And young Martin laughed—the indolent, submissive laughter with which he appeared to accept all things at the hands of this audacious, brown-cheeked, gray-eyed young girl.
She must be very sure of him, thought the little Italian sagely. Then, not so sagely, she wondered if Ruth was exhibiting her power to warn off all newcomers. . . . Wasthatwhy she refused to admit his wealth or his good looks—she wanted to invite no competition?
Maria Angelina believed she saw the light.
She would reassure Ruth, she thought eagerly. She was a young person of honor. Never would she attempt to divert a glance from her cousin's admirer.
Meanwhile a debate was carried on between golf and tennis, and was carried in favor of golf by Cousin Jim. There was unintelligible talk of hazards and bunkers and handicaps for the tournament, of records and of bogey, and then as Johnny turned to her with a casual, "Like the game?" a shadow of misgiving crept into her confidence.
She could not golf. Nor could she play tennis. Nor could she follow the golfers—as Johnny Byrd suggested—for Cousin Jane declared her frock and slippers too delicate. She must get into something more appropriate.
And in Maria Angelina the worried suspicion woke that she had nothing more appropriate.
A few minutes later Cousin Jane confirmed that suspicion as she paused by the trunk the young girl was hastily unpacking.
"I'll send to town for some plain little things for you to play in," she said cheerfully. "You must have some low-heeled white shoes and short white skirts and a batting hat. Theywon't come to much," she added as if carelessly, going down to her bridge game on the veranda.
But Maria Angelina's small hands clenched tightly at her sides in a panic out of all proportion to the idea.
More expense, she was thinking quiveringly. More investment!
Oh, she must not fail—she dared not fail. She must find some one—the right some one——
She dropped beside her trunk of pretty things in a passion of frightened tears.
But the night swung her back to triumph again.
For although she could not golf, and her hands could not wield a tennis racket, Maria Angelina could play a guitar and she could sing to it like the angels she had been named for. And the young people at the Lodge had a way of gathering in the dark upon the wide steps and strumming chords and warblingstrange strains about intimate emotions. And as Maria Angelina's voice rose with the rest her gift was discovered.
"Gosh, the little Wop's a Galli-Curci," was John Byrd's aside to Bob.
So presently with Johnny Byrd's guitar in her hands Maria Angelina was singing the songs of Italy, sometimes in English, when she knew the words, that all might join in the choruses, but more often in their own Italian.
A crescent moon edged over the shadowy dark of the mountains before her . . . the same moon whose silver thread of light slipped down those far Apennine hills of home and touched the dome of old Saint Peter's. She felt far away and lonely . . . and deliciously sad and subtly expectant. . . .
"'O Sole mio——"
And as she sang, with her eyes on the far hills, her ears caught the whir of wheels on the road below, and all her nerves tightened like wires and hummed with the charged currents.
Out of the dark she conjured a tall youngfigure advancing . . . a figure topped by short-cut curly brown hair . . . a figure with eyes of incredible brightness. . . .
If he would only come now and find her like this, singing. . . .
It was so exquisite a hope that her heart pleaded for it.
But the wheels went on.
"But he will come," she thought swiftly, to cover the pang of that expiring hope. "He will come soon. He said so. And perhaps again it will be like this and he will find me here——"
"'O Sole mio——"
And only Johnny Byrd, staring steadily through the dusk, discerned that there were tears in her eyes.
She told herself that she was foolish to hope for him so soon. Of course he could not follow at once. He could not leave New York. He had work to be done. She must not begin to hope until the week-end at least.
But though she talked to herself so wisely, she hoped with every breath she drew. She was accustomed to Italian precipitancy—and nothing in Barry Elder suggested delay. If he came, he would come while his memory of her was fresh.
It would be either here or York Harbor. Either herself or that girl with the blue eyes. If he really wanted to see her at all, if he had any memory of their dance, any interest in the newness of her, then he would come soon.
And so through Maria Angelina's days ran a fever of expectancy.
At first it ran high. The honk of a motor horn, the reverberation of wheels upon the bridge, the slam of a door and the flurry of steps in the hall set up that instant, tumultuous commotion.
At any moment, she felt, Barry Elder might arrive. Every morning her pulses confessed that he might come that day; every night her courage insisted that the next morning would bring him.
