_ BOOK III. IN WASHINGTON
CHAPTER II
As she came out of the first hotel of her selection and rejection Marie Louise asked the car-starter the name of another. He mentioned the New Willard.
It was not far, and she was there before she had time to recover from the staggering effect of Lady Clifton-Wyatt's bludgeon-like snub. As timidly as the waif and estray that she was, she ventured into the crowded, gorgeous lobby with its lofty and ornate ceiling on its big columns. At one side a long corridor ran brokenly up a steep hill. It was populous with loungers who had just finished their dinners or were waiting for a chance to get into the dining-rooms. Orchestra music was lilting down the aisle.
When Marie Louise had threaded the crowd and reached the desk a very polite and eager clerk asked her if she had a reservation. He seemed to be as regretful as she when she said no. He sighed, "We've turned away a hundred people in the last two hours."
She accepted her dismissal dumbly, then paused to ask, "I say, do you by any chance know where Grinden Hall is?"
He shook his head and turned to another clerk to ask, "Do you know of a hotel here named Grinden Hall?"
The other shook his head, too. There was a vast amount of head-shaking going on everywhere in Washington. He added, "I'm new here." Nearly everybody seemed to be new here. It seemed as if the entire populace had moved into a ready-made town.
Marie Louise had barely the strength to explain, "Grinden Hall is not an hotel; it is a home, in Rosslyn, wherever that is."
"Oh, Rosslyn--that's across the river in Virginia."
"Do you know, by any chance, Major Thomas Widdicombe?"
He shook his head. Major Widdicombe was a big man, but the town was fairly swarming with men bigger than he. There were shoals of magnates, but giants in their own communities were petty nuisances here pleading with room-clerks for cots and with head waiters for bread. The lobby was a thicket of prominent men set about like trees. Several of them had the Congressional look. Later history would record them as the historic statesmen of titanic debates, men by whose eloquence and leadership and committee-room toil the Republic would be revolutionized in nearly every detail, and billions made to flow like water.
As Marie Louise collected her porter and her hand-luggage for her next exit she saw Ross Davidge just coming in. She stepped behind a large politician or something. She forgot that she owed Davidge money, and she felt a rather pleasurable agitation in this game of hide-and-seek, but something made her shy of Davidge. For one thing, it was ludicrous to be caught being turned out of a second hotel.
The politician walked away, and Davidge would have seen Marie Louise if he had not stopped short and turned a cold shoulder on her, just as the distant orchestra, which had been crooning one of Jerome Kern's most insidiously ingratiating melodies, began to blare with all its might the sonorities of "The Star-spangled Banner."
Miss Webling saw the people in the alley getting to their feet slowly, awkwardly. A number of army and navy officers faced the music and stood rigid at attention. The civilians in the lobby who were already standing began to pull their hats off sheepishly like embarrassed peasants. People were still as self-conscious as if the song had just been written. They would soon learn to feel the tremendous importance of that eternal query, the only national anthem, perhaps, that ever began with a question and ended with a prayer. Americans would soon learn to salute it with eagerness and to deal ferociously with men--and women, too--who were slow to rise.
Marie Louise watched Davidge curiously. He was manifestly on fire with patriotism, but he was ashamed to show it, ashamed to stand erect and click his heels. He fumbled his hat and slouched, and looked as if he had been caught in some guilt. He was indeed guilty of a childish fervor. He wanted to shout, he wanted to weep, he wanted to fight somebody; but he did not know how to express himself without striking an attitude, and he was incapable of being a
poseur--except as an American posily affects poselessness.
When the anthem ended, people sank into their chairs with sighs of relief; the officers sharply relaxed; the civilians straightened up and felt at home again. Ross Davidge marched to the desk, not noticing Marie Louise, who motioned to her porter to come along with her luggage and went to hunt shelter at the Raleigh Hotel. She kept her taxi now and left her hand-baggage in it while she received the inevitable rebuff. From there she traveled to hotel after hotel, marching in with the dismal assurance that she would march right out again.
