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Page 6
"You are not," said his sister; "I will not desert Mr.
Winthrop, and you cannot desert me."
Brother Sam sighed, and seated himself on a rock.
"Do you think, Billy," he asked, "you can get us to Cambridge
in time for next year's game?"
The car limped into Stamford, and while it went into drydock
at the garage, Brother Sam fled to the railroad station, where
he learned that for the next two hours no train that
recognized New Haven spoke to Stamford.
"That being so," said Winthrop, "while we are waiting for the
car, we had better get a quick lunch now, and then push on."
"Push," exclaimed Brother Sam darkly, "is what we are likely
to do."
After behaving with perfect propriety for half an hour, just
outside of Bridgeport the Scarlet Car came to a slow and
sullen stop, and once more the owner and the chauffeur hid
their shame beneath it, and attacked its vitals. Twenty
minutes later, while they still were at work, there approached
from Bridgeport a young man in a buggy. When he saw the mass
of college colors on the Scarlet Car, he pulled his horse down
to a walk, and as he passed raised his hat.
"At the end of the first half," he said, "the score was a
tie."
"Don't mention it," said Brother Sam.
"Now," he cried, "we've got to turn back, and make for New
York. If we start quick, we may get there ahead of the last
car to leave New Haven."
"I am going to New Haven, and in this car," declared his
sister. "I must go--to meet Ernest."
"If Ernest has as much sense as he showed this morning,"
returned her affectionate brother, "Ernest will go to his
Pullman and stay there. As I told you, the only sure way to
get anywhere is by railroad train."
When they passed through Bridgeport it was so late that the
electric lights of Fairview Avenue were just beginning to
sputter and glow in the twilight, and as they came along the
shore road into New Haven, the first car out of New Haven in
the race back to New York leaped at them with siren shrieks of
warning, and dancing, dazzling eyes. It passed like a thing
driven by the Furies; and before the Scarlet Car could swing
back into what had been an empty road, in swift pursuit of the
first came many more cars, with blinding searchlights, with a
roar of throbbing, thrashing engines, flying pebbles, and
whirling wheels. And behind these, stretching for a twisted
mile, came hundreds of others; until the road was aflame with
flashing Will-o'-the-wisps, dancing fireballs, and long,
shifting shafts of light.
Miss Forbes sat in front, beside Winthrop, and it pleased her
to imagine, as they bent forward, peering into the night, that
together they were facing so many fiery dragons, speeding to
give them battle, to grind them under their wheels. She felt
the elation of great speed, of imminent danger. Her blood
tingled with the air from the wind-swept harbor, with the rush
of the great engines, as by a handbreadth they plunged past
her. She knew they were driven by men and half-grown boys,
joyous with victory, piqued by defeat, reckless by one touch
too much of liquor, and that the young man at her side was
driving, not only for himself, but for them.
Each fraction of a second a dazzling light blinded him, and he
swerved to let the monster, with a hoarse, bellowing roar,
pass by, and then again swept his car into the road. And each
time for greater confidence she glanced up into his face.
Throughout the mishaps of the day he had been deeply concerned
for her comfort, sorry for her disappointment, under Brother
Sam's indignant ironies patient, and at all times gentle and
considerate. Now, in the light from the onrushing cars, she
noted his alert, laughing eyes, the broad shoulders bent
across the wheel, the lips smiling with excitement and in the
joy of controlling, with a turn of the wrist, a power equal to
sixty galloping horses. She found in his face much comfort.
And in the fact that for the moment her safety lay in his
hands, a sense of pleasure. That this was her feeling puzzled
and disturbed her, for to Ernest Peabody it seemed, in some
way, disloyal. And yet there it was. Of a certainty, there
was the secret pleasure in the thought that if they escaped
unhurt from the trap in which they found themselves, it would
be due to him. To herself she argued that if the chauffeur
were driving, her feeling would be the same, that it was the
nerve, the skill, and the coolness, not the man, that moved
her admiration. But in her heart she knew it would not be the
same.
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