TWO--AND A MOUNTAIN
The next morning was given to recovery from the dance. In the afternoon
the Martins had planned a mountain climb. It was not a really bad
mountain, at all, and the arrangement was to start in the late
afternoon, have dinner upon the top, and descend by moonlight.
It was the plan of the younger inexhaustibles among the group, but in
spite of faint protests from some of the elders all the Martin
house-party was in line for the climb, and with the addition of the
Blair party and several other couples from the Lodge, quite a procession
was formed upon the path by the river.
It was a lovely day--a shade too hot, if anything was to be urged
against it. The sun struck great shafts of golden light amid the rich
green of the forest, splashing the great tree boles with bold light and
shade. The air was fragrant with spruce and pine and faint, aromatic
wintergreen. A hot little wind rocked the reflections in the river and
blew its wimpling surface into crinkled, lace-paper fantasies.
Overhead the sky burned blue through the white-cottonballs of cloud.
Bob Martin headed the procession, Ruth at his side, and the stout
widower concluded it, squiring a rather heavy-footed Mrs. Martin. Midway
in the line came Mrs. Blair, and beside her, abandoning the line of
young people behind the immediate leaders was a small figure in short
white skirt and middy, pressing closely to her Cousin Jane's side.
It was Maria Angelina, her dark hair braided as usual about her head,
her eyes a shade downcast and self-conscious, withdrawn and
tight-wrapped as any prudish young bud.
But if virginal pride had urged her to flee all appearance of
expectation, an equally sharp masculine reaction was withholding Johnny
Byrd from any appearance of pursuit.
He went from group to group, clowning it with jokes and laughter, and
only from the corners of his eyes perceiving that small figure, like a
child's in its white play clothes.
For half an hour that separation endured--a half hour in which Cousin
Jane told Maria Angelina all about her first mountain climb, when a
girl, and the storm that had driven herself and her sister and her
father and the guide to sleep in the only shelter, and of the guide's
snores that were louder than the thunder--and Maria Angelina laughed
somehow in the right places without taking in a word, for all the time
apprehension was tightening, tightening like a violin string about to
snap.
And then, when it was drawn so tight that it did not seem possible to
endure any more, Johnny Byrd appeared at Ri-Ri's side, conscious-eyed
and boyishly embarrassed, but managing an offhand smile.
"And is this the very first mountain you've ever climbed?" he demanded
banteringly.
Gladness rushed back into the girl. She raised a face that sparkled.
"The very first," she affirmed, very much out of breath. "That is, upon
the feet. In Italy we go up by diligence and there is always a hotel at
the top for tea."
"We'll have a little old bonfire at the top for tea. . . . Don't take it
so fast and you'll be all right," he advised, and, laying a restraining
hand upon her arm he held her back while Cousin Jane, with her casual,
careless smile, passed ahead to join one of the Martin party.
It was an act of masterful significance. Maria Angelina accepted it
meekly.
"Like this?" asked Johnny of her smiling face.
"I love it," she told him, and looked happily at the green woods about
them, and across the river, rushing now, to where the forest was
clinging to sharply rising mountain flanks. Her eyes followed till they
found the bare, shouldering peaks outlined against the blue and white
of the cumulous sky.
The beauty about her flooded the springs of happiness. It was a
wonderful world, a radiant world, a world of dream and delights. It was
a world more real than the fantasy of moonlight. She felt more real. She
was herself, too, not some strange, diaphanous image conjured out of
tulle and gauze, she was her own true flesh-and-blood self, living in a
dream that was true.
She looked away from the mountains and smiled up at Johnny Byrd very
much as the young princess in the fairy tale must have smiled at the
all-conquering prince, and Johnny Byrd's blue eyes grew bluer and
brighter and his voice dropped into intimate possessiveness.
It didn't matter in the least what they talked about. They were absurdly
merry, loitering behind the procession.
