THE RUNAWAY ROAD
THE Road ran spitefully up a steep, hot, rocky, utterly shadeless hill, and then at the top turned suddenly in a flirty little green loop, and looked back, and called "Follow me!"
Would n't you have considered that a dare?
The Girl and the White Pony certainly took it as such, and proceeded at once to "follow," though the White Pony stumbled clatteringly on the rolling stones, and the Girl had to cling for dear life to the rocking pommels of her saddle.
It was a cruel climb, puff—pant—scramble—dust—glare—every step of the way, but when the two adventurers really reached the summit at last, a great dark chestnut-tree loomed up for shade, every sweet-smelling breeze in the world was there to welcome them, and the whole green valley below stretched out before them in the shining, woodsy wonder of high noon and high June.
You know, yourself, just how the world looks and feels and smells at high noon of a high June!
Even a pony stands majestically on the summit of a high hill—neck arched, eyes rolling, mane blowing, nostrils quivering. Even a girl feels a tug of power at her heart.
And still the Road cried "Follow me!" though it never turned its head again in doubt or coquetry. It was a kind-looking Road now, all gracious and sweet and tender, with rustly green overhead, and soft green underfoot, and the pleasant, buzzing drone of bees along its clovered edges.
"We might just as well follow it and see," argued the Girl, and the White Pony took the suggestion with a wild leap and cantered eagerly along the desired way.
It was such an extraordinarily lonesome Road that you could scarcely blame it for picking up companionship as best it might. There was stretch after stretch of pasture, and stretch after stretch of woodland, and stretch after stretch of black-stumped clearing—with never a house to cheer it, or a human echo to break its ghostly stillness. Yet with all its isolation and remoteness the landscape had that certain vibrant, vivid air of self-consciousness that thrills you with an uncanny sense of an invisible presence—somewhere. It's just a trick of June!
Tramps, pirates, even cannibals, seemed deliciously imminent. The Girl remembered reading once of a lonely woman bicyclist who met a runaway circus elephant at the turn of a country road. Twelve miles from home is a long way off to have anything happen.
Her heart began to quicken with the joyous sort of fear that is one of the prime sweets of youth. It's only when fear reaches your head that it hurts. The loneliness, the mystery, the uncertainty, were tonic to her. The color spotted in her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed defensively to every startling detail of woods or turf. Her ears rang with the sudden, new acuteness of her hearing. She felt as though she and the White Pony were stalking right across the heartstrings of the earth. Once the White Pony caught his foot and sent a scared sob into her throat.
Oh, everything was magic! A little brown rabbit reared up in the Road as big as a kangaroo, and beckoned her with his ears. A red-winged blackbird bulky as an eagle trumpeted a swamp-secret to her as he passed. A tiny chipmunk in the wall loomed like a lion in his lair, and sent a huge rock crashing like an avalanche into the field. The whole green and blue world seemed tingling with toy noises, made suddenly big.
The White Pony's mouth was frothing with the curb. The White Pony's coat was reeking wet with noon and nervousness, but the Girl sat tense and smiling and important in her saddle, as though just once for all time she was the only italicized word in the Book of Life.
"It's just the kind of a road that I like to travel alone," she gasped, a little breathlessly, "but if I were engaged and my man let me do it, I should consider him—careless."
That was exactly the sort of Road it was!
Yet after three or four miles the White Pony shook all the skittishness out of his feet, and settled down to a zigzag, browsing-clover gait, and the Girl relaxed at last, and sat loosely to ease her own muscles, and slid the bridle trustingly across the White Pony's neck.
Then she began to sing. Never in all her life had she sung outside the restricting cage of house or church. A green and blue loneliness on a June day is really the only place in the world that is big enough for singing! In dainty ballad, in impassioned hymn, in opera, in anthem, the Girl's voice, high and sweet and wild as a boy's, rang out in fluttering tremolo. Over and over again, as though half unconscious of the words, but enraptured with the melody, she dwelt at last on that dream-song of every ecstatic young soul who tarries for a moment on the edge of an unfocused exultation:
The King of Love my Shepherd is
Whose Goodness faileth never,
I nothing lack if I am his
And he is mine f-o-r-e-v-e-r!
