Three Speeds Forward/Chapter 4
IV
OLAFF SPEAKS OUT
IV
OLAFF SPEAKS OUT
N my first moment of stupefaction I confess I did not know what to do. A mountain lion seemed almost preferable, and though I ought to have felt awfully angry and insulted, I somehow couldn't do it. I suppose it was because he really meant it, and wasn't pretending. So I simply told him the truth—that he was making me embarrassed and uncomfortable, and that if his regard amounted to anything, he would stop right there talking about it.
"Don't make it impossible for me to accept a favor from you," I went on. "Things like that sandbag a conversation and make one self-conscious, and put one on one's guard. You will force me to adopt a freezing manner, and protect myself as best I can. Don't you think that would be rather humiliating for both of us?"
Then, of course, being an awfully nice man, he groveled, and acted as though he was awfully grateful at not being killed dead. He begged my pardon over and over again, and got into the transmission to see if it actually was a fracture.
"I'll only ask you one thing before I drop the subject," he said very gravely, "and that is, to do me the honor to believe me."
It made me tingle all over to admit I did, but what was the use of fibbing about it? Besides, to have answered otherwise would have provoked a discussion. I was rather flustered, anyway, and kind of glad, too, and thought what beautiful thick wavy hair he had as he bent over the case. It hadn't been love at first sight—on my part, I mean—but it had got very close to the worrying line, and he certainly was tormentingly good looking, and unusually attractive and charming. It made me sigh that he had maddened a continent. Girls are awfully susceptible to the ridiculous, and a puzzle king—oh, no!
"You'd better let me take you home," he said, "and then I can come back with a man and tow Dandy to the shop."
But I wouldn't hear of it. In the first place, I didn't want to be under such an obligation; and, in the second, what was the good of saying die when you have a healthy reverse?
"But it will take you hours and hours," he said.
"You oughtn't mind that," I told him—"not after all you said, and all that I didn't let you say."
You ought to have seen how pleased he looked! Perhaps it was rather forward of me, but I couldn't help it. He was too nice not to tease a little, and after his promise about the tabooed subject, I wasn't afraid to skate all around it. Not that the stern facts of existence were neglected, however. The road was so narrow that he had to back too, having a 114-wheel base, and we both backed and backed and backed, till it would have made a cat laugh. Then we'd cool off, and talk, and back some more. He had some crackers in his kit, and a bottle of fizz water, and we had a sort of lunch, and grew chummier and chummier; even Olaff licking the crumbs off his hand and growing quite friendly—which I thought was a good sign, as Olaff is a regular Bernard Shaw on character, and sees right through people. I told Mr. Marsden he ought to be tremendously complimented; and he said he was, and anybody could see he loved dogs, and really appreciated Great Danes. Nothing would discourage me more about a man than if he didn't, and there's a heap in that old saying about "Love me, love my dog." Only sometimes the dog won't reciprocate, which in this case, fortunately, didn't happen, and everything was delightful.
It was about noon when we first began to back, and I know that nobody will believe me when I say it took us six hours to reach the county road. Mr. Marsden was very cautious about overheating, and was a great stickler for being on the safe side. Anyway, we'd back and stop, back and stop, back and stop, till we felt we'd been years together and were declining into middle age. We must have stopped fifty times, and as we had a separate talk each time, you can see for yourself that we were bound to get more and more confidential, and steadily advance the spark of friendship.
His whole past life gradually came out, and it was most strange and exciting and pathetic. His father had been the inventor of an extraordinary automatic machine cannon, and wherever there was trouble there was Mr. Marsden's father crazy to show it off. My Mr. Marsden, from the time he was nine to fifteen, went along, too, helping to chase up war ministers and wars and revolutions. The pair had the most awful ups and downs, riding one day in gold carriages with kings and dictators, and the next half starving and ignored. His father drew a considerable income from a ship-telegraph patent, and this allowed him to keep his liberty and his gun, and refuse what offers he got for it. And the worst of it was that it wasn't a good gun, and the only people who could make it work properly were Mr. Marsden and his father. But if nobody was very eager to buy it, they were always willing enough to give Mr. Marsden a front seat on the chance of his making good, and thus it was they were always to the fore, and shooting off their wonderful gun.
They averaged a war a year—not big ones, of course, because they don't occur so often, but little ones in unheard-of places—Herzegovina, Macedonia, Georgia, Morocco. No revolution was complete without Mr. Marsden and his gun, and he always saved the thing from being cold-blooded by siding ferociously with the party he was with. The detested enemy was always in front of Mr. Marsden's wonderful gun, and the people behind it were invariably the downtrodden patriots who were throwing off the despot's yoke. My Mr. Marsden told it all with a delicious humor, and an underlying tenderness for his crack-brained father that was most sweet and charming. Indeed, he had a real gift of description, and made my heart beat with the stories of battles and routs, and narrow squeaks, and corpses rotting in the sun—leading up to the time when his father died of fever, and he himself managed to get back to America with nothing more than the clothes he stood in. The ship-telegraph had been superseded by a better invention, and he found himself without a penny in the world, and no more education than what he had picked up on the march.
"But I was out of the gun business for good," he said, "and thank God for it."
