They expected to come back sooner. Her mother wanted just the name on the stone."
Frank had a strange feeling as he regarded the little grave.
"I never knew that you had lost a sister," he said. "I mean that your parents had buried a little girl. Of course, she died before you were born."
"No," she said, "but her death was a fearful blow. Mamma can hardly speak of it even to-day. She could never confess that her little girl was dead, so they called me by her name. I cannot explain it all now."
Frank said musingly:
"I remember your saying once that you were not even what you seemed to be. Is this what you meant?"
She nodded.
"Yes; that is what I meant."
They pushed on up the hill, without many words.
The little enclosure and the graven stone had made them thoughtful.
Arriving at the peak they found, at the brow of a cliff, a broad, shelving stone which hung out over a deep, wooded hollow, where here and there the red and gold were beginning to gleam. From it they could look across toward Algonquin, where they tried to locate the spot of the hermit"s cabin, and down upon the lake and the Lodge, which seemed to lie almost at their feet.
At first they merely rested and drank in the glory of the view. Then at last Frank drew from his pocket a folded typewritten paper.
"If the court of Minerva is convened, I will lay this matter before her," he said.
It was not a story of startling theme that he read to her--"The Victory of Defeat"; it was only a tale of a man"s love, devotion and sacrifice, but it was told so simply, with so little attempt to make it seem a story, that one listening forgot that it was not indeed a true relation, that the people were not living and loving and suffering toward a surrender which rose to triumph with the final page. Once only Constance interrupted, to say:
"Your friend is fortunate to have so good a reader to interpret his story. I did not know you had that quality in your voice."
He did not reply, and when he had finished reading and laid the ma.n.u.script down he waited for her comment. It was rather unexpected.
"You must be very fond of the one who wrote that," she said.
He looked at her quickly, hardly sure of her meaning. Then he smiled.
"I am. Almost too much so, perhaps."
"But why? I think I could love the man who did that story."
An expression half quizzical, half gratified, flitted across Frank"s features.
"And if it were written by a woman?" he said.
Constance did not reply, and the tender look in her face grew a little cold. A tiny bit of something which she did not recognize suddenly germinated in her heart. It was hardly envy--she would have scorned to call it jealousy. She rose--rather hastily, it seemed.
"Which perhaps accounts for your having read it so well," she said. "I did not realize, and--I suppose such a story might be written by almost any woman except myself."
Frank caught up the ma.n.u.script and poised it like a missile.
"Another word and it goes over the cliff," he threatened.
She caught back his arm, laughing naturally enough.
"It is ourselves that must be going over the cliff," she declared. "I am sure Mamma is worrying about us already."
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT THE SMALL WOMAN IN BLACK SAW
With September the hurry at the Lodge subsided. Vacations were beginning to be over--mountain climbers and wood rangers were returning to office, studio and cla.s.sroom. Those who remained were chiefly men and women bound to no regular occupations, caring more for the woods when the crowds of summer had departed and the red and gold of autumn were marching down the mountain side.
It had been a busy season at the Lodge, and Edith Morrison"s face told the tale. The constant responsibility, and the effort to maintain the standard of entertainment, had left a worn look in her eyes and taken the color from her cheeks. The burden had lain chiefly on her young shoulders. Her father was invaluable as an entertainer and had a fund of information, but he was without practical resources, and the strain upon Edith had told. If for another reason a cloud had settled on her brow and a shadow had gathered in her heart, she had uttered no word, but had gone on, day by day, early and late, devising means and supervising methods--doing whatever was necessary to the management of a big household through all those busy weeks.
Little more than the others had she seen Robin during those last August days. He had been absent almost constantly. When he returned it was usually late, and such was the demand upon this most popular of Adirondack guides that in nearly every case he found a party waiting for early departure. If Edith suspected that there were times when he might have returned sooner, when she believed that he had paused at the camp on the west branch of the Au Sable, she still spoke no word and made no definite outward sign. Whatever she brooded in her heart was in that secret and silence which may have come down to her, with those black eyes and that glossy hair, from some old ancestor who silently in his wigwam pointed his arrows and cuddled his resentment to keep it warm. It had happened that during the days when Constance had been absent with her mother Robin had twice returned at an earlier hour, and this could hardly fail to strengthen any suspicion that might already exist of his fidelity, especially as the little woman in black had commented on the matter in Edith"s presence, as well as upon the fact that immediately after the return of the absent ones he failed to reach the Lodge by daylight. It is a fact well established that once we begin to look for heartache we always find it--and, as well, some one to aid us in the search.
