AGRIPPING wave of nausea recalled Anthony to consciousness; a deathly sickness spreading from the pit of his stomach through his entire being; his prostrate head, seeming stripped of its skull, was tortured by the dragging fronds of the ferns among which he lay. He sat up dizzily. Through the leafy opening the fleeting forms of the clouds shifted over the sunny hills. The stream slipped silently through the grass. He staggered down the slight incline, and, falling forward upon the ground, let the water flow over his throbbing head. The cool shock revived him, and he washed away a dark, clotted film from his forehead and cheek.
His wallet, with his ticket to California and store of money were gone. He started in instant, unsteady pursuit of the man who had struck him down and robbed him. But, at the edge of the wood he paused—how long had he lain among the ferns? the sun was now high over his head, the morning lapsed, the other might have had three, four hours' start. He might now be entrained, bound for California, searching for Alfred Lukes. A sudden weakness forced him to sit at the roadside; he lost consciousness again for a moment. Then, summoning his youth, his vitality, he rose, and walked unsteadily in search of assistance.
He had proceeded an intolerable mile, wiping away a thin trickle of blood that persisted in crawling into his eye, when he saw a low roof amid a tangle of greenery. He stopped with a sobbing breath of relief. He was delirious, he thought, for peering at him through the leaves he saw the countenance and beautiful, bare body of a child, as dark and tense as bronze. A cloud of black hair overhung a face vivid as a flower; her crimson lips trembled; then, with a startled cry, the figure vanished.
He made his way with difficulty over a short path, overgrown with vines and twisted branches, and came abruptly upon a low, white house and wide, opened door. An aged and shapeless woman sat on a chair without a back, cutting green beans into a bright tin basin. When she saw him she dropped the pan with a clatter, and an unfamiliar exclamation of surprise.
“I've been hurt,” Anthony explained; “knocked silly and robbed.”
“Gina!” she called excitedly; “Dio mio!Gina!” A young woman, large and loosely molded, with a lusty baby clasped to her bared breast, appeared in the doorway. When she saw Anthony she dropped the baby into the elder's arms. “Poverino!” she cried; “come in the house, little mister.” She caught him by the arm, almost lifting him over the doorstep into a cool, dark interior. He had a brief glimpse of drying vegetables strung from the ceiling, of a waxen image of the virgin in faded pink silk finery against the wall; then, with closed eyes, he relaxed into the charge of soothing and skilled fingers. His head rested on a maternal arm while a soft bandage was fixed about his forehead.
“Ecco!” she ejaculated, her ministration successful. She led him to a rude couch upon the floor, and gently insisted upon his lying down. He attempted to thank her, but she laid her large, capable hand over his mouth, and he sank into an exhausted, semi-conscious rest. Once she bent over him, dampening the bandage, once he saw, against the light of the door, the shape, slim and beautiful as an angel, of the child. Outside a low, liquid murmur of voices continued without a break, strange and quieting.
He slept, and woke up refreshed, strengthened. The dusk had thickened in the room, the strings of vegetables were lost in the shadows, a dim oil lamp cast a feeble glow on rude walls. He lay motionless for a few, delightful seconds, folded in absolute peace, beneficent quietude. The amazing idea struck him that, perhaps, he had died, and that this was the eternal tranquillity of the hymn books, and he started vigorously to his feet in an absurd panic. The homely figure of a man entering dispelled the illusion—he was a commonplace Italian, one of the multitude who labored in the ditches of the country, stood aside in droves from the tracks as trains whirled past.
“What hit your head?” he asked, his mobile face displaying sympathetic interest, concern.
“A leaded stick,” Anthony explained. “I was knocked out, robbed.”
“Birbanti!” he laid a heavy hand upon Anthony's shoulder. “You feel better now, gia?” The latter, confused by such open attention, shook the hand from its friendly grip. “He was crazy,” he awkwardly explained; “and looking for a man who had killed his son; he wanted to get to California and I told him I had a ticket west.”
The laborer led Anthony to a room where a rude table was spread with homely fare—a great, rough loaf of bread, a deep bowl of steaming, green soup, flakey white cheese, and a bottle of purple wine. An open door faced the western sky, and the room was filled with the warm afterglow; it hung like a shining veil over the man, the still, maternal countenance of the woman, like an aureole about the baby now sleeping against her breast, and graced the russet countenance of an aged peasant. The child that Anthony had seen first, now in a scant white slip, seemed dipped in the gold of dreams.
As he consumed the savory soup, the creamy cheese and wine, the scene impressed him as strangely significant, familiar. He dismissed an idle effort of memory in order to consider the unfortunate aspect assumed by his immediate affairs. Concerning one thing he was determined—he would ask his father to assist him no further toward his western destination. He must himself pay for the initial error, together with all its consequences, of having followed Hartmann: California was his object, he would not write to Ellerton until his westward progress was once more assured.
