MRS. BLAIR REGRETS
It had taken a long time for concern to spread among the picnickers.
The sudden shower had sent them all scurrying for shelter, and when the
climb was resumed, they crossed the river on those wide, flat
stepping-stones that Johnny Byrd had missed, and re-formed in
self-absorbed little twos and threes that failed to take note of the
absence of the laggards.
When Ruth remembered to call back, "Where's Ri-Ri?" to her mother, Mrs.
Blair only glanced over her shoulder and answered, "She's coming," with
no thought of anxiety.
It did occur to her, however, somewhat later, that the girl was
loitering a little too significantly with young Byrd, and she made a
point of suggesting to Ruth, when she passed her in a short time, that
she wait for her cousin who was probably finding the climb too
strenuous.
"Who? Me?" said Ruth amazedly. "Gee, what do you want me to do--fan her?
Let Johnny do it," and cheerfully she went on photographing a group upon
a fallen log, and Mrs. Blair went on with the lawyer from Washington who
was a rapid walker.
And Ruth, with the casual thought that neither Ri-Ri nor Johnny Byrd
would relish such attendance, promptly let the thought of them dissolve
from her memory.
She was immersed in her own particular world that afternoon.
Life was at a crisis for her. Robert Martin had been drifting faster and
faster with the current of his admiration for her, and now seemed to
have been brought up on very definite solid ground. He felt he knew
where he was. And he wanted to know where Ruth was.
And Ruth found herself in that special quandary reserved for independent
American girls who want to have their cake and eat it, too.
She wanted Bob Martin, and she wanted to be gratifyingly sure that Bob
Martin wanted her--and then she wanted affairs to stand still at that
pleasant pass, while she played about and invited adventure.
Life was so desirable as it was . . . especially with Bob Martin in the
scene. But if he were unsatisfied he wouldn't remain there as part of
the adjacent landscape.
Bob was no pursuing Lochinvar.
It was very delicate. She couldn't explain all her hesitation
satisfactorily to herself, so she had made rather a poor job of it when
she tried to explain to Bob.
Part of it was young unreadiness for the decisions and responsibilities
of life, part of it was reprehensible aversion about shutting the door
to other adventures, and part of it was her native energy, as yet
unemployed, aware of a larger world and anxious to play some undivined
part in its destinies.
She had always been furious that the war had come too soon for her. She
would have loved to have gone over there, and known the mud and
doughnuts and doughboys . . . and the excitement and the officers. . . .
But Bob wasn't going to dangle much longer. He hadn't a doubt but that
everything was all right and he was in haste to taste the assurance.
And Ruth wasn't going to lose him.
These hesitations of hers would convey nothing to his youthful
masculinity but that she didn't care enough. And his was not the age
that appreciates the temporizing half loaf.
So that trip up the mountain meant for them much youthful discussion,
much searching of wills and hearts and motives, a threatening gloom upon
his part, and a struggling defensiveness upon hers.
Small wonder that Maria Angelina and her companion were not remembered!
It was not until she was at the very top of old Baldy, and again a part
of the general group that Ruth had the thought to look about her and
recognize her cousin's absence.
"They _are_ taking their time," she remarked to Bob.
"Glad they're enjoying it," he gave back with a disgruntled air that
Ruth determinedly ignored.
"I guess Ri-Ri's no good at a climb," she said. "This little old
mountain must have got her."
"Oh, Johnny's strong right arm will do the work," he returned
indifferently.
"But they ought to be here now. You don't suppose they missed the way?"
Mrs. Blair, overhearing, suggested, and turned to look down the steep
path that they had come.
Bob scouted the idea of such a mishap.
"Johnny knows his way about. They'll be along when they feel like it,"
he predicted easily, and Mrs. Blair turned to the arrangement of supper
with a slight anxiety which she dissembled beneath casual cheerfulness.
In her heart she was vexed. Dreadfully noticeable, she thought, that
persistent lagging of theirs. She might have expected it of Johnny
Byrd--he had a way of making new girls conspicuous--but she had looked
for better things from Maria Angelina.