And as the days passed the expectancy increased. It grew acute. It grew painful. The feeling, at every arrival, that he might be there gave her a tight pinch of suspense, a hammering racket of pulse-beats—succeeded by an empty, sickening, sliding-down-to-nothingness sensation when she realized that he was not there, when her despair proclaimed that he would never be there—and then, stoutly, she told herself that he would come the next time.
They were days of dreams for her—dreamsof the restaurant, of color, light and music, of that tall, slim figure . . . dreams of the dance, of the gay, half-teasing voice, the bright eyes, the direct smile. . . . Every word he had uttered became precious, infinitely significant.
"A rivederci, Signorina. . . . Don't forget me."
She had not forgotten him. Like the wax he had named she had guarded his image. Through all the swiftly developing experiences of those strange days she retained that first vivid impression.
She saw him in every group. She pictured him in every excursion. Above Johnny Byrd's light, straight hair she saw those close-cropped brown curls. . . . She held long conversations with him. She confided her impressions. She read him Italian poems.
But still he did not come.
And sharply she went from hope to despair. She told herself that he would never come.
She did not believe herself. Beneath a setlittle pretense of indifference she listened intently for the sound of arrivals; her heart turned over at an approaching car.
But she did not admit it. She said that she was through with hope. She said that she did not care whether he came or not. She said she did not want him to come.
He was with Leila Grey, of course.
Well—she was with Johnny Byrd.
She was with him every day, for with that amazing American freedom, Bobby Martin came down to see Ruth every day and the four young people with other couples from the Lodge were always involved in some game, some drive, some expedition.
But it was not accident nor a lazy concurrence with propinquity that kept Johnny Byrd at Maria Angelina's side.
Openly he announced himself as tied hand and foot. His admiration was as vivid as his red roadster. It was as unabashed and clamant as his motor horn. He reveled in her.He monopolized her. In his own words, he lapped her up.
With amazing simplicity Maria Angelina accepted this miracle. It was only a second-rate miracle to her, for it was not the desire of her heart, and she was uneasy about it. She did not want to be involved with Johnny Byrd if Barry Elder should arrive. . . . Of course, if she had never met Barry Elder. . . .
Johnny Byrd was a very nice, merry boy. And he was rich . . . independent. . . . If one has never tastedAsti Spumante, then one can easily be pleased withChianti.
Her secret dream was the young girl's protection against over-eagerness.
To her young hostess this indifference came as an enormous relief.
"She's all right," Ruth reported to her mother, upon an afternoon that Maria Angelina had taken herself downstairs to the piano and to a prospective call from Johnny Byrd while Ruth herself, in riding togs, awaited Bob Martin and his horses.
"She isn't jumping down Johnny's throat at all," the girl went on. "I was afraid, that first day, when she asked such nutty questions. . . . But she seems to take it all for granted. That ought to hold Johnny for a while—long enough so he won't get tired and throw her down for somebody else before he goes."
"You think, then, there isn't a chance of——?"
Mrs. Blair left the hypothesis in midair, convicted of ancient sentiment by the frank amusement of her young daughter's look.
"No, my dear, there isn't a chance of," Ruth so competently informed her that Mrs. Blair, in revolt, was moved to murmur, "After all, Ruth, people do fall in love and get married in this world."
"Oh, yes."
Patiently Ruth gave this thought her consideration and in fair-mindedness turned her scrutiny upon past days to evoke some sign that should contradict her own conclusions.
"She's got something—it's something different from the rest of us—but it would take more than that to do for Johnny Byrd."
Definitely, Ruth shook her head.
"You don't suppose she's beginning to think——?" hazarded Mrs. Blair.
Better than her daughter, she envisaged the circumstances which might have led, in her Cousin Lucy's mind, to this young girl's visit. Lucy, herself, had been taken abroad in those early days by a competent aunt. Now Lucy, in the turn of the tide, was sending her daughter to America.
Jane Blair would have liked to play fairy godmother, to make a benevolent gesture, to scatter largess. . . .
But she was not going to have it said that she was a fortune hunter. She was not going to alarm Johnny Byrd and implicate Bob Martin and disturb the delicate balance between him and Ruth.
Lucy's daughter must take her chances. This wasn't Europe.
