Part 5

"Oh, I don't know," drawled a third voice. "If his precious Gertrude is with him, what's a scarf pin more or less to Ammy?"

"Nevertheless, I'm sorry for the man that took that car," said Williamson curtly, and Antony bit his lip nervously on the stairs as he listened to the low murmur of assent that followed.

"Well, don't let us stay here all night," Williamson began again fussily. "Grab some of these damned wreaths, you fellows, and see if we can get them up to the house without sitting down in them!"

They bustled out, arguing over the best methods of tracking down their victims, who cowered miserably above them. Fear, insensate, reasonless fear, had laid his quivering, livid fingers on their shoulders, and chilled the blood in their veins. To get away-- to get away, at any cost!

Antony, stooping over the crouching figure by his side, whispered in her ear:

"I'll step down and look about a bit. There must be some way--I'll get you a coat somewhere and we can slip out. Wait here."

All was empty and silent in the laundry, but as he stopped a moment behind the door before peering out, a hand knocked gently on it and a boy's voice questioned softly.

"Are ye' there, then? Are ye, sir?" Instinctively and before he could catch back the word, Antony whispered hoarsely:

"Yes!"

"I'll be puttin' this in the durway, then, and Miss Delia Nolan said for me to say for ye to please wait an hour for her, an' she'd surely come. She does be needed in the bedrooms upstairs to watch the ladies' clothes f'r fear they'd be stolen, she says. But if ye'll wait the hour, she'll be with you, with more, maybe, if she can get it. Trust me for the horses, sir!"

There was a rattle and a thud as of some heavy object deposited on the floor in the open door, and the messenger scurried away. Antony looked cautiously around the door, and as he looked his eyes grew large and round, for there before him lay a mammoth tray filled with dainties to wake an appetite in one far less famished than poor Antony. Two half-emptied bottles reared their grateful promise high in the middle, and the jellied fowl vied with the crusted croquet, the rich pâté gleamed among the feathery wheaten rolls, the lobster nestled coyly in his luscious mayonnaise, seeming indeed to blush under the young man's ardent and devouring gaze. Breathlessly he lifted it, eagerly he bore it to that musty upper room, and there, with soft little cries of surprise from her and long-drawn sighs of satisfaction from him, they fell upon it. With every morsel of the food, with every throatful of the heartening, still beaded wine, courage, nay, audacity, crept softly over their jaded spirits, as the gentle but inevitable tide creeps up the beach.

"To Miss Delia Nolan!" he cried lightly, raising high his glass; "long life to her and her coachman!"

And "long life to her and her coachman!" Nette echoed, smiling from the broken chair she sat upon at Antony, who knelt before the tray. Through the chinks of the closed, dusty blinds vivid pencils of light streaked her delicate dress: she gleamed like a modish crocus in the bare lumber room. The rich viands before her, the dainty opalescence of the frozen sweet she held in a tinted, flower-shaped glass, the very dusk of the closed chamber, making her youth and loveliness more jewel-like, all enhanced the piquancy of the picture she presented. Antony's resolution flamed high in him: should such pluck, such beauty, such resource, be captured now, now after all they had gone through?

Never! He swore it.

As he registered this oath she rose lightly from her chair, and still jealously protecting her billowy skirts, began to peer about the room. Of a sudden she stopped and stood like a pointer dog, one finger raised to command his attention.

"What is in that basket?" she whispered excitedly.

There was no need to whisper, for not only the laundry but all the ground about it was absolutely deserted. But secrecy and flight have but one language and must conspire in whispers at the Pole itself. The basket in question, which lay in the darkest corner of the room, was of the description commonly in use among laundresses when they would return the purified objects of their toil. Bending over this, Nette fumbled a moment among its contents, and with a triumphant exclamation held up to Antony's bewildered vision a fresh, creased garment striped alternately with blue and white.

"And here is the apron! And here is the cap!" she murmured exultantly, "now I defy that horrid Mr. Williamson to find me! 'A marked woman,' indeed!"

Instantly the feasibility of the plan struck him, and he congratulated her warmly.

"Now all we need is to know where we are," he assured her, "and enough money to get away from it, wherever it is, and we are safe! I will step out and look about a bit while you change your dress; I feel confident that we shall find some means--luck would not have the heart to desert us now!"

He tiptoed, needlessly, it is true, down to the laundry, and in the very act of opening the door stumbled upon a plump old gentleman-- the very gentleman upon whose doubtless paternal arm the frost-like bride had preceded Antony to the altar. Ere the youth had time to catch his breath the portly one addressed him querulously.

