ON THE RED ROAD
The green, mid May Virginian afternoon was arched with a sky as blue as
the tiles of the Temple of Heaven and steeped in a wash of sunlight as
yellow as gold: smoke-hazy peaks piling up in the distance, billowy
verdure like clumps of trembling jade between, shaded with masses of
blue-black shadow, and lazying up and down, by gashed ravine and rounded
knoll a road like red lacquer, fringed with stone wall and sturdy shrub
and splashed here and there with the purple stain of the Judas-tree and
the snow of dogwood blooms. Nothing in all the springy landscape but
looked warm and opalescent and inviting--except a tawny bull that from
across a barred fence-corner switched a truculent tail in silence and
glowered sullenly at the big motor halted motionless at the side of the
twisting road.
Curled worm-like in the driver's seat, with his chin on his knees, John
Valiant sat with his eyes upon the distance. For an hour he had whirred
through that wondrous shimmer of color with a flippant loitering breeze
in his face, sweet from the crimson clover that poured and rioted
over the roadside: past nests of meditative farm-buildings, fields of
baby-green corn, occasional ramshackle dirt-daubed cabins with doorways
hung with yellow honeysuckle and flagrant trumpet-vines, and here and
there a quiet old church, Gothic and ivied and gray whose leaded
windows watched benignantly over myrtled graveyards. A great soothing
suspiration of peace seemed to swell from it all to lap the traveler
like the moist balminess of a semi-tropical sea.
"Chum old man," said Valiant, with his arm about the bulldog's neck, "if
those color-photograph chaps had shown us this, we simply wouldn't have
believed it, would we? Such scenery beats the roads we're used to, what?
If it were all like this--but of course it isn't. We'll get to our own
bailiwick presently, and wake up. Never mind; we're country gentlemen,
Chummy, en route to our estate! No silly snuffle, now! Out with it!
That's right,"--as a sharp bark rewarded him--"that's the proper
enthusiasm." He wound his strong fingers in a choking grip in the scruff
of the white neck, as a chipmunk chattered by on the low stone wall.
"No, you don't, you cannibal! He's a jolly little beggar, and he doesn't
deserve being eaten!"
He filled his brier-wood pipe and drew in great breaths of the fragrant
incense. "What a pity you don't smoke, Chum; you miss such a lot! I saw
a poodle once in a circus that did. But he'd been to college. Think how
you could think if you only smoked! We may have to do a lot of thinking,
where we're bound to. Wonder what we'll find? Oh, that's right, leave it
all to me, of course, and wash your paws of the whole blooming
business!"
After a time he shook himself and knocked the red core from the
pipe-bowl against his boot-heel. "I hate to start," he confessed, half
to the dog and half to himself. "To leave anything so sheerly beautiful
as this! However, on with the dance! By the road map the village can't
be far now. So long, Mr. Bull!"
He clutched the self-starter. But there was only a protestant wheeze;
the car declined to budge. Climbing down, he cranked vigorously. The
motor turned over with a surly grunt of remonstrance and after a
tentative _throb-throb_, coughed and stopped dead. Something was wrong.
With a sigh he flung off his tweed jacket, donned a smudgy "jumper,"
opened his tool-box, and, with a glance at his wrist-watch which told
him it was three o'clock, threw up the monster's hood and went bitterly
to work.
At half past three the investigation had got as far as the lubricator.
At four o'clock the bulldog had given it up and gone nosing afield. At
half past four John Valiant lay flat on his back like some disreputable
stevadore, alternately tinkering with refractory valves and cursing the
obdurate mechanism. Over his right eye an ooze of orange-colored oil
glowered and glistened and indefatigably drip-dripped into his shrinking
collar. A sharp stone gnawed frenziedly into the small of his back
and just as he made a final vicious lunge, something gave way and
a prickling red-hot stab of pain shot zigzagging from his smitten
crazy-bone through every tortured crevice of his impatient frame. Like
steel from flint it struck out a crisp oath that brought an answering
bovine snort from the fence-corner.
Worming like a lizard to freedom, his eyes puckered shut with the
wretched pang, John Valiant sat up and shook his grimy fist in the air.
"You silly loafing idiot!" he cried. "Thump your own crazy-bone and see
how you like it! You--oh, lord!"
His arm dropped, and a flush spread over his face to the brow. For
his eyes had opened. He was gesturing not at the bull but at a girl,
who fronted him beside the road, haughtiness in the very hue of her
gray-blue linen walking suit and, in the clear-cut cameo face under her
felt cavalry hat, myrtle-blue eyes, that held a smolder of mingled
astonishment and indignation. The long ragged stems of two crimson roses
were thrust through her belt, a splash of blood-red against the pallid
weave. An instant he gazed, all the muscles of his face tightened with
chagrin.
[Illustration]
"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered. "I didn't see you. I really
didn't. I was--I was talking to the bull."
The girl had been glancing from the flushed face to the thistly
fence-corner, while the startled dignity of her features warred with
an unmistakable tendency to mirth. He could see the little rebellious
twitch of the vivid lips, the tell-tale flutter of the eyelids, and the
tremor of the gauntleted hand as it drew the hat firmly down over her
curling masses of red-bronze. "What hair!" he was saying to himself.
"It's red, but _what_ a red! It has the burnish of hot copper! I never
_saw_ such hair!"
He had struggled to his feet, nursing his bruised elbow, irritably
conscious of his resemblance to an emerging chimney-sweep. "I don't
habitually swear," he said, "but I'd got to the point when something
_had_ to explode."
"Oh," she said, "don't mind me!" Then mirth conquered and she broke
forth suddenly into a laugh that seemed to set the whole place aquiver
with a musical contagion. They both laughed in concert, while the bull
pawed the ground and sent forth a rumbling bellow of affront and
challenge.
