"WHAT MAKES HER IN THE WOOD SO LATE?"
The City Hall in Warwick was a three-storied brick building of
dignified Colonial style, built during Washington's first
administration. The foundations had settled somewhat, as more than one
crack, zig-zagging upward from window to window, bore witness; and many
an iron clamp had stained the walls, suggesting to the sentimental mind
that the old building was weeping rusty tears over the degeneracy of
the times. However, the Hall was only in the first stages of an old
age that might be described as green, for the huge beams were sound to
the core, and the figure of a Roman lady still stood firmly upon the
cupola, extending with one chubby arm the impartial scales of Justice.
About a block to the south, and across the street, surrounded by rows
of crumbling gravestones carved with quaint epitaphs and heads of
ghastly cherubs, stood the First Church. Any stranger, carried hither
in a magic trunk and asked to name that corner of the world in which he
found himself, would have glanced but once at the four white pillars of
the First Church and once at the venerable City Hall, before answering
that he was in the heart of New England. No one could fail to identify
the architecture of these two characteristic edifices, or of the shops
whose roofs slanted toward the street; no one could mistake the speech
and countenance of many a passer-by. Evidences of modernity, buildings
that might have been anywhere else, were not lacking; but these huge
piles of iron and stone served only to bring into sharper contrast the
remnants of an earlier civilisation.
As one looked up and down the curving street, the thing that
immediately attracted his attention was a succession of church steeples
or cupolas that broke the roof-lines at almost regular intervals, and
the fashion of these structures left no doubt in the mind that Warwick,
in spite of foreign immigration, was still a stronghold of Puritanism.
All suggestion of Romish or Episcopalian tradition was scrupulously
avoided, even to the omission of the cross and the substitution of a
weather-vane or gamecock. Only one church told a different story. At
some distance north of the City Hall a gothic edifice in brown stone,
with a beautiful square tower of elaborate design, gave a touch of
colour and richness to a vista otherwise somewhat cold and bare. This
was St. George's Church, whose vestry, in the days when it required
some degree of heroism to be an Episcopalian in that uncongenial
atmosphere, had founded St. George's Hall. The present edifice, though
numbering seventy-five years of life, was young compared with the First
Church; and the lapse of time had not served to alter their respective
positions in the community. In Warwick the Episcopalians were still a
small minority; they were still the dissenters of this dissenting
commonwealth.
Around the City Hall, which a pious care had preserved in spite of its
present inadequacy, circled an almost unbroken procession of
trolley-cars; for this point was the very centre of the web of tracks
whose various termini were pegged out here and there in the
neighbouring towns. It might be added that this spot was enshrined in
the heart of every loyal citizen of Warwick as the true umbilicus of
the visible universe.
In the eyes of Llewellyn Leigh, however, the place had no such mystic
significance. On the afternoon following the visit of Miss Wycliffe to
the tower, he had walked hither from the college, down the long,
winding street on whose well-worn pavements the yellowing leaves of the
elms threw a sheen like gold. He had noted many a colonial house built
close to the sidewalk in the original New England fashion; he had seen
glimpses of deep back gardens; but his appreciative attitude of the
previous afternoon was gone, giving way to mild melancholy, such a mood
as is sometimes induced by the perusal of an old romance dear to the
youth of one's grandparents. The experience of the previous night had
some hand in this disillusion. Some of the dissatisfaction with which
it had left him still hung about his spirit, and drove him on in a
vague search for diversion. He stood in front of the City Hall and
watched the open cars go by, then took one, almost at random, that bore
the label of Evergreen Park. As soon as he had swung himself aboard,
he found that he was sitting beside Emmet, and the meeting was not
altogether welcome in his present self-absorption. Emmet also seemed
somewhat subdued as he asked him his destination, but he suspected that
this impression might be merely a reflection of himself.
"I 'm going wherever this car goes," he answered. "Evergreen Park, is
n't it? I 'm gradually exploring the surrounding country, and one
direction will do as well as another. But where are you bound for?"
