Part 4

"And by the way," she observed casually, "where is the motor-car, do you suppose?"

Antony sat down from sheer force of surprise. He had utterly forgotten the motor-car. Life to him had begun anew when he staggered up the bank. He looked piteously over the shining river.

"Well, we've done it, now!" he exclaimed, and as he sat in huddled misery a fit of senseless laughter shook him, nor was his dripping companionlong in joining him. They laughed till the decayed old boathouse echoed, and when, from very fatigue, they stopped, no trifles such as cold or wet or isolation or the justly merited terror of the Law could cloud their invincible youth after that baptism of mirth.

"Anyway," Antony began, his voice still shaking, "we are on the other side of the river, and there is no bridge for two miles, certainly, and we came through a pasture to get here and so the old car is pretty safe to be under the mud by the time she could be traced. They say the bottom is mostly quicksand all about here--if we are here--for heaven's sake, what is that?"

He pointed to a black rectangular object floating placidly on to shore, not ten feet from them.

"It is a trunk," Nette replied excitedly, "a black, waterproof motor trunk! And a suit case behind it! And oh, see, do you see that hat box?"

They held their breath as the strange squadron sailed majestically along the guiding current into their tiny port, the trunk floating high, displaying its white stenciled monogram proudly, the suit case following, the absurd little chimney-pot ducking and bobbing in the rear. Suddenly, as the suit case seemed likely to drift out again, they rushed to the bank, and while Nette dragged the trunk to shelter Antony strode into the water and gathered in the smaller craft.

They were all of wicker, with a lining of oiled silk and a covering of thick waterproof rubber material, and as Nette pulled at the fastenings of the trunk and flung back the lid it was at once evident that both these shielding materials had admirably performed their office: the contents were uninjured. They looked upon a shallow tray divided into two parts. In one lay what was apparently a small, fantastically shaped cloud of palest mauve. Upon one side of this cloud there was fastened with a sort of jewel a long, soft feather of a slightly deeper tint of mauve. This feather curled caressingly about the cloud and Antony's experience instructed him that the object was quite terrestrial--was, in fact, a hat. An indistinguishable, fluffy, shimmering mass of mauve filled the other compartment, and in the cover a cunning artificer had set a fair-sized mirror, surrounded by numerous loops of leather which held brushes, combs, and other toilet accessories. As Antony regarded this collection of objects, he was aware of a long, soft sigh, and turning to his companion he beheld her bowing as in a trance before them, lost, like the persons in a well-known hymn, in wonder, love and praise.

"Oh! How perfect!" she breathed, and at the picture of her, dripping and draggled, shivering and ecstasied, he shook his head in thoughtful amazement.

"Now, Miss Nette," he said abruptly, "do you know what you are going to do. This is simply too extraordinary to be anything less than providential. You are going to follow me into this little shed and when I have taken the trunk there, you are going to put on everything you can find in it. If there's anything sensible enough there, please give yourself a good rub-down with it. Will you take cold with your hair wet?" he added masterfully.

Either moisture or the sight of the mauve glories had taught her meekness, for:

"Oh, no, my hair will dry in a few minutes--it dries very quickly," she assured him, adding timidly, "but ought I--they are so lovely-- have we any right----"

"I suppose you have a right to avoid pneumonia," he interrupted her rudely "and as far as the question of rights is concerned, this is rather late in the day to go into that, I think!"

He marched to the little shed, bearing the trunk, as it had been the crown regalia, on outstretched arms, and Nette, wringing her hair and murmurmg incoherent abnegations concerning her unworthiness of the mauve mysteries, followed nevertheless.