Forever!Is mine f-o-r-e-v-e-r!
Her pulsing, passionate crescendo came echoing back to her from a gray granite hillside, and sent a reverent thrill of power across her senses.
Then—suddenly—into her rhapsody broke the astonishing, harsh clash and clatter of a hay-rake. The White Pony lurched, stood stock-still, gave a hideous snort of terror, grabbed the bit in his teeth, and bolted like mad on and on and on and on till a quick curve in the Road dashed him into the very lap of a tiny old gray farmhouse that completely blocked the way.
In another second he would have stumbled across the threshold and hurled his rider precipitously into the front hall if she had not at that very second recovered her "yank-hold" on his churning mouth and wrenched him back so hard that any animal but a horse would have sat down.
Then the girl straightened up very tremblingly in her saddle and said "O—h!"
Some one had to say something, for there in the dooryard close beside her were an Artist, a Bossy, and a White Bulldog, who all instantaneously, without the slightest cordiality or greeting, stopped whatever they were doing and began to stare at her.
Now it's all very well to go dashing like mad into a person's front yard on a runaway horse. Anybody could see that you did n't do it on purpose; but when at last you have stopped dashing, what are you going to do next, particularly when the Road doesn't go any farther? Shall you say, "Isn't this a pleasant summer?" or "What did you really like best at the theater last winter?" If you gallop out it looks as though you were fright ened. If you amble out, you might hear some one laugh behind your back, which is infinitely worse than being grabbed on the stairs.
The situation was excessively awkward. And the Artist evidently was not clever in conversational emergencies.
The Girl straightened her gray slouch hat. Then she ran the cool metal butt of her riding-whip back and forth under the White Pony's sweltering mane. Then she swallowed very hard once or twice and remarked inanely:
"Did the Road go right into the house?"
"Yes," said the Artist, with a nervous blue dab at his canvas.
The Girl's ire rose at his churlishness. "If that is so," she announced, "if the Road really went right into the house, I'll just wait here a minute till it comes out again.
But the Artist never smiled an atom to make things easier, though the Bossy began to tug most joyously at his chain, and the White Bulldog rolled over and over with delight.
The Girl would have given anything now to escape at full speed down the Road along which she had come, but escape of that sort had suddenly assumed the qualities of a panicky, ignominious retreat, so she parried for time by riding right up behind the Artist and watching him change a perfectly blue canvas sky into a regular tornado.
"Oh, do you think it's going to rain as hard as that?" she teased. "Perhaps I'd better settle down here until the storm is over."
But the Artist never smiled or spoke. He just painted and sniffed as though he worked by steam, and when his ears had finally grown so crimson that apoplexy seemed impending, she took pity on his miserable embarrassment and backed even the shadow of her pony out of his sight. Then with a desperate effort at perfect ease she remarked:
"Well—I guess I'll ride round to your back door. Perhaps the Road came out that way and went on without me."
But though she and the White Pony hunted in every direction through white birch and swaying alders, they found no possible path by which the Road could have escaped, and were obliged at last to return with some hauteur, and make as dignified an exit as possible from the scene.
The Artist bowed with stiff relief at their departure, but the White Bulldog preceded them with friendly romps and yells, and the Bossy pulled up his iron hitching stake and chain and came clanking after them with furious bounds and jingles.
No one but the White Pony would have stood the racket for a moment, and even the White Pony began to feel a bit staccato in his feet. The Girl kept her saddle like a circus rider, but the amusement on her face was just a trifle studied. It was a fine procession, clamor and all, with the Bulldog scouting ahead, the White Pony following skittishly, and the Bossy see-sawing behind, clanking a dungeon chain that left a cloud of dust as far as you could see.
It must have startled the Youngish Man who loomed up suddenly at a bend of the Road and caught the wriggling Bulldog in his arms.
"Who comes here?" he cried with a regular war-whoop of a challenge. "Who comes here?"
"Just a lady and a bossy," said the Girl, as she reined in the Pony abruptly, and sent the Bossy caroming off into the bushes.