"Politics," Emmet said briefly. Whether he had left the tower the
previous evening with a sore heart and was inclined to identify his new
friend with his old enemy, or whether he was merely occupied with his
own thoughts, Leigh now felt that his manner really exhibited some
constraint. He was a man of keen intuitions, and divined a
sensitiveness on his companion's part in regard to the rather
inglorious figure he had cut, in spite of Miss Wycliffe's openly
expressed interest. After all, might not this interest of hers savour
of ostentatious patronage? At this thought he experienced a kind of
fellow-feeling for the candidate, a change of emotion which his manner
was quick to register. His interest in politics was the academic
interest of the typical Mugwump he had confessed himself to be, and too
much confined to an occasional vote of protest. He had never attended
a primary meeting in his life, always having been too busy with his own
career to realise this duty, and too nomadic in his habits to acquire a
personal interest in local affairs. To him politics was the pastime of
the rich, who could afford it, or the business of the poor, who used it
as a means of support. The very word, as Emmet used it, conveyed an
impression to his mind like that which Borrow received when his gipsy
friends mentioned the mysterious "business of Egypt." He made a
comment that drew his companion on to speak of Cobbens with his former
bitterness, though in a smothered tone, as if he feared some chance
listener in the car that was now filling rapidly.
"But you'll find nothing doing in the park," Emmet said presently, with
an abrupt change of subject. "The season has just closed, and there is
n't a person on the place."
"So much the better," Leigh answered. "I 'm not in the mood for
merry-go-rounds and picnickers."
The seat became crowded to the point of discomfort, and Emmet, with a
significant look, went back to join the conductor on the platform.
Leigh interpreted the look to mean that some of the political business
on which he was bent lay with this man, and their earnest conversation
confirmed his impression. Left alone, he took Emmet's place at the end
of the seat and began to watch the passing scene. The car swung down a
steep street and crossed a long bridge over the river, from which he
had a view of a wide blue basin, where a score of little yachts lay
motionless as floating gulls. In the other direction several sand-bars
showed brown, ribbed backs, sparsely covered with coarse grass, and
Leigh wished that he could find himself dropped upon one of them, that
he might have the pleasure of wading ashore. The fancy put him in a
better frame of mind, and the afternoon began to brighten. In front of
him the open country beckoned, and before committing himself to it, he
turned for a farewell look at Warwick. The city stood upon the high
river wall, roof above roof shimmering in the hazy light, every line of
chimney, spire, and tower softened by the distance, like a blurred
etching against a pale blue background.
The country was similar to that through which he had passed the day
before, only now the quality of the air was a little more drowsy, the
quietude more absolute, and he awoke to the fact that the Indian Summer
had begun. The car had gone about four miles before Emmet returned,
and so absorbed had Leigh become that his reappearance was a surprise.
They were now at the top of a long hill, from the summit of which the
country fell away till it rose again far off in dark purple ridges of
low mountains.
"I am reminded of California by that sky-line," Leigh remarked. "Only
out there you see no patches of gorgeous foliage like those yonder.
The autumn comes on by imperceptible gradations. The first thing you
know, the leaves have shrivelled and gone."
"The park lies down there in the valley," Emmet said, on whom the
comparison had evidently made no impression. "There's nothing to see,
though, at this time of year. Why don't you go on to Pitkinton and
visit the silk mills?"
"Because I 'm determined to explore the park," Leigh answered. He was
not one to be swerved from his purpose by another's persistence; in
fact, any effort in such a direction usually had an opposite effect.
"I have no desire to see a lot of men working over machinery to-day who
ought to be out enjoying the Indian Summer," he explained. "I'll
reserve the mills for some other time."
The car came to a stop at a switch before a rustic gate, and they got
off together. It occurred to Leigh that possibly he had been a little
short with Emmet, somewhat unsympathetic with his practical and
industrial interests. If this were so, it was merely because he
realised the uselessness of explaining the peculiar intoxication of his
mood, for he suspected that the other would regard such emotions as fit
only for women and poets. "You might come for a walk with me," he
suggested. "The exercise would do you good."
Emmet hesitated, as if he considered the proposition seriously, looking
down the track at the approaching car for which their own was waiting.
"No," he said slowly. "I must be getting back to town, and there's one
of the boys on this car that I want to see."
"Some other time, then," said Leigh. "There are n't any bandits in
these woods, are there?"
"You 'd better keep your gun handy," Emmet answered. "Well, take care
of yourself."
Leigh had by this time reached the wicket gate, where he turned a
moment to catch Emmet's friendly wave of the hand. A few steps more,
and the woods enclosed him like a wall. He heard the diminishing buzz
of the returning car with a sense of relief and escape, for he was
pleased that his invitation had not been accepted. In his mind
lingered a feeling that he and Emmet had not been able to meet this
afternoon quite as before, but the feeling vanished with the
disappearance of the car, leaving him merely glad of the solitude.
