A TRIP TO HILLSBOROUGH.
The life of Emily Barlow during this balmy month of summer might be
described as an oscillation in criss-cross between her home and the
studio in one direction, and Shagarach's office and the state prison in
the other. For in spite of Robert's protest she had returned several
times to pour the sunlight of her sympathy into his cell, and the
convicts, either because the latent manhood in them went out to a brave
girl doing battle for her lover, or because Dobbs had exercised his
influence in her behalf, offered no repetition of their first affront.
The point of intersection between these two much-traveled routes was a
certain down-town corner, where Emily was already becoming a familiar
figure to the policeman who escorted ladies over the crossing. A more
disagreeable feature of her passage of this point was the frequent
appearance there of Mr. Arthur Kennedy Foxhall. But Emily, like other
golden-haired girls, was accustomed to rude glances from men, and had
learned to tolerate them as we accept turbid weather, muddy streets and
the other unavoidable miseries of life.
She had been riding in the steam car fully fifteen minutes before she
could determine in what direction the hostile influence lay. It could
not be the mere uncertainty of her journey. Even if Bertha were not with
the Arnolds at Hillsborough, it did not follow that her sweetheart was
lost. At first broadly pervasive, like an approaching fog, the malign
presence had gradually begun to locate itself near her, and it was with
a sudden shock, like the first splash of a long-delayed shower, that she
realized she was under observation from the passenger in front.
He had never turned around since they had left the station. To all
appearances he was buried in a magazine. There was not even a sidewise
position to indicate that he was keeping her within the field of his
vision. Yet Emily knew that every sense of the man was alert in her
direction, and that by a sort of diffused palpation, like that of the
blind, he was aware of her slightest gesture. She thought of moving back
to escape the oppression, or forward into another car. But the station
platforms on either side lay in full view of the windows, and she felt
that the relief would be only temporary. He would follow her out.
Who was the stranger? She was certain she had never seen his round,
shaven face before, yet she felt that it was some one whose fortunes
were bound in with hers, some one whom she would recognize, when his
name was uttered, as a familiar. All efforts to dispel this dim fear
were fruitless. She tried to gaze out at the skimming landscape, but
some subtle force gripped her muscles and turned her head to the front.
She closed her eyes, but the image still floated before her and she knew
it was there to thwart her purpose and work her lover harm.
Fully fifty minutes of the ride had been rendered wretched to Emily by
these doubts and fears, when the conductor entered to collect the
tickets for Hillsborough. The man in front seemed to jerk himself out of
his fit of absorption. He fumbled for his oblong blue card, on which
Emily espied the lettering "Hillsborough." But the hand which delivered
it struck a numbness in her heart. It was broad and fleshy, with the
fingernails which are said to betray the professional criminal, and a
star worked in black ink on the protuberance between forefinger and
thumb. Robert had described this peculiarity in his cell-acquaintance,
Bill Dobbs. If it were he, this was a strange situation in which to find
the solitary cracksman. Perhaps it was one of his "hospital days."
"Hillsborough! Hillsborough!" came the announcement from both ends of
the car, followed by the usual banging of doors. Emily started for the
rear exit, which was the nearer. Once alighted, she walked leisurely
forward along the platform. A side glance upward revealed Bill Dobbs
just leaving his seat and passing to the rear, exactly in her footsteps.
When he caught her eye he smiled. It was true. He was pursuing her. Her
spirits sank, and she did not quicken her pace. The engine stood
champing like an impatient horse beside her, for she was almost abreast
of the tender.
"All aboard!" the uniformed trainmen were crying. Emily glanced around.
Bill Dobbs was just entering the station door, apparently taking no more
notice of her than of the drivers soliciting his custom. But she knew
that her least movement was under his cognizance. With a quick jump she
placed her foot on the step, and, catching a conductor's hand, remounted
the moving train. A backward glance, as she sunk into her seat,
discovered Bill Dobbs sauntering up the road.
An interval of regret seized Emily when she reviewed her conduct calmly.
Had she, indeed, escaped some unknown danger? Or was she the victim of a
girl's foolish illusion? She was beginning to chide herself as a prey to
superstition when the realities of her predicament suddenly forced
themselves upon her by the reappearance of the conductor.
"What is the next station, please?"
"Elmwood."
"How far is that?"
"Two miles."
Two miles. To be carried two miles beyond Hillsborough into the
neighboring township! Possibly the Arnold estate lay midway between, but
it was more probable that she would be footsore and spent before she
reached the house where Bertha was supposed to be living. There was an
extra fare to pay, a brief whirling glimpse of woodland and meadow, and
then the engine slacked up again before a cottage-like, rustic station.
A circle of 12-year-olds desisted from their romp to watch the sweet
lady approaching them.
"Little boy, could you direct me to the Arnold mansion?" she said to the
oldest.
"Arnold mansion? Don't know any Arnolds round here."
"They live in Hillsborough. How far is that?"
"Oh, I know," put in a tot in tires. "That's the lady that has the
gardens way over on the Hillsborough line."
"'Bout five miles from here, isn't it, Chester?" said another.
"Can't I get a carriage to drive me there?" Emily felt equal to five
miles or twenty, now that she was once started, but if feasible she
would have preferred to let some four-footed creature do the walking.
"Well," said Chester, "you see the coach is up at the academy and I
guess it won't come down till the game is over. You might get a wagon."
"Oh, well, somebody may give me a ride. Which way does Hillsborough
lie?"
"Follow this road straight along, till you come to the bridge. That's
the Hillsborough line and I guess anybody over there will tell you."
