“Sure,” said Flo.
CHAPTER NINE
Walking goes in two-four time, but riding either on horse or in an automobile makes a rhythm like a waltz. For half an hour Blake had been thinking up waltzes and trying to hum them against the waltz that his mind seemed to prefer. Whenever he relaxed for the shortest space of time he would hear again, like a stubborn gramophone far back between his ears,
It’s three o’clock in the morning:
We’ve danced—th’ whole night through....
and the tick of the left rear wheel of the car kept it up.
Talking was useless; it was impossible to talk except at certain times of the day. Just after breakfast, when they started out, everyone was talkative for an hour. Then they fell silent until lunch, wherever that might happen to be. Afterwards the four people were dead quiet until they had stopped for the night, except for little interludes when Gwendolyn Saville-Sanders would say,
“Do look at that hill over there. Marvelous.”
Or Mary would call, “Blake, dear. Not quite so fast. You can never tell who’s coming around the curve.” When Teddy was driving she didn’t worry. Only relatives are unsafe as chauffeurs.
The left rear wheel ticked and Blake hummed waltzes and all the time the road was leading them farther and farther from any place that he had ever been. He felt great. He paid no attention to gas and oil and air. Teddy took care of all that, with the jealous love of a childless woman who has borrowed a nephew for the week. For Blake, stopping for gas and oil was a rude interruption. He would be far off somewhere and suddenly the car would stop in front of a dusty little red pump sitting in the middle of the landscape, with a man in overalls shambling out of the dusty little house behind it. Then Gwendolyn would order soda pop all around, and mop her face. Or she would ask for the ladies’ room in a husky whisper that made Blake ashamed to go to his side of the little house.