The Lucky Piece Part 5

Miss Deane selected one of the brightly colored specimens.

"This," she began, with mock gravity and a professional air, "is a _Boletus_--known as _Boletus speciosus_--that is, I think it is." She opened the book and ran hastily over the leaves. "Yes, _speciosus_--either that or the _bicolor_--I can't be certain just which."

"There, Constance," interrupted Mrs. Deane, "you confess, yourself, you can't tell the difference. Now, how are we going to know when we are being poisoned? We ate some last night. Perhaps they were deadly poison--how can we know?"

"Be comforted, Mamma; we are still here."

"But perhaps the poison hasn't begun to work yet."

"It should have done so, according to the best authorities, some hours ago. I have been keeping watch of the time."

Mrs. Deane groaned.

"The best authorities? Oh, dear--oh, dear! Are there really any authorities in this awful business? And she has been watching the time for the poison to work--think of it!"

A little group of guests collected to hear the impromptu discussion.

Frank, half reclining on the veranda steps, ran his eye over the a.s.sembly. For the most part they seemed genuine seekers after recreation and rest in this deep forest isolation. There were brain-workers among them--painters and writer folk. Some of the faces Frank thought he recognized. In the foreground was a rather large woman of the New England village type. She stood firmly on her feet, and had a wide, square face, about which the scanty gray locks were tightly curled. She moved closer now, and leaning forward, spoke with judicial deliberation.

"Them's tudstools!" she said--a decision evidently intended to be final.

She adjusted her gla.s.ses a bit more carefully and bent closer to the gay collection. "The' ain't a single one of 'em a mushroom," she proceeded.

"We used to have 'em grow in our paster, an' my little nephew, Charlie, that I brought up by hand and is now in the electric works down to Haverford, he used to gather 'em, an' they wa'n't like them at all."

A ripple of appreciation ran through the group, and others drew near to inspect the fungi. Constance felt it necessary to present Frank to those nearest, whom she knew. He arose to make acknowledgments. With the old lady, whose name, it appeared, was Miss Carroway, he shook hands. She regarded him searchingly.

"You're some taller than my Charlie," she said, and added, "I hope you don't intend to eat them tudstools, do you? Charlie wouldn't a et one o'

them kind fer a thousand dollars. He knew the reel kind that grows in the medders an' pasters."

Constance took one of Miss Carroway's hands and gave it a friendly squeeze.

"You are spoiling my lecture," she laughed, "and aiding Mamma in discrediting me before the world. I will tell you the truth about mushrooms. Not the whole truth, but an important one. All toadstools are mushrooms and all mushrooms are toadstools. A few kinds are poisonous--not many. Most of them are good to eat. The only difficulty lies in telling the poison ones."

Miss Carroway appeared interested, but incredulous. Constance continued.

"The sort your Charlie used to gather was the _Agaricus Campestris_, or meadow mushroom--one of the commonest and best. It has gills underneath--not pores, like this one. The gills are like little leaves and hold the spores, or seed as we might call it. The pores of this _Boletus_ do the same thing. You see they are bright yellow, while the top is purple-red. The stem is yellow, too. Now, watch!"

She broke the top of the _Boletus_ in two parts--the audience pressing closer to see. The flesh within was lemon color, but almost instantly, with exposure to the air, began to change, and was presently a dark blue. Murmurs of wonder ran through the group. They had not seen this marvel before.

"Bravo!" murmured Frank. "You are beginning to score."

"Many of the _Boleti_ do that," Constance resumed. "Some of them are very bad tasting, even when harmless. Some are poisonous. One of them, the _Sata.n.u.s_, is regarded as deadly. I don't think this is one of them, but I shall not insist on Miss Carroway and the rest of you eating it."

Miss Carroway sent a startled glance at the lecturer and sweepingly included the a.s.sembled group.

"Eat it!" she exclaimed. "Eat that? Well, I sh'd think not! I wouldn't eat that, ner let any o' my folks eat it, fer no money!"