"Oh! how d'ye do? So dark in here--senseless place to send a man! No more sweet peas, that I can see--can you? Pack-horse, too, I suppose like the rest of us? Fine business for my guests!"

"There is not a sweet pea left, sir," said Antony respectfully, "and if there were any I should certainly not allow you to undertake the transportation of them. You have enough on your mind, I should say." With a long drawn sigh the portly gentleman sank upon an inverted wash tub and wrung his hands miserably.

"Never in my life!" he mourned, "never in all my entire life!"

Antony uttered a soothing sound, of vague but apparently satisfactory import.

"Not that we mind the loss of the car at all," continued the old gentleman, more collectedly now, "only this morning his mother told me with tears in her eyes that she had offered him the price of it to give it up; so far as that goes, she is, as she only just now informed me, thanking her Creator on her bended knees and begging Him never to let us see or hear of that horrible machine again. Ammy promised her on his honour that if anything happened to this one, he would never buy another. It was his seventh."

Antony's heart leaped up, but he spoke decorously.

"It seems to me, sir," he said, "that you will, in all human probability, never see that car again."

"Thank God!" said his host fervently. "What is a stickpin to Richard?" he demanded explosively, "what, in heaven's name, do I care for a paltry fresh water pearl? It is the disgrace, the publicity; the laughing stock--in my house they tell me, these scoundrels are! At my daughter's wedding. Eating my food at this moment, perhaps, Mr. Williamson warns me!"

"This Mr. Williamson," said Antony gently, "seems to be a very keen person."

"The keenest," replied the old gentleman eagerly, "he is hunting for the woman now. It is unfortunate that he is the only one of the ushers who did not know Ammy, you see."

"I see. It was certainly unfortunate," said Antony suavely.

"Ammy is due in a few minutes," said the old gentleman, pulling out a wealthy gold watch, "and here I am sitting here! I am so overcome, you must excuse me. The five:three. I was to send someone."

"Can I not go, sir?" Antony asked feverishly, "just get me somebody's trap--anybody's--and let me go to get him and save you any further trouble."

"Why, that is very kind, I am sure," said Gertrude's father, "I will call the first one I see."

There was a scurrying down the narrow stair and as the old gentleman turned to go, a neat and very pretty housemaid rushed towards him.

"O sir, excuse me, sir," she cried, blushing delightfully, "but Miss Gertrude said I was to ask you for five dollars, sir, to pay for the C. O. D, at the station, sir. She wants it immediately. If some one is going down, sir, could he take me?"

With a practiced hand the father of the bride reached into his pocket, lifted from it a thick, green bundle, and placed a bill in the pink trembling hand held out for it.

"This gentleman here will take you down directly, Mary--Delia--er, my dear," he said kindly, "I don't recall his name at the moment, but we are all very informal to-day, and I'm sure he won't object.-- Here, boy, call me a carriage--anybody's! I'll see you later, my dear boy, and I am much obliged."

"Don't mention it, sir," Antony replied, and leaped nimbly into a gorgeous station-waggon, taking his seat beside the driver. The housemaid, displaying, as she mounted to the back seat, remarkable hosiery and footgear for one in her humble walk of life, followed quickly, and forth they drove.

The blood was tingling in his fingertips, his head reeled with a strange mixture of terror and delight--the intoxication of the artist in dangerous adventure--but Antony's voice was level as he inquired of the driver beside him:

"And what's the next station up the road, do you know?"

"Brookdale, sir, and there you can get the other road if you want it."

"I see. And is this the up train?"

"Yes, sir. I suppose Mr. Amory had to go out of his way to make any connection--the trains are poor here, sir. Mr. Ashley had to have two specials put on for to-day. You see, Cliffwood is a small place, sir."

Cliffwood! Antony could have kicked himself for not recognising in all this pomp of iron-gated villas, the scattered collection of estates thus poetically christened.

"That's a bad business about them murdering thieves, isn't it, sir?" pursued the driver confidentially.

Antony's heart sank like lead. "Murdering?" he gasped, "did the Frenchman die, then?"

"Oh, him!" returned the driver scornfully, "no, he didn't, the foreign pup. How could he--that old snake hasn't a fang in his head!"

Antony grasped the seat beneath him and drew a long, deep breath.

"I--I am glad to hear it," he said concisely, and as he spoke the incoming train whistled--a mellow, pleasing note that sang of freedom (yea, and guiltless freedom!) to wedding guest and housemaid alike.

