Part 30 (1/2)

She was late to her meeting with Davidge--not unintentionally. He was waiting on the steps of the hotel, smoking, when she drove up in the car she had bought for her Motor Corps work.

He said what she hoped he would say:

”I didn't know you drove so well.”

She quoted a popular phrase: ”'You don't know the half of it, dearie.'

Hop in, and I'll show you.”

He thought of Lady Clifton-Wyatt, and Marie Louise knew he thought of her. But he was not hero or coward enough to tell a woman that he had an engagement with another woman. She pretended to have forgotten that he had told her, though she could think of little else. She whisked round the corner of I Street, or Eye Street, and thence up Sixteenth Street, fast and far.

She was amazed at her own audacity, and Davidge could not make her out. She had a scared look that puzzled him. She was really thinking that she was the most unconscionable kidnapper that ever ran off with some other body's child. He could hardly dun her for the money, and she had apparently forgotten it again.

They were well to the north when she said:

”Do you know Rock Creek Park?”

”No, I've never been in it.”

”Would you like a glimpse? I think it's the prettiest park in the world.”

She looked at her watch with that twist of the wrist now becoming almost universal and gasped:

”Oh, dear! I must turn back. But it's just about as short to go through the park. I mustn't make you late to Lady Clifton-Wyatt's tea.”

He could find absolutely nothing to say to that except, ”It's mighty pretty along here.” She turned into Blagdon Road and coasted down the long, many-turning dark glade. At the end she failed to steer to the south. The creek itself crossed the road. She drove the car straight through its lilting waters. There was exhilaration in the splas.h.i.+ng charge across the ford. Then the road wound along the bank, curling and writhing with it gracefully through thick forests, over bridges and once more right through the bright flood. The creek scrambling among its piled-up boulders was too gay to suggest any amorous mood, and Marie Louise did not quite dare to drive the car down to the water's edge at any of the little green plateaus where picnics were being celebrated on the gra.s.s.

”I always lose my way in this park,” she said. ”I expect I'm lost now.”

She began to regret Davidge's approaching absence, with a strange loneliness. He was becoming tenderly necessary to her. She sighed, hardly meaning to speak aloud, ”Too bad you're going away so soon.”

He was startled to find that his departure meant something to her. He spoke with an affectionate rea.s.surance.

She stopped the car on a lofty plateau where several ladies and gentlemen were exercising their horses at hurdle-jumping. The elan of rush, plunge and recovery could not excite Mamise now.

”I'll tell you what we'll do. The next time I come to Was.h.i.+ngton you drive me over to my s.h.i.+pyard and I'll show you the new boat and the new yard for the rest of the flock.”

”That would be glorious. I should like to know something about s.h.i.+ps.”

”I can teach you all I know in a little while.”

”You know all there is to know, don't you?”

”Lord help us, I should say not! I knew a little about the old methods, but they're all done away with. The fabricated s.h.i.+p is an absolute novelty. The old lines are gone, and the old methods. What few s.h.i.+p-builders we had are trying to forget what they know.

Everybody is green. We had to find out for ourselves and pa.s.s it along to the foremen, and they hand it out to the laborers.

”The whole art is in a confusion. There is going to be a ghastly lot of mistakes and waste and scandal, but if we win out there'll be such a cloudburst that the Germans will think it's raining s.h.i.+ps. Niagara Falls will be nothing to the cascade of iron hulls going overboard.

Von Tirpitz with his ruthless policy will be like the old woman who tried to sweep the tide back with a broom.”

He grew so fervent in his vision of the new creation that he hardly saw the riders as they stormed the hurdles. Marie Louise took fire from his glow and forgot the petty motive that had impelled her to bring him to this place. Suddenly he realized how shamelessly eloquent he had been, and subsided with a slump.