"Well, I've said enough to her," Ruth statedbriskly, in answer to her mother's supposition. "I don't know how much she believes. . . . You know Ri-Ri is seething with Old World sentiment and she may be such a little nut as to think—but she doesn't act as if she really cared about it. It isn't just a pose. . . . Do you imagine," said Ruth, suddenly lapsing into a little Old World sentiment herself, "that she's gone on some one in Italy and they sent her over to forget him? That might account——"
"Lucy's letter didn't sound like it. She was very emphatic about Maria Angelina's knowing nothing of the world or young men. I rather gathered," Mrs. Blair made out, "that the family had a plain daughter to marry off and wanted the pretty one in ambush for a while—they take care of those things, you know."
"And I suppose if she copped a millionaire in the ambush they wouldn't howl bloody murder," said the girl, with admirable intuition.
"Oh, well——" She yawned and looked out of the window. "She's probably having thetime of her life. . . . I'm grateful she turned out such a little peach. . . . When she goes back and marries some fat spaghetti it will give her something to moon about to remember how she and Johnny Byrd used to sit out and strum to the stars—— There he is now."
"Bob?" said Mrs. Blair absently, her mind occupied by her young daughter's large sophistication.
"Johnny," said Ruth.
She leaned half out the window as the red roadster shot thunderously across the rustic bridge and brought up sharply on the driveway below. With a shouted greeting she brought the driver's red-blonde head to attention.
"Hullo—where's the Bob?"
Johnny grinned. "Trying to ride one horse and lead another. Sweet mount he's bringing you, Ruth. Didn't like the way I passed him. Bet you he throws you."
"Bet you he doesn't."
"You lose. . . . Where's the little Wop?"
"You mean Maria Angelina Santonini?"
"Gosh, is that all? Well, you scoot across to her room and tell Maria Angelina Santonini that she has a perfectly good date with me."
"She powdered her nose and went down stairs an hour ago," Ruth sang down, just as a small figure emerged from the music room upon the veranda and approached the rail.
"The little Wop is here, Signor," said Maria Angelina lightly.
Unabashed Johnny Byrd beamed at her. It was a perfectly good sensation, each time, to see her. One grew to suspect, between times, that anything so enchanting didn't really exist—and then, suddenly, there she was, like a conjurer's trick, every lovely young line of her.
Johnny knew girls. He knew them, he would have informed you, backwards and forwards. And he liked girls—devilish cunning games, with the same old trumps up their sleeves—when they wore 'em—but this girlwas just puzzlingly different enough to evoke a curiously haunting wonder.
Was it the difference in environment? Or in herself? He couldn't quite make her out.
He seemed to be groping for some clew, some familiar sign that would resolve all the unfamiliarities to old acquaintance.
Meanwhile he continued to smile cheerily at the young person he had so rudely designated as a little Wop and gestured to the seat beside him.
"Hop in," he admonished. "Let us be off before that horse comes and steps on me. That's a dear girl."
But Maria Angelina shook her dark head.
"I told you, no, Signor, I could not go. In my country one does not ride with young men."
"But you are in my country now. And in my country one jolly well rides with young men."
"In your country—but for a time, yes." Unconvinced Maria Angelina stood by her rail, like the boy upon the burning deck.
"But your aunt—cousin, I mean—would let you," he argued. "I'll shout up now and see——"
Unrelentingly, "It is not my cousin, but my mother who would object," she informed him.
"Holy Saint Cecilia! You're worse than boarding school. Come on, Maria Angelina—I'll promise not to kiss you."
That was one of Johnny's best lines. It always had a deal of effect—one way or another. It startled Maria Angelina. Her eyes opened as if he had set off a rocket—and something very bright and light, like the impish reflections of that rocket, danced a moment in her look.
"I will write that promise to my mother and see if it persuades her," she informed him.
"Oh, all right, all right."
With the sigh of the defeated Johnny Byrd turned off the gas and climbed out of his car.
"Just for that the promise is off," he announced. "Do you think your mother would mind letting you sit in the same room with me and teach me that song you promised?"
"She would mind very much in Italy." Over her shoulder Maria cast a laughing look at him as she stepped back into the music room. "There I would never be alone like this."