Suddenly it occurred to Maria Angelina that it had been some time since
he had drawn her back from Cousin Jane's casual but comprehending
smile, some time since they had even heard the echo of voices ahead.
Her conscience woke guiltily.
"We must hurry," she declared, quickening her own small steps.
Teasingly Johnny Byrd hung back. "'Fraid cat, 'fraid cat--what you
'fraid of, Maria Angelina?"
He added, "I'm not going to eat you--though I'd like to," he finished in
lower tone.
"But it is getting dark! There are clouds," said the girl, gazing up in
frank surprise at the changed sky. She had not noticed when the sunlight
fled. It was still visible across the river, slipping over a hill's
shoulder, but from their woods it was withdrawn and a dark shadow was
stretching across them.
"Clouds--what do you care for clouds?" scoffed Johnny gayly, and in his
rollicking tenor, "Just roll dem clouds along," sang he.
Politely Maria Angelina waited until he had finished the song, but she
waited with an uneasy mind.
She cared very much for clouds. They looked very threatening, blowing so
suddenly over the mountain top, overcasting the brightness of the way.
And behind the scattered white were blowing gray ones, their edges
frayed like torn clothes on a line, and after the gray ones loomed a
dark, black one, rushing nearer.
And suddenly the woods at their right began to thresh about, with a
surprised rustling, and a low mutter, as of smothered warning, ran over
the shoulder of the mountain.
"Rain! As sure as the Lord made little rain drops," said Johnny
unconcerned. "There's going to be a cloudful spilled on us," he told the
troubled girl, "but it won't last a moment. Come into the wood and find
the dry side of a tree."
He caught at her hand and brought her crashing through the underbrush,
pushing through thickets till they were in the center of a great group
of maples, their heavy boughs spread protectingly above.
A giant tree trunk protected her upon one side; upon the other Johnny
drew close, spreading his sweater across her shoulders. Looking upwards,
Maria Angelina could not see the sky; above and about her was soft
greenness, like a fairy bower. And when the rain came pouring like hail
upon the leaves scarcely a drop won through to her.
They stood very still, unmoving, unspeaking while the shower fell. There
was an unreal dreamlike quality about the happening to the girl. Then,
almost intrusively, she became deeply aware of his presence there beside
her--and conscious that he was aware of hers.
She shivered.
"Cold," said Johnny, in a jumpy voice, and put a hand on her shoulders,
guarded by his sweater.
"N-no," she whispered.
"Feel dry?"
His hand moved upward to her bared head, lingered there upon the heavy
braids.
"Yes," she told him, faintly as before.
"But you're shivering."
"I don't like t-thunder," she told him absurdly, as a muttering roll
shook the air above them.
His hand, still hovering over her hair, went down against her cheek and
pressed her to him. She could hear his heart beating. It sounded as
loudly in his breast as her own. She had a sense of sudden,
unpremeditated emotion.
She felt his lips upon the back of her neck.
She tried to draw away, and suddenly he let her go and gave a short,
unsteady laugh.
"It's all right, Ri-Ri--you're my little pal, aren't you?" he murmured.
Unseeingly she nodded, drawing a long, shaken breath. Then as he started
to draw her nearer again she moved away, putting up her arms to her hair
in a gesture that instinctively shielded the confusion of her face.
"No? . . . All right, Ri-Ri, I won't crowd you," he murmured. "But oh,
you little Beauty Girl, you ought to be in a cage with bars about. . . .
You ought to wear a mask--a regular diving outfit----"
Unexpectedly Ri-Ri recovered her self-possession. Again she fled from
the consummation of the scene.
"I shall wear nothing so unbecoming," she flung lightly back. "And it
has not been raining for ever so long. Unless you wish to build a nest
in the forest, like a new fashion of oriole, Signor Byrd, you had better
hurry and catch up with the others."
Johnny did not speak as they came out of the woods and in silence they
hurried along the path on the river's edge.