There was mirth among the audience. A young mountain climber in a moment of recklessness avowed his faith by declaring that upon Miss Deane's recommendation he would eat the whole a.s.sortment for two dollars.

"You'd better make it enough for funeral expenses," commented Miss Carroway; whereupon the discussion became general and hilarious, and the extempore lecture ceased.

"You see," Constance said to Frank, "I cannot claim serious attention, even upon so vital a subject as the food supply."

"But you certainly entertained them, and I, for one, have a growing respect for your knowledge." Then, rising, he added, "Speaking of food reminds me that you probably have some sort of midday refreshment here, and that I would better arrange for accommodations and make myself presentable. By the way, Constance," lowering his voice, "I saw a striking-looking girl on the veranda as we were approaching the house a while ago. I don't think you noticed her, but she had black eyes and a face like an Indian princess. She came out for a moment again, while you were talking. I thought she rather looked as if she belonged here, but she couldn't have been a servant."

They had taken a little turn down the long veranda, and Constance waited until they were well out of earshot before she said:

"You are perfectly right--she could not. She is the daughter of Mr.

Morrison, who owns the Lodge--Edith Morrison--her father's housekeeper.

I shall present you at the first opportunity so that you may lose no time falling in love with her. It will do you no good, though, for she is going to marry Robin Farnham. The wedding will not take place, of course, until Robin is making his way, but it is all settled, and they are both very happy."

"And quite properly," commented Frank with enthusiasm. "I heard something about it coming over. Mr. Meelie told me. He said they were a handsome pair. I fully agree with him." The young man smiled down at his companion and added: "Do you know, Conny, if that young man Farnham were unenc.u.mbered, I might expect you to do some falling in love, yourself."

The girl laughed, rather more than seemed necessary, Frank thought, and an added touch of color came into her cheeks.

"I did that years ago," she owned. "I think as much of Robin already as I ever could." Then, less lightly, "Besides, I should not like to be a rival of Edith Morrison's. She is a mountain girl, with rather primitive ideas. I do not mean that she is in any sense a savage or even uncultured. Far from it. Her father is a well-read man for his opportunities. They have a good many books here, and Edith has learned the most of them by heart. Last winter she taught school. But she has the mountains in her blood, and in that black hair and those eyes of hers. Only, of course, you do not quite know what that means. The mountains are fierce, untamed, elemental--like the sea. Such things get into one's blood and never entirely go away. Of course, you don't quite understand."

Regarding her curiously, Frank said:

"I remember your own hunger for the mountains, even in March. One might almost think you native to them, yourself."

"My love for them makes me understand," she said, after a pause; then in lighter tone added, "and I should not wish to get in Edith Morrison's way, especially where it related to Robin Farnham."

"By which same token I shall avoid getting in Robin Farnham's way,"

Frank said, as they entered the Lodge hall--a wide room, which in some measure carried out the Anglo-Saxon feudal idea. The floor was strewn with skins, the dark walls of unfinished wood were hung with antlers and other trophies of the chase. At the farther end was a deep stone fireplace, and above it the mounted head of a wild boar.

"You see," murmured Constance, "being brought up among these things and in the life that goes with them, one is apt to imbibe a good deal of nature and a number of elementary ideas, in spite of books."

A door by the wide fireplace opened just then, and a girl with jetty hair and glowing black eyes--slender and straight as a young birch--came toward them with step as lithe and as light as an Indian's. There was something of the type, too, in her features. Perhaps in a former generation a strain of the native American blood had mingled and blended with the fairer flow of the new possessors. Constance Deane went forward to meet her.

"Miss Morrison," she said cordially, "this is Mr. Weatherby, of New York--a friend of ours."

The girl took Frank's extended hand heartily. Indeed, it seemed to the young man that there was rather more warmth in her welcome than the occasion warranted. Her face, too, conveyed a certain gratification in his arrival--almost as if here were an expected friend. He could not help wondering if this was her usual manner of greeting--perhaps due to the primitive life she had led--the untrammeled freedom of the hills.

