I've Married Marjorie Part 5

"Lucille packed them. She worked like a demon to get everything ready.

She was thrilled."

"Thrilled!" said Marjorie resentfully. "I'm so sick of people being thrilled I don't know what to do. _I'm_ not thrilled. . . . I might have known it. It's just the sort of thing Lucille would be crazy over doing. I suppose she feels as if she were in the middle of a melodrama."

"I'm sorry, Marjorie, but there's something about you that always makes people feel romantic. . . ." His voice softened. "I remember the first time I saw you, coming into that restaurant a little behind Lucille, it made me feel as if the fairy-stories I'd stopped believing in had come true all over again. You were so little and so graceful, and you looked as if you believed in so many wonderful things----"

"Stop!" said Marjorie desperately. "It isn't fair to talk that way to me. I won't have it. If you feel that way you ought to take me back home."

"On the contrary, just the reverse," quoted Francis, who seemed to be getting cooler as Marjorie grew more excited. "You said you'd listen.

Be a sport, and do listen."

"Very well," said Marjorie sulkily. She _was_ a sport by nature, and she was curious.

"I've taken a job in Canada--reforesting of burned-over areas. I had to go to-night at the latest. It seemed to me that we hadn't either of us given this thing a fair try-out. I hadn't a chance with you unless I took this one. My idea is for you to give me a trial, under any conditions you like that include our staying in the same house a couple of months. I'm crazy over you. I want to stay married to you the worst way. You're all frightened of me, and marriage, and everything, now. But it's just possible that you may be making a mistake, not seeing it through. It's just possible that I may be making a mistake, thinking that you and I would be happy."

Marjorie gave a little tense jerk of outraged pride at this rather tactless speech. It sounded too much as if Francis might possibly tire of _her_--which it wasn't his place to do.

"And so," Francis went on doggedly, "my proposition is that you go up to Canada with me. There's a fairly decent house that goes with the job. There won't be too much of my society. You need a rest anyhow.

I won't hurry you, or do anything unfair. Only let us try it out, and see if we wouldn't like being married, exactly as if we'd had a chance to be engaged before."

"And if we don't?" inquired Marjorie.

"And if we don't, I'll give you the best divorce procurable this side of the water."

"You sound as if it was a Christmas present," said Marjorie.

She thought she was temporizing, but Francis accepted it as willingness to do as he suggested.

"Then you will?" he asked.

"But--it's such an awful step to take!"

Francis leaned back--she could feel him do it, in the dark--and began to argue as coolly as if it were not three o'clock in the morning, on an unfrequented road.

"The most of the step is taken. You haven't anything to do but just go on as you are--no packing or walking or letter-writing or anything of the sort. Simply stay here in the car with me and end at the place in Canada, live there and let me be around more or less. If there's anything you want at home that Lucille has forgotten----"

"Knowing Lucille, there probably is," said Marjorie.

"----we'll write her and get it. . . . Well?"

Marjorie took a long breath, tried to be very wide-awake and firm, and fell silent, thinking.

She was committed, for one thing. People would think it was all right and natural if she went on with Francis, and be shocked and upset and everything else if she didn't. Cousin Anna Stevenson would write her long letters about her Christian duty, and the office would be uncomfortable. And Lucille--well, Lucille was a blessed comfort. She didn't mind what you did so long as it didn't put her out personally.

She at least--but Lucille had packed the bag! And you couldn't go and fling yourself on the neck of as perfidious a person as _that_.

And--it would be an adventure. Francis was nice, or at least she remembered it so; a delightful companion. He wasn't rus.h.i.+ng her. All he wanted was a chance to be around and court her, as far as she could discover. True, he was appallingly strange, but--it seemed a compromise. And she had always liked the idea of Canada. As for eventually staying with Francis, that seemed very far off. It did not seem like a thing she could ever do. Being friends with him she might compa.s.s. Of course, you couldn't say that it was a fair deal to Francis, but he was bringing it on himself, and really, he deserved the punishment. For of course, Marjorie's vain little mind said irrepressibly to itself, he would be fonder of her at the end of the try-out than at the beginning. . . . And then a swift wave of anger at him came over her, and she decided on the crest of it. She would never give in to Francis's courts.h.i.+p. He wasn't the sort of man she liked.

He wasn't congenial. She had grown beyond him. But he deserved what he was going to get. . . . And she spoke.

"It isn't fair to you, Francis, because it isn't going to end the way you hope. But I'll go to Canada with you . . ."

For a moment she was very sorry she had said it, because Francis forgot himself and caught her in his arms tight, and kissed her hard.