Soon he came to a spring, a placid basin of water canopied by an
artificial grotto of rock, and kneeling down he gazed intently at his
own reflection. But no thought of Narcissus, or of Horace's fountain
of Bandusia, intervened to substitute literary memories for the reality
of sensation; he was too genuine a lover of nature to interpret it in
the terms of letters.
Down at the bottom of the pool the water welled up in slow puffs, as if
the ground were panting, stirring dead sticks and withered leaves, and
presently, in the spokes of light that radiated from the reflection of
his head, he descried a frog resting motionless below him. He
disturbed the water, so transparent that he could not tell when his
fingers would enter it, and the frog was gone like a grey streak,
leaving little swirls like dust where its feet had touched the bottom
in its flight. The only thought that floated through his mind as he
knelt there was one concerning the infinitely small in nature. The
place, he knew, was swarming with unseen life, creatures compared with
which the frog was a devouring monster of colossal proportions; and he
reflected that the immeasurable spaces of the sky were not more
wonderful than they.
Having taken a deep drink, he continued on his way, noting that here
beneath the trees the afternoon seemed several hours advanced beyond
the time of the sunny open, for the shadows were like twilight. Below
the path, crossed and recrossed by rustic bridges, ran a small rivulet.
The gurgling of its miniature falls, like the sound of water coming
from the neck of a jug, the occasional cawing of a crow, and the
snapping of twigs beneath his feet were the only interruptions to the
silence. Here was a sudden hushed restfulness, as grateful as the
draught of water he had drunk at the spring.
The rivulet ended in a broader stream, on whose bank he found a long,
low boat-house already locked and abandoned. A wooden bridge ran
across to the opposite shore, where a large dancing-pavilion stood,
waiting for the snow to follow the drifting leaves through the open
windows. A path which skirted this larger stream to the left promised
more seclusion than the way across the bridge and decided his choice.
On the bosom of the water were scattered the wrecks of what had
recently been a beautiful bed of Egyptian lotos. Here, where all had
been glistening greenness with splashes of yellow blossoms, attenuated
stalks lifted what looked like crumpled fragments of brown paper, which
quivered in a breeze too light to move the surface of the stream. Here
alone the fingers of the frost had left a blight, like that of flames,
and had denied to their destructive work the glamour of a funeral pall,
dealing death without pomp or circumstance.
The trees crept down and almost thrust him at times into the water
which lay at his feet, black from the vegetation in its bed and
reflecting on its brimming surface bright patches of colour from the
foliage on the opposite shore. Here and there a stricken tree was
duplicated by a long white image that seemed to point like a finger to
the depths below. Apparently there was no current, and this lack of
motion, combined with the blackness of the water and the sombreness of
the woods, produced an effect in striking contrast with the blue and
sunny river he had first crossed, its floating boats and scattered
sand-bars.
At length the trail took a sudden turn into the woods. The oaks and
elms gave way to a grove of pines, and the tangled jungle of
undergrowth was replaced by a slippery carpet of brown needles. The
path climbed upward until it ended in a comparatively open space, and
there, under the branches of a pine, her white hands clasped upon her
knees, he saw a woman sitting alone. If a hamadryad had suddenly
thrust her head around the bole of a tree and looked him full in the
face, he would not have been more astonished, so absolute was his sense
of utter loneliness; but when he saw that the figure was that of Miss
Wycliffe, he stood like one transfixed and deprived of the power of
speech. This was like a wild freak of his fancy, and he could scarcely
believe the vision real. The surprise appeared to be entirely on his
side, for she smiled as if the meeting were a matter of course, or one
of appointment. Undoubtedly she had been listening to his approach for
some time, and had seen him first.
"Well, Mr. Leigh," she called, "I hope I did n't frighten you. You
started as if you had seen a ghost."
He came forward, laughing. "So you are one of the bandits Emmet told
me of! He said the woods were full of them."
"Emmet," she repeated. "Did you come out with him? I did n't know he
was on this line."
"He is n't on any line at present. He has thrown up his job entirely
for politics. That seemed to be what he came out for. I left him on
the platform waiting for the down car, which he said was run by 'one of
the boys' whom he wanted to see." After a slight hesitation he added:
"I tried to persuade him to come with me, but I 'm glad now he did n't."
