The Innocent Adventuress Part 28

Johnny wanted to put his hands out and touch them. And he wanted to grip the small shoulders beneath that middy blouse and shake them out of that aloof perverseness . . . they had been such soft, nestling shoulders last night. . . .

"You know I--I'm really crazy about you," he said quickly. "Of course you know it--you had a right to know it. I was gone on you from the moment I first saw you. You were so--different. I thought it was just a crush--that I could take it or leave it, you know--but you _are_ different. A man's just _got_ to have you----"

He waited. He had an idea that he had elucidated something. He felt that he had raised an issue. But Maria Angelina stood like the bright eternal snow, unhearing and unheeding and most devilishly cold.

"Only last night," said Johnny, explaining feverishly again, "you were so funny and grand opera and all and I was mad and disgusted and grouchy and I--I didn't know how much I cared myself. Look here, forget it, will you, and begin again?"

"Begin what again?"

"Well, don't begin, then. Let's finish. Let's get married. I do want you, Ri-Ri--I want you like the very deuce. After you had gone--Gee, it was an awful night when I got over my mad. And coming down the mountain this morning--I didn't know _what_ I was going to find! . . . So let's forget it all--and get married," he repeated.

There was a pause. "Do you mean this?" said a still voice.

"Every word. That's what I was planning to tell you when I was running down the mountain this morning. . . . And last night--if you'd gone at me differently."

He looked at her. Something in that young figure made him say quickly, "Will you, Ri-Ri?"

"I should like you," said Maria Angelina in a clear implacable little voice, "to say that again, Signor Byrd, if you are in earnest."

"Oh, all right. Come on back, Barry. . . . I'm asking Ri-Ri to marry me--and we'll announce the engagement any time she says. . . . There.

. . . Now I've got that off my chest."

"Thank you," said Maria Angelina. She looked neither at the embarra.s.sed Johnny nor the astounded Barry. "I will think about it and I will let you know, Signor Byrd. Now please go."

"Well, of all the----" said Johnny blankly.

Then he looked at her. She was staring before her at something that she alone could see. Her look was rather extraordinary. It occurred to Johnny that after all she had a right to tantalize--and this was really no moment for capitulation.

To-night, now, after dinner, when every one was fed and warm and comfy.

Still she might give a fellow a decent look. Hang it, he wasn't a drygoods clerk offering himself!

"Come on, let her alone now," cut in Barry with a certain savage energy that woke wonder in Johnny before it had time to wake resentment.

"We must be off," Barry went on. "Come on, the first part of our way lies together and we'd better hurry or some searching party will find us. Remember, you've only been here an hour," he called back to Maria Angelina. He did not look at her, but added, in that same offhand way, "Better go in and get some sleep and I'll telephone the Lodge from Peter's and have a motor and a horse sent after you."

"I'll come with the motor all right," Johnny promised.

"Don't worry," called back Barry, and waved his hand with an air of gayety but there was no laughter on his face as he started off over the hill with Johnny Byrd.

CHAPTER XII

JOURNEY'S END

Over the hills went Johnny Byrd and down the trail and into a grove of pines.

Up to the left went Barry Elder, out of sight among the larches. He walked briskly at first, his face clouded but set. Then he walked slower, his face still clouded but unsettled.

Decidedly his pace lagged. Then it stopped. He looked back. . . . He went a little way back and stopped again. . . . Then he went on going back without stopping.

His face was much clearer now.

Maria Angelina had climbed a mountain and descended a mountain; she had wandered and struggled and scrambled for hours till she was faint with exhaustion; she had been through the extremes of hope and despair and shame and anger and heart-breaking indignation till it seemed as if her spirit must break with her body.

For recovery she had had some scant hours of sleep and a portion of food.

And now, instead of succ.u.mbing to the mortal weariness that should have been upon her, instead of closing the big eyes that burned in her head, she stood at the cabin door with uplifted face listening to the song of a bird that she did not know.

Then she reentered the cabin; but not to sink into a chair, not to release her bruised feet from the weight of her tiredness.

She cleared the table and piled the dishes in a huge pan upon the little stove. Upon the stove she discovered water heated in a kettle and she poured it, splashing, over the panful. She found three cloths of incredible blackness drying upon a little string in a corner by the stove, and after smiling very tenderly upon them she abandoned them in favor of a clean hand towel.

She restored the washed dishes to their obvious places upon the shelves and with a broom she battled with the dust upon the floor and drove it out the open door. Then she swept up the hearth, singing as she swept, and tidied the arrangement of books, bait and tobacco upon the mantel, fingering them with shy curiosity.

"Maria Angelina!" said a voice at the doorway and Maria Angelina turned with a catch at her heart.

It had taken Barry Elder a long time to retrace those steps of his.

Twice he had stopped in deep thought. Once he had pulled out a leather folder from his pocket and after regarding its sheaf of papers had sat down upon a stone and deliberately opened a long, much-creased-from-handling letter. It was dated a week before and it was headed York Harbor. It concluded with an invitation--and a question.

After reading that letter Barry remained sunk in thought for a time longer than the reading had taken.

All of his past was in that letter--and a great deal of his future in that invitation.

Then he went deeper into his pocketbook and took out a small photograph.

It was the one she had given him when he went to France--when she had been willing to inspire but not to bless him. For a long time, soberly, he gazed at the picture it disclosed, at the fair presentment of delightful youth.

Never had he looked at that picture in just that way. He had known longing before it, and he had known bitterness quite as misplaced and quite as disproportionate.

It affected him now in neither way.

It was a beautiful picture--it was the picture of a beautiful young woman. He acknowledged the beauty with generous appreciation. But he felt no inclination to go on staring, moonstruck, upon it; neither did he feel the impulse to thrust it hurriedly out of sight, as something with power to rend.

It neither troubled him nor invited--though the girl was beautiful enough, he continued to admit. So were her pearls--and neither were genuine, thought Barry with more humor than a former adorer has any right to feel.

Then he amended his thought. Something of her was real--the invitation in that letter--the inclination that he had always known she felt. It was just because it was a genuine impulse in her that he realized how strong was the calculation in her that had always been able to keep the errant inclination in check.

And even when he was going to war . . . She had envisaged her future so shrewdly--either as wife or widow, he was certain, that she had given the photograph and not her hand.

Later, Bob Martin became unavailable. And he, himself, acquired an income.

It was not the income that tempted her, he was clearly aware, and he did her and himself the justice to perceive that it was the inclination which prompted the invitation--but the inclination could now feel itself supported by an approving worldly conscience.