The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Somebody had opened one of the doors about six inches. That made a path of moonlight across the board floor.

  "I dunno why they closed the barn doors tonight," said the farmer from the opening "mostly we leave 'em open. Now, gentlemen, if you want water for your automobile there's a pail inside the door here, and the pump's round the corner in the pig yard."

  Fred clutched my arm. The moonlight path was slowly widening as the door swung open. "Quick!" he said; and the next minute I was climbing a ladder to the haymow, with Ferd at my heels.

  One thing saved us and one only: the farmer did not come inside to see the car; and whoever did come clearly thought it belonged to the place and never even glanced at it. As for us we lay face down in that awful haymow with openings in the hay big enough to fall through, and watched and listened. I shall never be the same person again after that experience.

  Whenever I get cocky, as Day would say, and reflect on my own virtues, and how few things I do that any one could find fault with, not playing bridge for more than two and a half cents a point, and stopping a flirtation before it reaches any sort of gossipy stage, I think of Ferd and myself in that awful haymow, with a man below searching round that miserable machine for a pail, and Ferd oozing a slow drip-drip on the floor below that was enough to give us away like the blood dropping from the ceiling in that play of David Belasco's.

  There was one awful moment before it was all over, when the farmer had gone back to bed and the man returned the pail. The others were all in their machine, yelling to be off.

  "They've had time to be gone twenty miles," one of them snarled. "The next time we see them, shoot at their tires. It's the only way."

  The man with the pail stood in the doorway and glanced in.

  "Pipe the car!" he said. "The farmers are the only folks with real money these days."

  He came in with the pail and one of the drops from Ferd's clothes hit him directly on top of the head! I heard it spat! He stopped as if he had been shot and looked up. I closed my eyes and waited for the end; but nothing happened. He put away the pail and hurried out, and the machine went on.

  It was Ferd who spoke first. He raised himself on an elbow and listened. Then he drew a long breath, as if he had not breathed for an hour.

  "Well," he said, "I may not be a thief and a rob ber, as well as an abductor of young married women, but I feel like one." He looked about the haymow, and at me, crumpled in my corner. "Really, you know," he said, "this sort of thing isn't done, Fanny."

  "If it only doesn't get into the papers!" I wailed.

  "And if only Day doesn't hear of it! Ferd, I must look a mess."

  He glanced at me. The moonlight was coming through a window.

  "You do look rather frowzy," he said.

  I think, if there is a psychological moment for such things, that was the moment. My affair, mild as it was, was dead from that instant. Day would never have said such a thing. Day never takes his irritation out on me; the worse I look the more cer tain Day is to reassure me. For instance, Day never says that to him I am as pretty as the day he first met me. He says that I am prettier than I ever was, and that every one thinks so. Day has a positive talent for being married.

  Well, we sat in the haymow and quarrelled. We thought it best to let them go on, give up the search and go back to the island for their women compan ions, before venturing out. So we sat and fought.

  "It was stupid," I said, "to have stolen the boat and not borrowed it." ^

  "I'd have had to explain you," said Ferd.

  "You need not have mentioned me. What is a lie for, if not for such an emergency? Couldn't you have found that boatman? That would have explained everything."

  "I couldn't find the boatman."

  "Did you try?"

  He turned sulky.

  "I did my best," he said. "I risked my life. I'll probably have a sick spell as it is. I've got a chill. How did I know the infernal boat had champagne in it?"

  I sat and thought. A lot of things came to me that I had not thought of before, such as Ferd having got up the party and put me in my present position, and having been a stupid in more ways than one. And what if Day had got home unexpectedly? I said this to Ferd.

  "Why didn't you think of that sooner?" he demanded brutally.

  "What time is it?" I asked, as sweetly as I could.

  He held his watch up in the moonlight, but of course it was full of water and not running. His matches and cigarettes were wet, too, and he grew more beastly every minute.

  "Ferd," I said finally, "I'm afraid lately you've been thinking that I that I cared for you. It was my fault. I let you think so. I don't, really. I only care for one man and I think you ought to know it. I've been a shameless flirt. That's all."

