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Page 60
"Dicky," said I after a time, "if it weren't for the candle I believe I
should be frightened."
"It's about the most parsimonious style of candle I've ever seen,"
replied Dicky, "but it would give a little more light if it were
trimmed." And he opened his pocket-knife.
"Be very careful," I begged, and Dicky said "Rather!"
"Did you ever notice," he asked, "that you can touch flame all right if
you are only quick enough? Now, see me take the top off that candle." If
Dicky had a fault it was a tendency to boastfulness. He took the lighted
wick between his thumb and his knife-blade, and skilfully scooped the
top off. It blazed for two seconds on the edge of the blade--just long
enough to show us that all the flame had come with it. Then it went out,
and in the darkness at my side I heard a scuffling among waistcoat
pockets, and a groan.
"No matches?" I asked in despair.
"Left 'em in my light overcoat pockets, Mamie. I'm a bigger ass
than--than Mafferton."
"You are," I said with decision. "No Englishman goes anywhere without
his light overcoat. What have you done with yours?"
"Left it in the carriage," replied Dick humbly.
"That shows," said I bitterly, "how little you have learned in England.
Propriety in connection with you is evidently like water and a duck's
back. An intelligent person would have acquired the light overcoat
principle in three days, and never have gone out without it afterward."
"Oh, go on!" replied Dick fiercely. "Go on. I don't mind. I'm not so
stuck on myself as I was. But if we've got to die together you might as
well forgive me. You'll have to do it at the last moment, you know."
"I suppose you have begun to review your past life," I said grimly, "and
that's why you are using so much American slang."
Then, as Dicky was again holding my hands, I maintained a dignified
silence. You cannot possibly quarrel with a person who is holding your
hand, no matter how you feel.
"There's only one thing that consoles me in connection with those
matches," Dicky mentioned after a time. "They were French ones."
"I don't know what that has to do with it," I said.
"That's because you don't smoke," Dicky replied. And I had not the heart
to pursue the inquiry. Time went on, black and silent, as it had been
doing down there for sixteen centuries. We stopped arguing about why
they didn't come to look for us, each privately wondering if it was
possible that we had strayed too ingeniously ever to be found. We talked
of many things to try to keep up our spirits, the conviction of the _St.
James's Gazette_ that American young ladies live largely upon
chewing-gum, and other topics far removed from our surroundings, but the
effort was not altogether successful. Dicky had just permitted himself
to make a reference to his mother in Chicago when a sound behind us made
us both start violently, and then cheered us immensely--a snore from
Mrs. Portheris within the tomb. It was not, happily, a single accidental
snore, but the forerunner of a regular series, and we hung upon them as
they issued, comforted and supported. We were vaguely aware that we
could have no better defence against disembodied Early Christians, when,
in the course of an hour, Mrs. Portheris sat up suddenly among the bones
of the original occupant and asked what time it was. We felt a pang of
regret at losing it.
After the first moment or two that lady realized the situation
completely. "I suppose," she said, "we have been down here about two
days. I am quite faint with hunger. I have often read that candles,
under these terrible circumstances, are sustaining. What a good thing we
have got the candles."
Dicky squeezed my hand nervously, but our chaperone had slept off the
eucalyptus and had no longer one cannibal thought.
"I don't think it is time for candles yet," he said reassuringly. "You
have been asleep, you know, Mrs. Portheris."
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