Stranded in Arcady.
by Francis Lynde.
I
THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
AT the half-conscious moment of awakening Prime had a confused impression that he must have gone to bed leaving the electric lights turned on full-blast. Succeeding impressions were even more disconcerting. It seemed that he had also gone to bed with his clothes on; that the bed was unaccountably hard; that the pillow had borrowed the characteristics of a pillory.
Sitting up to give these chaotic conclusions a chance to clarify themselves, he was still more bewildered. That which had figured as the blaze of the neglected electrics resolved itself into the morning sun reflecting dazzlement from the dimpled surface of a woodland lake. The hard bed proved to be a sandy beach; the pillory pillow a gnarled and twisted tree root which had given him a crick in his neck.
When he put his hand to the cramped neck muscle and moved to escape the bedazzling sun reflection, the changed point of view gave him a shock.
Sitting with her back to a tree at a little distance was a strange young woman--strange in the sense that he was sure he had never seen her before. Like himself, she had evidently just awakened, and she was staring at him out of wide-open, slate-gray eyes. In the eyes he saw a vast bewilderment comparable to his own, something of alarm, and a trace of subconscious embarra.s.sment as she put her hands to her hair, which was sadly tumbled.
Prime scrambled to his feet and said, "Good morning"--merely because the conventions, in whatever surroundings, die hard. At this the young woman got up, too, patting and pinning the rebellious hair into subjection.
"Good morning," she returned, quite calmly; and then: "If you--if you live here, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me where I am."
Prime checked a smile. "You beat me to it," he countered affably. "I was about to ask you if you could tell me where _I_ am."
"Don"t you know where you are?" she demanded.
"Only relatively; this charming sylvan environment is doubtless somewhere in America, but, as to the precise spot, I a.s.sure you I have no more idea than the man in the moon."
"It"s a dream--it must be!" the young woman protested gropingly. "Last night I was in a city--in Quebec."
"So was I," was the prompt rejoinder. Then he felt for his watch, saying: "Wait a moment, let"s see if it really was last night."
She waited; and then--"Was it?" she inquired eagerly.
"Yes, it must have been; my watch is still running."
She put her hand to her head. "I can"t seem to think very clearly. If we were in Quebec last night, we can"t be so very far from Quebec this morning. Can"t you--don"t you recognize this place at all?"
Prime took his first comprehensive survey of the surroundings. So far as could be seen there was nothing but the lake, with its farther sh.o.r.e dimly visible, and the primeval forest of pine, spruce, fir, and ghostly birch--a forest all-enveloping, shadowy, and rather forbidding, even with the summer morning sunlight playing upon it.
"It looks as if we might be a long way from Quebec," he ventured. "I am not very familiar with the Provinces, but these woods----"
She interrupted him anxiously. "A long way? How could it be--in a single night?" Then: "You are giving me to understand that you are not--that you don"t know how we come to be here?"
"You must believe that, if you can"t believe anything else," he hastened to say. "I don"t know where we are, or how we got here, or why we should be here. In other words, I am not the kidnapper; I"m the kidnapped--or at least half of them."
"It seems as if it _must_ be a bad dream," she returned, with the frown of perplexity growing between the pretty eyes. "Things like this don"t really happen, you know."
"I know they don"t, as a rule. I"ve tried to make them happen, now and then, on paper, but they always seem to lack a good bit in the way of verisimilitude."
The young woman turned away to walk down to the lake edge, where she knelt and washed her face and hands, drying them afterward on her handkerchief.
"Well," she asked, coming back to him, "have you thought of anything yet?"
He shook his head. "Honestly, I haven"t anything left to think with.
That part of my mind has basely escaped. But I have found something,"
and he pointed to a little heap of provisions and utensils piled at the upper edge of the sand belt: a flitch of bacon, sewn in canvas, a tiny sack of flour, a few cans of tinned things, matches, a camper"s frying-pan, and a small coffee-pot. "Whoever brought us here didn"t mean that we should starve for a day or two, at least. Shall we breakfast first and investigate afterward?"
""We?"" she said. "Can you cook?"
"Not so that any one would notice it," he laughed. "Can you?"
