_ BOOK III. IN WASHINGTON
CHAPTER IV
The sky was filled with morning when a noise startled Davidge out of nullity. He was amazed to find a strange woman asleep at his elbow. He remembered her suddenly.
With a clatter of wheels and cans and hoofs a milkman's wagon and team came out of the hills. Davidge stepped down from the car and stopped the loud-voiced, wide-mouthed driver with a gesture. He spoke in a low voice which the milkman did not copy. The taxi-driver woke to the extent of one eye and a horrible yawn, while Davidge explained his plight.
"Gasolene gave out, hey?" said the milkman.
"It certainly did," said Davidge, "and I'd be very much obliged if you'd get me some more."
"Wa-all, I'm purty busy."
"I'll pay you anything you ask."
The milkman was modest in his ambitions.
"How'd two dollars strike ye?"
"Five would be better if you hurried."
This looked suspicious, but the milkman consented.
"Wa-all, all right, but what would I fetch the gasolene in?"
"One of your milk-cans."
"They're all fuller melk."
"I'll buy one, milk and all."
"Wa-all, I reckon I'll hev to oblige you."
"Here's five dollars on account. There'll be five more when you get back."
"Wa-all, all ri-ight. Get along there, Jawn Henry."
John Henry got along. Even his
cloppety-clop did not waken Miss Webling.
The return of the rattletrap and the racket of filling the tank with the elixir finished her sleep, however. She woke in confusion, finding herself sitting up, dressed, in her little room, with three strange men at work outside.
When the tank was filled, Davidge entered her compartment with a cheery "Good morning," and slammed the door after him. The gasolene, like the breath of a god, gave life to the dead. The car snarled and jumped, and went roaring across the bridge, up the hill and down another, and down that and up another.
Here they caught, through a frame of leaves, a glimpse of Washington in the sunrise, a great congregation of marble temples and trees and sky-colored waters, the shaft of the Monument lighted with the milky radiance of a mountain peak on its upper half, the lower part still dusk with valley shadow, and across the plateau of roofs the solemn Capitol in as mythical a splendor as the stately dome that Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu.
This sight of Canaan from Pisgah-height was no luxury to the taxi-driver, and he hustled his coffee-grinder till he reached Rosslyn once more, crossed the Potomac's many-tinted stream, and rattled through Georgetown and the shabby, sleeping little shops of M Street into the tree-tunnels of Washington.
He paused to say, "Where do we go from here?"
Davidge and Marie Louise looked their chagrin. They still had no place to go.
"To the Pennsylvania Station," said Davidge. "We can at least get breakfast there."
The streets of Washington are never so beautiful as at this still hour when nothing stirs but the wind in the trees and the grass on the lawns, and hardly anybody is abroad except the generals on their bronze horses fronting their old battles with heroic eyes. The station outside was something Olympic but unfrequented. Inside, it was a vast cathedral of untenanted pews.
Davidge paid the driver a duke's ransom. There was no porter about, and he carried Marie Louise's suit-cases to the parcel-room. Her baggage had had a long journey. She retreated to the women's room for what toilet she could make, and came forth with a very much washed face. Somnambulistic negroes took their orders at the lunch-counter.
Marie Louise had weakly decided to return to New York again, but the hot coffee was full of defiance, and she said that she would make another try at Mrs. Widdicombe as soon as a human hour arrived.
And she showed a tactfulness that won much respect from Davidge when she said:
"Do get your morning paper and read it. I'm sure I have nothing to say that I haven't said, and if I had, it could wait till you find out how the battle goes in Europe."
He bought her a paper, too, and they sat on a long bench, exchanging comments on the news that made almost every front page a chapter in world history.
She heard him groan with rage. When she looked up he pointed to the submarine record of that week.
"Last week the losses took a horrible jump--forty ships of over sixteen hundred tons. This week it's almost as bad--thirty-eight ships of over sixteen hundred, thirteen ships under, and eight fishing-vessels. Think of it--all of 'em merchant-ships!
