THE CALL OF THE ROAD
As soon as Mr. Van Patten dropped to sleep for his morning nap, Barnes
determined to suggest to the girl a plan he had conceived during
breakfast. That it would impress Aunt Philomela as audacious he had no
doubt; that it would meet with kindlier interest from Miss Van Patten,
he dared hope. With the decided improvement in the old gentleman’s
condition the spirit of the whole household rose high. Not only had
he slept well during the night, but he had partaken of a fairly good
breakfast.
The morning hour had also been easier for Barnes. Mr. Van Patten had
clung to the young boy--the boy before he had become himself and was
still merely his father’s boy. Barnes had scarcely more to do than
listen. Alaska had been forgotten.
The morning itself, too, gave courage. The sun, now in supreme
authority, held in the bondage of shadows every unsightly thing and
marshaled forth to the front its legions of the beautiful. Everywhere
it put youth in command; chief of all on the saffron road which ran
before the brick house and later connected with other roads which in
turn connected with still other roads until a path was made clear
across the continent.
The road summoned forth. It beckoned. The wonder was, thought Barnes as
from his window he caught glimpses of it winding in and out among the
trees up the hill and so on, either way, until it ran straight into an
ocean--the wonder was how these young fellows hereabouts resisted its
call. If a man but followed it in its intricacies he would pass, on the
way, every palace and hovel in the land. Rich man, poor man, beggar
man, thief, a traveler would come upon them every one. These tawny
ribbons drained every spring of human life. They demanded their toll
of time from all the world. And in the end, when the legs failed, all
the world was finally borne over this same road and lowered to one side
of it. The wonder was, then, that instead of a few dreaming poets and
a few lawless vagabonds that all the young men in the world were not
caught by the spell of the highway and the pageant it promised.
But what of the spell of the houses by the side of the highway? They
cried halt to the young men. Ah, there lay the explanation--the road
after all was subservient to the houses by its side.
But there were many houses by the side of the road; how did each house
choose its own? By the eyes of the women who dwelt in the houses.
Clearly then, the houses themselves were subservient.
Were the eyes of the women then the final masters? Here was a problem
for a philosopher. He knew only that he himself had been stopped, with
the road beckoning him on.
Miss Van Patten was busy for an hour with her household tasks before
she returned to where Barnes had stationed himself at the foot of the
Dutch door. A snow-white apron made her look very business-like. Aunt
Philomela was for the moment carelessly absent. Here was Opportunity.
“I had in mind,” he said, “going to the next village for my suit-case.
I checked it there thinking at first to ride through but the station
below here tempted me and I got off.”
“I’ll send John for it,” she replied, wondering that she herself had
not anticipated his need. The reason was, though her modesty made
her refrain from offering the explanation, that she never associated
baggage with men folk. To her they were always as untrammeled and
unburdened as her saddle horse Aladdin.
“But I looked forward to the walk,” he said.
“Oh!”
“I thought that perhaps you--”
“Oh,” she exclaimed again. But this time it was an entirely different
sort of an “Oh.” It was a shy, fluttering monosyllable--resembling
a bird who, flushed from its nest, flies but a little way. Her eyes
reflected a certain eagerness--her quick glance towards the door a
certain timidity. Her cheeks assumed a compromise.
“It would be just an easy turn, down and back, wouldn’t it? The sun is
calling.”
Now Aladdin had been chafing three days in his stall unheeded by his
mistress, whinnying an answer to the bugle call of this same sun as it
sifted in through the chinks. But the most satisfaction he had found
was in her whispered solace, “To-morrow, perhaps.” Yet of all living
things outside the house, she loved him best.
“It would be very pleasant,” she confessed.
“Then--?”
“I think I may go,” she determined.
Which proved--what? It is very difficult to prove anything at all
but this at least would seem to prove that Aunt Philomela was not as
vigilant as she might have been. She came in just as the girl was
adjusting her hat of brown Leghorn--in fact at the moment that Barnes
was engrossed in watching the bewitching operation of the tying of a
pert bow of damson-colored ribbon beneath an ear which looked of too
delicate workmanship to be of any actual use. But that it was seemed
evident from the fact that it detected Aunt Philomela’s steps long
before his own of coarser fiber heard anything at all.
“It’s an art,” declared Barnes to the little old lady as she stood in
the doorway, a living human question mark. “It’s an art to be able
to tie a bow-knot. I’ve practiced twenty years and succeeded only in
developing an affair with dropping ends which won’t come untied.”
Aunt Philomela did not display as much interest as she might in this
statement. She was one to go to the heart of things. She was not to be
decoyed from the nub of a situation. Very well, then, he decided, she
should have it.
“Eleanor and I,” he informed her, “thought of taking to the road.” He
added immediately not so bold as he had determined to be,
“I must get my bag.”
“John is at your service,” snapped Aunt Philomela, instantly.
“But John isn’t able to exercise for me; John isn’t able to drink in
the sun for me. There are many things that John couldn’t do for me.”
It was clear these considerations had little weight with her.
“Perhaps you’ll come along too?” he ventured.
If it had been within the realm of possibility for her to make her
feeble limbs wag over those four miles she would have taken him up
just to foil the childlike innocence with which he veiled his sense of
confident security. Even as it was, she contrived to frighten him.