But Constance, when she had pa.s.sed them, said:

"I think you are marked for especial favor. Perhaps, after all, Robin is to have a rival."

Yet not all is to be read upon the surface, even when one is so unskilled at dissembling as Edith Morrison. We may see signs, but we may not always translate their meaning. Her love affair had been one of long standing, begun when Robin had guided his first party over Marcy to the Lodge, then just built--herself a girl of less than a dozen years, trying to take a dead mother's place. How many times since then he had pa.s.sed to and fro, with tourists in summer and hunting parties in winter. Often during fierce storms he had stayed at the Lodge for a week or more--gathered with her father and herself before the great log fire in the hall while the winds howled and the drifts banked up against the windows, gleaning from the Lodge library a knowledge of such things as books can teach--history, science and the outside world. Then had come the time when he had decided on a profession, when, with his h.o.a.rded earnings and such employment as he could find in the college town, he had begun his course in a school of engineering. The mountain winters without Robin had been lonely ones, but with her father she had devoted them to study, that she might not be left behind, and had taken the little school at last on the North Elba road in order to feel something of the independence which Robin knew. In this, the last summer of his mountain life, he had come to her father as chief guide, mainly that they might have more opportunity to perfect their plans for the years ahead. All the trails carried their story, and though young men still fell in love with Edith Morrison and maids with Robin Farnham, no moment of distrust had ever entered in.

But there would appear to be some fate which does not fail to justify the old adage concerning true love. With the arrival of Constance Deane at the Lodge, it became clear to Edith that there had been some curious change in Robin. It was not that he became in the least degree indifferent--if anything he had been more devoted than before. He made it a point to be especially considerate and attentive when Miss Deane was present--and in this itself there lay a difference. No other guest had ever affected his bearing toward her, one way or the other. Edith remembered, of course, that he had known the Deanes, long before, when the Lodge was not yet built. Like Constance, she had only been a little girl then, her home somewhere beyond the mountains where she had never heard of Robin. Yet her intuition told her that the fact of a long ago acquaintance between a child of wealthy parents and the farm boy who had sold them produce and built toy boats for the little girl could not have caused this difference now. It was nothing that Constance had engaged Robin to guide her about the woods and carry her book or her basket of specimens. Edith had been accustomed to all that, but this time there was a different att.i.tude between guide and guest--something so subtle that it could hardly be put into words, yet wholly evident to the eyes of love. Half unconsciously, at first, Edith revolved the problem in her mind, trying to locate the cause of her impression. When next she saw them alone together, she strove to convince herself that it was nothing, after all. The very effort had made her the more conscious of a reality.

Now had come the third time--to-day--the moment before Frank Weatherby's arrival. They were approaching the house and did not see her, while she had lost not a detail of the scene. Robin's very carriage--and hers--the turn of a face, the manner of a word she could not hear, all spoke of a certain tenderness, an understanding, a sort of ownership, it seemed--none the less evident because, perhaps, they themselves were all unconscious of it. The mountain girl remarked the beauty of that other one and mentally compared it with her own. This girl was taller than she, and fairer. Her face was richer in its coloring--she carried herself like one of the n.o.ble ladies in the books. Oh, they were a handsome pair--and not unlike, she thought. Not that they resembled, yet something there was common to both. It must be that n.o.ble carriage of which she had been always so proud in Robin. There swept across her mental vision a splendid and heart-sickening picture of Robin going out into the world with this rich, cultured girl, and not herself, his wife.

The Deanes were not pretentious people, and there was wealth enough already. They might well be proud of Robin. Edith cherished no personal bitterness toward either Constance or Robin--not yet. Neither did she realize to what lengths her impetuous, untrained nature might carry her, if really aroused. Her only conscious conclusion thus far was that Robin and Constance, without knowing it themselves, were drifting into a dangerous current, and that this new arrival might become a guide back to safety. Between Frank Weatherby and herself there was the bond of a common cause.

CHAPTER V