Incredulously Johnny stared past her into the music room. Through the windows upon the other side came the voices of bridge players upon the veranda without. Through those same windows were visible the bridge players' heads. Other windows opened upon the veranda in the front of the Lodge from which they had just come. An arch of doorway gave upon the wide hall where a guest was shuffling the mail.
"Alone!" ejaculated Johnny.
"My mother allows this when my sister Lucia and her fiancé, Paolo Tosti, are together," said Maria Angelina. "I am in the next room with a book. And that is very advanced. It is because Mamma is American."
"I'll say it's advanced," Johnny muttered. "You mean—you mean your sister and that—that toasted one she's engaged to have never really seen each other——?"
"Oh, they haveseeneach other——"
"The poor fish," said Johnny heavily. He glanced with increasing curiosity at the young girl by his side. . . . After all, thisjeune fillething might be true. . . .
"Well, I'm glad your mother was American," he declared, beginning to strum upon the piano and inviting her to a seat beside him.
But Maria Angelina remained looking through her music.
"Then I am only half a Wop," said she. She added, bright mischief between her long lashes, "What is it then—a Wop?"
Johnny Byrd, striking random chords, looked up at her.
"What is it?" he repeated. "I'll say that depends. . . . Sometimes it's dark and greasy and throws bombs. . . . Sometimes it's bad and glad and sings Carmen. . . . And sometimes it's—it's——"
Deliberately he stared at the small braid-bound head, the shadowy dark of the eyes, the scarlet curve of the small mouth.
"Sometimes it's just the prettiest, youngest——"
"I amnotso young," said Maria Angelina indignantly.
"Lordy, you're a babe in arms."
"I amnot." Her defiance was furious. It had a twinge of terror—terror lest they treat her everlastingly as child.
"I am eighteen. I am but a year and three months younger than Ruth."
"She's a kid," grinned Johnny.
"The Signor Bob Martin does not think so!"
"The Signor Bob Martin is nuts on that particular kid. And he's a kid himself."
"And do you think that you are——?"
"Sure. We're all kids together. Why not? I like it," declared young Byrd.
But Maria Angelina was not appeased. She had half glimpsed that indefinite irresponsibility of these strangers which treated youth as a toy, an experiment. . . .
"And is the Signorina Leila Grey," said she suddenly, "is she, also, a kid?"
Roundly Johnny opened his eyes. His face presented a curious stolidity of look, as if a protection against some unforeseen attack. At the same time it was streaked with humor.
"Now where," said he, "did you get that?"
"Is she," the girl persisted, "is she also a kid?"
"The Signorina Leila Grey? No," conceded Johnny, "the Signorina Leila Grey was born with her wisdom teeth cut. . . . At that she hasn't found so much to chew on," he murmured cheerily.
The girl's eyes were bright with divinations. "You mean that she did not—did not find your friend Bob something to chew upon?"
Johnny's laugh was a guffaw. It rang startlingly in that quiet room. "You're there, Ri-Ri—absolutely there," he vowed. "But where, I wonder——" He broke off. His look held both surmise and a shrewd suspicion.
"I—guessed," said Maria Angelina hastily. "And I saw her the first evening in New York. . . . She is very beautiful."
"She's a wonder," he admitted heartily. "Yes—and I'll say Bob nearly fell for her. If she'd been expert enough she could have gathered him in. He just dodged in time—and now he's busy forgetting he ever knew her."
"Perhaps," slowly puzzled out Maria Angelina, "perhaps the reason that she was not—not expert, as you say—was because her attention was just a little—wandering."
Johnny yawned. "Often happens." He struck a few chords. "Where's that little song of yours—the one you were going to teach me? I could do something with that at the next show at the club."
"If you will let me sit down, Signor——"
"I'm not crabbing the bench."
"But I wish the place in the center."
"What you 'fraid of, Ri-Ri?" Obligingly Johnny moved over. "Why, you have me tiedhand and foot. I'm afraid to move a muscle for fear you'll tell me it isn't done—in Italy."
But Ri-Ri gave this an absent smile. For long, now, she had been leading up to this talk and she felt herself upon the brink of revelations. . . . Perhaps this Johnny Byrd knew where Barry Elder was. Perhaps they were friends. . . .
"In New York," she told him, "that Leila Grey was at the restaurant with a young man—with the Signor Barry Elder."