Not that Edith had made a confidante of the sinister-clad little woman.
On the whole, she disliked her and was much more drawn toward the good-natured but garrulous old optimist, Miss Carroway, who saw with clear undistorted vision, and never failed to say a word--a great many words, in fact--that carried comfort because they const.i.tuted a plea for the creed of general happiness and the scheme of universal good. Had Edith sought a confidante merely for the sake of easing her heart, it is likely that it was to this good old spinster that she would have turned.
But a nature such as hers does not confide its soul-hurt merely for the sake of consolation. In the beginning, when she had hinted something of it to Robin, he had laughed her fears away. Then, a little later, she had spoken to Frank Weatherby, for his sake as well as for her own. He had not laughed, but had listened and reflected, for the time at least; and his manner and his manhood, and that which she considered a bond of sympathy between them, made him the one to whom she must turn, now when the time had come to speak again.
There came a day when Robin did not go to the woods. In the morning he had been about the Lodge and the guides" cabin, of which he was now the sole occupant, greeting Edith in his old manner and suggesting a walk later in the day. But the girl pleaded a number of household duties, and presently Robin disappeared to return no more until late in the afternoon. When he did appear he seemed abstracted and grave, and went to the cabin to prepare for a trip next morning. Frank Weatherby, who had been putting in most of the day over some papers in his room, now returning from a run up the hillside to a point where he could watch the sunset, paused to look in, in pa.s.sing.
"Miss Deane has been telling me the hermit"s story," Robin said, as he saw who it was. "It seems to me one of the saddest stories I ever heard.
My regret is that he did not tell it to me himself, years ago. Poor old fellow! As if I would have let it make any difference!"
"But he could not be sure," said Frank. "You were all in the world to him, and he could not afford to take the chance of losing you."
"And to think that all those years he lived up there, watching our struggle. And what a hard struggle it was! Poor mother--I wish she might have known he was there!"
Neither spoke for a time. Then they reviewed their visit to the hermitage together, when they had performed the last sad offices for its lonely occupant. Next morning Robin was away with his party and Frank wandered over to the camp, but found no one there besides the servants.
He surmised that Constance and her parents had gone to visit the little grave on the hillside, and followed in that direction, thinking to meet them. He was nearing the spot when, at a turn in the path, he saw them.
He was un.o.bserved, and he saw that Constance had her arms about Mrs.
Deane, who was weeping. He withdrew silently and walked slowly back to the Lodge, where he spent the rest of the morning over a writing table in his room, while on the veranda the Circle of Industry--still active, though much reduced as to numbers--discussed the fact that of late Mr.
Weatherby was seen oftener at the Lodge, while, on the other hand, Constance had scarcely been seen there since her return. The little woman in black shook her head ominously and hinted that she might tell a good deal if she would, an att.i.tude which Miss Carroway promptly resented, declaring that she had thus far never known her to keep back anything that was worth telling.
It was during the afternoon that Frank, loitering through a little grove of birches near the boat landing, came face to face with Edith Morrison.
He saw in an instant that she had something to say to him. She was as white as the birches about her, while in her eyes there was the bright, burning look he had seen there once before, now more fierce and intensified. She paused by a mossy-covered bowlder called the "stone seat," and rested her hand upon it. Frank saw that she was trembling violently. He started to speak, but she forestalled him.
"I have something to tell you," she began, with hurried eagerness. "I spoke of it once before, when I only suspected. Now I know. I don"t think you believed me then, and I doubted, sometimes, myself. But I do not doubt any longer. We have been fools all along, you and I. They have never cared for us since she came, but only for each other. And instead of telling us, as brave people would, they have let us go on--blinding us so they could blind others, or perhaps thinking we do not matter enough for them to care. Oh, you are kind and good, and willing to believe in them, but they shall not deceive you any longer. I know the truth, and I mean that you shall know it, too."
Out of the varying emotions with which the young man listened to the rapid torrent of words, there came the conviction that without doubt the girl, to have been stirred so deeply, must have seen or heard something which she regarded as definite. He believed that she was mistaken, but it was necessary that he should hear her, in order, if possible to convince her of her error. He motioned her into the seat formed by the bowlder, for she seemed weak from over-excitement. Leaning against it, he looked down into her dark, striking face, startled to see how worn and frail she seemed.
"Miss Morrison," he began gently, "you are overwrought. You have had a hard summer, with many cares. Perhaps you have not been able to see quite clearly--perhaps things are not as you suppose--perhaps----"
She interrupted him.