It was bright morning when Hugo awoke. Through the window-pane in the
room where he had slept, he could see a straggling back yard; damp
clothes moved in the breeze, and beyond was a depression green with
young shoots. He descended to the restaurant and ate his breakfast.
Automobiles were swishing along the road outside and he could hear a
clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Afterwards he went out doors and
walked through the busy centre of the village and on into the country.
Sun streamed upon him; the sky was blue; birds twittered in the budding
bushes. He had almost forgotten the beauty and peacefulness of
springtime; now it came over him with a rush--pastel colours and fecund
warmth, smells of earth and rain, melodious, haphazard wind. He knew
intuitively that McClaren would never send for him; he wondered what Mr.
Mills would say to Mr. Shayne about him. Both thoughts passed like white
clouds over his mind and he forgot them for an indolent vegetative
tranquillity.
The road curved over hills and descended into tinted valleys. Farmers
were ploughing and planting. The men at the restaurant had told him that
he was in Connecticut. That did not matter, for any other place would
have been the same on this May morning. A truck-driver offered him a
ride, which Hugo refused, and then, watching the cubic van surge away in
the distance, he wished fugitively that he had accepted.
Two half dollars and a quarter jingled in his pocket. His suit was seedy
and his beard unshaven. A picture of New York ran through his mind: he
stood far off from it gazing at the splendour of its towers in the
morning light; he came closer and the noise of it smote his ears;
suddenly he plunged into the city, his perspective vanished, and there
rose about him the ugly, unrelated, inchoate masses of tawdriness that
had been glorious from a distance, while people--dour, malicious,
selfish people who scuttled like ants--supplanted the vista of stone and
steel. The trite truth of the ratio between approach and enchantment
amused him. It was so obvious, yet so few mortals had the fine sense to
withdraw themselves. He was very happy walking tirelessly along that
road.
After his luncheon he allowed a truck to carry him farther from the
city, deeper into the magic of spring. The driver bubbled with it--he
wore a purple tulip in his greasy cap and he slowed down on the
hilltops with an unassuming reverence and a naïve slang that fitted well
with Hugo's mood. When he reached his destination, Hugo walked on with
reluctance. Shadows of the higher places moved into the lowlands. He
crossed a brook and leaned over its middle on the bridge rail,
fascinated by an underwater landscape, complete, full of colour, less
than a foot high. From every side came the strident music of frogs.
Spring, spring, spring, they sang, rolling their liquid gutturals and
stopping abruptly when he came too near.
In the evening, far from the city, he turned from the pavement on a
muddy country road, walking on until he reached the skeleton of an old
house. There he lay down, taking his supper from his pocket and eating
it slowly. The floor of the second story had fallen down and he could
see the stars through a hole in the roof. In such houses, he thought,
the first chapters of American history had been lived. When it was
entirely dark, a whippoorwill began to make its sweet and mournful
music. Warmth and chilliness came together from the ground. He slept.
In the morning he followed the road into the hills. Long stretches of
woodland were interrupted by fields. He passed farmhouses and the paved
drive of an estate. More than a mile from the deserted farm, more than
two miles from the main road, half hidden in a skirt of venerable trees,
he saw an old, green house behind which was a row of barns. It was a
big house; tile medallions had been set in its foundations by an
architect whose tombstone must now be aslant and illegible. It was built
on a variety of planes and angles; gables cropped at random from its
mossy roof. Grass grew in the broad yard under the trees, and in the
grass were crocuses, yellow and red and blue, like wind-strewn confetti.
Hugo paused to contemplate this peaceful edifice. A man walked briskly
from one of the barn doors. He perceived Hugo and stopped, holding a
spade in his hand. Then, after starting across to the house, he changed
his mind and, dropping the spade, approached Hugo.
"Looking for work, my man?"