The Scarlet Car | Page 5

happy enthusiasts, raced past them he groaned.
"The only one of us that showed any common sense was Ernest," he
declared, "and you turned him down. I am going to take a trolley to
Stamford, and the first train to New Haven."
"You are not," said his sister; "I will not desert Mr. Winthrop, and you
cannot desert me."
Brother Sam sighed, and seated himself on a rock.
"Do you think, Billy," he asked, "you can get us to Cambridge in time
for next year's game?"
The car limped into Stamford, and while it went into drydock at the
garage, Brother Sam fled to the railroad station, where he learned that
for the next two hours no train that recognized New Haven spoke 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