Kitabı oku: «The Lucky Piece: A Tale of the North Woods», sayfa 4

Robin, meantime, had bent his steps in their direction. In his genial manner and with his mellow voice he acknowledged the greetings of this little group of guests. He had just recalled, he said to Constance, having seen something, during a recent trip over McIntyre, which he had at first taken for a very beautiful and peculiar flower. Later he had decided it might be of special interest to her. It had a flower shape, he said, and was pink in color, but was like wax, resembling somewhat the Indian pipe, but with more open flowers and much more beautiful. He did not recall having seen anything of the sort before, and would have brought home one of the waxen blooms, only that he had been going the other way and they seemed too tender to carry. He thought it a fungus growth.

Constance was deeply interested in his information, and the description of what seemed to her a possible discovery of importance. She made him repeat the details as nearly as he could recollect, and with the book attempted to classify the species. Her failure to do so only stimulated her enthusiasm.

"I suppose you could find the place, again," she said.

"Easily. It is only a few steps from the tripod at the peak," and he drew with his pencil a plan of the spot.

"I've heard the McIntyre trail is not difficult to keep," Constance reflected.

"No – provided, of course, one does not get into a fog. It's harder then. I lost the trail myself up there once in a thick mist."

The girl turned to Frank, who was lounging comfortably on the steps, idly smoking.

"Suppose we try it this afternoon," she said.

Mr. Weatherby lifted his eyes to where Algonquin lay – its peaks among the clouds.

"It looks pretty foggy up there – besides, it will be rather late starting for a climb like that."

Miss Deane seemed a bit annoyed.

"Yes," she said, rather crossly, "it will always be too foggy, or too late, or too early for you. Do you know," she added, to the company at large, "this young man hasn't offered to climb a mountain, or to go trouting, once since he's been here. I don't believe he means to, all summer. He said the other day that mountains and streams were made for scenery – not to climb and fish in."

The company discussed this point. Miss Carroway told of a hill near Haverford which she used to climb, as a girl. Frank merely smiled good-naturedly.

"I did my climbing and fishing up here when I was a boy," he said. "I think the fish are smaller now – "

"And the mountains taller – poor, decrepit old man!"

"Well, I confess the trails do look steeper," assented Frank, mildly; "besides, with the varied bill of fare we have been enjoying these days, I don't like to get too far from Mrs. Deane's medicine chest. I should not like to be seized with the last agonies on top of a high mountain."

Miss Deane assumed a lofty and offended air.

"Never you mind," she declared; "when I want to scale a high mountain I shall engage Mr. Robin Farnham to accompany me. Can you take me this afternoon?" she added, addressing Robin.

The young man started to reply, reddened a little and hesitated. Edith, still lingering, holding fast to the veranda rail, suddenly spoke.

"He can go quite well," she said, and there was a queer inflection in her voice. "There is no reason – "

But Constance had suddenly arisen and turned to her.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" she pleaded hastily. "He has an engagement with you, of course. I did not think – I can climb McIntyre any time. Besides, Mr. Weatherby is right. It is cloudy up there, and we would be late starting."

She went over close to Edith. The latter was pale and constrained, though she made an effort to appear cordial, repeating her assurance that Robin was quite free to go – that she really wished him to do so. Robin himself did not find it easy to speak, and Edith a moment later excused herself, on the plea that she was needed within. Constance followed her, presently, while Frank, lingering on the steps, asked Robin a few questions concerning his trip through the Pass. Of the rocking-chair circle, perhaps only the small woman in black found comfort in what had just taken place. A silence had fallen upon the little company, and it was a relief to all when the mail came and there was a reason for a general breaking-up. As usual, Frank and Constance had a table to themselves at luncheon and ate rather quietly, though the russulas, by a new recipe, were especially fine. When it was over at last they set out to explore the woods back of the Lodge.

