CHAPTER XIIFIRST COMPLICATIONS
“The Elms” school for girls consisted of a trio of high-pillared Colonial buildings on the main street of Mount Hadley, Massachusetts. They stood behind lofty arches of towering trees that were old when Washington passed through to inspect Ticonderoga.
Mount Hadley had an atmosphere possessed by many scholastic, hilltop New England towns,—wide-verandahed, leisurely, sharply colored, exclusive. From its diminutive brownstone Memorial library to its chaste white churches, it expressed simplicity, asceticism, grace and dignified charm. The nasturtium-flavored individuality of the town stood in clearly defined contrast to the clash and clatter of muddy-guttered, smoky-scented, foreign-populated paper cities farther down the Connecticut. A ninety-minute suburban trolley service connected it with Springfield, Massachusetts.
Madelaine Theddon was entering her second year at “The Elms” when, upon emerging from the college store-and-postoffice early one September evening, she saw a motor-car draw to the near-by curb and a man leap out. He blocked her way with easy self-confidence. She recognized Gordon Ruggles.
Physically, Gordon seemed to have attained maturity in a year. He had gained in height at an expense of girth. His auto togs made him look still taller and older. But his twisted front tooth was as prominent and his eyelid flopped as badly as ever.
“Hello, Madge!” he cried. “Still sore?”
“I’ve never been ‘sore’ at you, Gordon. That’s a coarse and unkind thing to say!”
“Well, you swallowed all the guff Aunt Grace handed you about me.”
“Please don’t talk so, Gordon. If you haven’t been—well, interesting, it’s because you haven’t seemed to me to live up to the best that’s in you.”
“You didn’t talk that way the first time we met, Madge—when Aunt Grace was showing me the gate. You seemed like a regular girl, for a time. Then right off you got stiff—stiff as froze mutton.”
“You didn’t act very gentlemanly around my home afterward, Gordon. Your behavior displeased my mother. I couldn’t help charging that displeasure against you.”
“You made me feel for a time, Madge, as if you’d give a fellow a chance. Then you turned the glassy stare on me like—like—all the rest.” Gordon said this in a hard, dry self-pity which he knew intuitively how to employ with deadly effect on Madelaine’s type of femininity.
“Mother asked you not to try to see me or find out where I’d started in school. She begged you to go away and leave me alone. And you haven’t paid the slightest regard to her. Is that honorable? What ‘chance’ do you want?”
“What right did she have to ask it? She flung me a dare. Because I took it and smoked you out, she’s sore. And she’s gypping my game—with you.”
“Just what is your ‘game,’ Gordon?”
“Aw, you know what I want. You could show you were a good sport once in a while. At least, be human. But instead of acting like a cousin, you act—and Aunt Grace acts—as if I were a pestilence. I want to be friends and neither of you will let me.”
Gordon had planted himself in front of Madelaine in such a manner that she was unable to pass easily. But she was not afraid, merely annoyed. She was willowy and fragile beside him but her calm, dark eyes searched his own bravely.
“We can be friends, if that’s all you wish. But so long as you annoy mother, you annoy me. And that’s all I have to say.”
“You think I am a hell-buster, don’t you, Madge? You—even you!—won’t give me the benefit of the doubt.”
Along this attack, Gordon knew he could always score, if he acted sufficiently persistent and apparently sincere. The quick gleam in those expressive dark eyes showed when he had scored now.
“Gordon,” cried the girl, “why do you persist in coming up here, week after week and month after month, talking and acting as you do? What is it you want?”
“You’re the only girl who ever made me feel that if she were friendly, really friendly, I could pull up and amount to something. Is it any wonder I should be interested in sticking around? When a guy has met that kind of girl, he’s on the outs with every one unless he can have her to play with. And that’s you! And the truth!”
“But I can’t play around with any one. I’m attending school. And next spring mother and I are going abroad——”
“Every one plays ’round part of the time, Madge!” Gordon came closer as the girl shrank back. “I’ve been thinking about you nearly every day since I met you, Madge. I’m in a rotten way. Instead of helping me, you make it worse. Is that fair? When a fellow might go square if he had the chance, is it fair to make it as hard as you can?”
“I don’t want to make it hard for any one, Gordon. But mother made me promise I wouldn’t encourage you and I should keep that promise.”
“A bad promise is better broken than kept, Madge. And what kind of a promise is it anyway, when it injures and hurts somebody?”
This sort of argument, harped upon long enough, would have the girl’s defenses down.
“Please, Gordon, let me pass. People are watching.”
“Madge, are you afraid of me?”
“Of course I’m not afraid of you!”
“Get into the car then. For an hour let me talk to you—while we’re driving, I mean. I’ll have you back by eight o’clock. I promise it, faithfully. You’ve never heard my side of the story, Madge. Until you do, it’s not fair to condemn me. Not on your mother’s say-so.”
