The shifts had reduced to two, of two men each by now; Ted and old Tim, and Allison and the rector; and these latter two worked double time. Their lips and their tongues were parched and cracking, and in their periods of rest they sat motionlessly facing each other, with a wheeze in the drawing of their breath. Their stentorian breathing could be heard from the forward end of their little tunnel clear back into the car, where the three girls were battling to preserve their senses against the poisonous gases which were now all that they had to breathe. Acting on the rector’s advice, they had stood up in the car to escape the gradually rising level of the carbonic gas, stood, as the time progressed, with their mouths agape and their breasts heaving and sharp pains in their lungs at every breath. Arly dropped, silently crumpling to the floor; then, a few minutes later, Lucile, and, panic-stricken by the thought that they had gone under, Gail felt her own senses reeling, when suddenly, looking ahead through eyes which were staring, she saw a crack of blessed light!
There was a hoarse cry from ahead! The crack of light widened. Another one appeared, some four feet to the right of it, and Gail already fancied that she could feel a freshening of the air she breathed with such tearing pain. Against the light of the openings, two figures, the only two which were left to work, strove, at first with the slow, limp motions of exhaustion, and then with the renewed vigour of approaching triumph. She could distinguish them clearly now, by the light which streamed in, the stocky, strong figure of Allison and the tall, sinewy figure of the rector. They were working frantically, Allison with his coat off, and the rector with his coat and vest both removed, and one sleeve torn almost entirely from his shirt, revealing his swelling biceps, and a long, red scratch. Gail’s senses were numbed, so that they were reduced to almost merely optical consciousness, so that she saw things photographically; but, even in her numbness, she realised that what she had thought a trace of weakness in the rector, was only the grace which had rounded his strength.
The two figures bent inward toward each other. There was a moment of mighty straining, and then the whole centre between the two cracks rolled away. A huge boulder had barred the path, and its removal let down a rush of pure, fresh air from the ground above, let down, too, a flood of dazzling light; and in the curving, under-rim of the opening, stood the two stalwart men who were the survival of the fittest! The mere instinct of self-preservation drove Gail forward, with a cry, toward the source of that life-giving air, and she scrambled through the window and ran toward the two men. They came hurriedly down to meet her, and each gave her a hand.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FREE AND ENTIRELY UNCURBED
Gail Sargent became suddenly and acutely aware of an entirely new and ethnological subdivision of the human race. She had known of Caucasians, Mongolians, Ethiopians, and the others, but now she was to meet the representatives of the gay, carefree, and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press! They figuratively swarmed from the ground, dropped from the eaves, and wriggled from under the rugs!
Immediately after Gail had reached home from the accident in the subway, and had been put to bed and given tea, and had repeatedly assured the doctor there was nothing the matter with her, they brought, at her urgent request, copies of the “extras,” which were already being yelled from every street corner and down every quiet residence block.
The accounts were, in the main, more or less accurate, barring the fact that they started with the assumption that there had been one hundred in Allison’s party, all killed. Later issues, however, regretfully reduced the number of dead to forty, six, and finally none, at which point they became more or less coherent, and gave an exact list of the people who were there, the cause of the accident, and a most appreciatively accentuated history of the heroic work of the men. Although she regretted that her picture had by this time crept into the public prints, grouped with the murders and defalcations of the day, she was able to overlook this personal discomfort as one of the minor penalties which civilisation has paid for its progress; like electric light bugs and electric fan neuralgia, and the smell of gasolene.
Long before this period, however, the reporters had tracked her to her lair; so long before, in fact, that there had been three of them waiting on the doorstep when she was brought into the house, eager young men, with a high spirit of reverence and delicacy, which was concentrated entirely on their jobs. They would have held her on the doorstep until she fainted or dropped dead, if, by so doing, they could have secured one statement, or hint of a statement, upon which they could have fastened something derogatory to her reputation, or the reputation of any of her family or friends; for that was great stuff, and what the public wanted; and they would have photographed her gleefully in the process of expiring. Aunt Helen Davies, being a woman of experience, snatched Gail into the house before they had taken more than eight or nine photographs of her, but, from that instant, the doorbell became a nuisance and the telephone bell a torture! Both were finally disconnected, but, at as late an hour as one A.M., the house was occasionally assaulted.
By that time Gail had telegrams of frantic inquiry from all her friends back home, including the impulsive Clemmens, and particularly including a telegram from her mother, stating that that highly agitated lady could not secure a reservation on the first train on account of its being Saturday night, but that she would start on the fast eleven-thirty the next morning, whereat Gail kissed the telegram, and cried a little, and gave way to the moist joy of homesickness.
In the meantime, the representatives of the gay and carefree and absolutely uncurbed metropolitan press, were by no means discouraged by the fact that they had not been able to secure much, except hectic imaginings from the exterior of the Sargent house. They were busy in every other possible direction, with the same commendable persistence which we observe in an ant trying to drag a grasshopper up and down a cornstalk on the way home. They secured a straight story from Allison, a modest one from the rector, and variously viewed experiences from other male members of the party, and collected huge piles of photographs, among them the charming pictures of Gail, which had previously been printed on the innocent pages of arrivals at Palm Beach and the Riviera and other fashionable winter resorts, the whole spread being headed “What Society Is Doing.”