  Instead of being downcast, he rather brightened up at that remark.

  "You'll break my heart if you say that," he said, trying not to be too cheerful.

  "There's only one man for me!" I said firmly.

  "It's not fashionable, but it's very comforting. It's Day."

  "I'll never be the same man again, Fanny," he replied. "Am I not to call you up, or send you flowers, or look forward to seeing you at the Country Club on Sunday afternoons? Is life to lose all its joy?"

  "Oh, we'll have to meet, of course," I said largely; "but the other is off for good, Ferd! I find I can't stand too much of you. You're too heady."

  Well, he was almost blithe over it, and sat talking about Ida, and what a trump she was about the time he lost so much on copper, and the way she came home from Nice when he had typhoid. It, was stupid; but if you can understand me it seemed to put a cachet of respectability on our position. The more we talked about Day and Ida, the more we felt that the tongue of scandal could never touch us. We made a pact of platonic friendship, too, and shook hands on it; and it shows how dead the old affair was when Ferd never even kissed my hand.

  About an hour afterward the other car went back toward the island and we got up stiffly and crawled down the ladder. Ferd had had a nap, and he slept with his mouth open!

  We slipped out of the barn in the moonlight and reconnoitered. There was no one in sight and the house across the road was dark. Ferd took off the license plates and put them under one of the seat cushions and I looked for the short circuit. I found it at last, and Ferd fixed it with his pen-knife. Then he threw the doors open and we backed into the road. The last thing I remember is that as we started off a window was raised in the farmhouse and somebody yelled after us to stop.

  "Damnation!" said Ferd between his teeth. "He'll telephone ahead and they'll cut us off!"

  "We needn't stick to the main road. We can go back through the country."

  We found a lane leading off half a mile farther along and I turned into it. It was rough, but its very condition argued for safety. As Ferd said, no one in his sane mind would choose such a road. The secret of the lane came out a mile or so farther on, however, when it came to an end in a barnyard. It was a blow, really. We did not dare to go back and we could not possibly go ahead.

  "I can go up to the house and ask about the road," Ferd said. "The old stage road ought to be round here somewhere. If we can't find it there's nothing to do but to walk, Fan."

  "I can't walk," I said, "and I won't walk. I'm in my stocking feet. I'm through. Let's just go back and get arrested and have it over. I can't stand much more."

  "It's only twelve miles or so to town."

  "I couldn't walk twelve miles to escape hanging!"

  Ferd crawled out of the car and through a pig yard. I heard the pigs squealing. And then for five awful minutes I heard nothing except his distant knock and muffled voices. Then there was a silence, and out of it came Ferd headlong. He fell over the fence and landed in the mud beside the car.

  "Quick!" he panted. "Turn round and get back to the main road. They've got him on the telephone, and in another minute--"

  Did you ever try to turn an automobile in a panic and a small barnyard, with broken mowing ma
chines and old wagons everywhere--I just could not do it. I got part way round, with Ferd begging me for Heaven's sake to get some speed on, when we heard people coming from the house on a run, and a woman yelling from a window that she could see us and to shoot quick.

  There was a field next the barnyard a pasture, I suppose and the bars were down that led into it. I just headed the car for it and shut my eyes. Then we were shooting forward in a series of awful bumps, with Ferd holding on with both hands, and the noise behind was dying away.

  I do not recall the details of that part of the trip. Ferd says we went through two creeks and a small woods, and entirely through and over a barbed-wire fence, which was probably where we got our punctures. However that may be, in five minutes or so we drew up just inside a fence on the other side of which was a road. And we had two flat tires.

  Ferd tried to take the fence down, but he could not; so I did the only thing I could think of, and butted it down with the car. The glass in the lamps was smashed, but we were too far gone by that time to care. I had just one thought; if the gas only held out!