The sun came out again to light them; on the green leaves about them the
wetness glittered and dried and the ephemeral shower seemed as unreal as
the memory it evoked.
With her head bent Maria Angelina pressed on in a haste that grew into
anxiety. Not a sound came back to them from those others ahead. Not a
voice. Not a footstep.
And presently the path appeared dying under their feet.
Green moss overspread it. Brambles linked arms across it.
"They are not here. We are on the wrong way," cried Maria Angelina and
turned startled eyes on the young man.
Johnny Byrd refused to take alarm.
"They must have crossed the river farther back--that's the answer," he
said easily. "We went past the right crossing--probably just after the
storm. You know you were speeding like a two-year-old on the home
stretch."
But Ri-Ri refused to shoulder all that blame.
"It might have been before the storm--while we were lingering so," she
urged distressfully. "You know that for so long we had heard nothing--we
ought to go back quickly--very quickly and find that crossing."
Johnny did not look back. He looked across the river, which ran more
deeply here between narrowed banks, and then glanced on ahead.
"Oh, we'll go ahead and cross the next chance we get," he informed her.
"We can strike in from there to old Baldy. I know the way. . . . Trust
your Uncle Leatherstocking," he told her genially.
But no geniality appeased Maria Angelina's deepening sense of
foreboding.
She quickened her steps after him as he strode on ahead, gallantly
holding back brambles for her and helping her scramble over fallen logs,
and she assented, with the eagerness of anxiety, when he announced a
place as safe for crossing.
It was at the head of a mild rush of rapids, and an outcropping of large
rocks made possible, though slippery, stepping-stones.
But Ri-Ri's heelless shoes were rubber soled, and she was both fearless
and alert. And though the last leap was too long for her, for she landed
in the shallows with splashing ankles, she had scarcely a down glance
for them. Her worried eyes were searching the green uplands before
them.
Secretly she was troubled at Johnny's instant choice of way. Her own
instinct was to go back along the river and then strike in towards old
Baldy, but men, she knew from Papa, did not like objections to their
wisdom, so she reminded herself that she was a stranger and ignorant of
this country and that Johnny Byrd knew his mountains.
He told her, as they went along, how well he knew them.
Steadily their path climbed.
"Should we not wind back a little?" she ventured once.
"Oh, we're on another path--we'll dip back and meet the other path a
little higher up," the young man told her.
But still the path did not dip back. It reached straight up. But Johnny
would not abandon it. He seemed to feel it inextricably united with his
own rightness of decision, and since he was inevitably right, so
inevitably the path must disclose its desired character.
But once or twice he paused and looked out over the way. Then,
hopefully, Ri-Ri hung upon his expression, longing for reconsideration.
But he never faltered, always on her approach he charged ahead again.
No holding back of brambles, now. No helping over logs. Johnny was the
pathfinder, oblivious, intent, and Ri-Ri, the pioneer woman, enduring as
best she might.
Up he drove, straight up the mountain side, and after him scrambled the
girl, her fears voiceless in her throat, her heart pounding with
exertion and anxiety like a ship's engine in her side.
Time seemed interminable. There was no sun now. The gray and white
clouds were spread thinly over the sky and only a diffused brightness
gave the suggestion of the west.
When the path wound through woods it seemed already night. On barren
slopes the day was clear again.
Hours passed. Endless hours to the tired-footed girl. They had left the
last woods behind them now and reached a clearing of bracken among the
granite, and here Johnny Byrd stopped, and stared out with an
unconcealed bewilderment that turned her hopes to lead.
With him, she stared out at the great gray peaks closing in about them
without recognizing a friend among them. Dim and unfamiliar they loomed,
shrouded in clouds, like chilly giants in gray mufflers against the
damp.
It was not old Baldy. It could not be old Baldy. One looked up at old
Baldy from the Lodge and she had heard that from old Baldy one looked
down upon the Lodge and the river and the opening valley. She had been
told that from old Baldy the Martin chalet resembled a cuckoo clock.