Two courses were open to him—he could “beat” his way, getting meals when and how he was able, riding, when possible, on freight cars, doing casual jobs on the way. That he dismissed in favor of a second, which in the end, he judged, would prove more speedy. He would make his way to the nearest city, find employment in a public or private garage as chauffeur or mechanic, and, in a month at most, have the money necessary for the continuation of his journey.
The household conversed vigorously in their native idiom, giving his thoughts full freedom. The glow in the west faded, sank from the room, but, suddenly, he recognized the familiar quality of his surroundings. It resembled a picture of the Holy Family on the wall of his mother's room; the bare interior was the same, the rugged features of Joseph the carpenter, the brooding beauty of Mary. He almost laughed aloud at the absurd comparison of the exalted scene of Christ's infancy with this commonplace but kindly group, the laborer with soiled and callous hands and winestained mouth, the material young woman with the string of cheap blue beads.
The meal at an end the chairs were pushed back and the old woman noisily assembled the dishes. Anthony's head throbbed and burned. In passing, the mother's fingers rested upon his brow. “Not too hot,” she nodded contentedly.
A consultation followed. Anthony might remain there for the night; or, if he insisted, he might drive into the city with “Nono,” who left in a few hours with a wagonload of greens for the morning market. He chose the latter, with a clumsy expression of gratitude, impatient to resume active efforts in his rehabilitation in his own mind.
“Niente!” they disclaimed in chorus.
HE fell into an instant slumber on the hospitable heap in the corner, and was awakened while it was still dark. In the flicker of the oil lamp the old man's face swam vaguely against the night. Without the wagon was loaded, a drooping horse insecurely harnessed into patched shafts. The world was a still space of blue gloom, of indefinite forms suspended in the hush of color, sound; it seemed to be spun out of shadows like cobwebs, out of vapors, scents. A pale, hectic glow on the horizon marked the city. They ambled noiselessly, slowly, forward, under the vague foliage of trees. There was a glint of light in a passing window, the clatter of milk pails; a rooster crowed, thin and clear and triumphant; on a grassy slope by the road they saw a smoldering fire, recumbent forms.
They entered the soiled and ragged outskirts of the city—isolated ranks of hideous, boxlike dwellings amid raw stretches of clay, rank undergrowth. The horse's hoofs rang on a bricked pave, and the city surged about them. Overhead the elevated tracks made a confused, black tracing rippling with the red and white and green fire of signals. A gigantic truck, drawn by plunging horses whose armored hoofs were ringed in pale flame, passed with a shattering uproar of its metallic load. A train thundered above with a dolorous wail, showering a lurid trail of sparks into the sky, out of which a thick soot sifted down upon the streets. On either hand the blank walls of warehouses shut in the pavements deserted save for a woman's occasional, chalky countenance in the frosty area of the arc lights, or a drunkard lurching laboriously over the gutters. The feverish alarm of firebells sounded from a distant quarter. A heavy odor of stagnant oil, the fetid smoke of flaring chimneys, settled over Anthony, and gratefully he recalled the pastoral peace of the house he had left—the house hidden in its tangled verdure amid the scented space of the countryside.
They stopped finally before a shed open upon the street, where bluish-orange flames, magnified by tin reflectors, illuminated busy groups. Silvery fish with exposed carmine entrails were ranged in rows; the crisp, green spoil of the countryside was spread in the stalls—the silken stalks of early onions, the creamy pink of carrots, wine-red beets; rosy potatoes were heaped by cool, crusty cantaloupe, the vert pods of peas, silvery spinach and waxy, purple eggplant. Over all hung the delicate aroma of crushed mint, the faint, sweet tang of scarlet strawberries, the spicy fragrance of simple flowers—of cinnamon pinks and heliotrope and clover.
Anthony assisted the other to transfer his load to part of a stall presided over by a woman with bare, powerful elbows, shouting in a boisterous voice in perfect equality with her masculine neighbors.
High above the dawn flushed the sky; the flares dimmed from a source of light to mere colored fans, and were extinguished. Early buyers arrived at the market with baskets and pushcarts.
Anthony remained at the old man's side; it was too early to start in search of work; and, at his companion's invitation, he shared the latter's breakfast of cheese and bread, with a stoup of the bitter wine. As the market became crowded, in the stress of competition, bargaining, the vendor forgot Anthony's presence; and with a deep breath of determination, he started in search of employment; he again faced the West.
He had no difficulty in discovering the section of the city given over to the automobile industry, a broad, asphalt way with glittering show windows, serried ranks of cars, by either curb. There was, however, no work to be obtained here; a single offer would scarcely pay for his maintenance; in its potentialities California was the merest blur upon the future. Then for a second and more lucrative position he lacked the necessary papers. Midday found him without a prospect of employment. He had almost two dollars in change that had remained intact; and, lunching sparingly, he continued his inquiries.
