He left her at the entrance of the wide hall and, ascending to his room, began to put his traps together in readiness for departure by stage next day.
Constance descended the veranda steps and crossed over to the guides"
cabin, where a light still shone. As she approached the open door she saw Edith and Robin sitting on the bench, talking earnestly. Edith had been crying, but appeared now in a calmer frame of mind. Robin held both her hands in his, and she made no apparent attempt to withdraw them.
Then came the sound of footsteps and Constance stood in the doorway.
For a moment Edith was startled. Then, seeing who it was, she sprang up and ran forward with extended arms.
"Forgive me! Oh, forgive me!" she cried; "I did not know! I did not know!"
CHAPTER XVI
THE LUCKY PIECE
True to her promise, Constance was at the Lodge early next morning.
Frank, a trifle pale and solemn, waited on the veranda steps. Yet he greeted her cheerfully enough, for the Circle of Industry, daily dwindling in numbers but still a quorum, was already in session, and Miss Carroway and the little woman in black had sharp eyes and ears.
Constance went over to speak to this group. With Miss Carroway she shook hands.
Frank lingered by the steps, waiting for her, but instead of returning she disappeared into the Lodge and was gone several minutes.
"I wanted to see Miss Morrison," she exclaimed, in a voice loud enough for all to hear. "She did not seem very well last night. I find she is much better this morning."
Frank did not make any reply, or look at her. He could not at all comprehend. They set out in the old way, only they did not carry the basket and book of former days, nor did the group on the veranda call after them with warning and advice. But Miss Carroway looked over to the little woman in black with a smile of triumph. And Mrs. Kitcher grimly returned the look with another which may have meant "wait and see."
A wonderful September morning had followed the perfect September night.
There was a smack of frost in the air, but now, with the flooding sunlight, the glow of early autumn and the odors of dying summer time, the world seemed filled with anodyne and glory. Frank and Constance followed the road a little way and then, just beyond the turn, the girl led off into a narrow wood trail to the right--the same they had followed that day when they had visited the Devil"s Garden.
She did not pause for that now. She pushed ahead as one who knew her ground from old acquaintance, with that rapid swinging walk of hers which seemed always to make her a part of these mountains, and their uncertain barricaded trails. Frank followed behind, rarely speaking save to comment upon some unusual appearance in nature--wondering at her purpose in it all, realizing that they had never continued so far in this direction before.
They had gone something less than a mile, perhaps, when they heard the sound of tumbling water, and a few moments later were upon the banks of a broad stream that rushed and foamed between the bowlders. Frank said, quietly:
"This is like the stream where I caught the big trout--you remember?"
"It is the same," she said, "only that was much farther up. Come, we will cross."
He put out his hand as if to a.s.sist her. She did not take it, but stepped lightly to a large stone, then to another and another--springing a little to one side here, just touching a bowlder all but covered with water there, and so on, almost more rapidly than Frank could follow--as one who knew every footing of that uncertain causeway. They were on the other side presently, and took up the trail there.
"I did not know you were so handy crossing streams," said Frank. "I never saw you do it before."
"But that was not hard. I have crossed many worse ones. Perhaps I was lighter of foot then."
They now pa.s.sed through another stretch of timber, Constance still leading the way. The trail was scarcely discernible here and there, as one not often used, but she did not pause. They had gone nearly a mile farther when a break of light appeared ahead, and presently they came to a stone wall and a traveled road. Constance did not scale the wall, but seated herself on it as if to rest. A few feet away Frank leaned against the barrier, looking at the road and then at his companion, curious but silent. Presently Constance said:
"You are wondering what I have to tell you, and why I have brought you all this way to tell it. Also, how I could follow the trail so easily--aren"t you?" and she smiled up at him in the old way.
"Yes," admitted Frank; "though as for the trail, I suppose you must have been over it before--some of those times before I came."
She nodded.
"That is true. You were not here when I traveled this trail before. It was Robin who came with me the last time. But that was long ago--almost ten years."
"You have a good memory."
"Yes, very good--better than yours. That is why I brought you here to-day--to refresh your memory."
There was something of the old banter in her voice, and something in her expression, inscrutable though it was, that for some reason set his heart to beating. He wondered if she could be playing with him. He could not understand, and said as much.
"You brought me here to tell me a story," he concluded. "Isn"t that what you said? I shall miss the Lake Placid hack if we do not start back presently."
Again that inscrutable, disturbing look.
"Is it so necessary that you should start to-day?" she asked. "Mr.
Meelie, I am sure, will appreciate your company just as much another time. And to-day is ours."
That look--it kept him from saying something bitter then.
"The story--you are forgetting it," he said, quietly.
"No, I am not forgetting." The banter had all gone out of her voice, and it had become gentle--almost tender. A soft, far-away look had come into her eyes. "I am only trying to think how to tell it--how to begin. I thought perhaps you might help me--only you don"t--your memory is so poor."
He had no idea of her meaning now, and ventured no comment.
"You do not help me," she went on. "I must tell my little story alone.
After all, it is only a sequel--do you care for sequels?"
There was something in her face just then that, had it not been for all that had come between them, might have made him take her in his arms.
"I--I care for what you are about to tell," he said.
She regarded him intently, and a great softness came into her eyes.
"It is the sequel of a story we heard together," she began, "that day on McIntyre, in the hermit"s cabin. You remember that he spoke of the other child--a little girl--hers. This is the story of that little girl. You have heard something of her already--how the brother toiled for her and his mother--how she did not fully understand the bitterness of it all.
Yet she tried to help--a little. She thought of many things. She had dreams that grew out of the fairy book her mother used to read to her, and she looked for Aladdin caves among the hills, and sometimes fancied herself borne away by the wind and the sea to some far Eastern land where the people would lay their treasures at her feet. But more than all she waited for the wonderful fairy prince who would one day come to her with some magic talisman of fortune which would make them all rich, and happy ever after.
"Yet, while she dreamed, she really tried to help in other ways--little ways of her own--and in the summer she picked berries and, standing where the stage went by, she held them out to the tourists who, when the stage halted, sometimes bought them for a few pennies. Oh, she was so glad when they bought them--the pennies were so precious--though it meant even more to her to be able to look for a moment into the faces of those strangers from another world, and to hear the very words that were spoken somewhere beyond the hills."
She paused, and Frank, who had leaned a bit nearer, started to speak, but she held up her hand for silence.
"One day, when the summer was over and all the people were going home--when she had gathered her last few berries, for the bushes were nearly bare--she stood at her place on the stone in front of the little house at the top of the hill, waiting for the stage. But when it came, the people only looked at her, for the horses did not stop, but galloped past to the bottom of the hill, while she stood looking after them, holding that last saucer of berries, which n.o.body would buy.
"But at the foot of the hill the stage did stop, and a boy, oh, such a handsome boy and so finely dressed, leaped out and ran back all the way up the hill to her, and stood before her just like the prince in the fairy tales she had read, and told her he had come to buy her berries.
And then, just like the prince, he had only an enchanted coin--a talisman--his lucky piece. And this he gave to her, and he made her take it. He took her hand and shut it on the coin, promising he would come for it again some day, when he would give her for it anything she might wish, asking only that she keep it safe. And then, like the prince, he was gone, leaving her there with the enchanted coin. Oh, she hardly dared to look, for fear it might not be there after all. But when she opened her hand at last and saw that it had not vanished, then she was sure that all the tales were true, for her fairy prince had come to her at last."
Again Frank leaned forward to speak, a new light shining in his face, and again she raised her hand to restrain him.
"You would not help me," she said, "your memory was so poor. Now, you must let me tell the story.