"Huh? Barry Elder?"
"Are you,"—she was proud of the splendid indifference of her voice,—"are you a friend of his?"
Uninterestedly, "Oh, I know Barry," Johnny told her. "Bright boy—Barry. Awful high-brow, though. Wrote a play or something. Not a darn bed in it. Oh, well," said Johnny hastily, with a glance at the girl's young face, "I say, how does this go? Tatumpti tum titump tump—what do those words of yours mean?"
"Perhaps this Barry Elder," said Ri-Ri with averted eyes, her hands fluttering the pages, "perhaps he is the one that Leila Grey's attention was upon. Did you not hear that?"
"Who? Barry?"
"Has he not," said the girl desperately, "become recently more desirable to her—more rich, perhaps——"
"That play didn't make him anything, that's sure," the young man meditated. "But seems to me I did hear—something about an uncle shuffling off and leaving him a few thous. . . . Maybe he left enough to buy Leila a supper."
"Here are the English words." Maria Angelina spread the music open before them. "Mrs. Blair was joking with him," she reverted, "because he was not going to that York Harbor this summer where this Leila Grey was. But perhaps he has gone, after all?"
"Search me," said Johnny negligently. "I'm not his keeper."
"But you would know if he is coming tothe dance at the Martins—that dance next week——?"
"He isn't coming to the house party, he's not invited. He and Bob aren't anything chummy at all. Barry trains in an older crowd. . . . Seems to me," said Johnny, turning to look at her out of bright blue eyes, "you're awf'ly interested in this Barry Elder thing. Did you say you met him in New York?"
"I met him—yes," said Maria Angelina, in a steady little voice, beginning suddenly to play. "And I thought it was so romantic—about him and this Leila Grey. She was so beautiful and he had been so brave in the war. And so I wondered——"
"Well, don't you wonder about who's coming to that dance. That dance ismine," said Johnny definitely. "I want you to look your darndest—put it all over those flappers. Show them what you got," admonished Johnny with the simple directness in such vogue.
"And now come on, Ri-Ri—let's get into this together.
'I cannot now forget youAnd you think not of me!'
'I cannot now forget youAnd you think not of me!'
Comeon, Maria Angelina!"
And Maria Angelina, her face lifted, her eyes strangely bright, sang, while Johnny Byrd stared fixedly down at her, angrily, defiantly, sang to that unseen young man—back in the shadows——
"I cannot now forget youAnd you think not of me!"
"I cannot now forget youAnd you think not of me!"
And then she told herself that she would forget him very well indeed.
There had been distinct proprietorship in Johnny's reference to the dance, a hint of possessive admonition, a shade of anxiety to which Maria Angelina was not insensitive.
He wanted her to excel. His pride was calling, unconsciously, upon her, to justify his choice. The dance was an exhibition . . . competition. It was the open market . . . appraisal. . . .
No matter how charming she might be in the motor rides with the four, how pretty and piquant in the afternoon at the piano, how melodious in the evenings upon the steps, the full measure of his admiration was not exacted.
Sagely she surmised this. Anxiously she awaited the event.
It was her first real dance. It was her first American affair. Casually, in the evenings at the Lodge, they had danced to the phonograph and she had been initiated into new steps and amazed at the manner of them, but there had been nothing of the slightest formality.
Now the Martins were entertaining over the week-end, and giving a dance to which the neighborhood—meaning the neighborhood of the Martins' acquaintance—was assembling.
And again Maria Angelina felt the inrush of fear, the overwhelming timidity of inexperience held at bay by pride alone . . . again she knew the tormenting question which she had confronted in that dim old glass at the Palazzo Santonini on the day when she had heard of the adventure before her.
She asked it that night of a different glass, the big, built-in mirror of the dressing-room at the Martins given over to the ladies—a mirror that was a dissolving kaleidoscope of color andmotion, of bright silks, bare shoulders and white arms, of pink cheeks, red lips and shining hair.
Advancing shyly among the young girls, filled with divided wonder at their self-possession and their extreme décolletage, Ri-Ri gazed at the glass timidly, determinedly, fatefully, as one approaches an oracle, and out from the glittering surface was flung back to her a radiant image of reassurance—a vision of a slim figure in filmiest white, slender arms and shoulders bare, dark hair not braided now, but piled high upon her head—a revelation of a nape of neck as young and kissable as a baby's and yet an addition of bewildering years to her immaturity.
