The Innocent Adventuress

by Mary Hastings Bradley

  CHAPTER X

  FANTASY

  She awoke to fright--some great hairy beast of the forest was nosingher.

  Then a light flashed in her eyes, and as she closed them, drifting offto exhaustion again, she half saw a figure stooping towards her. Thenshe felt herself being carried, while a barking seemed to be all abouther.

  The next thing she knew was light forcing its brightness through herclosed lids and a great warmth beating upon her.

  She dragged her eyes open again. She was lying on a black bear skin rugbefore a roaring fire, and some one was kneeling beside her, tuckingcushions beneath her head. She had a glimpse of a khaki sleeve and alean brown wrist.

  The warmth was delicious. She wanted to put her head back against thosepillows and sleep forever but memory was rousing, too.

  Sleepily, she mumbled, "What time is it?"

  The khaki shirt sleeve had withdrawn from view and the answering voicecame from a corner of the room.

  "It's about two."

  Two o'clock! The night gone--gone past redemption.

  "Oh, Madre mia!" whispered Maria Angelina.

  She struggled up on one elbow, her little face, scratched and stained,staring wildly out from the dark thicket of hair. "But where am I? Whereis this place? Is it near the Lodge--near Wilderness Lodge?"

  "We're miles from Wilderness," said the voice out of the shadows. "Thisis Old Chief Mountain--on the Little Pine River."

  Old Chief Mountain! Vaguely Maria Angelina recalled that stony peak, farbehind Old Baldy. . . . They had climbed the wrong mountain, indeed.. . . And she had plunged farther away, in her headlong flight.

  She stared about her. She saw a huge fireplace where the flames weredancing. Above it, on a wide mantel, was a disarray of books,cigar-boxes, pipes and papers, the papers weighted oddly with a jar ofobviously pickled frogs.

  Upon the log walls several fishing rods were stretched on nails and agun, a corn-popper, a rough coat and cap and a fishing net were all hungon neighboring hooks.

  It was the cabin of some woodsman, and she seemed alone in it with thewoodsman and his dog, a tawny collie--the wild animal of her awakening.Quietly alert, he lay now beside her, his grave, bright eyes upon herface.

  The woodsman she could not see.

  "Now see if you can drink all of this." The khaki sleeve had appearedfrom the shadows and was holding a steaming cup to her lips.

  It was a huge cup made of granite ware. Obediently Maria Angelina drank.The contents were scalding hot and while her throat seemed blistered thewarmth penetrated her veins in quick reaction.

  "Lucky I didn't empty my coffeepot," said the voice cheerfully. "Thereit was--waiting to be heated. Memorandum--never wash a coffeepot."

  The voice seemed coming to her out of a dream. Thrusting back thetangled hair from her eyes Maria Angelina lifted them incredulously tothe woodsman's face.

  Was it true? . . . Those clear, sharp-cut features, those bright, keeneyes with the gay smile! . . . Was it true---or was she dreaming?

  Instinctively she dropped her hand and let her hair like a black curtainshield her face. The blood seemed to stand still in her veins waitingthat dreadful instant of recognition.

  Confusedly, with some frantic thought of flight, "I must go--Oh, I mustgo----"

  She sat up, still hiding, like Godiva, in her hair.

  "You lie down and rest," said the authoritative voice. "If there's anygoing to be done I'll do it. Is there some other Babe in the Woods to befound?"

  "Oh, no--no, but I must go----"

  "You get a good rest. You can tell me all about it and who you are whenyou're dry and warm."

  She yielded to the compulsion in his voice and to her own weakness, andlay very still and inert, her cheek upon her outflung arm, her eyeswatching the red dance of flames through the black strands of her hair.It was the final irony, she felt, of that dreadful night. To meet BarryElder again--like this--after all her dreams----

  It was too terrible to be true.

  And he did not know her. He had come to that place of his, in theAdirondacks, of which he had spoken, and had never given her a thought.He had never come to see her. . . .