The frank friendliness of her gaze betrayed no acceptance of his
meaning. "And how did our experiment come out?" she asked. "I
inferred from his presence with you last night that you had struck up
some sort of a friendship. I thought you would." She motioned him to
be seated with her characteristic suggestion of imperiousness. "Sit
down, do, and tell me all about it. You 've come just in time for my
little picnic, though I 'm afraid the friend I expected has failed me.
You 'll get nothing to eat, however, but this basket of Concord grapes
which I picked up on the way." And she thrust it forward with a smile
of invitation.
He threw himself down at her feet, and having selected a cluster of the
purple fruit, he held it up admiringly to the light.
"I did n't see any one on the car except the usual suburbanites," he
remarked. "But would n't you be afraid out here all alone, with no men
to protect you?" He wondered who the friend might be, but was too much
pleased with his own good fortune to give it more than a passing
thought.
"I believe we ought to be," she confessed, "but we 're not. The truth
is, we like to get far away from civilisation and exchange confidences.
Warwick is a great whispering-gallery, full of tale-bearing bats that
peep and mutter."
He lifted his head and listened. "Did you get that faint lift of the
breeze in the pines just then? Now it's gone; but it was just like the
distant sound of the surf. If my eyes were shut, I should think myself
by the shore."
"Oh, I 've been listening to nothing else for the last half hour," she
returned, "and I much prefer the sound of a human voice. Too much of
nature frightens me. You see I have no soul."
"You 've too much soul, perhaps," he amended. "If you had less, you
would be impervious to such suggestions. But I know what you mean.
However, we were talking about our friend Emmet, and your description
of Warwick reminded me of his animadversions on the place. But let me
go back to the beginning for a fair start, and tell you how I managed
to get hold of him." He described the events of the morning following
the dinner and the visit Emmet had paid him in the evening, putting in
the personal detail with an instinctive knowledge of a woman's demand
for such things. Her evident appreciation rewarded him. She had
something to say of the captain who had helped him in his effort, and
at many a point in their talk the congeniality of their minds became
evident. "You know how Emmet feels about the college, and about
colleges in general?" he asked.
She nodded understandingly.
"Unfortunately," he continued, "St. George's Hall is personified for
him in Anthony Cobbens. He told me all about their early associations
and subsequent estrangement. I must say that after his arraignment of
the man, I half expected to see them fly at each other's throats,
whereas they almost embraced." He threw back his head and laughed
heartily at the remembrance.
"The amenities of civilisation--and politics," she murmured, smiling.
"But how roiled poor Emmet was underneath," he mused. "I wish I had
Cardington's gift of speech to express the thoughts that have lately
been taking shape in my mind concerning the spectacle of a democratic
aristocracy. Now, if Emmet had the philosophical attitude of mind, he
would n't have the strength to struggle which he undoubtedly does have.
He needs that stimulus of personal animosity to get somewhere; if he
were philosophical, he would be unambitious. When he has arrived, as
they say, he will come to see that an aristocracy in the usual worldly
sense of the term must have money to maintain its existence. The old
aristocracy must have accessions of vulgar blood and vulgar money to
keep it alive, just as the language must be rejuvenated from time to
time by slang from the streets. I made a tentative effort to present
some such point of view to him as you suggested, but it didn't take.
He could only see Cobbens's red head in front of his eyes, and it was
like the proverbial rag of the same colour to the bull. Emmet is a
generation short of being able to see in his personal enemy a synopsis
of the processes of history. This, in short, is my conclusion. I'm
afraid I did n't accomplish what we hoped for."
"I might have known it," she commented. "But I'm grateful to you for
making the attempt."
"What hypocrites we are!" he cried, sitting up. "A little of my own
philosophy would n't be a bad thing for home use. I could easily allow
myself to get into as great a rage against Warwick as Emmet himself.
Already I 've begun to call it hard names, such as deadly, and cold,
and snobbish. I'm beginning to see that a man like myself must always
be on the outside here. I ought to have begun to live in Warwick three
generations ago, or to have brought a fortune with me. In the West men
are estimated on their individual merits, and one is n't made to feel
himself an outsider."
"Perhaps because there's no inside to get into," she suggested coolly.
He had a vision of that sanctum into which Cobbens could buy his way
with his wife's money, and he realised that this was not the first
glimpse he had had of a quality in the woman he loved that was not all
sweetness.