"Pretty soon I've got to send my ship out to run the gantlet. She's like Little Red Riding Hood going through the forest to take old Granny Britain some food. And the wolves are waiting for her. What a race of people, what a pack of beasts!"
Marie Louise had an idea. "I'll tell you a pretty name for your ship--
Little Red Riding Hood. Why don't you give her that?"
He laughed. "The name would be heavier than the cargo. I wonder what the crew would make of it. No, this ship, my first one, is to be named after"--he lowered his voice as one does on entering a church--"after my mother."
"Oh, that's beautiful!" Marie Louise said. "And will she be there to christen-- Oh, I remember, you said--"
He nodded three or four times in wretchedness. But the grief was his own, and he must not exploit it. He assumed an abrupt cheer.
"I'll name the next ship after you, if you don't mind."
This was too glorious to be believed. What bouquet or jewel could equal it? She clapped her hands like a child hearing a Christmas promise.
"What is your first name, Miss Webling?"
She suddenly realized that they were not, after all, such old friends as the night had seemed to make them.
"My first two names," she said, "are Marie Louise."
"Oh! Well, then we'll call the ship
Marie Louise."
She saw that he was a little disappointed in the name, so she said:
"When I was a girl they called me Mamise."
She was puzzled to see how this startled him.
He jumped audibly and fastened a searching gaze on her. Mamise! He had thought of Mamise when he saw her, and now she gave the name. Could she possibly be the Mamise he remembered? He started to ask her, but checked himself and blushed. A fine thing it would be to ask this splendid young princess, "Pardon me, Princess, but were you playing in cheap vaudeville a few years ago?" It was an improbable coincidence that he should meet her thus, but an almost impossible coincidence that she should wear both the name and the mien of Mamise and not be Mamise. But he dared not ask her.
She noted his blush and stammer, but she was afraid to ask their cause.
"
Mamise it shall be," he said.
And she answered, "I was never so honored in my life."
"Of course," he warned her, "the boat isn't built yet. In fact, the new yard isn't built yet. There's many a slip 'twixt the keel and the ship. She might never live to be launched. Some of these sneaking loafers on our side may blow her up before the submarines get a chance at her."
There he was, speaking of submarines once more! She shivered, and she looked at the clock and got up and said:
"I think I'll try Mrs. Widdicombe now."
"Let me go along," said Davidge.
But she shook her head. "I've taken enough of your life--for the present."
Trying to concoct a felicitous reply, he achieved only an eloquent silence. He put her and her luggage aboard a taxicab, and then she gave him her most cordial hand.
"I could never hope to thank you enough," she said, "and I won't begin to try. Send me your address when you have one, and I'll mail you Mrs. Widdicombe's confidential telephone number. I do want to see you soon again, unless you've had enough of me for a lifetime."
He did very handsomely by the lead she gave him:
"I couldn't have enough--not in a lifetime."
The taxi-driver snipped the strands of their gaze as he whisked her away.
Marie Louise felt a forenoon elation in the cool air and the bright streets, thick with men and women in herds hurrying to their patriotic tasks, and a multitude of officers and enlisted men seeking their desks. She was here to join them, and she hoped that it would not be too hard to find some job with a little thrill of service in it.
As she went through Georgetown now M Street was different--full of marketers and of briskness. The old bridge was crowded. As her car swooped up the hills and skirted the curves to Polly Widdicombe's she began to be afraid again. But she was committed to the adventure and she was eager for the worst of it. She found the house without trouble and saw in the white grove of columns Polly herself, bidding good-by to her husband, whose car was waiting at the foot of the steps.
Polly hailed Marie Louise with cries of such delight that before the cab had made the circle and drawn up at the steps the hunted look was gone and youth come back to Marie Louise's anxious smile. Polly kissed her and presented her husband, pointing to the gold leaves on his shoulders with militaristic pride.
Widdicombe blushed and said: "Fearless desk-fighter has to hurry off to battle with ruthless stenographers. Such are the horrors of war!"