It was late when he found himself before a sign that proclaimed the ability within to secure positions for competent chauffeurs. And, influenced largely by the chairs which he saw ranged against the wall, he entered and registered. The fee for registration was a dollar, and that left him with scant supplies as he took a place between three other men awaiting skeptically the positions which they had been assured they might confidently expect. With a casual nod to Anthony, a small man with watery blue eyes, clad in a worn and greasy livery, continued a dissertation on methods of making money additional to that of mere salary, of agreements with tiremen, repairs necessary and otherwise, the proper manner in which to bring a car's life quickly and gracefully to a close, in order, he added slyly to the indifferent clerk, to encourage the trade.
The afternoon wasted slowly but surely to a close; no one entered and the three rose with weary oaths and left in search of a convenient saloon. They waved to Anthony to follow them, but he silently declined.
A profound depression settled over him, a sense of impotence, of failure. His wounded head fretted him with frequent hot pains. He was enveloped by a sense of desolating loneliness which he endeavored to dispel with the thought of Eliza; but she remained as far, as faintly sweet, as the moon of a spring night. It seemed incredible that she had once been in his arms; surely he had dreamed her voice—such voices couldn't exist in reality—telling him that she loved him. Her letter had gone with his wallet, his ticket to California. He had not written her... she would be unable to penetrate the reason for his silence, his shame for blundering into such a blind way, his lack of anything reassuring to tell her. He could not write until his feet were once more firmly planted upon the only path that led to success, to happiness, to her.
THE clock on the wall above the clerk's head indicated half past five, and Anthony, relinquishing hope for the day, rose. Now he regretted the apparently fruitless expenditure of a dollar. “Leave an address?” the clerk inquired mechanically. “Office open at nine.”
“I'll be back,” Anthony told him. He turned, and collided with a man entering suddenly from the street. He was past middle age, with a long, pallid countenance, drooping snuff-colored mustache, a preoccupied gaze behind bluish glasses, and was clad in correct brown linen, but wore an incongruously battered and worn soft hat.
“I want a man to drive my car,” he announced abruptly. “I don't particularly care for a highly expert individual, but his habits—” he broke off, and muttered, “superficial adjustment to environment—popular conception of acquired characteristics.” Then, “must be moderate,” he ended unexpectedly.
Anthony lingered, while the clerk assured the other that several highly desirable individuals were available. “In fact,” he told him, “one left the office only a few minutes ago; I will have him call upon you in the morning.”
“What's this?” he replied, indicating Anthony; “is he a chauffeur?” The clerk nodded. “But,” he added, “the man I refer to is older, more experienced... sure to satisfy you.”
“What references have you?” the prospective employer demanded.
“None,” Anthony answered directly. The clerk dismissed his chances with a gesture.
“What experience?” the other persisted. “Driving on and off for four or five years, and I am a fair mechanic.”
“Fair only?”
“That's all, sir.”
The older man drew nearer to Anthony, scrutinizing him with a kindly severity. “What's the matter with your head?” he demanded.
“I was knocked down and robbed on a country road.”
“Lose much?”
“Everything.”
“Drinking?”
“No, sir.”
“Familiar with prehistoric geological strata?” Anthony admitted that he was not.
“I had hoped,” the other murmured, “to get a driver who could assist me with my indices.” He renewed his close inspection, then, “Elemental,” he pronounced suddenly; “I'll take you.”
“Five dollars, please,” interpolated the clerk. Outside his new employer took Anthony by the shoulder, glancing over his suit. “You can get your things, and then go out to my house.”
“I can go sooner than that,” Anthony corrected him. “I have no things.”
“Nothing but those clothes! Why... they will hardly do, will they? You must get something, take it out of your salary. But, hang it, a man must have a change of clothes! You must allow me—you are only a boy. I'll come along; no—impossible.” He took a long wallet from his pocket and placed it in Anthony's hands. “I don't know what such things cost,” he said. “I think there's enough; get what you need. I must be off... Mousterian deposits. Customs House.” Before Anthony could reply he had started away in a long, quick stride, but he stopped short. “My address,” he cried, “clean forgot.” He gave Anthony a street and number.
“Rufus Hardinge,” he called, hurrying away.
Anthony stood gazing in incredulous surprise at the polished, brown wallet in his hand. He turned to hurry after the other, to protest, but already he was out of sight. Anthony slipped the wallet in his pocket, and, his head in a whirl, walked slowly over the street until he found himself opposite a large retail clothing establishment. After a brief hesitation he entered, pausing to glance hastily at his resources. In the leather pocket which contained the paper money he saw a comfortable number of crisp yellow bills; the rest of the space was taken up by bulky and wholly unintelligible notes.