"I feel like one who has interfered in a family quarrel," he returned,
good-naturedly. "Well, I may be only a transient here, a bird of
passage nesting for a year in the towers of the Hall. I will earnestly
request myself to be amused at the spectacle of a democratic
aristocracy." He felt that in her heart she agreed with him, else, why
did she favour Emmet's candidacy?
"That will be like the attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers," she
replied, with a note of weariness in her voice. "But the equanimity
with which you took my speech about the West makes me feel like a
horrid shrew. Have you really got a sweet disposition, Mr. Leigh, or
are you just putting on airs?"
"Perhaps I have some occult reason for wishing to win your good
opinion," he suggested.
For the second time she staved off a personal drift in the
conversation. "It's getting darker," she said, looking about with
sudden concern.
"Don't say you must be going, Miss Wycliffe," he begged. "This is the
very best part of the day. Let me light a fire of pine cones." He
started up and stood before her, anticipating her acquiescence. She
nodded her approval graciously, and at that moment the setting sun,
struggling through the trees, shone full across her face and illumined
her eyes. In this clear glow they were no longer black, but brown as
the brown velvet of her jacket. He was haunted by a sense of a
duplicated experience, and then remembered the fragile girl sitting on
the stone step with her basket of eggs in her lap. But Miss Wycliffe's
colouring was glorified, rather than penetrated, by the sun's rays,
enriched rather than absorbed. Her face, framed in a large hat faced
underneath with a delicate tint of blue chiffon, seemed to look out at
him as from an inverted sea-shell, and the picture arrested him on the
point of going. As if she suspected the cause of his delay and
intended to break the charm, she removed the hat deftly and placed it
with her gloves beside her.
"I think a fire would be pleasant," she remarked, "though it is really
as warm as summer."
She had changed the picture only to improve it, for the suggestion of
wildness and freedom in her dark hair fitted more perfectly with the
spirit of the twilight woods. It may be that only a man can understand
the fascination that exists for men in just such a simple operation as
she had performed. The absolute femininity of it, the fumbling for the
hatpins, the deliberate and thoughtful reinserting of them afterward in
the discarded hat, where they can be found when needed, the invariable
smoothing back of the hair from brow and eyes,--all these things make
their peculiar appeal. It was this that caused Leigh to smile as he
turned away and went in search of fuel, whistling softly to himself.
Returning with his hat well filled with pine cones, he caught sight of
her face before she noted his approach, and was struck, as once before,
by her expression of immeasurable sadness. She sat, as at first,
embracing her knees with her hands, her nether lip drawn in as if she
would suppress a sigh, her eyes fixed upon the distance and shadowed by
something of the solemnity of the coming night.
As the light flames shot suddenly up from the heap of cones, their
brilliancy made the surrounding woods seem vast and dark, the more so
as the sun had now sunk behind the hill across the stream, filling the
woods in that quarter with a glow as from another fire. He fed the
flames thoughtfully with bits of broken branches, talking somewhat at
random about a camping trip in the Yosemite.
"Isn't it absurd," she said presently, "that we have gradually lowered
our voices till we are talking almost in whispers?"
"I mean to break the spell at once," he declared, and having made a
trumpet with his hand, he hallooed loudly toward the west. The result
was unexpected. A ghostly triple echo, which the lower tone of their
earlier conversation had failed to elicit, answered him from the
opposite shore. In broad daylight an echo will suggest mystery and a
bodiless, impish mocker, even to an unimaginative mind, but now the
effect was intensified tenfold by the silence and darkness that
enclosed them like a wall.
"You may laugh," she said, "but I don't wonder that primitive peoples
imagined a haunted nature. I 'm an absolute Pagan this very moment. I
believe in Pan and Echo and all the rest of them, and I don't like
their company a bit."
"Have you noticed how silent it has grown all of a sudden?" he asked.
"It seems only a few minutes ago that we heard the crows cawing in the
branches, and the woods were full of small noises of squirrels and
birds."
She leaned forward and prodded the fire absently with a stick, gazing
into the flames as if fascinated. Presently a whiff of smoke unlike
that from the burning faggots reached her, and she looked up to see
that he had lighted his pipe.
"I don't mind your smoking," she commented, smiling, "but if that's a
sign that you have settled down for half an hour of solid comfort, I
must interpose. You can smoke as we go along."
"It's only half-past five," he said regretfully, holding up his watch
to the light.