"If you do that sort of thing I _won't_!" she said. "That wasn't in the bargain."

"I know it wasn't," said Francis contritely. "Only you were such a good little sport to promise. I won't do it again unless you say I may. Honestly, Marjorie. Not even before people."

This sounded rather topsy-turvy, but after awhile it came to Marjorie what he meant--just about the time she climbed out of the car, sat on its step, and watched Francis competently unfurling and setting up two small and seemingly inadequate tents and flooring them with balsam boughs. He meant that there would have to be at least a semblance of friendliness on account of the people they lived among. She felt more frightened than ever.

Francis came up to her as if he had felt the wave of terror that went over her.

"Now you aren't to worry. I'm going to keep my word. You're safe with me, Marge. I'm going to take care of you as if I were your brother and your father and your cousin Anna----"

She broke in with an irrepressible giggle.

"Oh, please don't go that far! Two male relatives will be plenty. . . . I--I really got all the care from Cousin Anna that I wanted."

He looked relieved at her being able to laugh, and bent over the tents again in the moonlight.

"There you are. And here are the blankets. We're near enough to the road so you won't be frightened, and enough in the bushes so we'll be secluded. Good-night. I'll call you to-morrow, when it's time to go on. I know this part of the country like my hand, and here's some water in case you're thirsty in the night. Oh, and here are towels."

This last matter-of-fact touch almost set Marjorie off again in hysterical laughter. Being eloped with by a gentleman who thoughtfully set towels and water outside her door was really _too_ much. She pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped off some of her clothes--it did not seem enough like going to bed to undress altogether, and she mistrusted the balsam boughs with blankets over them that pretended to be a bed in the corner--and flung herself down and laughed and laughed and laughed till she nearly cried.

She did not quite cry. The boughs proved to have been arranged by a master hand, and she was very tired and exceedingly sleepy. She pulled hairpins out of her hair in a half-dream, so that they had to be sought for painstakingly next morning when she woke. She burrowed into the blankets, and knew nothing of the world till nine next morning.

"I can't knock on a tent-flap," said Francis's buoyant voice outside then. "But it's time we were on our way, Marjorie. There ought to be a bathrobe in that bundle of Lucille's. Slip it on and I'll show you the brook."

She reached for a mirror, which showed that, though tousled, she was pretty, took one of the long breaths that seemed so frequently necessary in dealing with Francis, said "in for a penny, in for a pound," and did as she was directed. The bath-robe wasn't a bath-robe, but something rather more civilized, which had been, as a matter of fact, part of her trousseau, in that far-off day when trousseaux were so frequently done, and seemed such fun to buy. She came out of the tent rather timidly. "Good gracious, child, that wasn't what I meant!"

exclaimed Francis, seeming appallingly dressed and neat and ready for life. "It's too cold for that sort of thing. Here!"

He picked up one of the blankets, wrapped it around her, gave her a steer in a direction away from the road, and vanished.

She went down the path he had pushed her toward, holding the towels tight in one hand and her blanket around her in the other. It was fresh that morning, though it was warm for May. And Francis seemed to think that she was going to take a bath in the brook, which even he could not have had heated. She s.h.i.+vered at the idea as she came upon it.

It was an alluring brook, in spite of its unheated state. It was very clear and brown, with a pebbled bottom that you could see into, and a sort of natural round pool, where the current was partly dammed, making it waist-deep. She resolved at first to wash just her face and hands; then she tried an experimental foot, and finished by making a bold plunge straight into the ice-cold middle of it. She shrieked when she was in, and came very straight out, but by the time she was dry she was warmer than ever. She ran back to the tent, laughing in sheer exuberance of spirits, and dressed swiftly. The plunge had stimulated her so that when Francis appeared again she ran toward him, feeling as friendly as if he weren't married to her at all.

"It was--awfully cold--but I'm just as hungry as I can be!" she called.

"Was there anything to eat in the car, along with the towels?"

Francis seemed unaccountably relieved by her pleasantness. This had been something of a strain on him, after all, though it was the first time such a thought had occurred to Marjorie. His thin, dark face lighted up.

"Everything, including thermos bottles," he called back. "We won't stop to build a fire, because we have to hurry; but Lucille----"

"Lucille!" said Marjorie. "Well, I certainly never knew what a wretch that girl was."

"Oh, not a wretch. Only romantic," said Francis, grinning. "I tell you again, Marjorie, you have a fatal effect on people. Look at me--a matter-of-fact captain of doughboys--and the minute I see that you won't marry me--stay married to me, I mean--I elope with you in a coach and four!"

"I don't think you ought to laugh about it," said Marjorie, sobering down and stopping short in her tracks.