It is the prime secret of the Open Road (but I may here tell it aloud)
that you are to pass nothing, reject nothing, despise nothing upon this
earth. As you travel, many things both great and small will come to your
attention; you are to regard all with open eyes and a heart of
simplicity. Believe that everything belongs somewhere; each thing has
its fitting and luminous place within this mosaic of human life. The
True Road is not open to those who withdraw the skirts of intolerance or
lift the chin of pride. Rejecting the least of those who are called
common or unclean, it is (curiously) you yourself that you reject. If
you despise that which is ugly you do not know that which is beautiful.
For what is beauty but completeness? The roadside beggar belongs here,
too; and the idiot boy who wanders idly in the open fields; and the girl
who withholds (secretly) the name of the father of her child.
* * * * *
I remember as distinctly as though it happened yesterday the particular
evening three years ago when I saw the Scotch Preacher come hurrying up
the road toward my house. It was June. I had come out after supper to
sit on my porch and look out upon the quiet fields. I remember the
grateful cool of the evening air, and the scents rising all about me
from garden and roadway and orchard. I was tired after the work of the
day and sat with a sort of complete comfort and contentment which comes
only to those who work long in the quiet of outdoor places. I remember
the thought came to me, as it has come in various forms so many times,
that in such a big and beautiful world there should be no room for the
fever of unhappiness or discontent.
And then I saw McAlway coming up the road. I knew instantly that
something was wrong. His step, usually so deliberate, was rapid; there
was agitation in every line of his countenance. I walked down through
the garden to the gate and met him there. Being somewhat out of breath
he did not speak at once. So I said:
"It is not, after all, as bad as you anticipate."
"David," he said, and I think I never heard him speak more seriously,
"it is bad enough."
He laid his hand on my arm.
"Can you hitch up your horse and come with me--right away?"
McAlway helped with the buckles and said not a word. In ten minutes,
certainly not more, we were driving together down the lane.
"Do you know a family named Williams living on the north road beyond the
three corners?" asked the Scotch Preacher.
Instantly a vision of a somewhat dilapidated house, standing not
unpicturesquely among ill-kept fields, leaped to my mind.
"Yes," I said; "but I can't remember any of the family except a gingham
girl with yellow hair. I used to see her on her way to school,''
"A girl!" he said, with a curious note in his voice; "but a woman now."
He paused a moment; then he continued sadly:
"As I grow older it seems a shorter and shorter step between child and
child. David, she has a child of her own,''
"But I didn't know--she isn't--"
"A woods child," said the Scotch Preacher.
I could not find a word to say. I remember the hush of the evening there
in the country road, the soft light fading in the fields. I heard a
whippoorwill calling from the distant woods.
"They made it hard for her," said the Scotch Preacher, "especially her
older brother. About four o'clock this afternoon she ran away, taking
her baby with her. They found a note saying they would never again see
her alive. Her mother says she went toward the river."
I touched up the mare. For a few minutes the Scotch Preacher sat silent,
thinking. Then he said, with a peculiar tone of kindness in his voice.
"She was a child, just a child. When I talked with her yesterday she
was perfectly docile and apparently contented. I cannot imagine her
driven to such a deed of desperation. I asked her: 'Why did you do it,
Anna?' She answered, 'I don't know: I--I don't know!' Her reply was not
defiant or remorseful: it was merely explanatory."
He remained silent again for a long time.
"David," he said finally, "I sometimes think we don't know half as much
about human nature as we--we preach. If we did, I think we'd be more
careful in our judgments."
He said it slowly, tentatively: I knew it came straight from his heart.
It was this spirit, more than the title he bore, far more than the
sermons he preached, that made him in reality the minister of our
community. He went about thinking that, after all, he didn't know much,
and that therefore he must be kind.
As I drove up to the bridge, the Scotch Preacher put one hand on the
reins. I stopped the horse on the embankment and we both stepped out.
"She would undoubtedly have come down this road to the river," McAlway
said in a low voice.
