Black Oxen Part 44

As they left the boathouse an hour later and walked up the steep path to the camp, once more that sense of coming disaster drove into her mind and banished the memory of the past hour, when she had forgotten it. What did it mean? She recalled that she had had dark presentiments before in her life, and they had always come in the form of this sudden mental invasion, as if some malignant homeless spirit exulted in being the first to hint at the misfortune to come.

But the camp was silent. Every one, apparently, had gone to bed, and slept the sleep of valiant souls and weary bodies. One lamp burned in the living-room, and Clavering turned it out and they parted lingeringly, and she went up to her room.

She had barely taken off her coat and scarf when she heard a tap on her door. She stared for a moment in panic, then crossed the room swiftly and opened it. Mr. Dinwiddie, wrapped against the cold in a padded dressing-gown and with noiseless slippers on his feet, entered and closed the door behind him.

"What has happened?" she demanded sharply. "Something. I know it."

"Don't look so frightened, my dear. I have no bad news for you. Only it's rather annoying, and I knew I shouldn't get a word alone with you in the morning."

"What is it? What is it?"

"I had this telegram an hour ago from Trent." He took a sheet of paper from the pocket of his dressing-gown, covered with handwriting. "Of course those b.u.mpkins down in Huntersville took their time about telephoning it up. Luckily the telephone is over in Larsing's room----"

Mary had s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from his hand and was reading it aloud.

"Hohenhauer took morning train for Huntersville stop will spend night there and go to camp in morning stop must see M. Z. stop don't let anything prevent stop very important stop he will not ask you to put him up stop thought best to warn you as you might be planning expedition. Trent."

"Hohenhauer!" exclaimed Mary, and now, oddly enough, she felt only astonishment and annoyance. "Why should he come all this way to see me? He could have written if he had anything to say." And then she added pa.s.sionately, "I won't have him here!"

"I thought perhaps you'd rather go down to Huntersville to see him,"

said Mr. Dinwiddie, looking out of the window. "Besides, he would make thirteen at table. I can take you down in the morning and telephone him to wait for us at the same time I order the motor to be sent up."

"I don't know that I'll see him at all."

"But you must realize that if you don't go down he'll come here. I don't fancy he's the sort of man to take that long journey and be put off with a rebuff. From what I know of him he not only would drive up here, but, if you had gone off for the day, wait until you returned. I don't see how you can avoid him."

"No, you are right. I shall have to see him--but what excuse can I give Lee? He must never know the truth, and he'll want to go with us."

"I've thought of that. I'll tell him that Trent is sending up some important papers for you to sign, and as some one is obliged to go to Huntersville to check up the provisions that will arrive on the train tomorrow morning, I've told Trent's clerk to wait there, as I prefer to see to the other matter myself. I--I--hate deceiving Lee----"

"So do I, but it cannot be helped. Did he bring me up here to get me away from Hohenhauer?"

Mr. Dinwiddie's complexion suddenly looked darker in the light of the solitary candle. "Well--you see----"

"I suspected it for a moment and then forgot it. No doubt it is the truth. So much the more reason why he should know nothing about that man's following me. Why should he be made uneasy--perhaps unhappy?

But what excuse to go off without him?"

"They have a Ford down there. I'll tell them to send that. With the provisions there'll be no room for four people."

"That will answer. And I'll give Hohenhauer a piece of my mind."

"But, Mary, you don't suppose that one of the most important men in Europe, with limited time at his disposal, would take that journey unless he had something very important indeed to say to you? Not even for your _beaux yeux_, I should think, or he'd have asked Trent to get him an invitation to spend several days at the camp. I must say I'm devoured with curiosity----"

Mary shrugged her shoulders. "I'm too sleepy for curiosity. What time must we start?"

"About nine, if the car gets here on time. It takes two hours to come up the mountain, and they'll hardly be induced to start before seven.

I'll tell Larsing to telephone at six."

"It's now eleven. We have eight hours for sleep. Good night, and believe that I am immensely grateful. You've arranged it all wonderfully."

She stamped her foot as Mr. Dinwiddie silently closed the door.

"Moritz! _What_ does he want? _Why_ has he followed me here? But he has no power whatever over my life, so why should I care what he wants?

... But that this--this--should be interrupted!"

She undressed without calm and slept ill.

LV

The flight next morning proved simpler of accomplishment than she had antic.i.p.ated. The men were going to a neighboring lake to fish, Larsing having excited them with the prospect of abundant trout; and why fish in your own lake when you may take a tramp of several miles through the woods to another? They begged Clavering to go with them, and as man cannot exist for long in the rarefied atmosphere of the empyrean without growing restive, he was feeling rather let down, and cherished a sneaking desire for a long day alone with men.

