The Blood Red Dawn Part 9

"Clear away the things!" Flint bellowed. "We're through!... Good night, Miss Robson, and a pleasant journey to you--you and your _immaculate_ friend Stillman."

He left the room with a melodramatic flourish.... Presently Claire heard him mounting the stairs.

"He's drunk!" flashed through her mind, as if the idea had just struck her. "Of course, he must be drunk, otherwise he wouldn't have dared to...."

She went out into the entrance hall and put on her hat.

CHAPTER VII

Midway between Yolanda and Sausalito Stillman's machine died with disconcerting suddenness The rain was coming down in sheets. Stillman got out.

"It's no use," he announced, lifting himself back into his seat. "I can't do anything in this deluge."

This was the first word that had been said since he and Claire had left Flint's.

"The worst will be over in a few moments," replied Claire, easily. But she was far from rea.s.sured.

The deluge was _not_ over in a few moments. It kept up with an ever-increasing violence, until it seemed that even the stalled car would be compelled to yield to its force. Claire had never seen it rain harder; the storm had a vindictive fury that reminded her of the dreadful tempest in "King Lear."

Stillman maintained his usual well-bred calm and smoked cigarettes while he chattered. He touched on every conceivable subject but the one uppermost in Claire's mind, until she began to wonder whether delicacy or contempt veiled his conversation. A half-hour pa.s.sed ... an hour ...

two. Still the rain swept from the sullen sky. Twice Stillman made a futile attempt to remedy the trouble with his engine, and twice he retired defeated to the shelter of the car. Claire was relieved that she was in the company of a man who did not emphasize the monotonous hours by indiscriminate raillery against the tricks of chance. At first he dismissed the situation with the most casual of shrugs; later he acknowledged his annoyance by an expression of regret at his companion's discomfort, but he stopped there.

As the hours went on, with no abatement of the storm's devastating energy, Claire grew less and less pleased at the prospect. She began to wonder whether the shelter of Flint's roof had not been, after all, the discreet thing. Was not her headlong flight in company with Stillman more open to criticism than the frank acceptance of her employer's hospitality? But these vagrant questions were the sp.a.w.n of a colorless spirit of social expediency which fastens itself on weak natures, and in Claire's case they died still-born. She had been too well schooled in loneliness to lean heavily on the crooked stick of public opinion.

Accustomed to standing alone, she had something of the spiritual arrogance that goes with independence. People could think what they liked. And it was more a realization of her mother's anxiety than any thought of self which made her suggest to Stillman that they might get out and walk into Sausalito.

"I think the last boat leaves there at twelve-thirty," she finished.

"Surely we could make it if we keep going."

Stillman thrust his arm out into the drenching rain, and withdrew it instantly. "I'm afraid that's out of the question, so long as the rain keeps up, Miss Robson," he said, in a tone of implied objection.

"Perhaps if it should stop...."

Claire settled back in her seat. Stillman was right. The storm was too furious to be lightly braved.

It was eleven o'clock before a quick veering of the wind brought a downpour so violent that what had gone before seemed little better than a rather weak rehearsal.

"It will clear presently," Stillman a.s.sured Claire. "Southeaster always break up in a flurry like this from the west."

In ten minutes the stars were peeping brilliantly through rents in the torn clouds. Pungent odors floated up from the rain-trampled stubble of the hillsides, the air was cleared of its stifling oppressiveness, the first storm of the season was over.

Both Claire and Stillman clambered out at the first signs of the storm's exhaustion. Stillman switched on his pocket-light and began to investigate the trouble with the engine. His decision was swift and conclusive.

"It's hopeless," he announced, turning to Claire with a slight grimace.

"We're stalled absolutely and no mistake. I guess we'd better strike out and walk. No doubt we'll get a lift into Sausalito before we've gone very far, but I dare say it's well to be on the safe side."

They rolled the machine to one side of the roadway and struck out hopefully. The rain had made a thin chocolate ooze of the highway, and before they had gone a hundred yards their shoes were slimy with mud. It appeared that Stillman had been something of an aimless wanderer for many years, and as he talked on and on, giving detached glimpses of the remote places he had visited, Claire had a curious sense of futility.