Repeating sternly his injunctions as to the value of thorough rub-downs, he left her, and falling upon the suit case, which he prophetically connected with the comforting masculine hat box, he carried it behind the shed, and at a chivalrous distance opened it Then in that deserted wood there was a silence, like that which fell in heaven, for the space of half an hour and, it may be, a little longer. At the end of this silence there appeared from behind a large oak a very dignified and handsome young gentleman attired, perhaps a thought impractically for his surroundings, in a fleckless frock coat with the appurtenances usually thereto accredited by our leading metropolitan tailors, such as stiffly creased grey trousers, patent-leather shoes, and delicate gloves dangled in the hand. Walking somewhat mincingly, this gentleman, elaborately backing around the shed and apparently not observing it, sought a rubber-incased hat box lying on the ground, and stooping gingerly, unclasped it, drew from it a glossy, black hat, and after a few affectionate strokings, which, applied to its surface, could but recall to any student of literature the painting of the lily, placed the same upon his sleek head with an absorbed and even slightly terrified expression, which melted slowly into one of deep satisfaction. After this he coughed politely and prepared to back again around the little hut. In this operation he was, however, interrupted by a soft tug at one of his almost too perfect coat tails.

"I look very well, too, I think," said a hesitating, sweet voice, and in an instant he was bareheaded before her.

Charming as Nette had appeared in her simple walking dress, Antony was utterly unprepared for the picture she now presented. In the absurd and yet wonderfully effective setting of the brown, budding trees, the broken and forbidding rocks, against the dull background of the dingy, decaying hut, her soft, pale tints of hat and gown gleamed like some one of the perfumed daintinesses Watteau traced upon his tricksy, tempting court fans. The whole costume, from the sweeping cavalier feather to the saucy, buckled slippers, recalled subtly that delightful pretense at Arcadia, that amusing pastoral figuring and posturing that broke under a sigh too ardent, a pressure too fiery, into the scented powder puff and the satin stays. One looked for a spinet, garlanded with golden cupids, for a white lamb smelling like Araby the blest, for a wreathed crook with a tiny mirror artfully set in its curve. To gaze upon that diabolically contrived simplicity was to produce in the susceptible breast, and most particularly in the susceptible masculine breast, an odd tumult of sensations too conflicting in their nature for description.

Nette's hair ran vine-like under the melting, tender-coloured plume; her skin glowed softly rosy, and two faint violet shadows under her brilliant eyes toned sweetly with the colours of her misleading gown. Around her neck on a slender golden chain was hung a singularly perfect fresh-water pearl, large, with shifting colours, utterly unadorned by any jeweller's fancies; an odd and very elegant bauble that caught Antony's eye instantly.

"Mademoiselle," he began, "you are--you are----" he paused, for genuine lack of words. "You are absurdly charming," he concluded, not altogether lamely, after all, and she swept him a graceful courtesy, her long, pale sash-ends floating out against the rough bark behind her. Nor was Master Antony displeased at the satisfaction at his appearance which he surprised in her eyes. Intrinsically inartistic indeed is the garb of our modern male, and yet to our accustomed eye there is a fine air of fitness, a grave elegance, in his sombre bifurcation; an ordered poetry in his candid vest, his lustrous neck scarf; a twinkling luxuriousness in his polished and costly footwear. All this appeared to perfection in Antony's dignified figure, just sufficiently above the middle height to allow of his being called tall.

"The sleeves," he informed her, "are a little short and I am not sure that I have not stretched the shoulder seams a little, but the shoes are exactly my own size. The underwear," he added absently, "was silk. Apricot colour----"

"My shoes," she began hastily, "are too large, but I think I can keep them on. The skirt is too long, of course, but I can hold it up. The hat," she concluded, with softened eyes, "I should like to be buried in."

"I should dislike to have you buried in it," he said briefly, "and now," he continued briskly, "the next thing is to get away. I have put all my things into the suit case and I will, with your permission, put yours there too. Then we will leave the suit case and the hat box under a pile of old boughs near where I dressed, and the trunk--is there anything in the trunk?" he broke off.

"No, I put them all on," she assured him, flushing delightfully. "There was just enough--of everything."

"I see. Well, I think we'll simply leave it here. Perhaps I might hide it a little," and he tossed a dusty roll of cocoa matting and a coil of rope over the receptacle, which being small became from that moment unnoticed.

