The Innocent Adventuress Part 25

She sat up and looked eagerly about.

There were no shadows now; the sunlight was streaming in through the cabin's three windows and through the door that stood open into a world of forest green. She heard birds singing and the sound of running water.

Barry Elder was nowhere to be seen.

The cabin was one room, an amazing room, its unconcealed simplicities blazoning themselves cheerfully in the light. There were rustic tables and comfortable chairs; there was a couch untouched, apparently, save that it had been denuded of the cushions that lay now about her. There was a small black stove and pans on it and dishes on a stand. There was a chest of drawers and along the walls were low open shelves of books, the shelves topped with a miscellany of pipes and pictures and playing cards.

Between two windows stood a large table buried in books and papers with a typewriter poking its head above the confusion.

So he really was writing a play--another play. She hoped, remembering Cousin Jim's remark, that he would not put too much Harvard in.

She got to her feet--with wincing reluctance for every muscle in her small person made its lameness felt, and she limped when she began to walk. The rejected pile of clothing had disappeared from her side, but the fringed moccasins were left, and very humbly she drew them on. Her stockings were not those in which a Santonini desires to be discovered!

Uncertainly she moved towards the door, her stiffly dried white skirt rattling at each move. It was a battleground of a skirt where black mud and green gra.s.s stains struggled for preeminence, and her poor middy blouse, she thought, was in little better plight.

She had a sudden, half hysterical thought of Lucia's face, if Lucia could see her now, and a queer little gulp of laughter caught in the lump in her throat!

"Morning, Signorina! A merry morning to you."

Up the gra.s.sy bank before the cabin Barry Elder came swinging towards her, a lithe figure in brown knickers and white shirt rolling loosely open at the throat. His face was flushed and his brown, close-cropped curls were wet as if he had been ducking them into the cold river water.

He waved one hand gayly; the other was carrying a pail of water.

"You look so _clean_!" gave back Maria Angelina impetuously, her laughter rising to meet his, but her sensitive blood coloring her face before his gaze.

"There's the entire river to wash in. I thought you'd like it better out of doors so I've built you a dressing room. . . . Meanwhile the commissary will be working. Don't be too long, for breakfast will be ready," he told her, pa.s.sing by her into the house, with a gesture of direction as if it were the most matter of fact thing in the world for young men to cook breakfast and for young ladies to wash in rivers.

So Maria Angelina followed his directions and went down into the grove of young birches that he called her dressing-room.

Here greenness was all about her, and through the delicate, interlacing boughs before her even the river was shut out, except one eddying stream of it that swerved in beneath her feet. There was lovely freshness in the morning air, a lovely brightness in the sky above her. It was a dressing-room for a nymph of the woods, for a dryad, for Diana herself.

Gratefully she stooped to the cold water at her feet. There on the bank, upon a spread towel, she discovered soap and fresh towels, a comb and a pair of military brushes, still wet from recent washing. He was very sweet and thoughtful, that Barry Elder.

Valiantly she attacked that tangled hair of hers, reducing it to the old submissive braids which she coroneted about her head, fastening them with twigs as best she could, and then she washed deliciously in that cold, running stream. It must be wonderful, she felt, to be a man and to live like this. One could forget the world in such a place. . . .

Sandy dashed upon her, scattering the gathering darkness of her thoughts, and she yielded to the young impulse to splash and romp with him before returning with him to the cabin.

She felt shy about reentering that house . . . and Barry Elder's presence.

A rich aroma of coffee greeted her upon the threshold. So did her host's voice in mock severity.

"I sent Sandy to bring you in--and I was just coming after the two of you. . . . Will you sit here? I did have a dressy thought of setting up a table out of doors but this is handier--nearer the stove, you know.

You've no idea of the convenience of it."

"But you are getting me so _many_ meals," protested Maria Angelina, confronted by a small table which he had spread for two before the fireplace. Within the hearth he had kindled a small and cheerful blaze.

"I'll agree to keep it up as long as you eat them."

Swiftly Barry turned the browning ham from the iron spider into a small platter and deposited it upon the table with a flourish. Then he placed the granite coffeepot at her right hand.

"I made it with an egg," he said proudly. "Will you pour, Signorina, while I cut this? That's genuine canned cream--none of your execrable Continental hot milk for me! And I like my cream first with three lumps of sugar, please."

He smiled blithely upon her as with a deep and delicious constraint her small hands moved, housewifely, among his cups.

"These aren't French rolls," he murmured, "but I promise you that they are cold enough for a true Italian breakfast, and there is honey and there is jam--and here, Signorina, is ham, milk-fed, smoke-cured, and browned to make the best chef of Sherry's pale with envy and despair.

. . . I thank you," and he accepted the cup of coffee from her hand with another direct smile that deepened the confusion of the girl's spirit.

A dream had succeeded the nightmare, a fairy tale of a dream. It was unreal . . . it was a bubble that would break . . . but it was a spell, an enchantment.

She forgot that she was tired and bruised; she forgot her stained clothes; she forgot her outrageous past and her terrifying future.

Oblivious and bewitched, she smiled across the table into Barry Elder's eyes and poured his coffee and ate his bread and jam. The amazing youth in her forgot for those moments all that it had suffered and all that it must meet. She was floating, floating in the web of this beautiful unreality.

And Barry Elder himself appeared a very different person from that bitter young man who had stared desperately into the fire and talked about cake and disillusionment. In spite of his lack of sleep there was nothing in the least haggard about his young face; he looked remarkably alert and interested in life, and his eyes were very gentle and his smile very sweet.

Perhaps there was something of a dream to him in the presence of a fairylike young creature who had blown in with the storm and slept upon his sheltering hearth. Perhaps there was an enchantment to him in the exquisite young face across the table, the shy, soft eyes, the delicate pale contours.

Into their absorption came a shattering knock upon the door. Instantly the nightmare was upon Maria Angelina. She was tense, her eyes wide, her lips parted. And as the knock was repeated, one hand, wide-fingered in fright, was raised as if to ward off some palpable blow.

"Oh, let me hide," she breathed across the table into Barry Elder's ears.

Fortunately the latch was on the door.

"Who's there?" said Barry Elder raising his voice to cover her reiterated whisper. In negation he gestured her to silence.

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo there, I say!"

It was the voice of Johnny Byrd and Maria Angelina half rose from her chair and clutched Barry Elder's arm as he moved towards the summons.

"Do not let him in," she gasped. "That is the man--last night----"

The dog's barking was drowning her words. Johnny called again.

"Anybody in? Here you wake up--anybody here?"

Barry Elder had stood still at her words. His expression changed. He turned and pointed to a blanket from the floor flung over a chair.

She slipped behind it.

Calling to his dog to behave and keep still, Barry stepped over to the door and opened it.

"Oh, Barry Elder! Gee, I thought this was your place but I didn't know you were here," Johnny Byrd declared in relief. "I saw the smoke and knew there was somebody about. . . . Gee, have you got any food?"

Slowly Barry surveyed him.

Johnny Byrd was not punctiliously turned out; he was streaked and muddied; his blue eyes were rimmed with red as if his night's rest had not been wholly soothing; he had no cap and his hair had clearly been combed back by fingers into its restless roach.

Barry's eyes appreciated each detail. "h.e.l.lo, Johnny," he remarked without affability. "How did you happen to toddle over for breakfast?"