  Ferd was quite sure he knew the way to town, but it turned out he did not. For hours and hours we bumped along on two tires and two rims, until my shoulders felt torn from their sockets. The worst of it was the noise we made. Every now and then we passed a farmhouse where the lights were going and everybody had been roused for the automobile thieves; and, instead of slipping past, we bumped by like a circus parade with a calliope.

  The moon was gone by that time; and, our lamps being broken, more than once we left the road entirely and rolled merrily along in a field until we brought up against something. And, of course, we met a car. We heard it coming, but there was nothing to do but bump along. It was a limousine, and it hailed us and drew up so we could not pass.

  "In trouble?" a man called.

  "Nothing serious," Ferd said peevishly.

  "Glad to give you a hand. You're cutting your tires to bits."

  "No, thanks."

  "I can take you back to town if you like."

  It was Bill Henderson, Jane's husband, on his way from the club to his mother's in the country! I could not even breathe. Ferd knew it too, that minute.

  "We are getting along all right," he snapped, trying to disguise his voice. "If you'll get your car out of the way--"

  "Oh, all right, Ferd, old chap!" said Bill, and signalled his man to go on.

  We sat as if petrified. Bill was Ida's cousin! The way of the transgressor is hard; though why one should have to lose a reputation built up by years of careful living just for one silly indiscretion is what gets me. I put a hand on Ferd's arm.

  "I'm gone!" I waited. "It will be all over town to-morrow. Bill's the worst old gossip. Oh, Ferd!"

  "He didn't see you," Ferd snapped. "For goodness' sake, Fan, shut up! This is my mess. There isn't any limit to the things he can say about me."

  We bumped on a little farther. I was crying, I'll admit; my head ached and my spine was jarred numb.

  "You'll have to do one thing," he said at last. "You'll have to tell Ida it was you. Heaven knows what she'll think."

  "I'll die first!" I snapped.

  Well, we got into town finally and it was three-thirty by the first clock we saw. Ferd got out and looked at the car, and then climbed in again.

  "Better get along a few blocks and then leave it," he said. "It looks something fierce, and so do we."

  And at that instant, before I could even start the engine, we were arrested for stealing the miserable thing!

  "There is some mistake," Ferd said loftily, but looking green in the electric light. "This is Mrs. Day Illington and this is her own machine."

  "Are you Mr. Illington?'

  "Yes!" said Ferd.

  The man looked very strange, as well he might, considering well, considering the facts that came out later.

  "I'll have to trouble you to come with me," he said, politely enough. "It will be only a short delay and we'll get this straightened out. But a car answering this description was stolen out the road a few miles and headed toward town, and there's a reward offered."

  He stood on the step and I drove to the station house. I had it fixed in my own mind to go home and write a letter to Day confessing all, and then pack a few things and hide my wretched self for the rest of my life. I even planned what to take; my jewelry and my checkbook, and only a dinner dress or two; and I wrote the letter to Day in my mind and one to Ida, telling her it was only a lark, but it had gone wrong without any fault of mine. Then we drew up at the station.

  Ferd got out and went in, and the officer turned on the pavement to help me out. But it was my chance and I took it; I just threw on the gas full and shot ahead down the street. He yelled after me and then began shooting. One bullet must have struck the good rear tire, for it collapsed and almost turned the car round. But I was desperate. I never looked back. I just drove for all I was worth down the street to its end, and after that down other streets, and still others. All the time I was saying I would rather die, and going round corners on two wheels, or one wheel and a rim.

  Finally I got into a part of town I knew and pulled up half a block from my own house. I recall that and leaving the engine still going, and that hideous nightmare of a machine standing by the curb, with its tires lying out on the road in ribbons and its lamps smashed; and I remember going up the steps and finding the hall door unlocked. Then I recall nothing more for a while. I fainted.

  It was Martha, one of the housemaids, who found me, I believe, as she was going out to early mass. They got me upstairs to bed and there was no use trying to run away that night; I could hardly stand. They got me some hot tea and a doctor and a trained nurse, and in the morning before breakfast Day came back. He tiptoed into my room and tried to kiss me, looking awfully frightened; but I would not let him.

