The Lucky Piece Part 4

Yet now that he had brought surprise to the very threshold, as it were, he began to hesitate. Perhaps, after all, Constance might not be overjoyed or even mildly pleased at his coming. She had seemed a bit distant before her departure, and he knew how hard it was to count on her at times.

"You can see the Lodge from that bend," said his companion, presently, pointing with his whip.

Then almost immediately they had reached the turn, and the Lodge--a great, double-story cabin of spruce logs, with wide verandas--showed through the trees. But between the hack and the Lodge were two figures--a tall young man in outing dress, carrying a basket, and a tall young woman in a walking skirt, carrying a book. They were quite close together, moving toward the Lodge. They seemed to be talking earnestly, and did not at first notice the sound of wheels.

"That's them now," whispered the young man, forgetting for the moment his scholastic training. "That's Robin and Miss Deane, with the book and the basket of toadstools."

The couple ahead stopped just then and turned. Frank prepared himself for the worst.

But Mr. Weatherby would seem to have been unduly alarmed. As he stepped from the vehicle Constance came forward with extended hand.

"You are good to surprise us," she was saying, and then, a moment later, "Mr. Weatherby, this is Mr. Robin Farnham--a friend of my childhood. I think I have mentioned him to you."

Whatever momentary hostility Frank Weatherby may have cherished for Robin Farnham vanished as the two clasped hands. Frank found himself looking into a countenance at once manly, intellectual and handsome--the sort of a face that men, and women, too, trust on sight. And then for some reason there flashed again across his mind a vivid picture of Constance as she had looked up at him that wet night under the umbrella, the raindrops glistening on her cheek and in the blowy tangle about her temples. He held Robin's firm hand for a moment in his rather soft palm.

There was a sort of magnetic stimulus in that muscular grip and hardened flesh. It was so evidently the hand of achievement, Frank was loath to let it go.

"You are in some way familiar to me," he said then. "I may have seen you when I was up this way ten years ago. I suppose you do not recall anything of the kind?"

A touch of color showed through the brown of Robin's cheek.

"No," he said; "I was a boy of eleven, then, probably in the field. I don't think you saw me. Those were the days when I knew Miss Deane. I used to carry baskets of green corn over to Mr. Deane's camp. If you had been up this way during the past five or six years I might have been your guide. Winters I have attended school."

They were walking slowly as they talked, following the hack toward the Lodge. Constance took up the tale at this point, her cheeks also flus.h.i.+ng a little as she spoke.

"He had to work very hard," she said. "He had to raise the corn and then carry it every day--miles and miles. Then he used to make toy boats and sail them for me in the brook, and a playhouse, and whatever I wanted.

Of course, I did not consider that I was taking his time, or how hard it all was for him."

"Miss Deane has given up little boats and playhouses for the science of mycology," Robin put in, rather nervously, as one anxious to change the subject.

Frank glanced at the volume he had appropriated--a treatise on certain toadstools, edible and otherwise.

"I have heard already of your new employment, or, at least, diversion,"

he said. "The young man who brought me over told me that a young lady had been bringing baskets of suspicious fungi to the Lodge. From what he said I judged that he considered it a dangerous occupation."

"That was Mr. Meelie," laughed Constance. "I have been wondering why Mr.

Meelie avoided me. I can see now that he was afraid I would poison him.

You must meet Miss Carroway, too," she ran on. "I mean you _will_ meet her. She is a very estimable lady from Connecticut who has a nephew in the electric works at Haverford; also the asthma, which she is up here to get rid of. She is at the Lodge for the summer, and is already the general minister of affairs at large and in particular. Among other things, she warns me daily that if I persist in eating some of the specimens I bring home, I shall presently die with great violence and suddenness. She is convinced that there is just one kind of mushroom, and that it doesn't grow in the woods. She has no faith in books. Her chief talent lies in promoting harmless evening entertainments. You will have to take part in them."

Frank had opened the book and had been studying some of the colored plates while Constance talked.

"I don't know that I blame your friends," he said, half seriously. "Some of these look pretty dangerous to the casual observer."

"But I've been studying that book for weeks," protested Constance, "long before we came here. By and by I'm going to join the Mycological Society and try to be one of its useful members."

"I suppose you have to eat most of these before you are eligible?"

commented Frank, still fascinated by the bright pictures.

"Not at all. Some of them are quite deadly, but one ought to be able to distinguish most of the commoner species, and be willing to trust his knowledge."