Her reply was forestalled by a sound, slight in itself, and one that
would have passed unnoted an hour before, the sharp snapping of a twig
somewhere in the darkness behind her. Only when he saw her start, and
the widening of her dark eyes, did he realise how much truth had been
contained in her jesting confessions of a few moments since. He could
see that she was more than startled, that her emotion was one of fright.
"Why, it's nothing," he said reassuringly, rising to his feet. "Any
little noise sounds loud in the woods at night. It was only a
squirrel, or a decayed branch giving way. I 'll prove it to you." He
raised his voice and called "Hello, there!" The result was vaguely
disconcerting. "I forgot our friend Echo," he said apologetically.
With some idea of restoring her composure by his own unconcern, he
began to move in the direction from which the sound had come; but he
had taken only a few steps when a blot of darkness which had crouched
before him like a huge stone or the stump of a tree suddenly detached
itself and rose into the form of a man. Leigh had an indistinct vision
of a face, of arms that seemed to ward him off, and then the intruder
fled without a word, breaking through the woods like a frightened
animal. He stumbled back to the fire, and stood listening till the
sounds of flight had died away.
"Well," he declared, "that was a surprise! A mutual one too, it seems.
I don't know which of us was frightened the most, but we got away from
each other as fast as we could."
"Oh, I knew it!" she cried, beginning to fasten on her hat with
trembling fingers. "I had felt for some time that we were not alone."
"It was only the keeper," he assured her, "or some tramp, attracted by
the firelight and thinking he had stumbled upon the camp of one of his
pals. Let's leave him the rest of the grapes, to show that we bear him
no ill-will for the shock he has given us. I'll just scrape a ring
about the fire to keep it from spreading."
"This is my last picnic," she declared, "for this year at least. I
couldn't come here again after that fright."
"Perhaps it's just as well I happened along," he remarked. "That
fellow may have been lurking about the woods all the afternoon, hoping
to pick up something from late visitors like ourselves."
A moment later he regretted his ill-considered words, for at the
thought of the peril she might have been in, she rose to her feet with
an evident return of her panic. Without waiting to put on her gloves,
she thrust them into his hands with an impulsive movement, almost
childlike in its unconscious betrayal of emotion. He put the gloves in
his pocket and took her hand to lead her down the slope. "It's
slippery here," he explained. But there was no need to apologize for
what she by no means considered a liberty. Indeed, though he was
conscious of nothing so much as of her hand in his, he was aware that
she felt in his own merely a needed support. As she leaned upon him in
the descent, he divined that her fear increased, instead of
diminishing, with their progress into the circumjacent darkness, as if
the act of flight intensified an appreciation of the original cause.
He strove to dispel the emotion his own words had done so much to
arouse, not without a guilty self-congratulation that his
thoughtlessness had driven her to his protection. Feeling his way
thus, step by step, he presently saw before his feet, as in a dream,
the dim reflection of a star; and then the stream grew upon his vision,
like a strip of fallen sky.
At that moment her foot slipped on the smooth pine needles, and with a
smothered cry she seemed almost to swoon into his arms at the very
margin of the water. Instinctively he held her close, her heart
beating wildly against his own. A fragrance sweeter than the fragrance
of the woods pervaded his senses, and he felt her hair brush against
his cheek. Then she stood released, having recovered herself with a
swift impulse, like a wild creature that had felt in time the first
touch of the snare. This elusiveness, this sudden recoil from his
contact, sobered him. What he might have done, had she remained a
moment longer in his arms, must be forever a matter of conjecture with
him now; but the intoxication vanished like a vapor from his mind,
leaving a keen vision of the situation in its uncoloured reality.
There arose within him a certain sense of shame that he had given so
much and received, as yet, nothing in kind. He had passed that period
of youth when a stolen kiss seems the acme of love's adventure. Such a
theft on his part, irrespective of its consequences, would have left
him still unsatisfied.
The belt of sky above the stream was sown thick with stars, that were
beginning to make themselves felt more clearly each moment as the
turning world gradually plunged this part of its surface into deeper
shadow. In this wan light the pathway lay dimly discernible before
them. The condition of the atmosphere was such as is best described by
the word _sublustris_, that glimmering radiance which lies somewhere
between thick darkness and such a light as is thrown by the crescent
moon. It was no longer necessary that he should guide her as before,
and as soon as she had freed herself from his embrace, she began to
take the lead.