"But it's my brother's Bossy," protested the Youngish Man.
"Oh, no, it is n't," the Girl explained a little wearily. "It's mine now. It chose between us."
The Youngish Man eyed her with some amusement.
"Did you really see my brother at the house?" he probed.
The Girl nodded, flushing. It was very hot, and she was beginning to feel just a wee bit faint and hungry and irritable.
"Yes, I saw your brother," she reiterated, " but I did n't seem to care for him. I rode by mistake right into the picture he was painting. There's probably paint all over me. It was very awkward, and he did n't do a thing to make it easier. I abominate that kind of person. If a man can't do anything else he can always ask you if you would n't like a drink of water!" She scowled indignantly. "It was the Road's fault anyway! I was just exploring, and the Road cried 'Follow me,' and I followed—a little faster than I meant to—and the Road ran right into your house and shut the door. Oh, slammed the door right in my face!"
"Would you like a drink of water, now?" suggested the Youngish Man.
"No, I thank you," said the Girl, with stubborn dignity, and then weakened to the alluring offer with "But my White Pony is very cruelly thirsty."
Both adventurers looked pretty jaded with heat and dust.
The Youngish Man led the way into a tiny, pungent wood-path that ended in a gurgling spring-hole, where the White Pony nuzzled his nose with deepbreathed, dripping satisfaction, while the Girl kept to her saddle and looked down on the Youngish Man with frank interest.
He looked very picturesque and brown and clever in his khaki suit with a game bag slung across his shoulder.
"You're not a hunter," she exclaimed impulsively. "You're not a hunter—because you have n't any gun."
"No," said the Man, "I'm a collector."
The Girl cried out with pleasure and clapped her hands. "A collector?—oh, goody! So am I! What do you collect? Minerals? Oh—dear! Mine is lots more interesting. I collect adventures."
"Adventures?" The Man made no slightest effort to conceal his amused curiosity. "Adventures? Now I call that a jolly thing to collect. Is it a good country to work in? And what have you found?"
The Girl smiled at him appreciatively—a little flitting, whimsical sort of smile, and commenced to rummage in the blouse of her white shirt-waist, from which she finally produced a small, red-covered notebook. She fluttered its diminutive pages for a second, and then began to laugh:
"You'd better sit down if you really want to hear what I've found."
The Man dropped comfortably into place beside the spring and watched her. She was very watchable. Some people have to be beautiful to rivet your attention. Some people don't have to be. It's all a matter of temperament. Her hair was very, very brown, though, and her eyes were deep and wide and hazel, and the red in her cheeks came and went with every throb of her heart.
"Of course," she explained apologetically, "of course I have n't found a lot of things yet—I've only been working at it a little while. But I've collected a 'Runaway Accident with the Rural Free-Delivery Man.' It was awfully scary and interesting. And I've collected a 'Den of Little Foxes Down in the Woods Back of My House,' and 'Two Sunrises with a Crazy Woman who Thinks that the Sun Can't Get Up Until She Does,' and I've collected a 'Country Camp-Meeting all Hallelujahs and By Goshes,' and a 'Circus Where I Spent All Day with the Snake-Charmer,' and a 'Midnight Ride Alone through the Rosedale Woods in a Thunder-Storm.' Of course, as I say, I have n't found a lot of things yet, but then it's only the middle of June and I have two more weeks vacation yet."
The Man put back his head and laughed, but it was a pleasant sort of laugh that flooded all the stern lines in his face.
"I'm sure I never thought of making a regular business of collecting adventures," he admitted, "but it certainly is a splendid idea. But are n't you ever afraid?" he asked. "Aren't you ever afraid, for instance, riding round on a lonesome trip like this?"
The Girl laughed. "Yes," she acknowledged, "I'm often afraid of—squirrels—and falling twigs—and black-looking stumps. I'm often afraid of toy noises and toy fears—but I never saw a real fear in all my life. Even when you jumped up in the Road I was n't afraid of you—because you are a gentleman—and—gentlemen are my friends."