CHAPTER VI
IN THE "DEVIL'S GARDEN"

Constance Deane had developed a definite ambition. At all events she believed it to be such, which, after all, is much the same thing in the end. It was her dream to pursue this new study of hers until she had made a definite place for herself, either as a recognized authority or by some startling discovery, in mycological annals – in fact, to become in some measure a benefactor of mankind. The spirit of unrest which had possessed her that afternoon in March, when she had lamented that the world held no place for her, had found at least a temporary outlet in this direction. We all have had such dreams as hers. They are a part of youth. Often they seem paltry enough to others – perhaps to us, as well, when the morning hours have passed by. But those men and women who have made such dreams real have given us a wiser and better world. Constance had confided something of her intention to Frank, who had at least assumed to take it seriously, following her in her wanderings – pushing through tangle and thicket and clambering over slippery logs into uncertain places for possible treasures of discovery. His reluctance to scale McIntyre, though due to the reasons given rather than to any thought of personal discomfort, had annoyed her, the more so because of the unpleasant incident which followed. There had been a truce at luncheon, but once in the woods Miss Deane did not hesitate to unburden her mind.

"Do you know," she began judicially, as if she had settled the matter in her own mind, "I have about concluded that you are hopeless, after all."

The culprit, who had just dragged himself from under a rather low-lying wet log, assumed an injured air.

"What can I have done, now?" he asked.

"It's not what you have done, but what you haven't done. You're so satisfied to be just comfortable, and – "

Frank regarded his earthy hands and soiled garments rather ruefully.

"Of course," he admitted, "I may have looked comfortable just now, rooting and pawing about in the leaves for that specimen, but I didn't really feel so."

"You know well enough what I mean," Constance persisted, though a little more pacifically. "You go with me willingly enough on such jaunts as this, where it doesn't mean any very special exertion, though sometimes I think you don't enjoy them very much. I know you would much rather drift about in a boat on the lake, or sit under a tree, and have me read to you. Do you know, I've never seen any one who cared so much for old tales of knights and their deeds of valor and strove so little to emulate them in real life."

Frank waited a little before replying. Then he said gently:

"I confess that I would rather listen to the tale of King Arthur in these woods, and as you read it, Conny, than to attempt deeds of valor on my own account. When I am listening to you and looking off through these wonderful woods I can realize and believe in it all, just as I did long ago, when I was a boy and read it for the first time. These are the very woods of romance, and I am expecting any day we shall come upon King Arthur's castle. When we do I shall join the Round Table and ride for you in the lists. Meantime I can dream it all to the sound of your voice, and when I see the people here climbing these mountains and boasting of such achievements I decide that my dream is better than their reality."

But Miss Deane's memory of the recent circumstances still rankled. She was not to be easily mollified.

"And while you dream, I am to find my reality as best I may," she said coldly.

"But, Constance," he protested, "haven't I climbed trees, and gone down into pits, and waded through swamps, and burrowed through vines and briars at your command; and haven't I more than once tasted of the things that you were not perfectly sure of, because the book didn't exactly cover the specimen? Now, here I'm told that I'm hopeless, which means that I'm a failure, when even at this moment I bear the marks of my devotion." He pointed at the knees of his trousers, damp from his recent experience. "I've done battle with nature," he went on, "and entered the lists with your detractors. You said once there are knights we do not recognize and armor we do not see. Now, don't you think you may be overlooking one of those knights, with a suit of armor a little damp at the knees, perhaps, but still stout and serviceable?"

The girl did not, as usual, respond to his gayety and banter.

"You may joke about it, if you like," she said, "but true knights, even in the garb of peasants, have been known to scale dizzy heights for a single flower. I have never known of one who refused to accompany a lady on such an errand, especially when it was up an easy mountain trail which even children have climbed."

"Then this is a notable day, for you have met two."

She nodded.

"But one was without blame, and but for the first there could not have occurred the humiliation of the second, and that, too" – she smiled in spite of herself – "in the presence of my detractors. It will be hard for you to rectify that, Sir Knight!"

There was an altered tone in the girl's voice. The humorous phase was coming nearer the surface. Frank brightened.

"Really, though," he persisted, "I was right about it's being foggy up there. Farnham would have said so, himself."