  A great wave of mortification surged over Maria Angelina, bearing amedley of images, of thoughts, of old hopes--like the wash from somesinking ship. What a fool of hope she had been! How vain and silly andcredulous! . . . She had dreamed of this man, sung to the thought ofhim--quickened to absurd expectancy at every stir of the wheels. . . .And then she had pictured him at the seashore, beneath the spell of thatgold-haired siren--and here he was, quite near and free--utterlyunremembering!

  She had suffered many pangs of mortification this night but now herpoor, shamed spirit bled afresh.

  But perhaps he had just come. And certainly he would remember to comeand see his friends, the Blairs, and possibly he would remember thatforeign cousin of theirs that he had danced with--just remember her withpleasant friendliness. She would give herself so much of balm.

  And who indeed was she for Barry Elder to remember? Just a very young,very silly goose of a girl, a little foreigner . . . some one tonickname and pet carelessly . . . a girl who had been good enough forJohnny Byrd to make love to but not good enough for him to marry. . . .

  A girl who had thrown her name recklessly to the winds and who,to-morrow, would be a byword. . . .

  These thoughts ached in her with her bruised flesh.

  Meanwhile Barry Elder had been making quick trips about the room and nowhe threw down an armful of garments beside her and knelt at her feet,tugging at her sopping shoes.

  "Let me get these off--there, that's better. Now the other one. . . .Lordy, child, those footies. . . . Now you'd better get into these drythings as quick as you can. Not a perfect fit, but the best I can do.I'll take a turn in the woods and be back in ten minutes. So you hurryup."

  He closed the door upon the words that Maria Angelina was beginning toframe and left her looking helplessly at a pair of corduroyknickerbockers, a blue flannel shirt, a strange undergarment, plaid golfstockings and a pair of fringed moccasins.

  They were in an untouched heap when her host returned, letting in a coldrush of the night with him.

  "What's this?" he flung out in mock severity. "See here, young lady, youmust get into those clothes whether they happen to be the style or not!Little girls who get wet can't go to sleep in their clothes. Now I'llgive you just ten minutes more and then if you are not a good girl----"

  To her own dismay and to his Maria Angelina burst into tears.

  "Oh, come now," said Barry helplessly. "You poor little dud----"

  The sudden gentleness of his voice undid the last of the girl's control.She sobbed harder and harder as he sat down beside her and began to pather shaking shoulders.

  "You shan't do anything you don't want to," he comforted. "You're tiredout, I know. But you'd be so much more comfy in these dry togs----"

  "Oh, please, Signor, not those things. Do not make me. I will getdry----"

  "You don't have to if you don't want to," he told her gently, lookingdown in a puzzled way at her distress. Her face was buried in a crook ofher arm; her black hair streamed tempestuously over her heavingshoulders. "Come closer to the fire, then, and dry out."

  He threw more wood upon the flames and piled on brush that shed a swift,crackling heat.

  "Give that a chance at those wet clothes of yours," he advised."Meanwhile we'd better wring this out," and with businesslike despatchhe began gathering that dripping black hair into the folds of a Turkishtowel. Very strenuously he wrung it.

  "That's what I do for my kid sister when she's been in swimming," hementioned. "She's at the seashore now--no getting her away from thewater. She's a bigger girl than you are. . . . Now when you feel bettersuppose you tell me all about it. Did you say you came from WildernessLodge?"

  "Yes," said Maria Angelina half whisperingly.

  Had he no memory of her at all? Or was she so different in that wet,muddied blouse, hair strea
ming, and face scratched--she looked down ather grimy little hands and wondered dumbly what her face might looklike.

  And then she saw that Barry Elder, having finished with her hair, waspreparing to wash her face, for he brought a granite basin of hot waterand began wetting and soaping the end of a voluminous towel with whichhe advanced upon her.

  "I can well wash myself," she cried with promptness, and most thoroughlyshe washed and scrubbed, and then hung her head as he took away thethings.

  She felt as if a screening mask had fallen and her only thought now wasto make an escape before discovery should add one more humiliation tothis night of shames.