“I can’t! I just can’t!”
Gordon’s face assumed the proper recklessness.
“All right, if that’s the way you feel about it. But next time you hear of me raising hell don’t blame anybody but yourself. Didn’t you ever have the feeling that no one care about you—what you did, or what became of you? No, of course you haven’t——”
“Gord! Come back! Don’t go off feeling so!”
“I can’t help the way I feel. I’m getting to the place where I don’t give a hang. I thought for a time you might help me. I see, as usual, I’m out o’ luck!”
It hurt the girl to have the lad talk so, especially as he appeared sincere. Suppose Mrs. Theddon were wrong! Suppose shewereprejudiced! She, Madelaine, had known that horrible feeling of nobody caring. Was it square of her mother to put such restrictions upon her? The girl was a queer mixture of half woman, half child. The “child” was always the orphan child, wondering to whom it belonged, why life had been “different.”
“Where do you want to drive?” she asked.
“Oh, up to Amherst and back, or Greenfield; what does it matter so long as I have a good chance to talk, and get you back by eight o’clock?”
“Well, I’ll have to tell Mrs. Anderson over to the House. And you may have to assure her you’re my cousin. It’s against the rules otherwise, you know.”
“Fair enough! Hustle! We’ve a couple of hours yet before dark.”
Madelaine soon discovered, not without annoyance, that the pummeling of the machine precluded much confidential intercourse. Also, once under way on the Deerfield road, Gordon’s mood shifted. He began to show off his dexterity in managing the contraption. Beside the motors of five years hence, it would be listed as a “haybaler.” But in Gordon’s hands it was no “haybaler.” It was a threshing-machine with the “governor” lost.
“I thought you wanted to tell me about yourself,” the girl reminded him as they reached a stretch of reasonably smooth roadway three miles out of town.
“Oh, for the love of Mike! Can’t you be human for once, Madge? Simply enjoy yourself! Or if you can’t, let me enjoy myself. It’s enough for me to have you along at such a time. You’re that kind of girl. That’s why I’ve wanted you so much.”
The sun sank down behind the Berkshires. The Connecticut valley was hushed and beautiful. Cattle lowed in moist barnyards along their way. They heard the clinking andsqueaking of milk pails and the nicker of horses with heads hanging low over whitewashed paddock fences.
A dew mist hung above the glassy river. The world grew dreamy. Gordon turned off upon a country road. With a sudden twinge of alarm Madelaine lost her sense of direction.
“Where are you going, Gordon?” she demanded at the end of a half-hour.
“Oh, I know a short cut. You’ll see. Hell!What’s that?”
They had passed through a thickly shadowed wood. The road opened out between a hill of undergrowth on one side and a pasture on the other. No houses were in sight. They were surrounded by typical western Massachusetts country. And the car had stopped abruptly.
The boy alighted, raised the hood, tinkered with the engine. He cranked several times in silence. At first Madelaine was interested. Then she grew annoyed. Gordon did not appear out of temper. This was unnatural. He even stood off, looked at the machine and—grinned.
“Has anything gone wrong—seriously wrong?” the girl demanded.
“Don’t know yet. Hope not!”
He toyed with the engine again, even going to the trouble of producing a bag of tools. Then he lighted a cigarette, inhaled a head full and opined:
“This looks like a peach of a fix, Madge. It’s lucky I’m your cousin!”
“But I’ve got to get back by eight o’clock, Gordon. You promised that!”
“Schools make me sick! A girl as old as you having to get into the house at dark—like a little freckled-faced brat! It’s the limit. You ought to shock ’em good!”
“Gordon! Please see if you can’t start the car. We’ve come a long way and an evening star is shining already.”
“I can’t help it if something’s gone wrong, can I? I’m no mechanic. I didn’t make the machine! I’d fix it if I could!”
“You mean to say you can’t fix it—that there’s no prospect of getting it fixed—so we can get back by eight o’clock?”
“Oh, get off your high horse, Madge! Have a heart! What do you think I’m trying to do—get you in Dutch?”
Madelaine looked at her watch. It was twenty-five minutes past seven. The most disturbing phase of the predicament was that she had no knowledge of the locality nor where to go for help. Gordon lighted another cigarette and stared at his car ruefully.
“There’s only one way out,” he finally declared, “find a house with a telephone and have a garage car come out and tow us.”
“That will take an awful long time, won’t it, Gordon?”
“Well, and what of it?”
“But I’ve got to be back at eight, I told you! How many times must I say it?”
“Oh, hang eight o’clock! I didn’t guarantee to get you back regardless of accident! They ought to have sense enough to know that some things might happen that couldn’t be helped.”