"What a coward you must think me!" she said, with a ghostly little
laugh. "Even now I would n't dare go last. As it is, I can see ahead
and know that you are behind me."
Her confidence in his protecting power brought him scant consolation.
A spirit of dreariness seemed to rise up from the faint reflections
that floated on the stagnant water; it blew stealthily out of the
encroaching woods, and was voiced in the stuttering, tentative note of
an awakened owl. Familiarity with nature had freed him from that sense
of pursuit in the woods at night which oppresses even a stout heart
unaccustomed to loneliness, and the flight of the unexpected apparition
was sufficient proof that he had no desire to molest them. The
incident certainly offered no ground for continued uneasiness, he
reflected. Why, then, did she make so much of it? Why indeed, except
that her companion was not the one man in all the world with whom she
would choose to be there alone. The time and the place were full of
romantic suggestions, were the loved one present. That he was not
present was indicated only too clearly by the unconscious confession of
her next remark: "I would n't have believed two hours ago that this
path could seem so long!"
They reached the boat-house at last, but instead of turning up the
ravine which he had followed from the spring, she ascended a flight of
stairs and came out upon an open road. From this point their way was
straight and plain. On their right lay the woods from which they had
emerged, and on their left was an unobstructed field. In this free
space the heavens seemed to expand immeasurably, and both felt the
influence of the change. She began to make light of her former alarm,
and his mood became more hopeful. He told himself that he had
nourished impossible expectations, considering their short
acquaintance, and that the remnant of their time together could be
better employed than by indulging alone his wounded pride. As they
walked up and down the platform, waiting for the car, the frogs from a
near-by pool trilled intermittently, and they paused to listen.
"They seem to be congratulating themselves upon the prolongation of the
summer season," he remarked. "Miss Wycliffe, have you any peculiar
associations with that sound?"
"Dinners," she returned flippantly. "Heavens! I've had enough of
nature for one evening. How perfectly melancholy! But what do they
remind you of?"
"I 'm in a reminiscent mood," he confessed. "I can never hear the
frogs trilling in the night without being reminded of the marshlands
around my native town in the Middle West. Every night, all summer
long, I could hear that symphony through the open windows of my room,
and because I was then in the adventurous and romantic period of youth,
the recurrence of the sound brings back an echo of old emotions. I
feel as if I were being called upon to go out into the world and seek
my fortune."
"Have you been back there lately?" she asked. "How does it seem to
revisit the home of your childhood after having had adventures, and
after having done something in the world? I 've never had any home but
this, I 've never travelled except for pleasure, and I 've never
accomplished anything."
Leigh lifted his head and laughed, but the laugh was not altogether a
happy one. "You present me to myself in a new light," he answered.
"So far I have only accomplished the feat of reaching the first rung of
the ladder which I used to think I would have climbed by this time.
But yes, I have been back there recently, and found everything changed.
In fact, the West is a symbol of mutation. The marshlands have been
filled in; streets extend across the places where I used to go for
cat-tails; they have no more batrachian concerts there now. The only
reminder of that earlier characteristic of the place is a huge green
frog worked out in a marble mosaic on the floor of the new court house.
That is the seal of my native town."
By mere accident Leigh had made that first important step in love's
progress; he had succeeded in arousing a personal interest.
"It's quite charming," she commented, "and not lacking in an element of
poetry, either."
"Poetry," he echoed, inspired by her appreciation. "It's just those
apparently common things that are so full of it, but the poets don't
see it, or else they don't quite dare to give it expression. The
conventions of the art are too overpowering. Take the railroad train,
for example, which stands to most of us for convenience combined with a
certain measure of discomfort. There 's nothing more stimulating to
the imagination than the whistle of a locomotive in the distance at
night, though perhaps only the poor, to whom travel is a luxury,
appreciate to the full its invitation and the suggestion of adventure.
Working up from one stratum to another through difficulties, they are
attended by a growing wonder as the world expands before them. But to
have all experiences open to you from the first by the power of wealth,
such as travel and theatres, for example, is the real misfortune of
birth. The curiosity of the rich is gratified before it is stimulated
by denial. Then what is left to them?"
"Ennui," she answered simply.
"What a blessing it is, then," he went on, "to have no time for that
emotion, or rather, lack of emotion. I believe that if I had been born
rich, I should have been ruined long before this; but I set myself a
long road to travel, a road that reaches, in fact"--he made a wide
upward gesture--"to the stars."