  "You are very good," she said shyly. "I cannot tell you how I thank you.And I feel so much better that if you will please let me go----"

  "Go? To Wilderness Lodge? It's miles and miles, child--and it's pouringcats and dogs again. Don't you hear the drumsticks on the roof?"

  She hesitated. "Then--have you a telephone?"

  "No, thank the Lord!" The remembered laughter flashed in Barry Elder'stones. "I came here to get away from the devil of invention and all hisworks. There isn't a telephone nearer than Peter's place--four milesaway. I'll go over for you as soon as it's light, for I expect yourmother's worrying her head off about you. How did you ever happen to getlost over here?"

  Helplessly Maria Angelina sought for words. Silence was ungrateful butthere seemed nothing she could say.

  "It was on a picnic--please do not ask me," she whispered foolishly.

  In humorous perplexity the young man stood looking down upon the smallfigure that chance had deposited so unexpectedly upon his hearth, a mostforlorn and drooping small figure, with downcast and averted head, thenwith that sudden smile that made his young face so brightly persuasivehe dropped beside her and reached towards her.

  "Here, little kiddie, you come and sit with me while I warm those feetof yours----"

  Swiftly she withdrew from his kindly reaching hands.

  "Signor, it is not fitting that you should hold me, that you should warmmy feet," she gasped. "I am _not_ a child, Signor!"

  Signor . . . The word waked some echo in his mind. . . . The child hadused it before--but what connection was groping----?

  He repeated the word aloud.

  "You do not recall?" said Maria Angelina chokingly. "Though indeed,there is no reason why you should. It was but for a moment----"

  She glanced up to see recognition leap amazedly into his face.

  "The little Signorina! The Blairs' little Signorina!"

  "Maria Angelina Santonini," she told him soberly. "Yes, that is I."

  "Why of course I remember," he insisted. "A little girl in a whitedress. A big hat which you took off. Your first night in America. We hada wonderful dance together----"

  "And you said you would come to the mountains," she told him childishly.

  He stared a moment. "Why, so I did. . . . And here I am. And here youare. To think I did not know you--I've been wondering whom you made mewant to think of! But I took you for a youngster, you know, a regularten-year-old runaway. Why, with your hair down like that---- Of course,it was absurd of me."

  He paused with a smile for the absurdity of it.

  Gallantly she tried to give him back that smile but there was somethingso wan and piteous in the curve of her soft lips, something so hurt andsick in the shadows of her dark eyes, that Barry Elder felt oddlysilenced.

  And then he tried to cover that silence with kind chatter as he movedabout his room once more in hospitable preparation.

  "It was Sandy, here, who really found you," he told her. "He whined atthe door till I let him out and then he came back, barking, for me, so Ihad to go. I was really looking for a mink. Sandy's always excited aboutminks."

  Maria Angelina put a hand to the dog's head and stroked it.

  "I was so tired," she said. "I think I was asleep."

  "I rather think you were," said Barry in an odd tone. He glanced at herwhite cheek with its scarlet scratch of a branch. "And I rather thinkyou ought to be asleep now but first you must eat this and drink somemore coffee."

  Maria Angelina needed no urging. Like a starveling she fell upon thatplate of crisp bacon and delicately fried eggs and cleaned it to thelast morsel.

  "I had but two bites of sweet chocolate for my dinner," she apologized.

  "So you were lost before dinner--no wonder you were done in."

  Barry filled a very worn-looking little brown pipe with care. "Wherewere you going, anyway, for your picnic?"

  "It was to Old Baldy."

  "Old Baldy, eh? Let me see--what trail did you take?"

  "On the river path. Then--then we got separated----"

  "I see. But it's a fairly clear trail. Did you try another?"

  "We--we crossed the river the wrong time, I think, and so got on thewrong mountain. We----"

  Maria Angelina's voice died away in sudden sick perception of thatbetraying pronoun.

  Quite slowly, without looking at her, Barry completed the lighting ofthat pipe to his satisfaction and drew a few appreciative puffs. Then heturned to inquire casually, "And who is 'we'?"

  He saw only the top of the girl's tousled head and the tense grip of herclasped hands in her lap.