But he told Mary that he did not want to go out of their woods and down to that hideous village for any such purpose as to watch her sign papers, and he stood on the landing waving his hat as she and Mr.

Dinwiddie crossed the lake in the motor boat to the waiting Ford. For once his intuitions failed him, and he tramped off with the other men, his heart as light as the mountain air, and his head empty of woman.

Mary looked back once at the golden-brown lake, set like a jewel in its casket of fragrant trees, and wondered if she would see it again with the same eyes. She was both resentful and uneasy, although she still was unable to guess what harm could come of this interview. If Hohenhauer wanted her to go to Was.h.i.+ngton she could refuse, and he had long since lost his old magnetic power over her.

But as the Ford b.u.mped down the steep road between the woods she felt less like Mary Ogden every moment ... those mists of illusion to withdraw from her practical brain ... returning to the heights where they belonged ... she wondered how she could have dared to be so unthinkingly happy ... the sport of the cynical G.o.ds? ...

sentimental folly that she had called exaltation? After all! After all!

Could she recapture that mood when she returned? Certainly, whatever this man wanted of her, it would be hard facts, not illusions, he would invite her to deal with. Even when he had been the most pa.s.sionate of lovers, his brain had always seemed to stand aloof, luminous and factual. He had not an illusion. He saw life as it was, and although his manners were suave and polished, and his voice the most beautiful she had ever heard, he could be brutally direct when it suited his purpose. For a moment she hated him as ardently as she had for a time after he left her.

They descended into lower and lower alt.i.tudes until the air grew intensely hot, physically depressing after the cold wine of the mountains; finally, ten minutes ahead of time, they drove into the doubly depressing village of Huntersville. It was no uglier than thousands of other villages and small towns that look as if built to demonstrate the American contempt for beauty, but the fact mitigated nothing to eyes accustomed to the picturesqueness of mountain villages in Europe, where the very roofs are artistic and the peasants have the grace to wear the dress of their ancestors.

There were a few farms in the valley, but if Huntersville had not been a junction of sorts, it is doubtful if it would have consisted of anything but a "general store," now that the saloons were closed.

There was one long crooked street, with the hotel at one end, the Store at the other (containing the post office), and a church, shops for automobile supplies, two garages, a drug store, and a candy store; eight or ten cottages filled the interstices. Men were working in the fields, but those in Huntersville proper seemed to be exhausted with loafing. Campers going in and out of the woods needing shelter for a night, and people demanding meals between trains, kept the dismal looking hotel open and reasonably clean.

The situation was very beautiful, for the mountains rose behind and there was a brawling stream.

Mr. Dinwiddie having ascertained that "Mr." Hohenhauer had received his message and gone for a walk, leaving word he would return at ten o'clock, Mary went into the hotel parlor to wait for him. The room was seldom used, patrons, local and otherwise, preferring the Bar of happy memories, and it smelled musty. She opened the windows and glanced about distastefully. The walls were covered with a faded yellow paper, torn in places, and the ceiling was smoked and fly-specked. The worn thin carpet seemed to have been chosen for its resemblance to turtle soup squirming with vermicelli. Over the pine mantel, painted yellow, were the inevitable antlers, and on a marble-topped table were badly executed water lilies under a gla.s.s dome. The furniture was horsehair, and she wondered how she and the Austrian statesman were to preserve their dignity on the slippery surface. Then she heard his voice in the hall as he stopped to speak to Mr. Dinwiddie, and she glanced out curiously.

She had not seen him since a year before the war, but he was little changed; improved if anything, for there was more color in his formerly pale face. He was as straight and as thin as ever, his fine head erect, without haughtiness; his dark eyes under their heavy lids had the same eagle glance. He was still, she concluded dispa.s.sionately, the handsomest man she had ever seen, even for an Austrian, the handsomest race on earth; he combined high intelligence with a cla.s.sic regularity of feature, grace, dignity; and when the firm lips relaxed he had a delightful smile. If it had not been for his hair, very thick white hair, he would have pa.s.sed for little over forty. He wore loose gray travelling clothes, and every detail was as quietly faultless as ever.

She went hastily to the speckled mirror beneath the antlers and surveyed herself anxiously. Her own travelling suit of dark green tweed, with its white silk s.h.i.+rt, was as carelessly perfect as his own, and the little green turban, with its shaded, drooping feather, extremely becoming. No color set off her fairness like green, but she turned away with a sigh. It was not the eyes of the past three days that looked back at her.

And then she remembered that he had not seen her since the renaissance.

The moment was not without its excitements.

Their meeting was excessively formal.

"Frau Grafin."

"Excellenz."