"Have you many friends?" asked the Man. The question seemed amusingly justifiable. "You look to me about eighteen. Girls of your age are usually too busy collecting Love to collect anything else—even ideas. Have you collected any Love?"
The Girl threw out her hands in joking protest. "Collected any Love? Why, I don't even know what Love looks like! Maybe what I d collect would be—poison ivy." Her eyes narrowed a little. Her voice quivered the merest trifle. There's a Boy at Home—who talks—a little—about it. But how can I tell that it's Love?"
Her sudden vehemency startled him. "Where is Home?" he asked.
For immediate answer the Girl slipped down from the White Pony's back, and loosened the saddle creakingly before she helped herself to a long, dripping draught from the birch cup that hung just over the spring.
"You're nice to talk to," she acknowledged, "and almost no one is nice to talk to. It's a whole year since I've talked right out to any one! Where do I live? Well, my headquarters are in New York, but my heartquarters are over at Rosedale. There's quite a difference, you know!"
"Yes," said the Man, "I remember—there used to—be—quite a difference. But how did you ever happen to think of collecting adventures?"
The girl pulled at the White Pony's mane for a long, hesitating moment, then she turned and looked searchingly into the Man's face. She very evidently liked what she saw.
"I collect adventures because I am lonesome!" Her voice shook a little, but her eyes were frankly untroubled. "I collect adventures because the life that interests me does n't happen to come to me, and I have to go out and search for it!—I'm companion all the year to a woman who does n't know right from wrong in any dear, big sense, but who could define propriety and impropriety to you till your ears split. And all her friends are just like her. They have n't any mental muscle to them. It's just dress and etiquette, dress and etiquette, dress and etiquette! So I have to live all alone in my head, and think and think and think, till my poor brain churns and overlaps like a surf without any shore. Do you know what I mean? Then when my June vacation comes, I run right off to Rosedale and collect all the adventures I possi bly can to take back with me for the long dreary year. Things to think about, you know, when I have to sit up at night giving medicine, or when I have to mend heavy black silk clothes, or when the dinners are so long that I could scream over the extra delay of a salad course. So I make June a sort of pranky, fancy-dress party for my soul. Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes, I know what you mean," said the Man. "I know just what you mean. You mean you're eighteen. That's the whole of it. You mean that there's no fence to your pasture, no bottom to your cup, no crust to your bread. You mean that you can't sleep at night for the pounding of your heart. You mean most of all that there's no limit to your vision. You're inordinately keen after life. That's all. You'll get over it!"
"I won't get over it!" There was fire in the Girl's eyes and she drew her breath sharply. "I say I won't get over it! There's nothing on earth that could stale me! If I live to be a hundred I sha n't wither!—why, how could I?"
Buoyant, blooming, aquiver with startled emo tions, she threw out her hands with a passionate gesture of protest.
The Man shook his shoulders and jumped up. "Perhaps you're right," he muttered. "Perhaps you are the kind that won't ever grow old. If you are—Heaven help you! Youth's nothing but a wound, anyway. Do you want to be a wound that never heals?" He laughed stridently.
Then the Girl began to fumble through sudden tears at the buckles of her saddle. Her growing hunger and faintness and the heat of the day were telling on her.
"You must think me a crazy fool," she confessed, "the way I have plunged into personalities. Why, I could go a whole year with an alien running-mate and never breathe a word or a sigh about myself, but with some people—the second you see them you know they are part of your chord. Chord is the only term in music that I understand, and I understand derstand that as though I had made the word myself." She tried to laugh. "Now I'm going home! I've had a good time. You seem almost like a friend. I've never had a talky friend."
And she was in her saddle and half-way down the wood-path before his mind quickened to cry out "Stop! Wait a minute!"
A little out of breath he caught up with her, and stood for a moment like an embarrassed schoolboy, though his face in the sunlight was as old as young forty.
"I'm afraid you have n't had much of an adventure this morning," he volunteered whimsically. "If you really want an adventure why don't you come back to the house and have dinner with my brother and me? There's no one else there. Think how it would tease my brother! You're twelve or fifteen miles from home, and it's already two o'clock and very hot. My brother has done some pictures that are going to be talked about next winter, and I—I've got rather a conspicuous position ahead of me in Washington. Would n't it amuse you a little bit afterward, if any one spoke of us, to remember our little farmhouse dinner to day?—Would you be afraid to come?" His last question was very direct.