She read between his clipped and vivid sentences the tragedy of a personality worsted by the soft hands of circ.u.mstances. This man might have done things. As it was he was an idler. He gave her the impression of a man waiting vaguely for opportunity--like some traveler pacing restlessly up and down a railway station platform in expectation of the momentary arrival of a delayed train. She tried to imagine him as she felt sure he must once have been--youthful, eager, ardent, a man of charming enthusiasms that just missed being extravagances, who could bring zest to his virtues as well as to his follies.

"Surely," she thought, "something more than inclination must have pushed him into this deadly stagnation."

And at once Miss Munch's insinuating question leaped up to answer:

"You know about his wife, of course!"

Were men put out of countenance by such impersonal tricks of fortune?

Impersonal?... this domestic tragedy?... Yes, Claire felt that it must be, otherwise the man tramping at her side would have wrestled so pa.s.sionately against fate as to have come away at least spattered with the mud of defeat. No, Stillman was not defeated, he was merely arrested, restrained, held for orders.

He had been in London when the war broke out. He had stayed long enough to watch the stolid, easy-going British public awake to the seriousness of the encounter, coming home after the first air raids.

"I didn't mind being killed," he laughed, in explanation of his sudden flight. "But I didn't like being so frightfully messed up in the process. I want a chance to strike back when I'm cornered. The Zeppelin game was too much like a rabbit-drive to suit me."

As he spoke of these experiences, Claire listened with a quickening of the spirit. The prospect of finding Stillman vibrant was too stirring to be denied. But he was still sober on this colossal subject of war ... a bit judicial, always well poised. He had his sympathies, but they did not appear vitalized by extravagances of feeling. Yet here and there Claire was conscious of truant warmths, like brief flashes of sunlight through a somber forest.

"And the draft--what do you think of that?" The question rose to her lips as if his answer might unlock the door to something deeper in the way of convictions.

He began with a shrug that chilled her; then his reply broke with sudden refreshment:

"It helps ... some of us. There are many who can't decide for themselves. The obvious duty isn't always the correct one. In my case...."

He did not stop speaking suddenly, but his voice trailed off into a dim region of musing. They both fell silent. But Claire knew. There was that haunting hope, almost like a fear, that his wife might some day get better. That was what he was waiting for! It might come to-morrow ...

next week ... in a year ... never! But when it did come he felt that he must be there, ready. She wondered whether he loved his wife very much, and she found herself hoping that he did.... It would help, somehow ...

yes, if that were so his sacrifice gained point. On the other hand....

She put the thought away with a quick thrust, feeling that she had no right to such a speculation, and presently she was aware that they were swinging into Sausalito.

Stillman looked at his watch. Twelve-thirty-five ... just five minutes late for the boat! She could see that he was disturbed.

"I thought sure we'd get a lift," he railed, tossing aside a mangled cigar. "This _is_ luck!... I guess we'll have to rout out the Sherwins.

It's something of a pull up the hill, but any safe port in a storm, you know."

"The Sherwins?"

"Another one of the Edington girls. They have a bungalow at the very dizziest point in Sausalito."

But Claire objected and held firm. "I couldn't think of it, Mr.

Stillman. No, really!... Please don't insist."

They agreed on a lodging for Claire in a freshly painted but otherwise rather decrepit lodging-house, just north of the ferry-slip. Its chief advantage was that it seemed quite too stagnant to be anything but respectable, and the suppressed grumbling of the old shrew whom they routed out confirmed their estimate. She didn't approve of couples who dragged G.o.d-fearing old women out of bed at unholy hours in the morning, and it was only the generous tip from Stillman and the a.s.surance that he intended looking elsewhere for quarters for himself that reconciled her to her loss of sleep and the compromise with her convictions.

For a good half-hour Claire sat with folded hands peering out from her room upon the damp hillside to the west. From across the street came the bawdy thumping of a mechanical piano and the swish of a sluggish tide.

Her encounter with Sawyer Flint had forced the door of her virginal seclusion and thrust her at once into the primitive and elemental open.

She felt like one who was coming out of voluntary exile to the pathos of a deferred heritage. Before her stretched the eagle's horizon, but she had only the fledgling's strength of wing. She longed for the faith and courage and daring to take life at its word, longed with all the dangerous fierceness of one who had fed too long upon the husks of existence. And, longing, she fell asleep, sitting in a chair before the open window, without thought or preparation....

The morning broke cloudless. All traces of the night's fury were obliterated as completely as sorrow from the face of a smiling child.

The sun touched the open s.p.a.ces with a tender, caressing warmth, but the shadows held a keen-edged chill.