The taxi-driver was willing to take her to hotels as long as they and her money lasted. Her strength and her patience gave out first. At the Lafayette she advanced wearily, disconsolately to the desk. She saw Ross Davidge stretched out in a big chair. He did not see her. His hat was pulled over his eyes, and he had the air of angry failure. If he despaired, what chance had she?
She received the usual regrets from the clerk. As she left the desk the floor began to wabble. She hurried to an inviting divan and dropped down, beaten and distraught. She heard some one approach, and her downcast eyes saw a pair of feet move up and halt before her.
Since Lady Clifton-Wyatt's searing glance and words Marie Louise had felt branded visibly, and unworthy of human kindness and shelter. She was piteously grateful to this man for his condescension in saying:
"You'll have to excuse me for bothering you again. But I'm afraid you're in worse trouble than I am. Nobody seems to be willing to take you in."
He meant this as a light jocularity, but it gave her a moment's serious fear that he had overheard Lady Clifton-Wyatt's slashing remark. But he went on:
"Won't you allow me to try to find you a place? Don't you know anybody here?"
"I know numbers of people, but I don't know where any of them are."
She told him of her efforts to get to Rosslyn by telephone, by telegraph, by train or taxicab. Little tears added a sparkle to laughter, but threatened rain. She ended with, "And now that I've unloaded my riddles on you, aren't you sorry you spoke?"
"Not yet," he said, with a subtle compliment pleasantly implying that she was perilous. Everybody likes to be thought perilous. He went on: "I don't know Rosslyn, but it can't be much of a place for size. If you have a friend there, we'll find her if we have to go to every house in Rosslyn."
"But it's getting rather late, isn't it, to be knocking at all the doors all by myself?"
She had not meant to hint, and it was a mere coincidence that he thought to say:
"Couldn't I go along?"
"Thank you, but it's out in the country rather far, I'm afraid."
"Then I must go along."
"I couldn't think of troubling you."
The end of it was that he had his way, or she hers, or both theirs. He made no nonsense of adventure or escapade about it, and she was too well used to traveling alone to feel ashamed or alarmed. He led her to the taxi, told the driver that Grinden Hall was their objective and must be found. Then he climbed in with her, and they rode in a dark broken with the fitful lightnings of street-lamps and motors.
The taxi glided out M Street. The little shops of Georgetown went sidelong by. The cab turned abruptly to the left and clattered across the old aqueduct bridge. On a broad reach of the Potomac the new-risen moon spread a vast sheet of tin-foil of a crinkled sheen. This was all that was beautiful about the sordid neighborhood, but it was very beautiful, and tender to a strange degree.
Once across, the driver stopped and leaned round to call in at the door:
"This is Rosslyn. Where do yew-all want to go next?"
"Grinden Hall. Ask somebody."
"Ask who? They ain't a soul tew be saw."
They waited in the dark awhile; then Davidge got out and, seeing a street-car coming down through the hills like a dragon in fiery scales, he stopped it to ask the motorman of Grinden Hall. He knew nothing, but a sleepy passenger said that he reckoned that that was the fancy name of Mr. Sawtell's place, and he shouted the directions:
"Yew go raht along this road ovah the caw tracks, and unda a bridge and keep a-goin' up a ridge and ova till yew come to a shawp tu'n to the raht. Big whaht mansion, ain't it?"
"I don't know," said Davidge. "I never saw it."
"Well, I reckon that's the place. Only 'Hall' I knaow about up heah."
The motorman kicked his bell and started off.
"Nothing like trying," said Davidge, and clambered in. The taxicab went veering and yawing over an unusually Virginian bad road. After a little they entered a forest. The driver threw on his search-light, and it tore from the darkness pictures of forest eerily green in the glare--old trees slanting out, deep channels blackening into mysterious glades. The car swung sharply to the right and growled up a hill, curving and swirling and threatening to capsize at every moment. The sense of being lost was irresistible.
Marie Louise fell to pondering; suddenly she grew afraid to find Grinden Hall. She knew that Polly knew Lady Clifton-Wyatt. They might have met since Polly wrote that letter. Lady Clifton-Wyatt had perhaps--had doubtless--told Polly all about Marie Louise. Polly would probably refuse her shelter. She knew Polly: there was no middle ground between her likes and dislikes; she doted or she hated. She was capable of smothering her friends with affection and of making them ancient enemies in an instant. For her enemies she had no use or tolerance. She let them know her wrath.