"No doubt," she agreed, "but we could have reached that conclusion later. An expressed willingness to go would have spared me and all of us what followed. As it is, Edith Morrison thinks I wanted to deprive her of Robin on his one day at home, while he was obliged to make himself appear foolish before every one."

"I wish you had as much consideration for me as you always show for Robin," said Frank, becoming suddenly aggrieved.

"And why not for Robin?" The girl's voice became sharply crisp and defiant. "Who is entitled to it more than he – a poor boy who struggled when no more than a child to earn bread for his invalid mother and little sister; who has never had a penny that he did not earn; who never would take one, but in spite of all has fought his way to recognition and respect and knowledge? Oh, you don't know how he has struggled – you who have had everything from birth – who have never known what it is not to gratify every wish, nor what it feels like to go hungry and cold that some one else might be warm and fed." Miss Deane's cheeks were aglow, and her eyes were filled with fire. "It is by such men as Robin Farnham," she went on, "that this country has been built, with all its splendid achievements and glorious institutions, and the possibilities for such fortunes as yours. Why should I not respect him, and honor him, and love him, if I want to?" she concluded, carried away by her enthusiasm.

Frank listened gravely to the end. Then he said, very gently:

"There is no reason why you should not honor and respect such a man, nor, perhaps, why you should not love him – if you want to. I am sure Robin Farnham is a very worthy fellow. But I suppose even you do not altogether realize the advantage of having been born poor – "

The girl was about to break in, but checked herself.

"Of having been born poor," he repeated, "and compelled to struggle from the beginning. It gets to be a habit, you see, a sort of groundwork for character. Perhaps – I do not say it, mind, I only say perhaps – if Robin Farnham had been born with my advantages and I with his, it might have made a difference, don't you think, in your very frank and just estimate of us to-day? I have often thought that it is a misfortune to have been born with money, but I suppose I didn't think of it soon enough, and it seems pretty late now to go back and start all over. Besides, I have no one in need to struggle for. My mother is comfortably off, and I have no little suffering sister – "

She checked him a gesture.

"Don't – oh, don't!" she pleaded. "Perhaps you are right about being poor, but that last seems mockery and sacrilege – I cannot bear it! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know, as I do, how he has gone out in the bitter cold to work, without his breakfast, because there was not enough for all, and how – because he had cooked the breakfast himself – he did not let them know. No, you do not realize – you could not!"

Mr. Weatherby regarded his companion rather wonderingly. There was something in her eyes which made them very bright. It seemed to him that her emotion was hardly justified.

"I suppose he has told you all about it," he said, rather coldly.

She turned upon him.

"He? Never! He would never tell any one! I found it out – oh, long ago – but I did not understand it all – not then."

"And the mother and sister – what became of them?"

The girl's voice steadied itself with difficulty.

"The mother died. The little girl was taken by some kind people. He was left to fight his battle alone."

Neither spoke after this, and they walked through woods that were like the mazy forests of some old tale. If there had been a momentary rancor between them it was presently dissipated in the quiet of the gold-lit greenery about them, and as they wandered on there grew about them a peace which needed no outward establishment. They held their course by a little compass, and did not fear losing their way, though it was easy enough to become confused amid those barriers of heaped bowlders and tangled logs. By and by Constance held up her hand.

"Listen," she said, "there are voices."

They halted, and a moment later Robin Farnham and Edith Morrison emerged from a natural avenue just ahead. They had followed a different way and were returning to the Lodge. Frank and Constance pushed forward to meet them.

"We have just passed a place that would interest you," said Robin to Miss Deane. "A curious shut-in place where mushrooms grow almost as if they had been planted there. We will take you to it."

Robin spoke in his usual manner. Edith, though rather quiet, appeared to have forgotten the incident of the veranda. Frank and Constance followed a little way, and then all at once they were in a spot where the air seemed heavy and chill, as though a miasma rose from the yielding soil. Thick boughs interlaced overhead, and the sunlight of summer never penetrated there. Such light as came through seemed dim and sorrowful, and there was about the spot a sinister aspect that may have been due to the black pool in the center and the fungi which grew about it. Pale, livid growths were there, shading to sickly yellow, and in every form and size. So thick were they they fairly overhung and crowded in that gruesome bed. Here a myriad of tiny stems, there great distorted shapes pushed through decaying leaves – or toppled over, split and rotting – the food of buzzing flies, thousands of which lay dead upon the ground. A sickly odor hung about the ghastly place. No one spoke at first. Then Constance said:

"I believe they are all deadly – every one." And Frank added:

"I have heard of the Devil's Garden. I think we have found it."

