The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp Part 9

But the force of her splendid will and courage struck home. The carving knife slipped from Mrs. Lupo's hand and stood upright between them in the board floor of the porch.

"Get down on your knees," ordered Miss Campbell, and all this time she had never taken her eyes off Mrs. Lupo's.

The knife was still swaying on the point of its blade, as the woman sank to the floor in a quivering, sobbing heap.

"What do you mean by coming to me like this?" demanded Miss Campbell.

"Your daughter, she try cut my throat this morning with same. I take revenge," answered Mrs. Lupo between her sobs.

"Nonsense! Absurd!"

"She have dislike me from first," went on Mrs. Lupo, who seemed to eliminate all articles from her conversation. "She joke at me. She buy berries of girl I hate."

Miss Campbell leaned against the rail and watched the woman crouched at her feet like a whipped dog. Only an instant did she allow the thought to come to her that she was alone in camp with a half-crazed savage.

"She is a very weak, pitiable object," she said to herself. "I must manage her and I shall. I am not afraid."

Suddenly she leaned over and put her hand very softly on the woman's shoulder.

"I am so sorry for you," she said. "Won't you let me help you? I think you are much too fine and capable to fly into rages like this. What is the reason of it?"

"Not know," answered Mrs. Lupo. "When they come, I see red. I wish to break up--kill."

"Do you love your husband?"

"Yes," answered the other with so much eloquence of expression that Miss Campbell knew she spoke the truth.

"And he loves you?"

"He loves me, but not so much. He leaves me for long time,--alone."

"Has he ever seen you in a rage?"

"Yes," answered Mrs. Lupo in a low voice, her head sinking on her breast.

"Of course, then, that is why he leaves you. Men like gentleness in a woman. A violent-tempered wife never keeps her husband's love. If you were gentle and quiet, your husband would take you with him to the village. But you are jealous and uncontrolled. You make a spectacle of yourself and of him. You look very ugly as you looked a while ago, like an angry animal instead of a handsome young woman. Try being gentle and always looking pretty and see how it works."

Mrs. Lupo looked up. Miss Campbell had captured her interest and she was listening to that sage spinster's advice with entire attention.

"You think me handsome woman?"

"Very, when you are in a good temper."

"Suppose I can't keep back anger?"

"The next time your eyes see red, make a little prayer. It will always be answered."

"To Christ?" asked Mrs. Lupo, who had been to a mission school as a girl.

"Yes, to Christ, who never spoke a harsh word even when He was struck in the face and spit upon and finally nailed to a cross."

"What shall I say?" asked the other, as interested as a child.

"When you feel the rage coming on, say over and over: 'Oh, Christ, take my anger from me and make me gentle and kind.'"

Mrs. Lupo repeated the prayer several times.

"And it will come true?" she asked.

"Always, always. Try it and see."

At last the half-breed rose to her feet. The knife stood upright between them swaying on its blade.

"You forgive?" she asked.

"I forgive."

"I will go away. I am afraid yet when the daughter comes. There is still hate here," she pointed to her temples. "But it will be gone if I stay away. When Lupo goes to village he stays long time. It is better for me not to see him when he comes back. Until I learn, I will not see him no more. Good-by. I'm thankful to you."

Mrs. Lupo departed, leaving the knife where it had fallen. It was on the tip of Miss Campbell's tongue to say:

"You must not leave me alone." But she checked herself. She doubted if she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme la.s.situde crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the brave little woman fainted dead away.

As Mrs. Lupo turned into the gallery, she glanced back but she only saw the train of Miss Campbell's white wrapper fluttering from the hammock in the breeze.

There had been several loud raps downstairs, but to Miss Campbell, fighting her way slowly back to consciousness, it sounded hundreds of miles away, like spirit rapping; or perhaps it was the pounding of her own pulses. A man entered the living room. He was of medium height and spare with a lean brown face, and he was dressed as men usually dress for walking trips, in knickerbockers, heavy shoes laced well up the leg, a gray flannel shirt open at the neck with a brown silk tie. He wore a pith helmet; on his back was strapped a flat knapsack, and he carried a cane and a telescope. As he hurried through the living room, he tossed his helmet into a chair. There was a bald spot on his head fringed with reddish hair turning gray. His features were distinguished and because of a certain dignity with which he carried himself, a certain air of command and confidence, people were apt to wonder who he was.

"It was upstairs, I am certain," the visitor remarked to himself, glancing into the empty kitchen and then mounting the rustic steps to the upper sleeping porch. With quick, comprehensive eyes he took in the five white cots standing in a row, on the porch the group of wicker chairs, the murderous looking knife, swaying on the tip of its shining blade, and lastly the high-backed canvas sleeping hammock from which trailed the train of a white muslin dress.

"Whew!" he exclaimed, under his breath.

For a moment it looked as if something unspeakably dreadful had happened that beautiful morning, and his fears were not set at rest even when he bounded past the knife and stood leaning over Miss Campbell's half conscious form.

"Water," she gasped faintly.

"I wonder if there's a bathroom," he thought, running along the porch to the nearest door after the one leading to the pa.s.sage. "Of course they always have them in these so-called camps," he added, catching the flash of a porcelain tub beyond. In another moment he had wet Miss Campbell's lips from a gla.s.s of water and was dabbing her temples with the end of a wet towel. "Better now?" he asked, as she opened her heavenly blue eyes.

She nodded with a faint smile and closed them again.

"Curious how a doctor is always finding work to do even in the wilderness," he thought, feeling Miss Helen's pulse. With an exclamation, he hurried back to the bathroom, and among a perfect army of tooth powder and talc.u.m powder boxes,--"enough for half a dozen people," he thought,--he spied a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia.

He mixed a dose in the gla.s.s with professional dexterity and hurried back.

"Just as well I happened along," he thought, moistening her lips with the mixture. "That does the trick," he added, as she presently opened her eyes again and swallowed a little of the ammonia and water.

The white, pinched look left her face, the color crept back to her cheeks, and she gave a sigh of relief as she shifted her position in the hammock.

"My pillows?" she asked, feeling for the pillows which he had slipped from under her head to the floor.