  "If you would not ask, Signor!" she said whisperingly.

  "A dark secret!" He tried to laugh over that but his keen eyes rested onher with a troubled wonder.

  "And then you got lost--even from your companion?" he prompted quietly.

  "Yes, I--I came away alone for he--he refused to go on," faltered MariaAngelina painfully, "and then I seemed to go on forever--and I could dono more. But now I am quite well again," she insisted with a ghost of abrave smile. "If only--if only my Cousin Jane could know that I'm tryingto get back," she finished in a tone that shook in spite of her.

  "You weren't trying to get lost, were you?" questioned Barry lightly,groping for a cue. There was no mistaking the flash of Maria Angelina'srepudiation and the candor of her suddenly upraised young face.

  "Oh, no, Signor, no, no! It was only that I was so careless--that Ibelieved he knew the way."

  "And was he trying to get lost?"

  "Oh, no, Signor, no, it was all a mistake."

  "This is a very easy neck of the woods to get lost in," Barry told herreassuringly. "Old residents here often miss their way--especially in astorm. Mrs. Blair will worry, of course, but she is very sensible andshe knows you will come to light with the daylight. Just as soon as itis clear enough for me to find my way I'll strike over to Peter's placeand phone her that you are safe and sound, and I'll get a horse for youto ride out on--you won't care for any more walking and the motor canonly come as far as the road."

  "But you must not tell them _you_ have found me," said Maria Angelina,overwhelmed with tragedy again. She seemed fated, she thought indreadful humor, to spend the night with young men! And to have been lostby one and found by another!

  "It will be so much worse," she said pleadingly. "Could you not justshow me the way and let me go----?"

  "So much worse?" His face was very grave and gentle. "So much worse? Idon't think I understand."

  "So _very_ much worse. To have been found like this--Oh, promise me tosay nothing about it. I know that I can trust you."

  "I think you had better tell me all about it, Signorina."

  He saw that dark misery, like a film, swim blindingly over her wideeyes.

  "I cannot."

  He considered a moment before he spoke again.

  "If you really do not want any one to know that I found you I am willingto hold my tongue. But don't you see what a lot of ridiculous deceptionthat would involve? You would have to make up all sorts of littlethings. And then, after all, you'd be sure to say something--one alwaysdoes--and let it all out----"

  Maria Angelina looked at him pathetically and a sudden impulse stabbedhim to say hastily, "I'll fall in with any plan you want to make. Onlywait to decide until you feel rested. Then perhaps we can decidetogether. . . . A
nd now, if you are really getting dry----"

  "Truly, I am, Signor Elder. I am indeed dry and hot."

  "Then you'd better make up your mind to curl up on that cot over thereand sleep."

  "I couldn't sleep."

  There was truth beneath Maria Angelina's quick disclaimer. Exhausted asshe was, her mind was vividly awake, now, excited with the strangenessof her presence there.

  Her mortification at his finding her was gone. He was so rarely kind, sopleasantly matter of fact. He was as gayly undisturbed as if the heavensrained starving young girls upon him every night! And somehow she hadknown he was like this . . . but he was like no one else that she hadknown. . . .

  Her mind groped for a comparison. For an instant she vainly tried topicture Paolo Tosti doing the honors to such a guest--but that picturewas unpaintable.

  This Barry Elder was chivalry itself; he was kindness and comfort--andhe was a strange, stirring excitement that flung a glamour over thedisaster of the hour.

  It was like a little hush before the final storm, a dim dream before thenightmare enfolded her again.

  Her eyes followed him as he turned out the kerosene lamp, which wassputtering, and flung fresh logs upon the hearty fire. Overhead therain droned, like monotonous fingers upon a keyboard, and beside herSandy slept noisily, with sudden whimpers.

  Barry's eyes, meeting the wistful dark ones, smiled responsively, andMaria Angelina felt a queer tightening within her, as if some one hadtied a band about her heart.

  "You don't have such fires in Italy," he observed, dropping down uponthe rug across from her, and refilling that battered pipe of his. "Iwell remember when I ordered a fire and the _cameraria_ came in with abunch of twigs."

