II
AMATEUR CASTAWAYS
LUCETTA MILLINGTON--she had told Prime her name on the tramp to thenorthward--sat down in the sand, elbows on knees and her chin propped inher hands.
"You say 'aeroplane' as if it suggested something familiar to you, Mr.Prime," she prompted.
Truly it did suggest something to Prime, and for a moment his mouth wentdry. Grider, the man he was to have met in Quebec, was a collegeclassmate, a harebrained young barbarian, rich, an outdoor fanatic, anowner of fast yachts, a driver of fast cars, and latterly a dabbler inaviatics. Idle enough to be full of extravagant fads and fancies, andwealthy enough to indulge them, this young barbarian made friends of hisenemies and enemies of his friends with equal facility--the latterchiefly through the medium of conscienceless practical jokes evolvedfrom a Homeric sense of humor too ruthless to be appreciated by meretwentieth-century weaklings.
Prime had more than once been the good-natured victim of these jokes,and his heart sank within him. It was plain now that they had both beenconveyed to this outlandish wilderness in an aircraft of some sort, andthere was little doubt in his mind that Grider had been at the controls.
"It's a--it's a joke, just as I have been trying to tell you," hefaltered at length. "We have been kidnapped, and I'm awfully afraid Iknow the man who did it," and thereupon he gave her a rapid-fire sketchof Grider and Grider's wholly barbarous and irresponsible proclivities.
Miss Millington heard him through without comment, still with her chinin her hands.
"You are standing there and telling me calmly that he did this--thisunspeakable thing?" she exclaimed when the tale was told. Then, after amomentary pause: "I am trying to imagine the kind of man who could be soferociously inhuman. Frankly, I can't, Mr. Prime."
"No, I fancy you can't; I couldn't imagine him myself, and I earn myliving by imagining people--and things. Grider is in a class by himself.I have always told him that he was born about two thousand years toolate. Back in the time of Julius Caesar, now, they might have appreciatedhis classic sense of humor."
He stole a glance at the impassive face framed between the supportingpalms. It was evident that Miss Millington was freezing silently in aheroic effort to restrain herself from bursting into flames of angryresentment.
"You may enjoy having such a man for your friend," she suggested withchilling emphasis, "but I think there are not very many people who wouldcare to share him with you. Perhaps you have done something to earn theconsequences of this wretched joke, but I am sure _I_ haven't. Whyshould he include me?"
Prime suspected that he knew this, too, and he had to summon all hisreserves of fortitude before he could bring himself to the point oftelling her. Yet it was her due.
"I don't know what you will think of me, Miss Millington, but I guessthe truth ought to be told. Grider has always ragged me about mywomen--er--that is, the women in my stories, I mean. He says they areall alike, and all sticks; merely wooden manikins--womanikins, he callsthem--upon which to hang an evening gown. I shouldn't wonder if it werepartly true; I don't know women very well."
"Go on," she commanded.
"The last time I was with Grider--it was about two weeks ago--he wasparticularly obnoxious about the girl in my last bit of stuff--the storythat was printed in the _New Era_ last month. He said--er--he said Iought to be marooned on some desert island with a woman; that after anexperience of that kind I might be able to draw something that wouldn'tbe a mere caricature of the sex."
At this, as was most natural, Miss Millington's ice melted in a suddenand uncontrollable blaze of indignation.
"Are you trying to tell me that this atrocious friend of yours has taken_me_, a total stranger, to complete his cast of characters in thiswretched burlesque?" she flashed out.
"I don't wish to believe it," he protested. "It doesn't seem possiblefor any human being to do such a thing. But I know Grider so well----"
"It is the smallest possible credit to you, Mr. Prime," she snapped."You ought to be ashamed to have such a man for a friend!"
"I am," he acceded, humbly enough. "Grider weighs about fifty poundsmore than I do, and he took three initials in athletics in theuniversity. But I pledge you my word I shall beat him to a frazzle forthis when I get the chance."
"A lot of good that does us now!" scoffed the poor victim. And then shegot up and walked away, leaving him to stand gazing abstractedly at thewheel tracks of the kidnapping air-machine.
Having lived the unexciting life of a would-be man of letters, Prime hadhad none of the strenuous experiences which might have served to prefacea situation such as this in which he found himself struggling like afly in a web. It was absurdly, ridiculously impossible, and yet itexisted as a situation to be met and dealt with. Watching the indignantyoung woman furtively, he saw that she went back to sit down beside theashes of the breakfast fire, again with her chin in her hands. Meaningto be cautiously prudent, he rolled and smoked a cigarette beforeventuring to rejoin her, hoping that the lapse of time might clear theair a little.
She was staring aimlessly at the dimpled surface of the lake when hecame up and took his place on the opposite side of the ashes. The littleheap of provisions gave him an idea and an opening, but she struck inahead of him.
"Let me know when you expect me to pose for you," she said withoutturning her head.