The car stopped. The driver got down and went forward to a narrow lane opening from the narrow road. There was a sign-board there. He read it by the light of the moon and a few matches. He came back and said:
"Here she is. Grinden Hall is what she says on that theah sign-bode."
Marie Louise was in a flutter. "What time is it?" she asked.
Davidge held his watch up and lighted a match.
"A little after one."
"It's awfully late," she said.
The car was turning at right angles now, and following a narrow track curling through a lawn studded with shrubbery. There was a moment's view of all Washington beyond the valley of the moon-illumined river. Its lights gleamed in a patient vigilance. It had the look of the holy city that it is. The Capitol was like a mosque in Mecca, the Mecca of the faithful who believe in freedom and equality. The Washington Monument, picked out from the dark by a search-light, was a lofty steeple in a dream-world.
Davidge caught a quick breath of piety and reverence. Marie Louise was too frightened by her own destiny to think of the world's anxieties.
The car raced round the circular road. Her eyes were snatched from the drowsy town, small with distance, to the imminent majesty of a great Colonial portico with columns tall and stately and white, a temple of Parthenonian dignity in the radiance of the priestly moon. There was not a light in any window, no sign of life.
The car stopped. But-- Marie Louise simply dared not face Polly and risk a scene in the presence of Davidge. She tapped on the glass and motioned the driver to go on. He could not believe her gestures. She leaned out and whispered:
"Go on--go on! I'll not stop!"
Davidge was puzzled, but he said nothing; and Marie Louise made no explanation till they were outside again, and then she said:
"Do you think I'm insane?"
"This is not my party," he said.
She tried to explain: "There wasn't a light to be seen. They couldn't have got my telegram. They weren't expecting me. They may not have been at home. I hadn't the courage to stop and wake the house."
That was not her real reason, but Davidge asked for no other. If he noted that she was strangely excited over a trifle like getting a few servants and a hostess out of bed, he made no comment.
When she pleaded, "Do you mind if I go back to Washington with you?" he chuckled: "It's certainly better than going alone. But what will you do when you get there?"
"I'll go to the railroad station and sit up," Marie Louise announced. "I'm no end sorry to have been such a nuisance."
"Nuisance!" he protested, and left his intonation to convey all the compliments he dared not utter.
The cab dived into another woods and ran clattering down a roving hill road. Up the opposite steep it went with a weary gait. It crawled to the top with turtle-like labor. Davidge knew the symptoms, and he frowned in the shadow, yet smiled a little.
The car went banging down, held by a squealing brake. The light grew faint, and in the glimmer there was a close shave at the edge of a hazardous bridge over a deep, deep ravine. The cab rolled forward on the rough planks under its impetus, but it picked up no speed. Half-way across, it stopped.
"Whatever is the matter?" Marie Louise exclaimed.
Davidge leaned out and called to the driver, "What's the matter now?" though he knew full well.
"Gas is gone, I reckon," the fellow snarled, as he got down. After a moment's examination he confirmed his diagnosis. "Yep, gas is all gone. I been on the go too long on this one call."
"In Heaven's name, where can you get some more gasolene?" said Marie Louise.
"Nearest garodge is at Rosslyn, I reckon, lady."
"How far is that?"
"I'd hate to say, lady. Three, fo' mahls, most lahkly, and prob'ly closed naow."
"Go wake it up at once."
"No thanky, lady. I got mahty po' feet for them hills."
"What do you propose to do?"
"Ain't nothin' tew dew but wait fo' somebody to come along."
"When will that be?"
"Along todes mawnin' they ought to be somebody along, milkman or somethin'."
"Cheerful!" said Marie Louise.
"Batt'ries kind o' sick, tew, looks lahk. I was engaged by the houah, remember," the driver reminded them as he clambered back to his place, put his feet up on the dashboard and let his head roll into a position of ease.
The dimming lights waned and did not wax. By and by they went where lights go when they go out. There was no light now except the moonset, shimmering mistily across the tree-tops of the rotunda of the forest, just enough to emphasize the black of the well they were in. _