misunderstood his broken French, but these people are so idiotically obstinate, you know. They've sent for a doctor, and they insist that they hold--me responsible, and that if we don't stay here quietly they'll--in short, I don't see what to do. I'm dreadfully sorry." He paused, ready for reproaches, for tears, for rebellion. But none of these was apparent. "How silly!" said Nette carelessly, glancing a moment at the group of men. Antony felt slightly relieved, but only slightly. "I'm afraid that it can be made quite disagreeable, however," he explained gently, "though it is silly. The fellow deserved to be bitten--if he is, which I'm not at all certain of," he interjected hastily, "and it's none of our business and all his fault; but I've tried everything--bribing and bullying--and we seem to be caught here. I regret it so much--as soon as we can get to my uncle, it will be all right, of course, but nobody here will take a message for me and--and I think perhaps it will make less publicity and fuss, you know, if we go quietly with--with whoever they ask us to and . . ." He ground his teeth--if only he had been alone! He saw himself the butt of the whole college, nick-named for eternity, blamed by his uncle, that bulwark of convention, self-disgraced by reason of utter, crude failure in this, the greatest social crisis of his life. It was maddening, humiliating--and this thick-skinned, feather-headed girl by his side seemed absolutely indifferent to her (to say the least) embarrassing situation. Stealing a glance at her he perceived that she was still smiling. Nay, more, she now directed the smile straight at him, and though its warm brightness cheered him irrationally for a moment, it was for a moment only, and the gloom of their plight shut round him again as he caught the eye of the leader of the hostile group beyond. Suddenly he felt a tug at his coat, turned to see the gleaming red head of the author of all his woes, and seized him by the arm with a confused idea of vengeance. "The doctor's coming, mister, he's nearly got here!" panted this unconscious instrument of Fate, "and I'll bet that foreign man dies! I'll bet he does! He got a terrible bite! Did you see it?" Antony throttled the boy hastily and looked apprehensively at his companion; he had hoped to spare her this. To his surprise she turned to the child and laughed lightly. "Oh, dear, no!" she said, "he won't die, little boy. Chauffeurs don't die--they explode!" Antony had a sense of moral shock. This passed frivolity. Really, the girl was scarcely human; sympathy was wasted on her. "Did you know the sheriff was coming?" the freckled-faced imp pursued, after a mildly contemptuous stare at his patron's incomprehensible friend. "I wouldn't go with him, if I was you. My uncle says he's got no right to make you." "Of course he's got no right," Antony exclaimed angrily, "but what can I do about it? I can't fight eight or ten men, can I? I'd rather go than be carried." "Why don't you jump into that automobile?" the boy asked abruptly. "I would. She goes easy--I saw him start her up before. She'll whizz off, I'll bet you!" The girl turned abruptly. "That's it!" she cried; "let's do that, Mr. Tony!" In a flash he caught the practical possibility of the scheme. Once at his uncle's and the affair was finished. But common sense gave pause. "I can't run the thing," he admitted with vexation, "I don't know the first thing about them." "Oh, that's nothing--they run themselves!" she said competently, "I'm used to them. Hurry--here comes a man, now!" It was indeed the fact that a burly, self-satisfied creature was advancing towards them, and Antony's blood boiled at the pompous rustic's meaning glance. "Come, come, Mr. Tony!" she urged excitedly. "Can you run?" he muttered desperately, "it's no good if you can't, you know." "Of course I can," she replied, and he noted how different the tones of her voice had grown, how much richer and more alluring. "I can beat you to the car! Come!" The freckled boy plucked at his coat urgingly, and in a moment, as one flees in dreams, he was dashing down the slight slope that led to the little tableland at the head of the steeper hill where the huge car stood, pointed towards freedom. A hoarse, suety cry issued from the constable, answered by the farther group; a number of men rushed hastily in their direction, but no one seemed to realise the object of their flight and the way was left clear. The red-headed boy bounded beside them, whooping madly; Nette's pale skirt flashed valiantly a trifle ahead of them; the loose stones rolled under their flying feet. With a light bound the girl dropped on the wide leather seat, and Antony tumbled in after her, an agile village boy almost at his heels. Even as it was, this boy would have seized him had not the freckled arbiter of their destinies dexterously tripped him, grinning derisively at his downfall as he dashed to the side of the car and panted: "Let her go, mister, let her go!" Mechanically Antony grasped the steering wheel as he had seen others grasp it and turned to his companion. But she had toppled breathless against his shoulder and huddled there motionless. He stared helplessly at the approaching pursuit--his head whirled. "Here, I'll pull it!" cried the red-headed urchin and fumbled mysteriously at Antony's feet. A low, raucous buzzing began forthwith, and as three men dashed up to them triumphantly, the great car shuddered a moment and lurched down the hill, gathering speed with every quarter-second. There flashed before Antony's eyes a quick panorama of the extended Frenchman, the kneeling doctor, the threatening men; his ears resounded with the gleeful cackle of