It was growing dark. When I walked out on the bridge my legs were
strangely unsteady; a weight seemed pressing on my breast so that my
breath came hard. We looked down into the shallow, placid water: the
calm of the evening was upon it; the middle of the stream was like a
rumpled glassy ribbon, but the edges, deep-shaded by overhanging trees,
were of a mysterious darkness. In all my life I think I never
experienced such a degree of silence--of breathless, oppressive silence.
It seemed as if, at any instant, it must burst into some fearful excess
of sound.
Suddenly we heard a voice--in half-articulate exclamation. I turned,
every nerve strained to the uttermost. A figure, seemingly materialized
out of darkness and silence, was moving on the bridge.
"Oh!--McAlway," a voice said.
Then I heard the Scotch Preacher in low tones.
"Have you seen Anna Williams?"
"She is at the house," answered the voice.
"Get your horse," said the Scotch Preacher.
I ran back and led the mare across the bridge (how I remember, in that
silence, the thunder of her hoofs on the loose boards!) Just at the top
of the little hill leading up from the bridge the two men turned in at a
gate. I followed quickly and the three of us entered the house together.
I remember the musty, warm, shut-in odour of the front room. I heard the
faint cry of a child. The room was dim, with a single kerosene lamp, but
I saw three women huddled by the stove, in which a new fire was blazing.
Two looked up as we entered, with feminine instinct moving aside to hide
the form of the third.
"She's all right, as soon as she gets dry," one of them said.
The other woman turned to us half complainingly:
"She ain't said a single word since we got her in here, and she won't
let go of the baby for a minute."
"She don't cry," said the other, "but just sits there like a statue."
McAlway stepped forward and said:
"Well--Anna?"
The girl looked up for the first time. The light shone full in her face:
a look I shall never forget. Yes, it was the girl I had seen so often,
and yet not the girl. It was the same childish face, but all marked upon
with inexplicable wan lines of a certain mysterious womanhood. It was
childish, but bearing upon it an inexpressible look of half-sad dignity,
that stirred a man's heart to its profoundest depths. And there was in
it, too, as I have thought since, a something I have seen in the faces
of old, wise men: a light (how shall I explain it?) as of experience--of
boundless experience. Her hair hung in wavy dishevelment about her head
and shoulders, and she clung passionately to the child in her arms.
The Scotch Preacher had said, "Well--Anna?" She looked up and replied:
"They were going to take my baby away."
"Were they!" exclaimed McAlway in his hearty voice. "Well, we'll never
permit _that_. Who's got a better right to the baby than you, I'd like
to know?"
Without turning her head, the tears came to her eyes and rolled
unheeded down her face.
* * * * *
"Yes, sir, Dr. McAlway," the man said, "I was coming across the bridge
with the cows when I see her standing there in the water, her skirts all
floating around her. She was hugging the baby up to her face and saying
over and over, just like this: 'I don't dare! Oh, I don't dare! But I
must. I must,' She was sort of singin' the words: 'I don't dare, I don't
dare, but I must.' I jumped the railing and run down to the bank of the
river. And I says, 'Come right out o' there'; and she turned and come
out just as gentle as a child, and I brought her up here to the house."
* * * * *
It seemed perfectly natural at this time that I should take the girl and
her child home to Harriet. She would not go back to her own home, though
we tried to persuade her, and the Scotch Preacher's wife was visiting in
the city, so she could not go there. But after I found myself driving
homeward with the girl--while McAlway went over the hill to tell her
family--the mood of action passed. It struck me suddenly, "What will
Harriet say?" Upon which my heart sank curiously, and refused to resume
its natural position.
In the past I had brought her tramps and peddlers and itinerant
preachers, all of whom she had taken in with patience--but this, I knew,
was different. For a few minutes I wished devoutly I were in Timbuctu or
some other far place. And then the absurdity of the situation struck me
all at once, and I couldn't help laughing aloud.
"It's a tremendous old world," I said to myself. "Why, anything may
happen anywhere!"
The girl stirred, but did not speak. I was afraid I had frightened her.
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"No, sir," she answered faintly.