A look came into the Girl's eyes that was very good for a man to see.
"Why, of course I would n't be afraid to come," she said. "Gentlemen are my friends."
But she was shy about going, just the same, with a certain frank, boyish shyness that only served to emphasize the general artlessness of her verve.
With a quick dive into the bushes the Man collared the Bossy and transferred his clanking chain to the bit of the astonished White Pony.
"Now you've got to come," he laughed up at her, and the whole party started back for the tiny old gray farmhouse where the Artist greeted them with sad concern.
"I've brought Miss Girl back to have dinner with us," announced the Pony-leader cheerfully, relying on his brother's serious nature to overlook any strangeness of nomenclature. "You evidently did n't remember meeting her at Mrs. Moyne's house-party last spring?"
The Girl fell readily into the game. She turned the White Pony loose in the dooryard, and then went into the queer old kitchen, rolled up her sleeves, wound herself round with a blue-checked apron, and commenced to work. She had a deft touch at household matters, and the Man followed her about as humbly as though he himself had not been adequately providing meals for the past two months.
The color rose high in the Girl's cheeks, and her voice took on the thrill and breathiness of amused excitement. Wherever she found a huddle of best china or linen or silver she raided it for her use, and the table flared forth at last with a dainty, inconsequent prettiness that quite defied the Artist's prescribed rules for beauty.
It was a funny dinner, with an endless amount of significant bantering going on right under the Artist's sunburned nose. Yet for all the mirth of the situation, the Girl had quite a chance to study the face of her special host, in all its full detail of worldliness, of spirituality, of hardness, of sweetness. Her final impression, as her first one, was of a wonderful affinity and congeniality. "His face is like a harbor for all my stormy thoughts," was the way she described it to herself.
After dinner the three washed up the dishes as sedately as though they had been working together day-in, day-out through the whole season, and after that the Artist escaped as quickly as possible to catch a cloud effect which he seemed to consider preposterously vital.
Then with a dreary little feeling of a prize-pleasure all spent and gone, the Girl went over to the mirror in the sitting-room and pinned on her gray slouch hat and patted her hair and straightened her belt.
But it was not her own reflection that interested her most. The mirror made a fine frame for the whole quaint room, with its dingy landscape wall paper from which the scarlet petticoat of a shep herdess or the vivid green of a garland stood out with cheerful crudity. The battered, blackened fireplace was lurid here and there with gleams of copper kettles, and a huge gray cat purred comfortably in the curving seat of a sun-baked rocking-chair.
It was a good picture to take home in your mind for remembrance, when walls should be brick and rooms ornate and life hackneyed, and the Girl shut her eyes for a second, experimentally, to fix the vision in her consciousness.
When she opened her eyes again the Man was struggling through the doorway dragging a small, heavy trunk.
"Oh, don't go yet!" he exclaimed. "Here are a lot of your things in this trunk. I brought them in to show you."
And he dragged the trunk to the middle of the room and knelt down on the floor and commenced to unlock it.
"My things?" cried the Girl in amazement, and ran across the room and sat down on the floor beside him. "My things?"
There was a funny little twist to the Man's mouth that never relaxed all the time he was tinkering with the lock. "Yes—your things," was all he said till the catch yielded finally, and he raised the cover to display the full contents to his companion's curious eyes.
"Oh—books!" she cried out, with a sudden, sweeping flush of comprehension, and darted her hand into the dusty pile and pulled out a well-worn copy of the Rubaiyat. Instinctively she clasped it to her.
"I thought so!" said the Youngish Man quizzically. "I thought that was one of your books.
"When Time lets slip a little, perfect hour,
Oh, take it—for it will not come again."
His eyes narrowed, and his hands reached nerv ously to regain possession of the volume. Then he laughed.
