The Innocent Adventuress Part 21

"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? Where is this place? Is it near the Lodge--near Wilderness Lodge?"

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

Old Chief Mountain! Vaguely Maria Angelina recalled that stony peak, far behind 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 were dancing. Above it, on a wide mantel, was a disarray of books, cigar-boxes, pipes and papers, the papers weighted oddly with a jar of obviously pickled frogs.

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

It was the cabin of some woodsman, and she seemed alone in it with the woodsman and his dog, a tawny collie--the wild animal of her awakening.

Quietly alert, he lay now beside her, his grave, bright eyes upon her face.

The woodsman she could not see.

"Now see if you can drink all of this." The khaki sleeve had appeared from 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 the warmth penetrated her veins in quick reaction.

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

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

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

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

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

She sat up, still hiding, like G.o.diva, in her hair.

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

"Oh, no--no, but I must go----"

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

She yielded to the compulsion in his voice and to her own weakness, and lay very still and inert, her cheek upon her outflung arm, her eyes watching 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 Barry Elder 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 the Adirondacks, 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 a medley of images, of thoughts, of old hopes--like the wash from some sinking ship. What a fool of hope she had been! How vain and silly and credulous! . . . She had dreamed of this man, sung to the thought of him--quickened to absurd expectancy at every stir of the wheels. . . .

And then she had pictured him at the seash.o.r.e, beneath the spell of that gold-haired siren--and here he was, quite near and free--utterly unremembering!

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

But perhaps he had just come. And certainly he would remember to come and see his friends, the Blairs, and possibly he would remember that foreign cousin of theirs that he had danced with--just remember her with pleasant 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 to nickname and pet carelessly . . . a girl who had been good enough for Johnny 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 now he 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 dry things 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 hurry up."

He closed the door upon the words that Maria Angelina was beginning to frame and left her looking helplessly at a pair of corduroy knickerbockers, a blue flannel shirt, a strange undergarment, plaid golf stockings and a pair of fringed moccasins.

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

"What's this?" he flung out in mock severity. "See here, young lady, you must 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'll give 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 pat her shaking shoulders.

"You shan't do anything you don't want to," he comforted. "You're tired out, 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 get dry----"

"You don't have to if you don't want to," he told her gently, looking down in a puzzled way at her distress. Her face was buried in a crook of her arm; her black hair streamed tempestuously over her heaving shoulders. "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 despatch he began gathering that dripping black hair into the folds of a Turkish towel. Very strenuously he wrung it.

"That's what I do for my kid sister when she's been in swimming," he mentioned. "She's at the seash.o.r.e now--no getting her away from the water. She's a bigger girl than you are. . . . Now when you feel better suppose you tell me all about it. Did you say you came from Wilderness Lodge?"

"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 streaming, and face scratched--she looked down at her grimy little hands and wondered dumbly what her face might look like.