To-night she was glad of the white skin, that was a gift from Mamma. The white coral string, against the satin softness of her throat, revealed its opalescent flush. She was immaculate, exquisite, like some figurine of fancy—an image of youth as sweet and innocently troubling as a May night.
"You're a love," said Ruth heartily, appearing at her side, very stunning herself in jade green, with her smooth hair a miracle of shining perfection.
"And you're—different," added Ruth in a slightly puzzled voice, looking her small cousin over with the thoroughness of an inventory. "It must be the hair, Ri-Ri. . . . You've lost that little Saint Susy air."
"But there is no Saint Susy," Ri-Ri interposed gayly, lightly fingering the dark curves of her hair.
Truly—for Johnny—she had done her darndest! Surely he would be pleased.
"If you'd only let me cut that lower—you're simply swaddled in tulle——"
Startled, Maria glanced down at the hollows of her young bosom, at the scantiness of her bodice suspended only by bands of sheerest gauze. She wondered what Mamma would say, if she could see her so, without that drape of net. . . .
"You have the duckiest shoulder blades," said Ruth.
"Oh—dotheyshow?" cried Maria Angelina in dismay. She twisted for a view and the movement drew Ruth's glance along her lithe figure.
"We ought to have cut two inches more off," she declared, and now Ri-Ri's glance fled down to the satin slippers with their crossed ribbons, to the narrow, silken ankles, to the slender legs above the ankles. It seemed to her an utterly limitless exhibition. And Ruth was proposing two more inches!
Apprehensively she glanced about to make sure that no scissors were in prospect.
"But you'll do," Ruth pronounced, and in relief Maria Angelina relinquished the center of the mirror, and slipped out into the gallery that ran around three sides of the house.
It was built like a chalet, but Maria Angelina had seen no such chalet in her childish summers in Switzerland. Over the edge of the rail she gazed into the huge hall, cleared now fordancing. The furniture had been pushed back beneath the gallery where it was arranged in intimate little groups for future tête-à-têtes, except a few lounging chairs left on the black bear-skins by the chimney-piece. In one corner a screen of pine boughs and daisies shut off the musicians from the streets, and in the opposite corner an English man-servant was presiding over a huge silver punch bowl.
To Maria Angelina, accustomed to Italian interiors, the note was buoyantly informal. And the luxury of service in this informality was a piquant contrast. . . . No one seemed to care what anything cost. . . . They gave dances in a log chalet and sent to New York for the favors and to California for the fruit. . . . Into the huge punch-bowl they poured wine of a value now incredible, since the supply could never be replenished. . . .
Very different would be Lucia's wedding party in the Palazzo Santonini, on that marvelous old service that Pietro polished but threetimes a year, with every morsel of refreshment arranged and calculated beforehand.
What miracles of economy would be performed in that stone-flagged kitchen, many of them by Mamma's own hands! Suddenly Maria Angelina found a moment to wonder afresh at that mother . . . and with a new vision. . . . For Mamma had come from this profusion.
"They have a regular place at Newport." Ruth was concluding some unheard speech behind her. "But they like this better. . . . This is the life," and with a just faintly discernible note of proprietorship in her air she was off down the stairs.
"Didn't they find Newport rather chilly?" murmured the girl to whom she had been talking. "Wasn't Mrs. M. a Smith or a Brown-Jones or something——?"
"It was something in butterine," said another guest negligently and swore, softly and intensely, at a shoulder strap. "Oh,damnthething! . . . Well—flop if you want to. I've got nothing to hide."
"You know why girls hide their ears, don't you?" said the other voice, and the second girl flung wearily back, "Oh, so they can have something to show their husbands—I heard that in my cradle!"
"Itisrather old," its sponsor acknowledged wittily, and the pair went clattering on.
Had America, Maria Angelina wondered, been like this in her mother's youth? Was it from such speeches that her mother had turned, in helplessness or distaste, to the delicate implications, the finished innuendo of the Italian world?
Or had times changed? Were these girls truly different from their mothers? Was it a new society?
