Part 9 (1/2)
”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.”