. . .
No cuckoo clocks in those vague sweeps below.
"Can we not go down a little bit?" said Maria Angelina gently. "Farther
down again we might find the right path. . . . Up here--I think we are
on the wrong mountain."
Turning, Johnny looked about. Ahead of him were overhanging slabs of
rock.
Irresolution vanished. "That's the top now," he declared. "We are just
coming up the wrong side, that's all. I'll say it's wrong--but here we
are. I'll bet the others are up there now--lapping up that food. Come
on, Ri-Ri, we haven't far now to go."
In a gust of optimism he held out his hand and Maria Angelina clutched
it with a weariness courage could not conceal.
It seemed to her that her breath was gone utterly, that her feet were
leaden weights and her muscles limply effortless. But after him she
plunged, panting and scrambling up the rocks, and then, very suddenly,
they found themselves to be on only a plateau and the real mountain head
reared high and aloof above.
Under his breath--and not particularly under it, either--Johnny Byrd
uttered a distinct blasphemy.
And in her heart Maria Angelina awfully seconded it.
Then with decidedly assumed nonchalance, "Gosh! All that way to supper!"
said the young man. "Well, come on, then--we got to make a dent in
this."
"Oh, are you sure--are you _sure_ that this is the right mountain?"
Maria Angelina begged of him.
"Don't I know Baldy?" he retorted. "We're just on another side of it
from the others, I told you. Come on, Ri-Ri--we'll soon smell the coffee
boiling."
She wished he had not mentioned coffee. It put a name to that gnawing,
indefinite feeling she had been too intent to own.
Coffee . . . Fragrant and steaming, with bread and butter . . .
sandwiches filled with minced ham, with cream cheese, with olive
paste--sandwiches filled with anything at all! Cold chicken . . . salad
. . . fruit. Food in any form! _Food!!_
She felt empty. Utterly empty and disconsolate.
And she was tired. She had never known such tiredness--her feet ached,
her legs ached, her back ached, her arms ached. She could have dropped
with the achingness of her. Each effort was a punishment.
Yet she went on with a feverish haste. She was driven by a compulsion to
which fatigue was nothing.
It had become terrible not to be reunited with the others. She thought
of the hours, the long hours, that she and Johnny Byrd had been alone
and she flinched, shivering under the whiplash of fear.
What were they saying of her, those others? What were they thinking?
She knew how unwarrantable, how inexcusable a thing she had done.
It had begun with deliberate loitering. For that--for a little of
that--she had the sanction of the new American freedom, the permission
of Cousin Jane's casual, understanding smile.
"It's all right," that smile had seemed to say to her, "it's all right
as long as it's Johnny Byrd--but be careful, Ri-Ri."
And she had loitered shamefully, she had plunged into the woods with
Johnny in that thunder storm, she had let him take her on the wrong
path.
And now it was growing dark and they were far from the others--and she
was not sure, even, that they were upon the right way.
But they _must_ be. They could not be so hideously, so finally wrong.
Panic routed her exhaustion and she toiled furiously on.
"You're a pretty good scout--for a little Wop," said Johnny Byrd with a
sudden grin and a moment's brightness was lighted within her.
She did not speak--she could only breathe hard and smile.
Nearer and nearer they gained the top, rough climbing but not dangerous.
The top was not far now. Johnny shouted and listened, then shouted
again.
Once they thought they heard voices but it was only the echoes of their
own, borne hollowly back.
"The wind is the other way," said Johnny, and on they went, charging up
a steep, gravelly slope over more rocks and into a scrub group of firs.
. . .
Surely this was as near the top as one could go! Nothing above but
barren, tilted rock. Nothing beyond but more boulders and stunted trees.
The place lay bare before their eyes.
Round and round they went, calling, holding their breath to listen.
Then, with a common impulse, they turned and stared at each other.
That moment told Maria Angelina what panic was.