That was it, she concluded, and she, in her old-world seclusion, was of another era from these assured ones. . . . Again, for a moment the doubt of her capacity to cope with these times assailed her, but only for a moment, fornext instant she caught Johnny Byrd's upturned glance from the floor below and in its flash of admiration, as unstinted as a sun bath, her confidence drew reanimation.
Later, she found that same warmth in other men's eyes and in the eagerness with which they kept cutting in.
That cutting in, itself, was strange to her. It filled her with a terrifying perspective of what would happen if she werenotcut in upon—if she were left to gyrate endlessly in the arms of some luckless one, eternally stuck. . . .
At home, at a ball, she knew that there were fixed dances, and programs, in which engagements were jotted definitely down, and at each dance's end a girl was returned respectfully to her chaperon where the next partner called for her. Often she had scanned Lucia's scrawled programs for the names there.
But none of that now.
Up and down the hall she sped in some man's arms, round and round, up and down, until another man, agile, dexterous, shot betweenthe couples and claimed her. And then up and down again until some other man. . . . And sometimes they went back to rest in the intimately arranged chairs beneath the balcony, and sometimes stepped out of doors to saunter along a wide terrace.
It was incredibly independent. It was intoxicatingly free. It was also terrifyingly responsible.
And Maria Angelina, in her young fear of unpopularity, smiled so ingenuously upon each arrival, with a shy, backward deprecatory glance at her lost partner, that she stirred something new and wondering in each seasoned breast, and each dancer came again and again.
But all of them, the new young men from town, the tennis champion from Yale, the polo player from England, the lawyer from Washington, the stout widower, the professional bachelor, all were only moving shapes that came and went and came again and by their tribute made her successful in Johnny's eyes.
Indeed, so well did they do their work that Johnny was moved to brusque expostulation.
"Look here, Ri-Ri, I told you this was to bemydance! With all those outsiders cutting in—Freeze them, Ri-Ri. Try a long, hard level look on the next one you see making your way. . . . Don't youwantto dance with me, any more? Huh? Where's that stand-in of mine? Is it a little, old last year's model?"
"But what am I to do——?"
"Fight 'em off. Bite 'em. Kick their shins. . . . Oh, Lord," groaned Johnny, dexterously whirling her about, "there's another coming. . . . Here's where we go. This way out."
Speedily he piloted her through the throng. Masterfully he caught her arm and drew her out of doors.
She was glad to be out of the dance. His clasp had been growing too personal . . . too tight. . . . Perhaps she was only oddly self-conscious . . . incapable of the serene detachment of those other dancers, who, yielding and intertwined, revolved in intimate harmony.
There was a moon. It shone soft and bright upon them, making a world of enchantment. The long lines of the mountains melted together like a violet cloud and above them a round top floated, pale and dreamy, as the dome of Saint Peter's at twilight.
From the terrace stretched a grassy path where other couples were strolling and Johnny Byrd guided her past them. They walked in silence. He kept his hand on her arm and from time to time glanced about at her in a half-constraint that was no part of his usual air.
At a curve of the path the girl drew definitely back.
"Ah no——"
"Oh, why not? Isn't it the custom?" He laughed over the often-cited phrase but absently. His eyes had a warm, hurrying look in them that rooted her feet the more stubbornly to the ground.
"Decidedly not." She turned a merriment lighted face to him. "To walk alone with ayoung man—between dances—beneath the moon!"
Maria Angelina shuddered and cast impish eyes at heaven.
"Honestly?" Johnny demanded. "Do you mean to tell me you've never walked between dances with young men?"
"I tell you that I have never even danced with a young man until——" She flashed away from that memory. "Until I came to America. I am not yet in Italian society. I have never been presented. It is not yet my time."
"But—but don't the sub debs have any good times over there? Don't you have dances of your own? Don't you meet fellows? Don't you know anybody?" Johnny demanded with increasing amazement at each new shake of her head.
"Oh, come," he protested. "You can't put that over me. I'll bet you've got a bagful of fellows crazy about you. Don't you ever slipout on an errand, you know, and find some one waiting round the corner——?"
"You are speaking of the customs of my maid, perhaps," said Maria Angelina with becoming young haughtiness. "For myself, I do not go upon errands. I have never been upon the streets alone."