"I, also, used to think that Life was made for me," he scoffed teasingly. "It's a glorious idea as long as it lasts! You take every harsh old happening and every flimsy friendship and line it with your own silk, and then sit by and say, 'Oh, is n't the World a rustly, shimmery, luxurious place! And all the time the happening is harsh, and the friendship is flimsy, and it's just your own perishable silk lining that does the rustle and the shimmer and the luxury act. Oh, I suppose that's 
Instinctively she clasped it to her
'woman talk' about silk linings, but I know a thing or two, even if I am a man."
But the radiancy of the Girl's face defied his cynicism utterly. Her eyes were absolutely fathom less with Youth.
Then his mood changed suddenly. He reached out with a little brooding gesture of protection. "These are my college books," he confided, "my Dream Library. I've scarcely thought of them for a dozen years. I don't meet many dreamers nowadays. You've probably got a lot of newer books than these, but I'll wager you anything in the world that every book here is a precious friend to you. I should n't wonder if your own copies opened exactly to the same places. Here's young Keats with his shadowing tragedy. How you have mooned over it. And here's Tennyson. What about the starlit vision:
"And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,—"
The Girl took up the words softly in unison:
"And far across the hills they went
To that new world which is the old."
In rushing, eager tenderness she browsed through one book after another, sometimes silently, some times with a little crooning quotation, where corners were turned down. And when she had quite finished, her eyes were like stars, and she looked up tremulously, and whispered:
"Why, we—like—just—the—same—things."
But the Youngish Man did not smile back at her. His face in that second turned suddenly old-looking and haggard and gray. He threw the books back into their places, and slammed the trunk-cover with a bang.
For just the infinitesimal fraction of a second the Man and the Girl looked into each other's eyes. For just that infinitesimal fraction of a second the Man's eyes were as unfathomable as the Girl's.
Then with a great sniff and scratching and whine, the White Bulldog pushed his way into the room, and the Girl jumped up in alarm to note that the sun was dropping very low in the west, and that the shadows of late afternoon crept palpably over her companion's face.
For a moment the two stood awkwardly with out a word, and then the Girl with a conscious effort at lightness queried:
"But where did the Runaway Road go to? I must find out."
The Youngish Man turned as though something had startled him.
"Wouldn't you rather leave things just as they are?" he asked.
"NO!" The Girl stamped her foot vehemently. "NO! I want everything. I want the whole adventure."
"The whole adventure?" The Youngish Man winced at the phrase, and then laughed to cover his seriousness.
"All right," he acquiesced. "I'll show you just where the Runaway Road goes to."
Without further explanation he stepped to the dooryard and scooped up two heaping handfuls of gravel from the Road. As he came back into the room he trailed a little line of earth across the floor to the foot of the stairs, and threw the re maining handful up the steps just as a heedless child might have done.
"Go follow your Runaway Road," he smiled, "and see where it leads to, if you are so eager! I'm going down to the woods to see if my brother is quite lost in his clouds."
Was n't that another dare? It seemed a craven thing to tease for a climax and then shirk it. She had never shirked anything yet that was right, no matter how unusual it was.
She started for the stairs. One step, two steps. three steps, four steps—her riding-boots grated on the gravel. "Oh, you funny Runaway Road," she trembled, "where do you go to?"
At the top stairs a tiny waft of earth turned her definitely into the first doorway.
She took one step across the threshold, and then stood stock-still and stared. It was a woman's room. And from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall flaunted an incongruous, moneyed effort to blot out all temperament and pang and trenchant life-history from one spot at least of the little old gray farmhouse. Bauble was there, and fashion and novelty, but the whole gay decoration looked and felt like the sumptuous dressing of a child whom one hated.
With a gasp of surprise the Girl went over and looked at herself in the mirror.
"Would n't I look queer in a room like this?" she whispered to herself. But she did n't look queer at all. She only felt queer, like a flatted note.
Then she hurried right down the stairs again, and went out in the yard, and caught the White Pony, and climbed up into her saddle.
The Youngish Man came running to say goodby.
"Well?" he said.
The Girl's eyes were steady as her hand. If her heart fluttered there was no sign of it.
"Why, it was a woman's room," she answered to his inflection.