Edith Morrison shuddered. Perhaps the life among the hills had made her a trifle superstitious.

"Let us be going," Constance said. "Even the air of such a place may be dangerous." Then, curiosity and the collecting instinct getting the better of her, she stooped and plucked one of the yellow fungi which grew near her foot. "They seem to be all Amanitas," she added, "the most deadly of toadstools. Those paler ones are Amanita Phalloides. There is no cure for their poison. These are called the Fly Amanita because they attract flies and slay them, as you see. This yellow one is an Amanita, too – see its poison cup. I do not know its name, and we won't stop here to find it, but I think we might call it the Yellow Danger."

She dropped it into the basket and all turned their steps homeward, the two girls ahead, the men following. The unusual spot had seemed to depress them all. They spoke but little, and in hushed voices. When they emerged from the woods the sun had slipped behind the hills and a semi-twilight had fallen. Day had become a red stain in the west. Constance turned suddenly to Robin Farnham.

"I think I will ask you to row me across the lake," she said. "I am sure Mr. Weatherby will be glad to surrender the privilege. I want to ask you something more about those specimens you saw on McIntyre."

There was no hint of embarrassment in Miss Deane's manner of this request. Indeed, there was a pleasant, matter-of-fact tone in her voice that to the casual hearer would have disarmed any thought of suspicion. Yet to Edith and Frank the matter seemed ominously important. They spoke their adieus pleasantly enough, but a curious spark glittered a little in the girl's eyes and the young man's face was grave as they two watched the handsome pair down the slope, and saw them enter the Adirondack canoe and glide out on the iridescent water. Suddenly Edith turned to her companion. She was very pale and the spark had become almost a blaze.

"Mr. Weatherby," she said fiercely, "you and I are a pair of fools. You may not know it – perhaps even they do not know it, yet. But it is becoming very clear to me!"

Frank was startled by her unnatural look and tone. As he stood regarding her, he saw her eyes suddenly flood with tears. The words did not come easily either to deny or acknowledge her conclusions. Then, very gently, as one might speak to a child, he said:

"Let us not be too hasty in our judgments. Very sad mistakes have been made by being too hasty." He looked out at the little boat, now rapidly blending into the shadows of the other shore, and added – to himself, as it seemed – "I have made so little effort to be what she wished. He is so much nearer to her ideal."

He turned to say something more to the girl beside him, but she had slipped away and was already halfway to the Lodge. He followed, and then for a time sat out on the veranda, smoking, and reviewing what seemed to him now the wasted years. He recalled his old ambitions. Once they had been for the sea – the Navy. Then, when he had become associated with the college paper he had foreseen in himself the editor of some great journal, with power to upset conspiracies and to unmake kings. Presently he had begun to write – he had always dabbled in that – and his fellow-students had hailed him not only as their leader in athletic but literary pursuits. As editor-in-chief of the college paper and valedictorian of his class, he had left them at last, followed by prophecies of a career in the world of letters. Well, that was more than two years ago, and he had never picked up his pen since that day. There had been so many other things – so many places to go – so many pleasant people – so much to do that was easier than to sit down at a remote desk with pen and blank paper, when all the world was young and filled with gayer things. Then, presently, he had reasoned that there was no need of making the fight – there were too many at it, now. So the flower of ambition had faded as quickly as it had bloomed, and the blossoms of pleasure had been gathered with a careless hand. His meeting with Constance had been a part of the play-life of which he had grown so fond. Now that she had grown into his life he seemed about to lose her, because of the flower he had let die.