Forth from the train, ere hardly it had stopped, leaped an eager pair, a man and a maid, not too precisely attired, for their garments were rumpled and not such as the critical in these matters assume when bound for a wedding festival. Yet they did not seem unhappy, these two, but rather lenient and tender in their judgments upon all the world, for they smiled sweetly upon the empty platform, and sweetly, if a little vaguely, upon Antony, who advanced to meet them, hat in hand.

"Mr. Amory, I presume?" he said airily. "I came down to get you, but I find I must send a telegram, on account of the trains running so poorly here, and so I will not detain you a second, as I am sure you cannot see Mrs.--Mrs. Richard too soon. They will send back for me."

"Thanks, old man--are they caught?" cried the lately arrived, making for the station-waggon, and staring at the diamond horseshoe in Antony's pearl grey tie, Antony touched it knowingly and smiled.

"No. They are not caught yet," he said, "but we're on the scent!"

"Good!" exclaimed the other, "now jump in, dear," and as the last bit of baggage left the train and the waggon turned, Antony fled through the station and raced up the steps of the moving car, hand in hand with the pretty housemaid.

They seated themselves amid curious and friendly smiles.

"I will speak when the wheels are well started," thought Antony, and then, "when she gets her breath, I will say something," but with each minute overwhelming embarrassment wrapped him, more deeply, and he sat, with averted eyes, in silence. Just as they slackened pace to pause at Brookdale and he motioned her to rise, she spoke, huskily and with an evident effort.

"What will you do with the chain and the pin?"

"Put them, with all these clothes and five dollars, in the trunk, row the three pieces across the river, meet them with a cart and express them to Mr. Ashley from Turnersville," he answered, promptly and with a rapid lucidity which astonished himself.

"They will be surprised," she remarked indifferently, as she descended the steps of the train, and:

"It is probable that they will," he agreed.

* * * * *

It was some three hours later that a vehicle conducted by one horse moved solitary under a rich and rising moon along the fair white road that leads to one of the most venerable if not the largest of our colleges. Dogged by its own black shadow, whose wheels, smaller but no less symmetrical, rolled silently beside it, this vehicle would inevitably have stirred romantic interest in the breast of any imaginative spectator of its progress. And this with reason, for one of its two occupants was a girl, who slept, white-faced beneath the moon, her head, on which was perched askew a housemaid's cap, drooped forward on her breast, her lips slightly parted. The other, a well-dressed young man, allowed the easy-going beast to pick its own way, the while he gazed at the sleeping face, compassionately, it would seem, for all at once, with a pitying exclamation, he slipped his arm behind her, and gently guided her head to his shoulder. With a sigh of relief she nestled against him and her face relaxed with the comfort of her new attitude, while still she slept. Thus they drove on for many minutes, nor did his eyes once leave that white, appealing face. So small she seemed, so helpless--could this slender creature have stood by him so gallantly, have matched her wits so triumphantly against the incredible crises of the past day? Day? Antony felt that the ordinary partitions of time had henceforth no meaning for him and that the philosopher who questioned the validity of time itself knew well whereof he had written.

What a spirit the girl had! How beautiful she had looked in the wood! He sighed, and at that or some other slight sound she opened her eyes and gazed in terror at him. And as she gazed the terror slowly melted and disappeared, a lovely child-like confidence grew in its place, and she spoke softly.

"It is you!" she said, and half awake, she smiled deliciously, straight into his bending eyes, "you are here?"

A great wave seemed to break in Antony's breast.

"Here?" he cried, deep voiced, "where could I be but here--with you? Who could be here--but me?"

Fully awakened now, she started from him, a flood of red sweeping her pale face as she saw where she had been resting.

"No--no!" she stammered, "you are--we are--I was only dreaming that----"

With his eyes he entreated her, for their steed, spying the lights of home, had started forward and Antony's hands were busy.

"Ah, Nette, dearest Nette," he begged her, and something in his voice shook her so that she trembled beside him, "if waking makes you hate me again, then dream! For when you dream, I am sure you love me."

"I do not! I do not!" she cried, covering her face with her hands.

The eager horse tugged at the bit: Antony forced her by his mere will to meet his eyes.

"Not?" he said, low and clearly, "Not? Not after to-day, Nette?"

She bit her lip, and then, as the old college bell rang out nine sharp strokes she laid her arms swiftly about his neck and his cheek quivered under her warm soft hair.

"You are right," she whispered, "after to-day--everything!"

The streets were no longer empty. They sat, separate, with whirling hearts, trembling under the mounting moon. They were in the familiar street. . . .

"After to-day--after to-day!" he muttered dizzily, when suddenly she laughed out beside him, sobbed brokenly, then laughed again.

"To-day is the first of April!" she cried.

And once again the polished moon threw her needless glory over youth and love and laughter.