Johnny Byrd stared. With a supreme effort of credulity he envisaged the fact. Perhaps it was really so. Perhaps she was just as sequestered and guileless and inexperienced as that. It was ridiculous. It was amusing. It was—somehow—intriguing.
With his hand upon her bare arm he drew her closer.
"Ri-Ri—honest now—is this the first——?"
She drew away instinctively before the suppressed excitement of him. Her heart beat fast; her hands were very cold. She knew elation . . . and panic . . . and dread and hope.
It was for this she had come. Young and rich and free! What more would Mammaask? What greater triumph could be hers?
"I'd like to make a lot of other things the first, too," muttered Johnny.
To Ri-Ri it seemed irrevocable things were being said. But she still held lightly away from him, resisting the clumsy pull of his arm. He hesitated—laughed oddly.
"It ought to be against the law for any girl to look the way you do, Ri-Ri." He laughed again. "I wonder if you know how the deuce youdolook?"
"Perhaps it is the moonlight, Signor."
"Moonlight—you look as if you were made of it. . . . I could eat you up, Ri-Ri." His eyes on her red little mouth, on her white, beating throat. His voice had an odd, husky note.
"Don't be such a little frost, Ri-Ri. Don't you like me at all?"
It was the dream coming true. It was the fairy prince—not the false figure she had set in the prince's place, but a proud revenge upon him. This was reality, fulfillment.
She saw herself already married to Johnny,returning proudly with him to Italy. She saw them driving in a victoria, openly as man and wife—or no, Johnny would have a wonderful car, all metal and bright color. They would be magnificently touring, with their luggage strapped on the side, as she had seen Americans.
She saw them turning into the sombre courtway of the old Palazzo Santonini and, so surely had she been attuned to the American note, she could presage Johnny's blunt disparagement. He would be astonished that they were living upon the third floor—with the lower apartment let. He would be amused at the servants toiling up the stairs from the kitchens to the dining hall. He would be entertained at the solitary tub. He would be disgusted, undoubtedly, at the candles. . . .
But of course Mamma would have everything very beautiful. There would be no lack of candles. . . . The chandeliers would be sparkling for that dinner. There would be delicious food, delicate wines, an abundant gleamof shining plate and crystal and embroidered linens.
And how Lucia would stare, how dear Julietta would smile! She would buy Julietta the prettiest clothes, the cleverest hats. . . . She would give dear Mamma gold—something that neither dear Papa nor Francisco knew about—and to dear Papa and Francisco she would give, too, a little gold—something that dear Mamma did not know about.
For once Papa could have something for his play that was not a roast from his kitchen nor clothes from his daughters' backs nor oats from his horses!
Probably they would be married at once. Johnny was free and rich—and impatient. She did not suspect him of interest in a long wooing or betrothal. . . . And while she must appear to be in favor of a return home, first, and a marriage from her home, the American ceremony would cut many knots for her—save much expense at home. . . .
She saw herself proudly exhibiting Johnny,delighting in his youth, his blonde Americanism, his smartly cut clothes, his conqueror's assurance.
Meanwhile Maria Angelina was still standing there in the moonlight, like a little wraith of silver, smiling with absent eyes at Johnny's muttered words, withdrawing, in childish panic, from Johnny's close pressing ardor. She knew that if he persisted . . . but before her soft detachment, her half laughing evasiveness of his mood, he did not persist. He seemed oddly struggling with some withholding uncertainties of his own.
"Oh, well, if that's all you like me," said Johnny grumpily.
It was reprieve . . . reprieve to the irrevocable things. Her heart danced . . . and yet a piqued resentment pinched her.
He had been able to resist.
She knew subtly that she could have overcome that irresolution. . . . But she was not going to make things too easy for him—her Santonini pride forbade!
"We must go back," she told him and exulted in his moodiness.
And for the rest of the evening his arm pressed her, his eyes smiled down significantly upon her, and when she confronted the great mirror again it was to glimpse a girl with darkly shining eyes and cheeks like scarlet poppies, a girl in white, like a bride, and with a bride's high pride and assured heart.
She slept, that night, composing the letter to dear Mamma.
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 therich 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 sharpmasculine 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 herback 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 hadfinished 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 ofa 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 asound 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 betweennarrowed 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, andsince 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 againwe 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 yousurethat 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 theymustbe. 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 topwas 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.