One instinctively sides with the hero in any story—not that Mr. Marsden was that exactly—but in his struggles and hardships and disappointments and the gritty fight he made to get through college and make something of himself and his abilities. Think of the Bo-peep puzzle, for instance. He made it for his landlady's little girl, who was sick in bed, and he too poor to buy her a Christmas present! His big things were all failures, while this unconsidered trifle, whittled out with his jack-knife late one night, and inspired simply by kindness, brought him an unexpected and Heaven-sent independence. He sold it to a syndicate for thirty-five dollars, and only retained half profits because they wouldn't make it one hundred dollars outright.
"Now they are Marsden Incorporated," he said, "and I am under a ten years' iron-clad contract. Strange how things fall out, isn't it?"
Altogether we were awfully good friends by the time we reached the county road, where Mr. Marsden promised to push Dandy Dick till I could get in the high-speed clutch for what we hoped was the last time. It was good running from there home, you know, and he was to tail along behind, besides, to keep an eye on me. But, of course, it meant saying good-by right there, because if Dandy once got moving there was no stopping her till I got into papa's barn. Mr. Marsden wasn't over-willing to begin, and got very miserable and downhearted, especially when I told him that it wouldn't do for us ever to meet again.
"They might say I was meeting you clandestinely," I said, "and then I'd just lie down and die of mortification. You don't know what a nest of gossips we live in, nor how they tear girls limb from limb. And that's without counting papa, for Heaven only knows what he'd do to me."
Then he groaned—positively groaned—and murmured something about a "way." "Oh, there must be a way!"
"This is one of the places where there isn't any way," I remarked. "Of course, if you could save papa's life, or find him tied to the track and then cut him free, it might break the ice a bit. But it would be just like papa to be grumpy about it, and keep you at arm's length even then."
"Tell me frankly," he cried, "this isn't any subterfuge on your part? It isn't that I'm unpresentable, is it? Would you be ashamed to know me—be friends, I mean—in the ordinary way? I've been so long a pariah that I'm beginning to lose my nerve. Yet you haven't acted as though there was any real gulf between us."
"Only papa," I said. "But that's a mile wide and ten deep. Oh, no, Mr. Marsden, I like you ever so much, and I think you are nicer and lots more interesting than all the men here put together." (I wanted to pile it on, because it was true, you know, and I felt most awfully sorry for him, and it seemed so unjust and wrong that I couldn't meet him properly—only through cracked porcelains and chewed-up low-gears.)
"Then it just comes down to this: I have to meet your father, and simply force him to like me."
It seemed tame to remind him that this was easier said than done. Making papa like you wasn't an affair of touching a button. And, if anything, he was more ferocious than ever about losing the Vincents, and his dislike of Mr. Marsden had become a monomania. That's the trouble about a man who's been good-natured all his life, and never had an enemy except the legislature; when at last he finds one he won't let it go. I believe papa actually enjoyed being a Marsden-phoboist.
"There is something in what you said just now," he went on meditatively. "I must get him into a tight place and save him."
"It can't be done," I said. "Papa's been saved only once in his life, and then it was the First National Bank, and it took three million dollars."
"A little plan has been running through my head for the last hour," he persisted. "Possibly you noticed my interest in the Lampmans' fancy-dress ball, and how I drew you out about it? I think I could use it to advantage if I could count on you to help me."
My face must have expressed my misgiving. I didn't want to promise in the dark. A girl has always to be on her guard, and though he was very fascinating and all that, I still had a little sense. I wouldn't have any harm come to my father for a hundred thousand Marsdens. He was quick to see what was passing in my head, and gazed at me more and more despairingly.
"I suppose it is crazy for me to try," he said, "but I wouldn't be halfway a man if I didn't. You haven't gone back from what you told me?"
"What did I tell you?"
"That you liked me, I mean. That under happier circumstances, you would give me the same chance that your other men friends have to—to———"
I rather hoped he'd go on, but he didn't. The way he broke off, and clenched his hands, was terribly eloquent, and anybody could see it was the real thing. It was almost in self-defense that I looked at my watch, gave a little scream, and begged him to push Dandy and not delay me another minute.
"All I want to ask you is this," he broke out. "Be sure you go to the ball, and make your father go, too—in the Dauntless, of course—and leave the Lampmans' exactly at two o'clock. Will you do this for me? May I count on it absolutely? The happiness of my whole life depends on it."
He caught my hand and held it so appealingly, so devotedly, that it wasn't in flesh and blood to say No; especially as I was going to the Lampmans' anyway—papa, Dauntless, and all—and the only real favor was the two-o'clock part of it. So I made a great deal of saying Yes, I would, and then he heaved away at Dandy, and with a lot of shoving got me started. I gave him a double toot to cheer him up, while the G. R. A. T. pounded along behind, ready to help out if need be, and Olaff smiled at me quizzically with his blood-shot eyes.
"Homeward bound, old dog," I said, and then I whispered, "Olaff, do you believe in love at first sight?" And what do you suppose that wonderful old dog did?
Nodded—positively nodded—and uttered a loud, enthusiastic bark.
It's such a comfort to have a dog you can always agree with!—who always knows the right thing to bark, and barks it. Papa says he has enough sense to run a Democratic State Committee. Papa is a Republican.