“I will order the carriage.”
But here Miss Van Patten herself interposed.
“It’s too fine a day to drive,” she declared sensibly. “We’ll be back
by the time father wakes. Do you want anything at the village?”
“I wouldn’t for the world burden you,” Aunt Philomela answered, coldly.
Which, on the whole, thought Barnes, was a reply unworthy of her.
So it happened that within less than twenty-four hours, Barnes took up
the trail again--with a difference. In the first place he no longer
carried his portfolio. Moreover he did not miss it. And yet he had not
proceeded a hundred yards before he passed material enough to fill it.
He gave scarcely a glance at the old patriarchs of apple-trees looking
like muscle-knotted dwarfs engaged in the absurd task of supporting
green apples no larger than marbles; at the sturdy pines whispering
Norwegian sagas, the lithe birches, and the shivering poplars.
“Daddy and I have taken this road so many times. He loves it,”
exclaimed Miss Van Patten.
“Of course he does!” he nodded.
She turned her eyes towards him in some amazement at his assurance.
“You understand Daddy so well,” she said.
“The big emotions,” he declared thoughtfully, “make us all of kin.
Man-sorrows draw men together as women-sorrows draw women together.
Sound us deep enough and all men are brothers, all women sisters. Sound
us still deeper and even sex vanishes; we become just comrades.”
“Aunt Philomela proves the rule? I wish she were in better humor.”
“I wouldn’t for a fortune have her change,” he returned quickly.
“You don’t mind her sharp tongue?”
“It relieves me of a great responsibility.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Aunt Philomela,” he declared, “is attorney for the world. There’s
nothing like a stiff prosecution to stiffen one’s own defense--if it’s
a fair one.”
“Oh, I see.”
That was doubtful but she thought she saw, which is quite as
satisfactory.
“In a way your aunt’s opposition is the old case of Art versus
Reality,” he continued, “the Academy versus the Acme. But Lord forgive
us, the controversy is a purely scholastic one. If we only get deep
enough in our thoughts, as in our emotions, we find ourselves again
all one. Aunt Philomela isn’t so suspicious of me as she is of my
portfolio.”
“She isn’t really ferocious,” she assured him. “And she _does_
appreciate your kindness.”
“That, at any rate, doesn’t matter.”
“The change in father this morning is marvelous. It made me know that
we’re doing right--however strange it seems.”
“Does it seem strange to you?”
“It certainly is--unusual.”
“Yes, I suppose it is and yet it isn’t anything more than the road led
me to expect.”
“That’s what it is to be a man,” she smiled. “Women are allowed to
expect so little.”
He was studying her mouth. It was so simply and yet so marvelously
drawn. He had decided it was a child’s mouth, but at this he glanced up
quickly.
“And yet,” he said, “women are the mothers of expectancy.”
She turned away her head without replying. She was a bit shy of his
loose generalizing. She brought him back again to her father. She made
vivid to him the days of close comradeship she had passed with the old
gentleman during these last two years. After this he led her out to
tell him more of the neighbors and of her life among them. He listened
for the names and made it a point to fix them in his mind. Among them
as she rambled on there was one Carl Langdon, he noted, who stood out
a bit more than the others. Langdon it seemed, played a violin and she
herself was musical. He refused to satisfy his curiosity by pressing
any further along this line than she of her own accord led him. Yet, as
it was, there were several little things about Langdon which excited
his interest.
Before they knew it, they reached the beginning of the descent which
led into the village of white houses huddled at the foot of the
surrounding hills, like sheep pressing warm sides together against a
blizzard. At the glimpse of the steel path of the railroad, Barnes
impulsively turned away.
“Shall we go back?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered absent-mindedly.
So they retraced their steps over the same road, which yet seemed
to him a new road. On the return he found himself reciprocating
her confidence by telling something of his own life. It seemed an
uninteresting enough tale and yet he found her listening with apparent
eagerness. In fact before he knew it she had led him a great deal
further than he had intended to go. He had proposed covering only the
blunt facts of his life such as their present relations gave her a
right to know, but before he realized it he had gone into a great many
more intimate details.
It was not until they were within sight of the house, that he awoke to
what her eyes had enticed from him. Then he drew himself up short, a
bit startled by the phenomenon. He was usually reticent about himself.
“I beg your pardon,” he apologized, “I must have bored you.”
“You haven’t,” she answered frankly.
“At any rate,” he said, “I had no idea of going into those matters.”
She smiled again and this time he saw that her mouth was after all not
a child’s mouth.
Aunt Philomela met them at the door, as though she had been some
time waiting for them. She fixed her eyes upon the girl as though to
discover at a glance what this morning contained. Then she turned to
Barnes, raising her scant eyebrows a trifle.
“You gave your bag to the marketman to bring back?” she asked blandly.
Bag? Bag, to be sure. It was a blow straight from the shoulder. It was
another case of where he had not carried out his original intentions.
“I have decided,” stammered Barnes, “that if you will be so good, you
may send John for it.”
“And the other things you mentioned?”
“I’ve been able to attend to myself.”
The girl was trying to edge by into the house. Aunt Philomela stopped
her.
“Carl is waiting in the sitting-room for you,” she announced. “He is
anxious to meet--your brother.”