It was too bad. It showed that as soon as you gave those cloistered
girls an inch they took an ell.
Outwardly she spoke with praise of her charge. Julia Martin, a youthful
aunt of Bob's, was curious about the girl.
"She's the loveliest creature," she declared with facile enthusiasm, as
she and Mrs. Blair delved into a hamper that the Martins' chauffeur and
butler had shouldered up before the picnickers.
"And so naively young--I don't see how her mother dared let her come so
far away."
"Oh--her mother wanted her to see America," Mrs. Blair gave back.
"She must be having a wonderful time," pursued the young lady. "She was
simply a picture at the dance. . . . Think of giving a mountain climb
the night after the dance," she added in a lower voice. "Bob and his
mother are perfectly mad. I think they want to kill their guests
off--perhaps there's method in their madness. . . . I never saw anything
quite like her," she resumed upon Maria Angelina. "I fancy Johnny Byrd
hasn't either!"
"Wasn't she pretty?" agreed Mrs. Blair with pleasantness, laying out the
spoons. "Yes, it's very interesting for her to have this," she went on,
"before she really knows Roman society. . . . She will come out as soon
as she returns from America, I suppose. The eldest sister is being
married this fall, and the next sister and Maria Angelina are about of
an age."
"Little hard on the sister unless she is a raving, tearing beauty," said
the intuitive Miss Martin with a laugh. "Perhaps they are sending Maria
Angelina away to keep her in abeyance!"
"Perhaps," Mrs. Blair assented. "At any rate, with this preliminary
experience, I fancy that little Ri-Ri will make quite a sensation over
there."
It was as if she said plainly to the curious young aunt that this
pilgrimage was only a prelude in Maria Angelina's career, and she
certainly did not take its possibilities for any serious finalities.
But the youthful aunt was not intimidated.
"She'll make a sensation over _here_ if she carries off the Byrd
millions," she threw out smartly.
Mrs. Blair smiled with an effect of remote amusement. Inwardly she knew
sharp annoyance. She wished she could smack that loitering child. . . .
Very certainly she would betray no degrading interest in her fortunes.
The Martins were not to think that she was intent on placing _any one_!
"Johnny Byrd's a child," said she indifferently.
"He's been of age two years," said the youthful aunt, "and he's out of
college now and very much a catch--all his vacations used to be
hairbreadth escapes. Of course he courts danger," she threw in with a
little laugh and a sidelong look.
But Mrs. Blair was not laughing. She was blaming herself for the
negligence which had made this situation possible, although--extenuation
made haste to add within her--no one could humanly be expected to be
going up and down a trail all afternoon to gather in the stragglers. And
she had told Ruth to wait.
"She's probably just tired out," said the stout widower with strong
accents of sympathy. "Climb too much for her, and very sensibly they've
turned back."
"If I could only be sure. If I could only be sure she wasn't hurt--or
lost," said Mrs. Blair doubtfully.
"Lost!" Bob Martin derided. "Lost--on a straight trail. Not unless they
jolly wanted to!"
"Don't spoil the party, mother," was Ruth's edged advice. "Ri-Ri hasn't
broken any legs or necks. And she wasn't alone to get lost. She just
gave up and Johnny Byrd took her home. I know her foot was blistered at
the dance last night and that's probably the matter."
It was the explanation they decided to adopt.
Mrs. Blair, recalling that this was not her expedition, made a double
duty of appearing sensibly at ease, although the nervous haste with
which a sudden noise would bring her to alertness, facing the path,
revealed some inner tension.
The young people were inclined to be hilarious over the affair,
inventing fresh reasons for the absent ones, reasons that ranged from
elopement to wood pussies.
"There was one around last night," the tennis champion insisted.
But the hilarity was only a flash in the pan. After its flare the party
dragged. Curiosity preoccupied some; uneasiness communicated itself to
others. And the frank abstraction of Ruth and Bob had a depressing
effect upon the atmosphere.