Emily thanked her guides and sped off on her long trudge. Behind her she
heard the boys' shrill chirps, mingled with the light soprano of
girlhood, running up and down the bright gamut of pleasure. How
melodious their joyous inflections were, compared with the harsh
syllables she was accustomed to hear from the children of the pavements.
How much richer and deeper this country stillness than the everlasting
murmur of the city, which makes silence only a figure of speech to the
dwellers within its walls.
But is not all silence figurative and relative, thought Emily, a mere
hint at some magnificent placid experience, only possible in its purity
to the inhabitants of outer space? Even the countryside was not still.
Plump sparrows, dusting themselves in the road, never ceased their
brawling. The shy brown thrush swerved across her path at intervals and
bubbled his song from the thickets. The meadowlark left his
tussock-hidden nest to greet the world proudly from the pasture rock,
and far away the phoebe's plaintive utterance of his lost love's name
pierced the sibilance of the trees.
"There's a loam for you," said an old gardener, spading an oval plot on
a lawn. His bulbs and potted sproutings were arranged at one side.
"Feel. 'Twouldn't soil a queen's hands. Dry as meal and brown as a
berry. Same for two feet down."
Emily took up a handful to please the old man. It crumbled between her
fingers like the soft brown sugar which grocers display in crocks,
though not, as youthful customers sometimes think, to be scooped and
paddled with by idle hands.
"I can see roses in that, miss," said the gardener, turning up a deep
spadeful for her inspection. But time was precious and she shortened the
commonplaces, breaking away toward Hillsborough.
All that was visible of Elmwood was a cluster of cottages about the
station and a few outlying farms. A brick building crowning its highest
hill was probably the academy to which her guides had referred. On both
sides the country opened out in great reaches of level fertility, groves
of dark trees rising at intervals where the pools lay that nourished
their roots. Now they sprung up by the roadside and overarched her with
drooping boughs.
Looking upward, as she walked, almost alone, Emily felt herself the
center of a greater mystery, embracing, as it were, that in which her
sweetheart was entangled. Nights of vigil had begun to overstring her
nerves. That strange doubling of impressions which attacks us in such
moods, making a kind of mirage of the mind, came over her. Everything
about her seemed familiar, as old as her infancy, as the world itself.
Elmwood! She had babbled the name in her cradle days, her earliest
rambles had been through its grassy paths. Yonder silver-birch, whose
delicately scalloped foliage rose and drooped in long strings, as if the
foamy spurt of a fountain should be frozen in its fall, had it not
printed itself on her memory somewhere a thousand times before? The
three urchins passing her from behind, surely their faces were not
strange.
It may be Emily was right about the urchins and that there was no
mirage in her recollection of them. She had been present on the morning
when Ellen's body was found and they may have stood by her side in the
crowd.
"I'm stiff, Whistler," said one of them in the broad drawl of the city
gamin.
"Don't expect to be limber after ridin' twenty miles on a car truck, do
yer, Turkey? What place is this, anyway?"
"I'll stump yez to come over in the swamp and get some little frogs,"
said urchin number three, who was no other than our crabbed young
acquaintance, Toot Watts.
Emily wondered, as she saw them disappear down in the meadows, whether
they had really been her fellow-passengers all the way from the city.
How dingy they were! Not a point of color except the peachy cheeks of
Whistler and the golden glow at the end of Turkey's cigarette.
When she reached the academy playground she thought she must have
covered two miles. There was a game in progress between two baseball
clubs of rival academies and the sight of sportive youths and cheering
onlookers was welcome to her after so long a spell of solitude. She was
unhappily ignorant of the rudiments of that most scientific of games.
"Fly" and "grounder" to her were simply undistinguishable terms of a
barbaric technical jargon. But the sparkle of eager eyes and the motion
of active limbs, set off by graceful costumes, was, perhaps, more
apparent to her than if appreciation of the spectacle had been
overwhelmed by interest in the match.
What breeding in the salute, in the very tones, when one of the
outfielders, chasing a hit out of bounds, begged pardon for jostling
against her ever so little. For a moment, admiring the liberal swing of
his arm, as he made the long throw home, though the most womanly of
women, she envied men the bodily freedom which they deny to their
sisters. Presumably the play was successful, for its result was greeted
with plaudits, and the club afield closed in toward the plate.
Beyond the ball ground, under a clump of willows, Emily was surprised
to come upon her three fellow-passengers once more. They must have cut
through the meadows on the other side of the academy. The grove made a
screen completely hiding them from the playground, and there was no one
else about. Against a rocky wall three bicycles were resting.
"Let's take a ride, fellers," said the one who had been addressed as
"Turkey."
"Cheese it. There's somebody comin'," protested the Whistler.
"Come on. I'm sick of this. Them fellers can't play a little bit."
"On'y a little ride around. They'll never know," added Toot.
Turkey boldly led the way, mounting like a veteran. Toot followed
quickly, and finally the Whistler, finding himself abandoned by his
comrades, swallowed his scruples and joined them. His was a girl's
wheel, but he overtook his companions easily.
"Boys! Stop!" Emily found herself calling out a remonstrance. All three
turned their heads at this shrill command, but it only made them speed
away more rapidly. The road was downhill here, and the pedals whirled
around like the crank-shaft of a flying locomotive. Should she turn back
and give the alarm? It was a good stretch for limbs already weary and
with an unknown number of miles before them. Besides, this was probably
nothing worse than a boyish prank. If only city-street boys were like
country-academy boys, she sighed. Perhaps they would be if they all had
natty uniforms to wear and a bicycle apiece. No doubt the gamins would
soon turn about, although they acted as though her outcry had frightened
them; and the last she saw of them they were pedaling for dear life
toward the city, twenty miles away.
Circumstances were to be greatly altered when Emily met these young
racers again.