that freckled Fate who had launched them, and then he faced an empty country road, silent but for the whirring of their chariot. He turned his face to the girl, unconsciously moving the simple steering apparatus so as to keep the car in the middle of the road, while he spoke. "May I trouble you to take this now?" he said politely. "Your knowledge of this business has undoubtedly saved you a great deal of mortifying bother and delay." She stiffened sensibly beside him, and in her voice he caught no hint of the momentary rich abandon that he had noticed at the beginning of their flight, for she spoke with the cool and airy dryness of their first meeting. "My knowledge?" she repeated, with an obviously sincere surprise, "my knowledge? What do you mean? Why should I take it? I never handled a car in my life!" Antony's fingers stiffened and grew damp against the wheel. For a few sick seconds he sat utterly silent, stunned and incredulous, not knowing what he did, while his hands, with a strange muscular memory all their own of the days when he had propelled a little mechanical velocipede steered by a wheel, kept the whirring vehicle in the centre of the long, empty road. "Good heavens!" he muttered at last, "I thought you told me--you certainly said--I understood you--oh, the devil!" "Put your foot on something!" Nette cried feverishly; "that's the way they do! It can't be hard to stop it for just a moment. Put your foot----" With that she stamped her little white shoe on a round metal disc projecting like a toadstool from the floor in front of her, and immediately, whether from that cause alone, or because Antony unwittingly complicated the manoeuvre by some untoward pressure of knee or wrist, the car, with a tremendous jerk, began to revolve backward upon itself in a dizzy swoop. A moment more had seen them in the deep ditch beside the road, had not Antony dislodged her foot with an ungraceful but timely kick and allowed the mechanism to right itself and lumber into its course again. "For God's sake, sit still!" he shouted hoarsely. "Is it possible you do not understand you are in danger? Do you wish to kill or maim us both before it is necessary? I order you to sit perfectly quiet until I tell you to jump!" "Very well," she replied meekly, with a short, frightened intake of the breath, and they sped along. THE FLIGHT II. THE FLIGHT ANTONY had now--so wonderfully resilient is youth--won sufficient confidence in himself to realise that there was yet a chance of bringing this dangerous expedition to some sort of successful issue, if fate should prosper them with a straight and empty road. They were not, fortunately, travelling at any tremendous rate of speed; though jumping from the car would have been extremely unwise, it remained a possibility, at least, and if, as was fairly probable, the car had already travelled a considerable distance, its motive power would become exhausted sooner or later and they could dismount safely. In a few curt sentences he explained the situation, as it appeared to him, to his companion. "I must beg you to believe," he concluded, "that I somehow got a distinct impression of your telling me that you were used to managing these things--I cannot understand how I could have made such a mistake. I am particular in repeating this, because in case of accident--and it would be the merest idiocy to deny that a very grave accident is quite likely to happen at any moment--I do not want you to think too hardly of me. But of course your realise that unless I had been quite certain of your ability I should never have attempted such a foolhardy thing." She made no answer, and at the risk of losing his straight course he stole a rapid glance at her. To his surprise she was crimson with what was obvious, even to his fleeting view, as embarrassment. Her fingers twisted nervously; the tears that suffused her eyes were certainly not tears of grief or fright. She bit furiously at her under lip, and began more than one sentence that faltered away into confusion. Indeed, they had triumphantly climbed and descended a hill that sent Antony's heart into his throat before she succeeded in the task she evidently loathed but had as evidently determined to fulfil. "Mr.--Mr. Tony," she began suddenly, alarmed in her turn at their increased speed as they went down the hill, "in case, as you say, anything should happen, I must tell you something. When I said that about--about my running the car perfectly well----" "You didn't, of course, put it in that way," he interjected, as she seemed unable to go on. "Oh, didn't I?" she asked. "I thought you said I did." "You said that they ran themselves, you remember, and that you were used to them," he reminded her, "and I took that to mean----" "Oh, that's what I said," she repeated, thoughtfully. "Don't you know what you said?" he demanded, a spasm of terror catching him and quickening his heart-beat as a great waggon loomed into sight horribly near them. Despairingly he glanced at the shining metal paraphernalia that encompassed him--his eye fell upon an unmistakable brass horn at his right, terminating in a rubber bulb. This could be but one thing, and cautiously loosening one clammy hand from the wheel, he pressed the bulb nervously. A loud, harsh cry from its brazen throat relieved him inexpressibly and sent a glow of confidence through him. He repeated the pressure, the driver of the cart looked leisurely around, and with a scowl drew off to one side of the road. Antony's blood resumed its normal pace, and as the course was now clear for a moment, anyway, he repeated his question: "Don't you know what you said?" The trees, the full brooks, the grazing cattle, unrolled