"To back one's judgment with one's life, as it were. Well, that's one sort of bravery, no doubt. Tell me, please, how many of these gayly spotted ones you have eaten and still live to tell the tale?"

CHAPTER IV

A BRIEF LECTURE AND SOME INTRODUCTIONS

The outside of Spruce Lodge suggested to Frank the Anglo-Saxon castle of five or six hundred years ago, though it was probably better constructed than most of the castles of that early day. It was really an immense affair, and there were certain turrets and a tower which carried out the feudal idea. Its builder, John Morrison, had been a faithful reader of Scott, and the architecture of the Lodge had in some manner been an expression of his romantic inclination. Frank thought, however, that the feudal Saxon might not have had the long veranda facing the little jewel of a lake, where were mirrored the mountains that hemmed it in. With Constance he sat on the comfortable steps, looking through the tall spruces at the water or at mountain peaks that seemed so near the blue that one might step from them into the cloudland of an undiscovered country.

No one was about for the moment, the guests having collected in the office for the distribution of the daily mail. Robin had gone, too, striding away toward a smaller cabin where the guides kept their paraphernalia. Frank said:

"You don't know how glad I am to be here with you in this wonderful place, Conny. I have never seen anything so splendid as this forest, and I was simply desperate in town as soon as you were gone."

She had decided not to let him call her that again, but concluded to overlook this offense. She began arranging the contents of her basket on the step beside her--a gay a.s.sortment of toadstools gathered during her morning walk.

"You see what _I_ have been doing," she said. "I don't suppose it will interest you in the least, but to me it is a fascinating study. Perhaps if I pursue it I may contribute something to the world's knowledge and to its food supply."

Frank regarded the variegated array with some solemnity.

"I hope, Conny, you don't mean to eat any of those," he said.

"Probably not; but see how beautiful they are."

They were indeed beautiful, for no spot is more rich in fungi of varied hues than the Adirondack woods. There were specimens ranging from pale to white, from cream to lemon yellow--pink that blended into shades of red and scarlet--gray that deepened to blue and even purple--numerous shades of buff and brown, and some of the mottled coloring. Some were large, almost gigantic; some tiny ones were like bits of ivory or coral.

Frank evinced artistic enthusiasm, but a certain gastronomic reserve.

"Wonderful!" he said. "I did not suppose there were such mushrooms in the world--so beautiful. I know now what the line means which says, 'How beautiful is death.'"

There was a little commotion just then at the doorway of the Lodge, and a group of guests--some with letters, others with looks of resignation or disappointment--appeared on the veranda. From among them, Mrs. Deane, a rather frail, nervous woman, hurried toward Mr. Weatherby with evident pleasure. She had been expecting him, she declared, though Constance had insisted that he would think twice before he started once for that forest isolation. They would be in their own quarters in a few days, and it would be just a pleasant walk over there. There were no hard hills to climb. Mr. Deane walked over twice a day. He was there now, overseeing repairs. The workmen were very difficult.

"But there are _some_ hills, Mamma," interposed Constance--"little ones.

Perhaps Mr. Weatherby won't care to climb at all. He has already declared against my mushrooms. He said something just now about their fatal beauty--I believe that was it. He's like all the rest of you--opposed to the cause of science."

Mrs. Deane regarded the young man appealingly.

"Try to reason with her," she said nervously. "Perhaps she'll listen to you. She never will to me. I tell her every day that she will poison herself. She's always tasting of new kinds. She's persuaded me to eat some of those she had cooked, and I've sent to New York for every known antidote for mushroom poisoning. It's all right, perhaps, to study them and collect them, but when it comes to eating them to prove that the book is right about their being harmless, it seems like flying in the face of Providence. Besides, Constance is careless."

"I remember her telling me, as reason for not wanting to be a doctor, something about giving you the wrong medicine last winter."

"She did--some old liniment--I can taste the stuff yet. Constance, I do really think it's sinful for you to meddle with such uncertain subjects.

Just think of eating any of those gaudy things. Constance! How can you?"

Constance patted the nervous little lady on the cheek.

"Be comforted," she said. "I am not going to eat these. I brought them for study. Most of them are harmless enough, I believe, but they are of a kind that even experts are not always sure of. They are called _Boleti_--almost the first we have found. I have laid them out here for display, just as the lecturer did last week at Lake Placid."