She was the first to recover. "You _did_ look so funny!" she gasped.
"I can believe it," he agreed, making a vicious dab at his smudged brow.
"The possibilities of a motor for comedy are simply stupendous."
She came closer and looked curiously at the quiescent monster--at the
steamer-trunk strapped on the carrier and the bulging portmanteau
peeping over the side of the tonneau. "Is it broken?"
"Merely on strike, I imagine. I think it resents the quality of the
gasoline I got at Charlottesville. I can't decide whether it needs a
monkey-wrench or a mustard-plaster. To tell the truth, it has been out
of commission and I'm not much of an expert, though I can study it out
in time. Are we far from the village?"
"About a mile and a half."
"I'll have to have it towed after me. The immediate point is my traps. I
wonder if there is likely to be a team passing."
"I'm afraid it's not too certain," answered the girl, and now he noted
the liquid modulation, with its slightly questioning accent, charmingly
Southern. "There is no livery, but there is a negro who meets the train
sometimes. I can send him if you like."
"You're very good," said Valiant, as she turned away, "and I'll be
enormously obliged. Oh--and if you see a white dog, don't be frightened
if he tries to follow you. He's perfectly kind."
She looked back momentarily.
"He--he always follows people he likes, you see--"
"Thank you," she said. The tone had now a hint--small, yet
perceptible--of aloofness. "I'm not in the least afraid of dogs." And
with a little nod, she swung briskly on up the Red Road.
John Valiant stood staring after her till she had passed from view
around a curve. "Oh, glory!" he muttered. "To begin by shaking your fist
at her and end by making her wonder if you aren't trying to be fresh!
You poor, profane, floundering dolt!"
After a time he discarded his "jumper" and contrived a make-shift
toilet. "What a type!" he said to himself. "Corn-flower eyes and a
blowse of coppery hair." A fragment of verse ran through his mind:
"Tawny-flecked, russet-brown, in a tangle of gold,
The billowy sweep of her flame-washed hair,
Like amber lace, laid fold on fold,
Or beaten metal beyond compare."
"Delicacy and strength!" he muttered, as he climbed again to the leather
seat. "The steel blade in the silk scabbard. With that face in repose
she might have been a maid of honor of the Stuarts' time! Yet when she
laughed--"
* * * * *
The girl walked on up the highway with a lilting stride, now and then
laughing to herself, or running a few steps, occasionally stopping by
some hedge to pull a leaf which she rubbed against her cheek, smelling
its keen new scent, or stopping to gaze out across the orange-green
belts of sunny wind-dimpled fields, one hand pushing back her mutinous
hair from her brow, the other shielding her eyes. When she had passed
beyond the ken of the stranded motor, she began to sing a snatch of a
cabin song, her vivid red lips framing themselves about the absurd words
with a humorous exaggeration of the soft darky pronunciation. Beneath
its fun her voice held a haunting dreamy quality, as she sang, sometimes
in the blaze of sun, sometimes with leaf-shadows above her through
which the light spurted down in green-gilt splashes. Once she stopped
suddenly, and crouching down by a thorn-hedge, whistled--a low mellow
tentative pipe--and in a moment a brown-flecked covey of baby partridges
rushed out of the grass to dart instantly back again. She laughed, and
springing up, threw back her head and began a bird song, her slender
throat pulsing to the shake and reedy trill. It was marvelously done,
from the clear, long opening note to the soaring rapture that seemed to
bubble and break all at once into its final crescendo.
Farther on the highroad looped around a strip of young forest, and she
struck into this for a short cut. Here the trees stirred faintly in the
breeze, filling the place with leafy rustlings and whisperings; yet it
was so still that when a saffron-barred hornet darted through with an
intolerant high-keyed hum, it made the air for an instant angrily
vocal, and a woodpecker's tattoo at some distance sounded with startling
loudness, like a crackling series of pistol-shots.
In the depth of this wood she sat down to rest on the sun-splashed roots
of a tree. Leaning back against the seamed trunk, her felt hat fallen to
the ground, she looked like some sea-woman emerging from an earth-hued
pool to comb her hair against a dappled rock. The ground was sparsely
covered with gray-blue bushes whose fronds at a little distance blended
into a haze till they seemed like billows of smoke suddenly solidified,
and here and there a darting red or yellow flower gave the illusion of
an under-tongue of flame. Her eyes, passionately eager, peered about
her, drinking in each note of color as her quick ear caught each
twig-fall, each sound of bird and insect.
She drew back against the tree and caught her breath as a bulldog
frisked over a mossy boulder just in front of her.
A moment more and she had thrown herself on her knees with both arms
outstretched. "Oh, you splendid creature!" she cried, "you big, lovely
white darling!"
The dog seemed in no way averse to this sensational proceeding. He
responded instantly not merely with tail-wagging; but with ecstatic
grunts and growls. "Where did you come from?" she questioned, as his
pink tongue struggled desperately to find a cheek through the whorl of
coppery hair. "Why, you must be the one I was told not to be afraid of."
She petted and fondled the smooth intelligent muzzle. "As if any one
could be afraid of _you_! We'll set your master right on that point."
Smiling to herself, she pulled one of the roses from her belt, and
twisting a wisp of long grass, wound it round and round the dog's neck
and thrust the ragged rose-stem firmly through it. "Now," she said, and
pushed him gently from her, "go back, sir!"
He whined and licked her hand, but when she repeated the command, he
turned obediently and left her. A little way from her he halted, with a
sudden perception of mysterious punishment, shrugged, sat down, and
tried to reach the irksome grass-wisp with his teeth. This failing, he
rolled laboriously in the dirt.
Then he rose, cast a reproachful glance behind him, and trotted off.