  Madly Maria Angelina fell upon the revelation.

  "You have been in Italy!"

  "Oh, more than once! But all before the war."

  "And you have been in Rome? Oh, to think of that! But where did youstay? Whom did you know there, Signor?"

  Barry grinned. "Head waiters!"

  "You knew no Romans, then? Oh, but that was a pity."

  "I can well believe it, Signorina!"

  "Oh, Rome can be very gay--though I am not out in society myself, andknow so little. . . . What did you do, then? I suppose you went to theForum and the Vatican and the Via Appia like all the tourists and droveout to the Coliseum by moonlight?"

  Delightedly she laughed as Barry Elder confirmed her account of hisactivities.

  "Me, I have never seen the Coliseum by moonlight," she reportedplaintively, adding with eager wistfulness, "And did you buy violets onthe Spanish Stairs? And throw a penny into the Trevi fountain to ensureyour return? And do you remember the street that turns off left, the ViaPoli? From there you come quick to my house, the Palazzo Santonini----"

  "And do you really live in a palace?" It was Barry's turn to question."A really truly palace? And is your father a really truly prince?"

  "Nothing so great! He is a count--but of a very old family, theSantonini," Maria Angelina explained with becoming pride.

  "And is your mother of a very old----"

  "My mother is American--the cousin of Mrs. Blair. But Mamma has neverbeen back in America--she is too devoted to us, is Mamma, and she has somuch to look after for Papa. Papa is charming but he does not manage."

  "That makes complications," said Barry gravely.

  "And Francisco, my brother, is just like him. He is always runningbills, now that he is in the army. And he was so brave in the war thatMamma cannot bear to be cross. He will have to marry an heiress, thatboy," she sighed and Barry Elder's eyes lighted in amusement.

  "How many of you are there?" he wanted interestedly to know, andvivaciously Maria Angelina informed him of her sisters, her life, herlessons, the rare excursions, the pension at the seashore, theengagement of her sister Lucia and Paolo Tosti.

  And absorbedly Barry Elder listened, his eyes on her changing face. Whenshe paused he flung in some question or some anecdote of his own timesin Italy and Sandy was often roused by unseasonable laughter, andthudded his tail in sleepy friendliness before dozing off to his dreamsagain.

  Then like a flash, as swiftly as it had come, the excited glow ofrecollection was an extinguished flame, leaving her shivering before anearer memory.

  For Barry Elder asked one question too many. He brought the present downupon them.

  "And how do you like America?" he asked. "Has it been good fun for youup here?"

  Only the blind could have missed the change that came over the girl'sface, blotting out its laughter and etching in queer, startled fear.

  "It has been--very gay," she stammered.

  Despairingly she asked herself why she still tried to hide her storyfrom him since in the morning it must all come out. He would know allabout her then. And what must he be thinking already of her stammeredevasions?

  Oh, if only on that yesterday, which seemed a thousand yesterdays away,she had stayed closely by her Cousin Jane! If she had not let her follywreck all her life!

  Bitterly ironic to know that all the time Barry Elder was here, at hand.If only she had known! Had he just come?

  She wondered and asked the question.

  And at that Barry's face changed as if he had remembered something hewould have been as glad to forget.

  "Oh--I've been here a few days," he gave back vaguely.

  She glanced about the shadowy room. "So alone?"

  A wry smile touched his mouth. "I came for alone-ness. I had a play towrite--I wanted to work some things out for myself," and indefinably butcertainly Maria Angelina caught the impression that all the things hewanted to work out for himself in this solitude were not connected withhis play.

  His linked hands had slipped over his knees and he looked ahead of himvery steadily into the fire, and Maria Angelina had a feeling that helooked that way into the fire many evenings, so oddly, grimly intent,with oblivious eyes and faintly ironic lips.

  He was quiet so long, without moving, that she felt as if he hadforgotten her. He did not look happy. . . . Something dark had touchedhim. . . .

  "Is it something you want that you cannot get, Signor?" she asked him ina grave little voice.