He insisted on paying Marie Louise's driver, though she said, "Women will never be free so long as men insist on paying all their bills."
Polly said: "Hush, or the brute will set me free!"
He kissed Polly, waved to Marie Louise, stepped into his car, and shot away.
Polly watched him with devout eyes and said:
"Poor boy! he's dying to get across into the trenches, but they won't take him because he's a little near-sighted, thank God! And he works like a dog, day and night." Then she returned to the rites of hospitality. "Had your breakfast?"
"At the station." The truth for once coincided very pleasantly with convenience.
"Then I know what you want," said Polly, "a bath and a nap. After that all-night train-trip you ought to be a wreck."
"I am."
Polly led her to a welcoming room that would have been quite pretty enough if it had had only a bed and a chair. Marie Louise felt as if she had come out of the wilderness into a city of refuge. Polly had an engagement, a committee meeting of women war-workers, and would not be back until luncheon-time. Marie Louise steeped herself in a hot tub, then in a long sweet sleep in a real bed. She was wakened by the voices of children, and looked out from her window to see the Widdicombe tots drilling in a company of three with a drum, a flag, and a wooden gun. The American army was not much bigger compared with the European nations in arms, but it would grow.
Polly came home well charged with electricity, the new-woman idea that was claiming half of the war, the true squaw-spirit that takes up the drudgery at home while the braves go out to swap missiles with the enemy. When Marie Louise said that she, too, had come to Washington to get into harness somewhere, Polly promised her a plethora of opportunities.
At luncheon Polly was reminded of the fact that a photographer was coming over from Washington. He had asked for sittings, and she had acceded to his request.
"I never can get photographs enough of my homely self," said Polly. "I'm always hoping that by some accident the next one will make me look as I want to look--make ithers see me as I see mysel'!"
When the camera-man arrived Polly insisted that Marie Louise must pose, too, and grew so urgent that she consented at last, to quiet her. They spent a harrowing afternoon striking attitudes all over the place, indoors and out, standing, sitting, heads and half-lengths, profile and three-quarters and full face. Their muscles ached with the struggle to assume and retain beatific expressions on an empty soul.
The consequences of that afternoon of self-impersonation were far-reaching for Marie Louise.
According to the Washingtonian custom, one of the new photographs appeared the following Sunday in each of the four newspapers. The Sunday after that Marie Louise's likeness appeared with "Dolly Madison's" and Jean Elliott's syndicated letters on "The Week in Washington" in Sunday supplements throughout the country. Every now and then her likeness popped out at her from
Town and Country,
Vogue,
Harper's Bazaar,
The Spur, what not?
One of those countless images fell into the hands of Jake Nuddle, who had been keeping an incongruous eye on the Sunday supplements for some time. This time the double of Mamise was not posed as a farmerette in an English landscape, but as a woman of fashion in a Colonial drawing-room.
He hurried to his wife with the picture, and she called it "Mamise" with a recrudescent anguish of doubt.
"She's in this country now, the paper says," said Jake. "She's in Washington, and if I was you I'd write her a little letter astin' her is she our sister."
Mrs. Nuddle was crying too loosely to note that "our." The more Jake considered the matter the less he liked the thought of waiting for a letter to go and an answer to come.
"Meet 'em face to face; that's me!" he declared at last. "I think I'll just take a trip to the little old capital m'self. I can tell the rest the c'mittee I'm goin' to put a few things up to some them Senators and Congersmen. That'll get my expenses paid for me."
There simply was nobody that Jake Nuddle would not cheat, if he could.
His always depressing wife suggested: "Supposin' the lady says she ain't Mamise, how you goin' to prove she is? You never seen her."
Jake snarled at her for a fool, but he knew that she was right. He resisted the dismal necessity as long as he could, and then extended one of his most cordial invitations:
"Aw, hell! I reckon I'll have to drag you along."
He grumbled and cursed his fate and resolved to make Mamise pay double for ruining his excursion. _