“Perhaps they would if so many girls didn’t use that accident excuse until it’s thin and threadbare. Besides, I’m not quite convinced, Gordon, that this is an accident. I fail to understand why your car should stop so suddenly away off here in this lonely wood. Everything appeared to be working excellently until we left the highway.” Her lips grew hard. “I think you’d better start hunting that telephone, Gordon. And I’ll go along and call mother in Springfield. It’s plain we’re not going to return by eight o’clock or anywhere near it.”
“Well, you wait here till I go around the next turn. I’ll see if I sight a house. If I do, I’ll call you.” But the girl did not miss the dull angry flush on Gordon’s face at reference to Mrs. Theddon.
The fellow stumbled off down the sandy road. Madelaine waited. To run after him would have been asinine. He was gone a disquieting time. The girl drew her sweater-coat about her shoulders as the last daylight faded and the stars grew brighter. It was ghastly quiet. Somewhere off across the valley a dog barked. She heard the faint tinkle of a cow bell. From down among the frowsy woodland ferns at her right came a faint trickling of water. A mosquito sang close to her ear. The dew was heavy. It gathered in huge drops on the leather seat and the thick, brass-framed windshield.
Madelaine heard her cousin’s returning footsteps in thesand before she discerned his figure. Then he stopped to light a cigarette.
“It was a devil of a ways, Madge, and I’m sorry I had to leave you. But I got ’em! A tool car will come out in an hour.”
“An hour! You found a telephone?”
“A devil of a ways down the valley—yes. I had to cut through a pasture and swamp. There’s nothing to do now but wait.”
“Gordon! I——”
“Oh, don’t get sore. I called The Elms, too. Miss Anderson said it was all O. K. I told her we’d met with an accident—a real accident—and if she didn’t believe it, she could call the Mohawk Garage and find out if I hadn’t sent there for aid.”
“You called Miss Anderson? She said it would be all right? On your honor?”
“On my honor!”
He lurched up into the machine and Madelaine had to make room for him in the single seat.
“Mind cigarette smoke?” he asked. “It’ll keep off the mosquitoes.”
The girl was greatly troubled. She wished she could believe that when Gordon swore “on his honor,” it was his honor.
“Great out here in the country, this time o’ night, ain’t it?” observed the fellow, idly turning the impotent gas and spark levers beneath the wheel.
“How far was it, Gordon, to the house where you telephoned?”
“Oh, I dunno. Couple of miles, I guess. Forget it, Madge! Too dark now for you to make it through all that bog, anyhow.”
Gordon twisted his body around and rested one arm along the seat-back behind her.
“Did you tell the garage men very explicitly where we were stalled?”
“Sure I did! What’s biting you, Madge, anyhow?”
“How did you describe it? Just where are we?”
“On the Shutesbury road, about eight miles above Amherst.”
“How far is it back to the main road?”
“Say, Madge! Are you afraid to wait here with me just because there’s no houses in sight?”
“Afraid? Oh, no, Gordon. I’m not afraid of you in the least.”
“Then I wish you’d cut out the catechism.”
The girl bit her lip and slapped at a murderous mosquito on her wrist. She drew the sweater-coat tighter about her and started that wait. She was glad she had her purse in her sweater-coat pocket. Gordon smoked his cigarette to the final puff and sighed philosophically as he lighted another. He restored his arm along the back of the seat. It grew darker.
“Madge,” said he, “did you know—honestly!—you’re one of the swellest girls I ever ran across!”
“Please don’t let’s have any cheap flirting, Gordon. I’m bothered enough as it is, by this predicament you’ve forced upon me.”
“I’ve forced upon you! Madge, if I didn’t have a whale of a lot of patience, you’d certainly get my goat. Here you are, away out here in this God-forsaken spot alone with me in the dark, and you act as if we were in the middle of Main Street, Springfield, with a whole flock of cops looking on!”
“Just what do you mean to infer by that, Gordon? Is there any reason for me to expect anything but the most correct conduct from you?”
“You can’t go provoking and tantalizing a fellow and expect him to remain a dummy—forever!”
“Meaning just what, Gordon. You may speak plainly.”
“Aunt Gracia ought to have wised you to a few things. Then you’d try to be more agreeable.”
“Your Aunt Gracia has ‘wised me to a few things’ as you so crudely term it. Which is why I’m not afraid of you in the least.”
“Madge, let’s cut this out! I’ve got a rotten temper and I know it. Sometimes it’s a devil of a job to hang on to it. So let’s talk of pleasanter things. This breakdown gives me just the chance I’ve wanted for a darn long time—the chance to talk about you! Madge, look here! I might as well get it out of my system right off the bat and have it done for good and all. Madge, honest-to-God, I love you!——”
“Gordon!”