  He turned his eyes to her, and she saw there was smoldering fire beneaththeir surface brightness.

  "No, Signorina, it is something that I want and that I can get."

  "There is no difficulty there," she murmured.

  "No?" His tone held mockery. "The difficulty is in me. . . . I don'twant to want it."

  His eyes continued to rest on her in ironic smiling.

  "Signorina, what would you do if you wanted a cake, oh, such a beautifulcake, all white icing and lovely sugar outside . . . and within--well,something that was very, very bad for the digestion? Only the first bitewould be good, you see. But such a first bite! And you wantedit--because the icing was so marvelous and the sugar so sweet. . . . Andif you had wanted that cake a long time, oh, before you knew what acheating thing it was within, and if you had been denied it and suddenlyfound it was within your reach----?"

  He broke off with a laugh.

  Slowly she asked, "And would you have to eat the cake if you took thefirst bite?"

  His voice was harsh. "To the last crumb."

  "Then I would not bite."

  "But the frosting, Signorina, the pretty pink and white frosting!"

  So bitter was his laugh that the girl grew older in understanding. Shethought of the girl she had seen by his side in the restaurant, the girlwhose eyes had been as blue as the sea and her hair yellow as amber. . . the girl who had angled for Bob Martin's money.

  She remembered that Barry Elder had of late inherited some money.

  Impulsively she leaned towards him, her eyes dark and pitiful in herwhite face.

  "Do not touch it," she whispered. "Do not. I do not want _you_ to beunhappy----"

  Utterly she understood. His absurd metaphor was no protection againsther. She remembered all Cousin Jane's implications, all the baldrevelations o
f Johnny Byrd.

  Somehow he had come to know that the heart of Leila Grey was a cheatingthing, yet for the sake of the beauty which had so teased him, for theglamorous loveliness of those blue eyes and rosy tints, he was almostready to let himself be borne on by his inclinations. . . .

  Barry Elder looked startled at that earnest little whisper and his eyesmet hers unguarded a full minute, then a whimsical smile touched hislips to softness.

  "I'm afraid you have a tender heart, Maria Angelina Santonini," he said."You want all the world to have nice wholesome cake, beautifullyfrosted--don't you?"

  Her gravity refused his banter. "Not all the world. Only those for whomrealities matter. Only those--those like you, Signor--who could feelpain and disillusionment."

  "In God's green earth, what do you know of disillusionment, child?"

  "I am no child, Signor."

  "I don't believe that you are." He looked at her with new seriousness.

  "And I am horribly afraid," he continued, "that you have an inkling intomy absurd symbols of speech."

  That brought her eyes back to his and there was something indefinablytouching in their soft, deprecating shyness. . . . Barry's gaze lingeredunconsciously.

  He began to wonder about her.

  He had wondered about her that night at the restaurant, heremembered--wondered and forgotten. He had been unhappy that night, withthe peculiar unhappiness of a naturally decisive man wretchedly in twominds, and she had given him a half hour of forgetfulness.

  Afterwards he had concluded that his impressions had played him false,that no daughter of to-day could possibly be as touchingly young, asinnocently enchanting.

  But she was quite real, it seemed. And she sat there upon his hearth rugwith her eyes like pools of night. . . . What in the world had happenedto her in this America to which she had come in such gay confidence?What was she trying to hide?

  What in all the sorry, stupid world had put that shadow into her look,that hurt droop to her lips?

  He could not conceive that real tragedy could so much as brush her withthe tips of its wings, but some trouble was there, some difficulty.

  His pipe was out but he drew on it absently. Maria Angelina snuggledcloser and closer into her pile of cushions and went to sleep.

  After she was asleep he rose and stood looking down at her, and he foundhis heart queerly touched by that scratched cheek and the childish wayshe tucked her hand under the other cheek as she slept.

  Also he was fascinated by the length of her black lashes.

  Very carefully he covered her with blankets.

  Then he yawned, looked at his watch, smiled to himself and with ablanket of his own he stretched himself upon the fur rug at her feet.