The Scarlet Car | Page 5

to Stamford.
"That being so," said Winthrop, "while we are waiting for the car, we had better get a quick lunch now, and then push on."
"Push," exclaimed Brother Sam darkly, "is what we are likely to do."
After behaving with perfect propriety for half an hour, just outside of Bridgeport the Scarlet Car came to a slow and sullen stop, and once more the owner and the chauffeur hid their shame beneath it, and attacked its vitals. Twenty minutes later, while they still were at work, there approached from Bridgeport a young man in a buggy. When he saw the mass of college colors on the Scarlet Car, he pulled his horse down to a walk, and as he passed raised his hat.
"At the end of the first half," he said, "the score was a tie."
"Don't mention it," said Brother Sam.
"Now," he cried, "we've got to turn back, and make for New York. If we start quick, we may get there ahead of the last car to leave New Haven."
"I am going to New Haven, and in this car," declared his sister. "I must go--to meet Ernest."
"If Ernest has as much sense as he showed this morning," returned her affectionate brother, " Ernest will go to his Pullman and stay there. As I told you, the only sure way to get anywhere is by railroad train."
When they passed through Bridgeport it was so late that the electric lights of Fairview Avenue were just beginning to sputter and glow in the twilight, and as they came along the shore road into New Haven, the first car out of New Haven in the race back to New York leaped at them with siren shrieks of warning, and dancing, dazzling eyes. It passed like a thing driven by the Furies; and before the Scarlet Car could swing back into what had been an empty road, in swift pursuit of the first came many more cars, with blinding searchlights, with a roar of throbbing, thrashing engines, flying pebbles, and whirling wheels. And behind these, stretching for a twisted mile, came hundreds of others; until the road was aflame with flashing Will-o'-the-wisps, dancing fireballs, and long, shifting shafts of light.
Miss Forbes sat in front, beside Winthrop, and it pleased her to imagine, as they bent forward, peering into the night, that together they were facing so many fiery dragons, speeding to give them battle, to grind them under their wheels. She felt the elation of great speed, of imminent danger. Her blood tingled with the air from the wind-swept harbor, with the rush of the great engines, as by a handbreadth they plunged past her. She knew they were driven by men and half-grown boys, joyous with victory, piqued by defeat, reckless by one touch too much of liquor, and that the young man at her side was driving, not only for himself, but for them.
Each fraction of a second a dazzling light blinded him, and he swerved to let the monster, with a hoarse, bellowing roar, pass by, and then again swept his car into the road. And each time for greater confidence she glanced up into his face.
Throughout the mishaps of the day he had been deeply concerned for her comfort, sorry for her disappointment, under Brother Sam's indignant ironies patient, and at all times gentle and considerate. Now, in the light from the onrushing cars, she noted his alert, laughing eyes, the broad shoulders bent across the wheel, the lips smiling with excitement and in the joy of controlling, with a turn of the wrist, a power equal to sixty galloping horses. She found in his face much comfort. And in the fact that for the moment her safety lay in his hands, a sense of pleasure. That this was her feeling puzzled and disturbed her, for to Ernest Peabody it seemed, in some way, disloyal. And yet there it was. Of a certainty, there was the secret pleasure in the thought that if they escaped unhurt from the trap in which they found themselves, it would be due to him. To herself she argued that if the chauffeur were driving, her feeling would be the same, that it was the nerve, the skill, and the coolness, not the man, that moved her admiration. But in her heart she knew it would not be the same.
At West Haven Green Winthrop turned out of the track of the racing monsters into a quiet street leading to the railroad station, and with a half-sigh, half-laugh, leaned back comfortably.
"Those lights coming up suddenly make it hard to see," he said.
"Hard to breathe," snorted Sam; "since that first car missed us, I haven't drawn an honest breath. I held on so tight that I squeezed the hair out of the cushions."
When they reached the railroad station, and Sam