"I was an idiot to tell you that!" he exploded. "Can't you understandthat that fool suggestion about the desert island and a--er--a woman wasGrider's and not mine? How could I know that he would ever be criminalenough to turn it into a fact?"
"Oh, if you can call it criminal, and really mean it--" she threw out.
"I'll call it anything in the vocabulary if only you won't quarrel withme. Goodness knows, things are bad enough without that!"
She let him see a little more of her face. The frown had disappeared,and there were signs that the storm of indignation was passing.
"I suppose it isn't a particle of use to quarrel," she admitted. "Whatis done is done and can't be helped, however much we may agree todespise your barbarous friend, Mr. Grider. How is it all going to end?"
At this Prime aired his small idea. "Our provisions won't last more thana day or two; they were evidently not intended to. If that meansanything, it means that Grider will come back for us before long. Hecertainly can't do less."
"To-day?"
"Let us hope so. Have you ever camped out in the woods before?"
"Never."
"Neither have I. What I don't know about woodcraft would make a muchlarger book than any I ever hope to write. You probably guessed thatwhen you saw me make the fire."
The corners of the pretty mouth were twitching. "And you probablyguessed my part of it when you saw me try to make that dreadfulpan-bread. I _can_ cook; really I can, Mr. Prime; but when one has beenused to having everything imaginable to do it with----"
Prime thought he might venture to laugh once more. "Your revenge is inyour own hands; all you have to do is to continue to make the bread.It'll get me in time. My digestion isn't particularly good, you know."
"Do you really think we shall be rescued soon?"
"For the sake of my own sanity, I'm obliged to think it."
"And in the meantime we must sit here and wait?"
"We needn't make the waiting any harder than we are obliged to. Supposewe call it a--er--a sort of surprise-party picnic. I imagine it is nouse for us to try to escape. Grider probably picked the lonesomestplace he knew of."
She fell in with the idea rather more readily than he could have hoped,and it gave him a freshening interest in her. The women he knew bestwere not so entirely sensible. During what remained of the forenoon theyrambled together in the forest, care-free for the moment and postponingthe evil day. In such circumstances their acquaintance grew by leaps andbounds, and when they came back to make a renewed attack upon theprovisions, the picnic spirit was still in the saddle.
The afternoon
was spent in much the same manner; and in the absence ofthe conventional restraints, a good many harmless confidences wereexchanged. Before the day was ended the young woman had heard the movingstory of Prime's struggle for a foothold in the field of letters, astruggle which, he was modest enough to say, was still in the making;and in return she had given her own story, which was commonplaceenough--so many years of school, so many in a Middle Westerncoeducational college, two more of them as a teacher in the girls'school.
"Humdrum, isn't it?" she said. They had made the evening fire, and shewas trying to cook two vegetables and the inevitable pan-bread in theone small skillet. "This is my first real adventure. I wish I might knowwhether I dare enjoy it as much as I'd like to."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Oh, the conventions, I suppose. We can't run fast enough or far enoughto get away from them. I am wondering what the senior faculty would sayif it could see me just now."
Prime grinned appreciatively. "It would probably shriek and expire."
"Happily it can't see; and to-morrow--surely Mr. Grider will come backfor us to-morrow, won't he?"
"We are going to sleep soundly in that comforting belief, anyway. Whichreminds me: you will have to have some sort of a place to sleep in. Whydidn't I think of that before dark?"
Immediately after supper, and before he would permit himself to roll acigarette from the diminishing supply of precious tobacco, Prime fellupon his problem, immensely willing but prodigiously inexperienced. Atfirst he thought he would build a shack, but the lack of an axe put thatout of the question. Round by round, ambition descended the ladder ofnecessity, and the result was nothing better than a camper's bed ofbroken pine twigs sheltered and housed in by a sort of bower built fromsuch tree branches as he could break off by main strength.
The young woman did not withhold her meed of praise, especially aftershe had seen his blistered hands, which were also well daubed with pitchfrom the pines.
"It's a shame!" she said. "I ought not to have let you work so hard. Ifit should happen to rain, you'd need the shelter much more than Ishould."
"Why do you say that?"
"You don't look so very fit," was the calm reply; "and I _am_ fit. Doyou know, my one ambition, as a little girl, was to grow up and be anacrobat in a circus?"
"And yet you landed in the laboratory of a girls' school," he laughed.
"Not exclusively," she countered quickly. "Last year I was also anassistant in the gymnasium. Swimming was my specialty, but I taughtother things as well."
Prime laughed again. "And I can't swim a single stroke," he confessed."Isn't that a humiliating admission on the part of a man who has livedthe greater part of his life in sight of the ocean?"
Miss Millington said she thought it was, and in such gladsome fashionthe evening wore away. When it came time to sleep, the lately risen moonlighted the young woman to her bower; and Prime, replenishing the fire,made his bed in the sand, the unwonted exertions of the day and eveningputting him to sleep before he had fairly fitted himself to theinequalities of his burrow below the tree roots.
Stranded in Arcady Page 4