behind them like a painted ribbon for several seconds before she answered. At length his ear caught a faint, short murmur. "N--no." "Why not?" he demanded briefly. "I would rather not tell you," she replied with a return of her old spirit. "You must tell me," he said angrily. "Here come two carriages--oh, why did I never notice how they stopped these things? Reach under my arms and squeeze that horn--quick!" The carriages separated and he went, quaking, between them. "Now, go on--this luck can hardly last," he warned her. "I intend to know for how much of this nightmare I am responsible." "You are responsible for all of it, then," she cried recklessly. "You had not the slightest excuse for making me drink all that nasty, burning stuff!" Regardless of his wheel, Antony turned and stared at her, and only her shriek of terror saved them from the stone wall that bordered a curve in the road. "You mean you were----" "If you dare to say it I shall jump!" she interrupted, plucking nervously at her skirt, and he saw that she was quite capable of carrying out the threat. "But--but you drank it yourself--I thought you knew----" he stammered. "It was down in my throat--I couldn't help it--I pushed it away as soon as I could--I never tasted anything but champagne and sherry and I thought they were all the same, those things. . ." She was on the point of tears now, and even in his keen sense of danger Antony was conscious of a gratified consciousness of that calm masculine superiority so long denied him. "I see, I see," he said hastily. "I am very sorry. I did the best I could at the time: I am not accustomed to resuscitating fainting young ladies and I rather lost my head. I assure you that I assume all the blame." "I think you had better," she replied vindictively, and Antony's conscious magnanimity collapsed instantly into an intense irritation. "I must beg you to observe," he said, somewhat jerkily, as they bounced up and down the irregularities of a rough country road, "that I am hardly responsible, even with the best will in the world, for your inability to consume five or six swallows of bad whisky without--without----" in a panic of terror as her hands flew to her skirts and her knees stiffened, he concluded impotently, "oh, have it any way you like! It's all my fault. Now, for heaven's sake, sit still and listen to me. Do you or do you not know anything whatever about motor cars? I ask because it is absolutely necessary," he added hastily. "I know nothing whatever about them," she returned with an icy finality, an air of uninterested irresponsibility, that maddened even while it appalled him. "Very good; neither do I," he said. "We are, as you see, on a long, empty, practically uninhabited country road. This is extremely fortunate for us, but it will not last much longer, for we are coming into Huntersville, which was, on the occasion when I last went through it in one of these ungodly machines, full of babies, chickens, unhitched horses, and large, disagreeable dogs. Rather than go through Huntersville I would run this thing at a tree, now. If I could estimate the force of the shock, I'd do it anyway. But I cannot estimate it, and I do not want to frighten you to death. Besides, it might send the thing backward. The same reasoning applies to a steep bank. Now, as I remember it, there is a wild sort of road that turns off to the left very soon and goes up a long hill somewhere or other. I haven't the least idea where, but it must lead to something. My idea would be to go up that road and try to wear the machinery out on it. If it runs into a field, it can't be helped. At any rate, I think there is less risk. Are you willing to try it?" His sincere and serious manner had its effect and she answered simply, "Anything that you think is best, of course. But could we not experiment a little, and try to stop it? It cannot be anything very complicated, since it has to be done so often." "No, no, no!" Antony cried nervously, "not while I'm in my right mind! It may seem foolish to you," he continued more stiffly, "but I have reached my limit of experiment. I--I know nothing of any kind of machinery--I loathe it. As soon as I began anything of that sort, my nerve would go. You remember the result when you stamped on that brass knob? Well, I admit that I am not equal to a repetition, to be quite frank." "I thought men always understood machinery," she murmured impatiently. "All the men I know are quite clever at it." Now, curiously enough, this pettish and really inexcusable fling did not produce its presumable effect upon Antony. Whether he felt that it was partly justified and that he was really in some sort unworthy of his sex, or whether the actuality of their pressing danger rendered him immune as regards such flighty stabs, is not known, but it remains a fact that he merely pursed his lips indulgently and spoke as follows: "You are indeed fortunate in your acquaintance. I regret that practice in steering horses, sail boats, bob sleds and to a certain small extent, dirigible balloons, has left me little leisure--and less inclination--for these evil-smelling devil-waggons. Neither the steamfitter nor the engineer has ever appealed to me----" He ceased abruptly, and as his voice died out she looked questioningly at him, for even her slight acquaintance with the young gentleman had taught her that he was not one to leave a well-planned sentence incomplete from choice. "What is it?" she asked breathlessly. "That wild road is on the other side of Huntersville!" he said, with an utter absence
{'title': "An Idyll of All Fools' Day by Josephine Daskam Bacon", 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}