"Yes," said the Youngish Man quite simply. "It is my wife's room. My wife is in Europe get ting her winter clothes. All people do not happen—to—like—the—same—things."
The Girl put out her hand to him with bright-faced friendliness.
"In Europe?" she repeated. "Indeed, I shall not be so local when I think of her. Wherever she is—all the time—I shall always think of your wife as being—most of anything else—in luck."
She drew back her hand and chirruped to the White Pony, but the Youngish Man detained her.
"Wait a second," he begged. "Here's a copy of Matthew Arnold for you to take home as a token, though there's only one thing in it for us, and you won't care for that until you are forty. You can play it's about the mountains that you pass going home. Here it is:
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
THESE demand not that the things about them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy."
"Rather cracked-ice comfort, is n't it?" the Girl laughed as she tucked the little book into her blouse.
"Rather," said the Youngish Man, "but cracked ice is good for fevers, and Youth is the most raging fever that I know about."
Then he stood back from the White Pony, and smiled quizzically, and the Girl turned the White Pony's head, and started down the Road.
Just before the first curve in the alders, she whirled in her saddle and looked back. The Youngish Man was still standing there watching her, and she held up her hand as a final signal. Then the Road curved her out of sight.
It was chilly now in the gloaming shade of the woods, and home seemed a long way off. After a mile or two the White Pony dragged as though his feet were sore, and when she tried to force him into a jarring canter the sharp corners of the Matthew Arnold book goaded cruelly against her breast.
"It is n't going to be a very pleasant ride," she said. "But it was quite an adventure. I don't know whether to call it the 'Adventure of the Runaway Road' or the 'Adventure of the Little Perfect Hour.'"
Then she shivered a little and tried to keep the White Pony in the rapidly fading sun spots of the Road, but the shadows grew thicker and cracklier and more lonesome every minute, and the only familiar sound of life to be heard was 'way off in the distance, where some little lost bossy was call ing plaintively for its mother.
There were plenty of unfamiliar sounds, though. Things—nothing special, but just Things—sighed mournfully from behind a looming boulder. Something dark, with gleaming eyes, scudded madly through the woods. A ghastly, mawkish chill like tomb-air blew dankly from the swamp. Myriads of tiny insects droned venomously. The White Pony shied at a flash of heat lightning, and stumbled bunglingly on a rolling stone. Worst of all, far behind her, sounded the unmistakable tag ging step of some stealthy creature.
For the first time in her life the girl was frightened—hideously, sickeningly frightened of Night!
Back in the open clearing round the tiny farm house, the light, of course, still lingered in a lulling yellow-gray. It would be an hour yet, she reasoned, before the great, black loneliness settled there. She could picture the little, simple, homely, companionable activities of early evening the sputter of a candle, the good smell of a pipe, the steamy murmur of a boiling kettle. O—h! But could one go back wildly and say: "It is darker and cracklier than I supposed in the woods, and I am a wilful Girl, and there are fifteen wilful miles between me and home—and there is a cemetery on the way, and a new grave—and a squalid camp of gypsies—and a broken bridge—and I am afraid! What shall I do?"
She laughed aloud at the absurdity, and cut at the White Pony sharply with her whip. It would be lighter, she thought, on the open village road below the hill.
Love? Amusement? Sympathy? She shook her young fist defiantly at the hulking contour of a stolid, bored old mountain that loomed up through a gap in the trees. "Drat Self-sufficiency," she cursed, with a vehement little-girl curse. "I won't be a bored old Mountain. I won't! I won't! I won't!"
All her short, eager life, it seemed, she had been floundering like a stranger in a strange land—no father or mother, no chum, no friend, no lover, no anything—and now just for a flash, just for one "little, perfect hour" she had found a voice at last that spoke her own language, and the voice belonged to a Man who belonged to another woman!
She remembered her morning's singing with a bitter pang. "Nothing is mine forever. Nothing, nothing, NOTHING!" she sobbed.