And the runaways were missed. Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of
making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much
a part of every gathering that its absence now made song a dejection.
Other things of Maria Angelina than her soprano were missed, also.
Julia Martin found the popular bachelor decidedly absent-minded. The
crack young polo player thought the scenery disappointing. Decidedly, it
was a dull party.
And the weather was threatening.
So after supper had been disposed of and there had been a bonfire and an
effort at singing about it, a dispirited silence spread until a decent
interval was felt to have elapsed and allowed the suggestion of return.
Once it was suggested everybody seemed ready for the start, even without
the moon, for the path was fairly clear and the men had pocket
flashlights, so down in the dark they started, proceeding cautiously
and gingerly, and accumulating mental reservations about mountains and
mountain climbing until the moon suddenly overtook them and sent a
silvering wash of light into the valley at their feet.
They had gained the main path before the moon deserted them, and the
first of the gusty showers sent them hurrying along in shivering
impatience for the open fires of homes.
"We'll find that pair of short sports toasting their toes and giving us
the laugh," predicted Bob, tramping along, a hand on Ruth's arm now.
Ruth was wearing his huge college sweater over her silk one and felt
indefinably less adventurous and independent than on her upward trip.
Bob seemed very stable, very desirable, as she stumbled wearily on. She
wasn't quite sure what she had wanted to gain time for, that afternoon.
Already the barriers of custom and common-sense were raising their solid
heads.
And Bob was romance, too. It was silly to be unready for surrender. She
realized that if she lost him. . . .
At the Lodge she gave him back a quick look that set him astir.
"Hold on," he called as she broke from him to follow her mother.
The cars from the Martin house party had been left at the Lodge in
readiness and with perfunctory warmth of farewells the tired
mountaineers were hastening either to the Lodge or the motors.
"Here's Johnny's car," he sung out. "He's probably inside----" and Bob
swung hastily after Ruth and her mother.
He was up the steps beside them and opened the door into the wide hall
where a group was lingering about the open fire.
A glance told them Johnny Byrd was not of the company. Bob and Ruth went
to the door of the music room. It was deserted. Mrs. Blair went swiftly
to the clerk's desk at the side entrance.
She came back, looking upset. Maria Angelina had not returned, to the
clerk's knowledge. No one had telephoned any news.
"I'll go up and make sure," offered Ruth, and sped up the stairs only to
return in a few minutes with a face of dawning excitement.
"They must be lost!" she announced in a voice that drew instant
attention.
"Did you look to see if her things were there?" said her mother in an
agitated undertone.
Bob Martin met her glance with swift intelligence.
"Johnny's car is out there," he told them. "It isn't _that_--they are
simply lost, as Ruth says. Wait--I must tell them before they get away,"
and he hurried out into the increasing downpour.
Mrs. Blair turned on her daughter a face of pale misgiving.
"I knew it," she said direfully. "I felt it all along. . . . She's
lost."
"Well, she'll be found," said Ruth lightly, with an indisputable lift
of excitement. "The bears won't eat them."
Mrs. Blair's eyes shifted uneasily to meet the advancing circle from the
fire.
"There are worse bites than bears'," she found time to throw out, before
she had to voice the best possible version of Maria Angelina's
disappearance.
Instantly a babble of facile comfort rose.
They would be here any moment now.
Some one had picked them up--they were safe and sound, this instant.
There wasn't a thing that could happen--it wasn't as though these were
_wilds_.
Just telephone about--she mustn't worry. As soon as it was light some
one would go out and track them.
Why, Judge Carney's boys had been lost all night and breakfasted on
blueberries. It wasn't uncommon.
And nothing could happen to her--with Johnny Byrd along.
Oh, Johnny would take care of her--by morning everything would be all
right.
But how in the world had it happened? That was such an _easy_ trail!
And that was the question that stared, Argus-eyed, at Jane Blair. It was
the question, she knew, that they were all asking themselves--and the
others--in covert curiosity.
What had happened? And how had it happened?