"Now what is it," he continued, after a pause, "that makes Warwick so
uninspiring, in spite of its obvious charm? Is n't it the spiritual
stagnation that comes with wealth and aristocracy? One reads it in the
very faces of the people, and recognises it in the things they think
worth while. It doesn't need a long observation to discover this. A
stranger takes in the impression with his first breath here. Like the
first glance at a new face, it reveals the truth. Afterward you get
accustomed to an unprepossessing face, and forget what you first
thought of it. In much the same way, I suppose, a man could become
hypnotised and drugged by the atmosphere of Warwick. All this is in
the nature of an explanation of what I meant this afternoon by my
denunciation of the place."
She stood silently looking down into the pool from which arose the
sound that had brought them to this point. It was evident that she
felt no temptation now to indulge in one of those retorts that came so
easily to her tongue. Leigh had appealed to her imagination, a thing
which the modern man more rarely succeeds in doing with a woman than
his predecessor who wore gay garments and rode a caparisoned steed in
the lists. Besides, his earnestness had given his thought, though it
was by no means a new one, his own personal stamp, and won its
acceptance. Deeper than these causes, he had expressed her own
convictions.
"A denunciation," he continued shrewdly, "with which you sympathised."
"One must do something," she said, with a little gesture of despair,
"or die of suffocation."
"Exactly," he agreed, "even if it be only to take the side of the under
dog in a municipal election. Can you wonder that your sympathy with
Emmet, your evident revolt against the point of view of your own class,
set me to speculating upon the reason? Have I worked out the problem
to its demonstration?"
Her silence seemed to give assent to his question, though she was
apparently so deeply plunged in thought that she forgot to reply in
words; and the appearance of the headlight of the trolley-car down the
track brought their conversation to a close. Miss Wycliffe herself
suggested that they take the front seat beside the motorman, explaining
that she always enjoyed the unobstructed view ahead. He handed her up,
pleased to think that they were still to be for some time practically
alone. At their backs a glass partition shut off the rest of the car;
the motorman himself seemed a mere automaton, with ears for nothing but
the bell, and eyes for nothing but the gleaming track ahead. Leigh
suspected that a wish to avoid a possible recognition from some
passenger had influenced her in taking this seat, and he dared to hope
also that she shared his appreciation of the further opportunity to be
alone together. Their conversation, however, was fragmentary, as if
each were deep in incommunicable thoughts. From time to time, as the
car swung swiftly around a curve, she swayed against him softly, so
that he began to look expectantly ahead for a change in the straight
line of the track, laughing happily to himself at her involuntary
apology. Their comradeship seemed to have entered upon a stage in
which mere propinquity was sufficient to give content without the aid
of conversation, and a deep serenity of mood had now replaced the
wavering uncertainties of his earlier emotions. This atmosphere of
harmony and understanding remained unbroken until they stood before her
house; but now an inexplicable change occurred. She suddenly held out
her hand with a gesture that seemed to him frankly impatient, as if she
were anxious to be gone. "And my gloves," she said. "I think I gave
them to you."
He produced them reluctantly. "I had hoped you would forget them, Miss
Wycliffe."
"One does n't easily forget a new pair of gloves," she answered in a
tone cruelly matter-of-fact, as if she would show deliberately her
unconcern. He could now see all too clearly what a fool's dream he had
cherished, and the awakening was painfully abrupt. He divined that
something was amiss, something of which he had no knowledge or right to
a knowledge. During that afternoon he had passed through the whole
gamut of a lover's emotions, only to strike at last the lowest note of
all, and he watched her hurrying up the walk as if she were going out
of his life forever.
That evening he turned over in his mind all the phases of their
enigmatical relationship, cursing his bland folly as he recalled with
keen humiliation his complacent explanation of her to herself while
they waited for the car. Her manner at parting appeared nothing less
than a decisive rebuke. When at length he fell asleep, he was visited
by a ghastly dream, in which the incident in the woods was re-enacted
with all the grewsome accentuation that belongs to the realm of
dreamland. Again the shadowy figure rose up before his feet and fled
away. He pursued and grappled with the intruder in the darkness,
demanding his name and trying to see his face. Finally he seemed to
prevail, but the figure slipped from his grasp and left him there
alone. He turned back then, seeking the fire and smitten with poignant
anxiety for the woman he loved; but the light was quenched, and the
place could not be found. After struggling for what seemed a lifetime
through mazes of darkness and terror, he awoke.