“Oh, never mind the high-horse stuff! It’s no crime for a fellow to love a girl——”
“No, but it’s a contemptible thing to intrigue one into a dilemma where she must listen to your insults whether she cares to or not!”
“Insults!”
“Very much so, Gordon. If you were a gentleman——”
“Lookit, Madge! Do you know what I could do to you, if I wanted?”
“Yes. Being stronger physically, there are many things you could do to me—if you wanted. The question is, would you? I hardly think you would——”
“Wouldn’t I, though? I know this game! I’ve played it before!”
It was a reckless assertion but it escaped before Gordon gave it thought.
His worldly wisdom had been gained through contact with femininity whose motto was: “Treat me rough, kid,—treat me rough!” He believed a woman enjoyed being “mauled”, even though she protested; that the man ultimately won who had the nerve to play out his hand. And he had never been seriously called to account for indiscretions to date. Madelaine’s attitude was cool dare—a challenge—or he so assumed. He proceeded to accept that challenge—to show her what unleashed male strength could do.
Laughing coolly, the lad’s arm closed tightly around Madelaine’s shoulders. His left hand caught her two wrists and held them firmly. He pulled the girl’s face toward him. He kissed her—as much and as long as he pleased.
Madelaine stiffened as she might have taken a blow she could not avoid. She did not attempt to fight back. She did not try to scream, to struggle, to excoriate him, to claw at his eyes. She endured the profanation until the boy’s temper was appeased. He could not hold her so always. His own position was too contorted. The moment his iron grip was loosened, she pushed open the car door and was over its edge in a flash. Down into the soggy, fern-choked ditch where the water trickled she jumped, falling on knees and hands. Her face was scratched. But she struggled up and darted around the rear of the car.
Gordon knew she must go that way and on the oppositeside he waited. His lips were laughing but his face was white. He had struck a shin-bone in scrambling from the machine to capture her and the pain was maddening. As well be killed now for a sheep as a lamb! He caught the girl roughly by her left shoulder and almost pulled her from her feet as he yanked her toward him.
Never for an instant was Madelaine confused. Without a word she bent and scooped a handful of sand. Squarely in the young man’s features she threw it,—in his eyes, his nostrils, his half-opened mouth.
Gordon emitted a hoarse bellow and loosed her. In that instant the girl darted away down the road, into the woodland shadow, back in the direction from which they had come.
Gordon spat out mouthfuls of the grit and yowled his curses. But the stuff in his eyes was blinding. It gouged and seared his eyeballs, cutting and inflaming the lids so that a great wash of tears coursed down his face, streaking it ludicrously. He groped his way to the car and sank on the running board. Securing his handkerchief he swabbed his eyes.
He was fifteen minutes clearing his sight. He lit the jets in the big brass head lamps, cranked the car, scratched the varnish viciously backing it into the brambles to turn it around, then started after Madelaine.
He knew it to be four or five miles back to the main highway. Madelaine could not yet have covered the distance. So the big reflectors lighted the cloistered woods several hundred feet ahead and a cloud of ghostly dust hung low in his rear.
Madelaine, fleeing along the shadowed wood-road, heard and saw the machine coming behind, before it made the turn. She darted into a copse of willows and hid there until it passed, Gordon low above the wheel, one hand holding his handkerchief to his face. So he missed her, ultimately reaching the Amherst highway in another fit of black rage and disappointment.
It was after nine o’clock when Madelaine emerged from the wood. She saw the valley and its main highway ghostly in the starlight before her. Far to the north an electric car was coming,—bobbing up and down on the uneven roadbed. She climbed a low fence on the south and ran swiftly across the hay stubble in a diagonal direction. Withdeer-like, gymnastic suppleness she covered the distance. Into the highway she finally stumbled, hair fallen free and lungs distressed. But the electric car was still far down the line. She had time to recover her breath, cleanse her scratched face, and arrange hair and clothing before the car worked its rocking way toward her.
No one could detect in the pretty, flushed girl who boarded that trolley the recent victim of a near-assault in the woods to the eastward.
The car went through to Holyoke. Madelaine remained aboard. While waiting to secure a Springfield connection, she slipped into a High Street drug store and called Mrs. Anderson. As she now suspected, Gordon had not ’phoned The Elms. Mrs. Anderson was informed that she need not expect her pupil back that evening, as Madelaine had left suddenly for Springfield. Then Madelaine called her mother but her trolley arrived before she had secured her number.
Gordon left his auto on the main road, extinguished its lamps and went back toward the woods afoot, hoping to encounter his nimble foster-cousin.
“All right, you little wildcat,” he snapped as he returned to his machine an hour later. “Get lost if you want! But believe me, next time I get you alone, it’ll be where there’s no sand to throw in my eyes. A catty woman’s dirty trick! We’ll see!”