"And now," said Antony, when he had conveyed the neat, damp roll she handed him to its hiding place, "let us get along. We can do no better than follow this path, which seems to grow broader, if anything, and it stands to reason we must come out somewhere. I may as well confess that I have a very poor idea of location, and I don't as yet find any landmarks. From the moment that we struck off into that field track I lost my bearings entirely. I should suppose we were opposite--or almost opposite--Brookdale; perhaps a bit lower down. We can get a rig and drive back probably--unless we die of hunger," he ended angrily. "I have only a little change with me --forgot it when I changed my clothes, of course, this morning. I suppose, though, I could get some money on this," and he fingered the scarf pin at his throat. It was a horseshoe of small diamonds of the purest water, and as Nette's eyes fastened on it she started suddenly.

"Was that what you had on this morning?" she asked.

"No," he answered, flushing a little. "I found it in a jeweller's box on the top of the things in the suit case, with a letter. I have the letter--it says only 'Amory' on it. I put the pin on," a trifle shamefacedly, "more or less to go with the whole rig, you know!"

Antony looked very boyish as he made this confession and Nette could but smile as he fingered the little horseshoe consciously. This smile was not lost upon the youth, and turning, he walked on in silence, advancing steadily if delicately along the path, which, though narrow enough to force them into single file, was sufficiently clear to afford a certain margin of safety to Nette's billowy splendours. Antony occasionally held back a threatening bough, and she from time to time moaned apprehensively as some projecting stump detained her drapery for a terrifying second; but for this they exchanged no further conversation.

Antony's faculties, stretched to their utmost since morning, unfortified by food, absolutely refused to rally around him on this occasion, and though he cudgelled his brains for a solution of the probabilities of his conduct when they should emerge from the wood, it was a useless performance. He was capable of walking erectly through the trees, of keeping his shoes bright, of shielding his hat from indignity--and of nothing more. Thus oblivious to all but the sensations of the moment, he plodded steadily on, and it was with an expression of positive stupor that he burst all at once and without the slightest transition of the foliage out of the rude woods into a trim gravel road flanked by incredibly artificial Lombardy poplars. In front of him swept a terraced lawn; far across it rose a lordly Elizabethan mansion composed, apparently, of weathered oak and gay window boxes; a marvellously rolled tennis court swam before his dazzled eyes. As he felt Nette at his side and opened his lips to speak, a loud, triumphant shout burst upon the air and a carriage and pair stationed at the end of the drive sprang into rapid motion towards them.

"'Ere you are, sir! 'Ere! Just in time, sir, jump in! All right, sir--I knew by the lady's dress--could you h'open the door yourself, sir? Mr. Richard said he knew you'd try the old road-- 'owever did you get over the old bridge, sir? I doubt we can make it this late, but we'll try. Excuse me, sir, but there's no time for talk--in you go, sir!"

Under the piercing eye of the garrulous old servant Nette slipped into the brougham and Antony after her, as one in a dream. The fat bays literally galloped along the crushed stone, whirled through an elaborate iron gateway, and devoured the stretch of country road whose scattered houses Antony tried in vain to identify.

"Where are we going?" Nette asked fearfully, but he could only shake his head.

"Somewhere near a railroad station, I hope," he answered; "we couldn't very well walk along the road dressed like this. Evidently this old idiot knows your dress--that's very unfortunate."

"He cannot know it," she insisted, "for it has never been worn. I am sure of it."

"Nonsense," said Antony brutally, and at her incredulous displeasure he softened only so far as to demand:

"Then how did he know you?"

"I don't know," she admitted, and they drew up suddenly among a crowd of carriages and motor-cars gathered around a quaint stone church.

"Now we'll slip out," Antony began, when all at once a slender young man sprang to the door of the brougham, wrenched it open, seized Antony's hand, and burst into a torrent of language.

"Well, you took your time, didn't you? At last! Ritchie was sick with rage--till we got the telegram. How's Auguste? Car gave out, of course. Poor Emily felt dreadfully. Miss---excuse me, but all I can think of is Gertrude, you can just get in--dash over to the cloister and they've left a place, _So_ glad to have met you-- yes, indeed. This is Williamson. Please ask for mother's carriage directly the ceremony is over--we're going to form an arch or something at the house. Hurry up, old man--I had all your work. The rest are in by this time, but I have to attend to the carriages and you are to take in the late ones. Family on left of white ribbons-- for heaven's sake, Miss Gertrude--_run!_"

He dragged Nette from the step and raced her toward the church; she lifted her skirts and skimmed like a swallow beside him. Antony stumbled to the puffing old coachman, pulled all the silver out of his pocket and handed it to him mechanically.