  "Send the nurse out!" I whispered. So he did; and still I would not let him kiss me. "Not until I've told you something," I said feebly. "You may not care to when you've heard it all."

  He looked so big and so dependable and so wor ried that I could have screamed; but I had to tell him. Bill Henderson might have recognised me; and Ferd, as like as not, would be goose enough to tell Ida the whole story. And, anyhow, there's nothing like perfect honesty between husband and wife.

  "Day," I said tremulously, "I'm a felon a thief! I--I stole a lot of champagne last night and an automobile, and broke down fences, and almost ran over a policeman, and was arrested or Ferd was Day, don't look like that!" For his face was terrible. He had gone quite white.

  "You!" he said.

  "Get up and stand by the window, looking out," I implored him. "I can tell you better if I can't see your eyes."

  So he did and I told him the whole thing. He never moved, and I kept getting more and more frightened. It sounded worse, somehow, when I told it. When I had finished he did not come to me as I had hoped. He said:

  "I'd like a few minutes to get used to it, Fan. I'll go out and walk about a bit. It's it's just a little hard to grasp, all at once."

  So he went out, and I lay and cried into my pillow; but when he nurse had brought me some tea and raised the shades, and the sun came in, I felt a little better. He had not been noisy, anyhow; and in time perhaps he would forgive me, though probably he would never really trust me again. I got up in a chair and had my hair tied with a ribbon and my nails done, and put on my new negligee with lace sleeves; and I felt pretty well, considering.

  At nine o'clock the policeman on the beat asked to see me. I sent down word that I was indisposed; but he said it was urgent and would only take a moment. The nurse put a blanket over my knees and a pillow behind me, and the officer came in. I was frightened; but after all my only real fear had been Day, and now that he knew, Fate could hardly have a fresh blow. But it had, all right.

  "Sorry to disturb you, ma'am," said the officer, "but it's about your car."

  "Yes?" My lips were trembling.

  "It's been found; I found
it and only a block or so away, ma'am; but it's in bad shape lamps smashed and tires chewed to ribbons. It's a sight, for sure!"

  "But that's not my car!" I exclaimed, forgetting caution.

  "I guess there's no mistake about it, ma'am. Those fellows that stole it, up the river, must have climbed fences with it."

  "How do you know it is my car?" I was absolutely bewildered.

  "These are your license plates, aren't they? I found them under the seat."

  They were my license plates!

  Day came in shortly after and tiptoed into the room. The nurse was out. He came over to me and stooped down.

  "It took me a little by surprise, honey," he said; "but that's over now. You've been foolish, but you've had your lesson. Let's kiss and be friends again."

  "Just a moment, Day," I said calmly. "Have you had your lesson?"

  "Just what do you mean?"

  He followed my eyes to the table and the license plates were there. He actually paled.

  "Where did you get them?"

  "Under the seat of the car Ferd and I stole last night at Devil's Island my car, which you said was being overhauled!"

  He drew a long breath. Then he got down on his knees and put his head in my lap.

  "I've had my lesson honest, honey!" he said. "Some darned fool suggested a picnic on one of those islands mixed couples and I was ass enough to agree. I took Ida Jackson. We didn't have any picnic--the champagne was stolen--"

  "Ferd and I--" I put in.

  "And then my car went--"

  "My car and I took it."

  "And we spent all the evening and part of the night chasing the thing for fear you'd hear of it!" He looked up at me and there were dark circles round his eyes. "I haven't been to bed at all, honey," he said humbly. "It's been a rotten night! I've had enough affinity for the rest of my life. There's nobody like you!"

  I would not kiss him just then, but I let him lie down on my couch and hold my hand until he dropped asleep. Somehow the words of Ferd's silly card kept running through my head:

  Another woman now and then

  Is relished by the best of men.

  My little affair with Ferd had seemed harmless enough and the picnic had been a lark; but Day and Ida had had a picnic and it had been a lark--only the shoe was on the other foot, and it hurt!