She matched the laugh, and it relieved him mightily. It was her undoubted right as a woman to cry out, or faint, or be foolishly hysterical if she chose; the circ.u.mstances certainly warranted anything. But she was apparently waiving her privilege.
"Yes, I ought to be able to cook. When I am at home I teach domestic science in a girls" school. Will you make a fire?"
Prime bestirred himself like a seasoned camper--which was as far as possible from being the fact. There was plenty of dry wood at hand, and a bit of stripped birch bark answered for kindling. The young woman removed her coat and pulled up her sleeves. Prime cut the bacon with his pocket-knife, and, much to the detriment of the same implement, opened a can of peaches. For the bread, Domestic Science wrestled heroically with a lack of appliances; the batter had to be stirred in the tiny skillet with water taken from the lake.
The cooking was also difficult. Being strictly city-bred, neither of them knew enough to let the fire burn down to coals, and they tried to bake the pan-bread over the flames. The result was rather smoky and saddening, and the young woman felt called upon to apologize. But the peaches, fished out of the tin with a sharpened birch twig for a fork, were good, and so was the bacon; and for sauce there was a fair degree of outdoor hunger. Over the breakfast they plunged once more into the mystery.
"Let us try it by the process of elimination," Prime suggested. "First, let me see if I can cancel myself. When I am at home in New York my name is Donald Prime, and I am a perfectly harmless writer of stories. The editors are the only people who really hate me, and you could hardly charge this"--with an arm-wave to include the surrounding wilderness--"to the vindictiveness of an editor, could you?"
He wished to make her laugh again, and he succeeded--in spite of the sad pan-bread.
"Perhaps you have been muck-raking somebody in your stories," she remarked. "But that wouldn"t include me. I am even more harmless than you are. My worst enemies are frivolous girls from well-to-do families who think it beneath them to learn to cook scientifically."
"It"s a joke," Prime offered soberly; "it can"t be anything else." Then: "If we only knew what is expected of us, so that we could play up to our part. What is the last thing you remember--in Quebec?"
"The most commonplace thing in the world. I am, or I was, a member of a vacation excursion party of school-teachers. Last evening at the hotel somebody proposed that we go to the Heights of Abraham and see the old battle-field by moonlight."
"And you did it?"
"Yes. After we had tramped all over the place, one of the young women asked me if I wouldn"t like to go with her to the head of the cove where General Wolfe and his men climbed up from the river. We went together, and while we were there the young woman stumbled and fell and turned her ankle--or at least she said she did. I took her arm to help her back to the others, and in a little while I began to feel so tired and sleepy that I simply couldn"t drag myself another step. That is the last that I remember."
"I can"t tell quite such a straight story," said Prime, taking his turn, "but at any rate I shan"t begin by telling you a lie. I"m afraid I was--er--drunk, you know."
"Tell me," she commanded, as one who would know the worst.
"I, too, was on my vacation," he went on. "I was to meet a friend of mine in Boston, and we were to motor together through New England. At the last moment I had a telegram from this friend changing the plan and asking me to meet him in Quebec. I arrived a day or so ahead of him, I suppose; at least, he wasn"t at the hotel where he said he"d be."
"Go on," she encouraged.
"I had been there a day and a night, waiting, and, since I didn"t know any one in Quebec, it was becoming rather tiresome. Last evening at dinner I happened to sit in with a big, two-fisted young fellow who confessed that he was in the same boat--waiting for somebody to turn up.
After dinner we went out together and made a round of the movies, with three or four cafes sandwiched in between. I drank a little, just to be friendly with the chap, and the next thing I knew I was trying to go to sleep over one of the cafe tables. I seem to remember that my chance acquaintance got me up and headed me for the hotel; but after that it"s all a blank."
"Didn"t you know any better than to drink with a total stranger?" the young woman asked crisply.
"Apparently I didn"t. But the three or four thimblefuls of cheap wine oughtn"t to have knocked me out. It was awful stuff; worse than the _vin ordinaire_ they feed you in the Paris wine-shops."
"It seems rather suspicious, doesn"t it?" she mused; "your sudden sleepiness? Are you--are you used to drinking?"