The young man ate his dinner silently – supplying his physical needs in the perfunctory manner of routine. He had been late coming in, and the dining-room was nearly empty. Inadvertently he approached the group gathered about the wide hall fireplace as he passed out. Miss Carroway occupied the center of this little party and, as usual, was talking. She appeared to be arranging some harmless evening amusement.

"It's always pleasant after supper," she was saying – Miss Carroway never referred to the evening meal as dinner – "to ask a few conundrums. My Charlie that I raised and is now in the electric works at Haverford used to say it helped digestion. Now, suppose we begin. I'll ask the first one, and each one will guess in turn. The first one who guesses can ask the next."

Becoming suddenly conscious of the drift of matters, Frank started to back out, silently, but Miss Carroway had observed his entrance and, turning, checked him with her eye.

"You're just in time," she said. "We haven't commenced yet. Oh, yes, you must stay. It's good for young people to have a little diversion in the evening and not go poking off alone. I am just about to ask the first conundrum. Mebbe you'll get the next. This is one that Charlie always liked. What's the difference between a fountain and the Prince of Wales? Now, you begin, Mr. Weatherby, and see if you can guess it."

The feeling was borne in upon Frank that this punishment was rather more than he could bear, and he made himself strong for the ordeal. Dutifully he considered the problem and passed it on to the little woman in black, who sat next. Miss Carroway's rival was consumed with an anxiety to cheapen the problem with a prompt answer.

"That's easy enough," she said. "One's the son of the queen, and the other's a queen of the sun. Of course," she added, "a fountain isn't really a queen of the sun, but it shines and sparkles and might be called that."

Miss Carroway regarded her with something of disdain.

"Yes," she said, with decision, "it might be, but it ain't. You guessed wrong. Next!"

"One's always wet, and the other's always dry," volunteered an irreverent young person outside the circle, which remark won a round of ill-deserved applause.

"You ought to come into the game," commented Miss Carroway, "but that ain't it, either."

"I'm sure it has something with 'shine' and 'line,'" ventured the young lady from Utica, who was a school-mistress, "or 'earth' and 'birth.' I know I've heard it, but I can't remember."

"Humph!" sniffed Miss Carroway, and passed it on. Nobody else ventured a definition and the problem came back to its proposer. She sat up a bit straighter, and swept the circle with her firelit glasses.

"One's thrown to the air, and the other's heir to the throne," she declared, as if pronouncing judgment. "I don't think this is much of a conundrum crowd. My Charlie would have guessed that the first time. But I'll give you one more – something easier, and mebbe older."

When at last he was permitted to go Frank made his way gloomily to his room and to bed. The day's events had been depressing. He had lost ground with Constance, whom, of late, he had been trying so hard to please. He had been willing enough, he reflected, to go up the mountain, but it really had been cloudy up there and too late to start. Then Constance had blamed him for the unpleasant incident which had followed – it seemed to him rather unjustly. Now, Edith Morrison had declared openly what he himself had been almost ready, though rather vaguely, to suspect. He had let Constance slip through his fingers after all. He groaned aloud at the thought of Constance as the wife of another. Was it, after all, too late? If he should begin now to do and dare and conquer, could he regain the lost ground? And how should he begin? Half confused with approaching sleep, his thoughts intermingled with strange fancies, that one moment led him to the mountain top where in the mist he groped for mushrooms, while the next, as in a picture, he was achieving some splendid triumph and laying the laurels at her feet. Then he was wide awake again, listening to the whisper of the trees that came through his open window and the murmur of voices from below. Presently he found himself muttering, "What is the difference between a fountain and the Prince of Wales?" – a question which immediately became a part of his perplexing sleep-waking fancies, and the answer was something which, like a boat in the mist, drifted away, just out of reach. What was the difference between a fountain and the Prince of Wales? It seemed important that he should know, and then the query became visualized in a sunlit plume of leaping water with a diadem at the top, and this suddenly changed into a great mushroom, of the color of gold, and of which some one was saying, "Don't touch it – it's the Yellow Danger." Perhaps that was Edith Morrison, for he saw her dark, handsome face just then, her eyes bright with tears and fierce with the blaze of jealousy. Then he slept.