"Thank you kindly, sir--I did my best. So many not knowing either you or the young lady, sir, it was 'ard for us, but I did my best. She looks beautiful, they tell me--h'isn't that some one waving for you, sir?"

Antony ran wildly towards the church door, whence issued a pompous and familiar peal from the organ; a strongly accented march, to whose measures, he reflected dizzily, no one whom he had yet encountered had ever been able to adapt his steps. He peered up the little, crowded aisle. Half-way along it paced a solemn party of young men; four visions of mauve and feathers followed them, and even as he removed his hat four more hurried past him and entered the door. They were in couples, each bearing a great armful of white and purple sweet peas, and the maiden nearest him in the last couple, flushed and panting, with one bare arm, was none other than poor Uncle Julius's godmother's own daughter's stepdaughter! She moved demurely, her eyes downcast, the great pearl rising with her quick breath, and Antony wiped the troubled sweat from his brow. A stir behind him, a murmured, sighing tribute, and the bride was passing by. White as the lilies in her hands, a frostlike veil falling over her glistening train, she glided beside her portly father, and the crowded little church turned to mark her passage as a hedge of sunflowers seeks the sun.

Antony sighed and turned to confront a massive lady swathed in rose-coloured satin and variously adorned with precious stones of all colours. She fixed him with a protruding grey eye and directed toward him a hissing whisper.

"I am the bride's Aunt!" she declared. Antony stared vaguely at her.

"And I hope there is a seat well to the front," she continued severely, if hoarsely.

With a shock of comprehension Antony thrust forward his arm.

"I am sure that there is, madam," he said politely, "pray come with me."

And so it happened that he led the massive satin creature up the aisle in the wake of that mystic procession, outwardly a mask of courtly solicitude, but within him the premonitions of whirling mania. He was literally faint with hunger; the strong sweetness of the lilies and other aromatic plants disposed about the church for its decoration affected him almost unpleasantly with their cloying odours, and the menacing fear that with every step he was involving himself further in a list of crimes so confused as to be, perhaps, yet uncatalogued in the annals of the law, shadowed his soul.

"_I, Emily Hildegarde, take thee, Richard_----"

the tones of the frost-like bride were as clear and silvery as her veil. Richard would encounter a certain amount of self-possession, it appeared. But perhaps young women were all self-possessed, now. Antony could not recall a bride that had trembled in his experience.

The solemn service hastened to its conclusion. Suppose the marriage should prove to have been invalid because of a fraudulent and criminal usher? It might be possible. . . .

"I am sorry, but the church is filled," he murmured suavely to a beseeching violet-scented pair, marvelling at his own self-command.

It was over. Mendelssohn announced it and his echoes shook the windows. Two more hopeful voyagers had launched out upon life, arm in arm down the smiling, tearful aisle; two more combatants with armour scarcely buckled smiled boastfully on entering the field, nor noted that it was strewn with the breakage of their predecessors!

Thus cynically did Antony muse as the glowing pair swept by, when all at once a soft voice murmured close to his ear:

"Ask for Mrs. Williamson's carriage!"

She was gone. They were all gone, in a perfumed cloud of mauve, and with a bound he cleared the three entrance steps and ran to the crowd of vehicles that began to move about.

"Is Mrs. Williamson's carriage here?" he called loudly, and, as a one-horse coupe drew up to him, the odour of sweet peas was wafted across his nostrils and she swept in beside him, jealously guarding her skirts from harmful contacts. Obedient to her imperative gesture, he took his seat beside her, and feeling unable to combine into any intelligible sentence his emotions and apprehensions, gazed questioningly into her flushed and sparkling countenance. She pressed the sweet peas to her breast, and as the carriage moved off at a rapid pace she looked deep into his eyes and spoke.