A great, black, smothering isolation like a pall settled down over her, and seemed to pin itself with a stab through her heart. Everybody, once in his time, has tried to imagine his Dearest-one absolutely nonexistent, unborn, and tortured himself with the possibility of such a ghostly vacuum in his life. To the Girl suddenly it seemed as though puzzled, lonely, unmated, all her short years, she had stumbled now precipitously on the Great Cause Of It—a vacuum. It was not that she had lost any one, or missed any one. It was simply that some one had never been born!
The thought filled her with a whimsical new terror. She pounded the White Pony into a gallop and covered the last half-mile of the Runaway Road. At the crest of the hill the valley vista brightened palely and the White Pony gave a whimper of awakened home instinct. Cautiously, warily, with legs folding like a jack-knife he began the hazardous descent.
Was he sleepy? Was he clumsy? Was he foot sore? Just before the Runaway Road smoothed out into the village highway his knees wilted suddenly under him, and he pitched headlong with a hideous lurch that sent the Girl hurtling over his neck into a pitiful, cluttered heap among the dust and stones, where he came back after his first panicky run, and blew over her with dilated nostrils, and whimpered a little before he strayed off to a clover patch on the highway below.
Twilight deepened to darkness. Darkness quickened at last to stars. It was Night, real Night, black alike in meadow, wood, and dooryard, before the Girl opened her eyes again. Part of an orange moon, waning, wasted, decadent, glowed dully in the sky.
For a long time, stark-still and numb, she lay staring up into space, conscious of nothing except consciousness. It was a floaty sort of feeling. Was she dead? That was the first thought that twittered in her brain. Gradually, though, the reassuring edges of her cheeks loomed into sight, and a beautiful, real pain racked along her spine and through her side. It was the pain that whetted her curiosity. "If it's my neck that's broken," she reasoned, "it's all over. If it's my heart it's only just begun."
Then she wriggled one hand very cautiously, and a White Doggish Something came over and licked her fingers. It felt very kind and refreshing.
Now and then on the road below, a carriage rattled by, or one voice called to another. She didn't exactly care that no one noticed her, or rescued her—indeed, she was perfectly, sluggishly comfortable—but she remembered with alarming distinctness that once, on a scorching city pavement, she had gone right by a bruised purple pansy that lay wilting underfoot. She could remember just how it looked. It had a funny little face, purple and yellow, and all twisted with pain. And she had gone right by. And she felt very sorry about it now.
She was still thinking about that purple pansy an hour later, when she heard the screeching toot of an automobile, the snort of a horse, and the terrified clatter of hoofs up the hill. Then the White Doggish Something leaped up and barked a sharp, fluttery bark like a signal.
The next thing she knew, pleasant voices and a lantern were coming toward her. "They will be frightened," she thought, "to find a body in the Road." So, "Coo-o! Coo-o!" she cried in a faint little voice.
Then quickly a bright light poured into her face, and she swallowed very hard with her eyes for a whole minute before she could see that two men were bending over her. One of the men was just a man, but the other one was the Boy From Home. As soon as she saw him she began to cry very softly to herself, and the Boy From Home took her right up in his great, strong arms and carried her down to the cushioned comfort of the automobile.
"Where—did—you—come—from?" she whispered smotheringly into his shoulder.
The harried, boyish face broke brightly into a smile.
"I came from Rosedale to-night, to find you!" he said. "But they sent me up here on business to survey a new Road."
"To survey a new Road?" she gasped. "That's—good. All the Roads that I know—go—to—Other People's Homes."
Her head began to droop limply to one side. She felt her senses reeling away from her again. "If—I—loved—you," she hurried to ask, "would—you—make—me—a—safe Road—all my own?"
The Boy From Home gave a scathing glance at the hill that reared like a crag out of the darkness.
"If I could n't make a safer Road than that—" he began, then stopped abruptly, with a sudden flash of illumination, and brushed his trembling lips across her hair.
"I'll make you the safest, smoothest Road that ever happened," he said, "if I have to dig it with my fingers and gnaw it with my teeth."
A little, snuggling sigh of contentment slipped from the Girl's lips.
"Do—you—suppose," she whispered, "do—you—suppose—that—after—all—this—was—the real—end—of—the Runaway Road?"