"Wasn't she lovely?" she said dreamily.

Antony opened his mouth and closed it, opened it again and again closed it. For a moment it seemed to him that his mind was reeling from its foundations; that perhaps, after all, he was the legitimate usher of Emily's wedding and that this lustrous-eyed creature with him was Gertrude . . . and then a wholesome rage came to his assistance.

"For heaven's sake," he cried, "talk reasonably! Where are we going? What town is this? Do you realise the awful situation we are in? I shall go raving mad if this thing keeps up much longer!"

She laid a small gloved hand on his knee and spoke calmly to the quivering youth.

"Listen," she said, "I do not see that we can do better than go on to the house. It is a very big wedding and we can mix very easily in the crowd if only I can get another dress--or a long coat, somewhere. Perhaps I can. Especially now, when hardly any one is here yet. Then you can get hold of a carriage and we can drive to the station. We can at least get something to eat, for I know how hungry you are. Nobody knows who half the people are at a wedding--it is the safest place in the world for--for----"

"For escaping criminals," he concluded bitterly, yet with an unreasonable lightening of heart. "It is true, nobody will know me. And perhaps I can find out where we are."

"And who we are," she reminded him, smiling kindly.

He was amazed at the almost maternal gentleness, the sweet poise of her manner. She might have been the very bridesmaid she simulated.

"Did any one speak to you?" he asked curiously.

She shook her head.

"I was so late. I think I am _her_ friend, and they don't seem to know each other so very well. The first four are friends, but my four, no. Still, I can't very well see them again, for she will ask about me--oh, who can this be?"

They had turned in at a different gate from the one by which they had left and were following a driveway that led along a series of stables and offices. From one of these a house-maid ran out, stopping the carriage with a gesture. At her embarrassed request Antony opened the carriage door.

"I was to ask the first one that came by this way, if you please-- you are an usher, aren't you, sir?"--Antony nodded grimly--"to go to the laundry, right here, sir, and pick out the best arches. They're in the tubs. The other gentlemen will help carry them in. Mr. Richard thought the ladies would know best about the arches," she added shyly, Smiling graciously, Nette stepped lightly from the coupe, and as Antony followed her she nodded to the coachman,

"You may go back now," she said, "we will walk up to the house in a few moments."

He touched his hat and drove on, the house-maid hastened in the same direction, and Nette, followed by her companion, stepped into the laundry. There indeed were the arches, twined with purple and white sweet peas; the dim, damp room reeked and bloomed with them. As they confronted each other uncertainly, a high, excited voice floated toward them, evidently nearing rapidly.

"We must have every carriage guarded and the trains watched, that's all. They must be in the house, and they had no luggage, so how can they change their clothes? That dress will mark the woman absolutely. They will try for a motor, of course."

Steps were at the laundry door. In an agony of terror Antony dragged the girl into a back room, and hardly knowing what he did, beckoned her up a narrow, dingy stair. Like shadows they fled up it, and crouched at its head listening to the tramping feet of what was evidently a group of men: young men from their tone and manner.

"It's perfectly clear," began the unmistakable voice of Williamson, "they are, of course, that same couple that got off with three big touring cars last season. It's their specialty. The man drives like a demon, and the woman is the coolest little devil that ever walked. They have Amory's car, they got the clothes, and by coming so late they actually put the thing through. I hope no jewelry is gone, but we mustn't alarm the guests at any cost--Emily would never forgive us."

"The woman is marked--I know all the bridesmaids now, and I shall make it my business to locate the eighth. Harvey, will you stay with the presents? Ritch, like a fool, refused to have a detective."

"What did he look like, Williamson?" some one demanded.

"Kick me, if you want to, Harvey, I couldn't tell to save my life I--I was so excited, and he was so decent about it--he's just like anybody else. And I'm the only one that said a word to him-- it's maddening! We'll have to let him go--we can't grab every man we see, and nobody knows who half these people are. But watch the dining-room. Amory ought to be here any minute. He's nearly crazy, I suppose."