He purchased a serviceable suit, stout shoes, a cap, and, after a short consideration, two flannel shirts. If this were not satisfactory, he concluded, he could pay with a portion of his salary. The slip of the total amount, which he carefully folded, registered thirty-one dollars and seventy cents.
At a small tobacco shop, where he drew upon his own rapidly diminishing capital, he discovered from the proprietor that it would be necessary to take a suburban car to the address furnished him. He rolled rapidly between rows of small, identical, orderly brick dwellings; on each shallow portico a door exhibited an obviously meretricious graining; dingy or garish curtains draped the single lower windows; the tin eaves were continuous, unvaried, monotonous. Occasionally a greengrocer's display broke the monotony of the vitreous way, a rare saloon or drugstore held the corners. Farther on the street suffered a decline, the line of dwellings was broken by patches of bedraggled gardens, set with the broken fragments of stone ornaments; small frame structures, streaked by the weather and blistered remnants of paint, alternated with stables, stores heaped with the sorry miscellanies of meager, disrupted households. Imperceptibly green spaces opened, foliage fluttered in the orange light of the declining sun; through an opening in the habited wall he caught sight of a glimmering stream, cows wandering against a hill.
He left the car finally at a lane where the houses, set back solidly in smooth, opulent lawns, were somberly comfortable, reserved. The place he sought, a four-square ugly dwelling faced with a tower, the woodwork painted mustard yellow, was surrounded by gigantic tulip poplars. At the front a cement basin caught the spray from a cornucopia held aloft by sportive cherubs balanced precariously on the tails of reversed dolphins, circled by a tan-bark path to the entrance and a broad side porch. He was about to ring the bell when a high, young voice summoned him to the latter. There he discovered a girl with a mass of coppery hair, loosely tied and streaming over her shoulder, in a coffee-colored wicker chair. She was dressed in white, without ornaments, and wore pale yellow silk stockings. A yellow paper book, with a title in French, was spread upon her lap; and, gravely sitting at her side, was a large terrier with a shaggy yellow coat.
“I suppose,” she said without preliminary, “that you are the person who took father's money. It was really unexpected of you to appear withanyof it. Give me the wallet,” she demanded, without allowing him opportunity for a reply.
He gave it to her without comment, a humorous light rising in his clear gaze. “I warn you,” she continued, “I know every penny that was in it. I always give him a fixed amount when he goes out.” She emptied the money into her lap, and counted it industriously: at the end she wrinkled her brow.
“Here is a note of what I spent,” he informed her, tendering her the slip from the store. She scanned it closely. “That's not unreasonable,” she admitted finally, palpably disappointed that no villainous discrepancy had been revealed; “and it adds up all right.” Then, with an assumption of business despatch, “It must come out of your salary, of course; father is frightfully impractical.”
“Of course,” he assented solemnly.
“Your references—”
“I haven't any.”
She made an impatient gesture of dismay; the terrier rose and surveyed him with a low growl. “He promised me that he would do the thing properly, that I positively need not go. What experience have you had?”
He told her briefly.
“Dreadfully unsatisfactory,” she commented, “and you are oceans too young. But... we will try you for one week; I can't promise any more. Would you be willing to help a little in the house—opening boxes, unwrapping bones—?”
“Certainly,” he assured her cheerfully, “any little thing I can do....”
“The car's at the bottom of the garden, it has to be brought around by the side street. There's a room overhead, and a bell from the house. You must come up very quickly if, in the night, it rings three times, for that,” she informed him, “will mean burglars. My father and I are quite alone here with two women. I can't think of anything else now.” The terrier moved closer to Anthony, sniffing at his shoes, then raised his golden eyes and subjected him to a lengthy, thoughtful scrutiny. “That is Thomas Huxley,” she informed him; “he is a perfectly wonderful investigator, and detests all sentimentality. You will come up to the kitchen for meals,” she called, as Anthony turned to descend the lawn; “the bell will ring for your dinner.”
HE found the automobile in the semi-gloom of a closed carriage house. On the right, separated by a partition, were three loose stalls, apparently long unoccupied; their ornamental fringe of straw had moldered, and dank, grey heaps of feed lay in the troughs. A ladder fixed vertically against a wall disappeared into cobwebby shadows above; and mounting, Anthony found the room to which he had been directed. It, too, was partitioned from the great, bare space of the hay-loft; the musty smell of old hay and heated wood hung dusty, heavy, about the corners, where sounded the faint squeaks of scattering mice. The space which he was to occupy had been rigorously swept and aired; print curtains hung at the small dormer window that overlooked the lawn, while, above the washstand, was the bell which, he had been warned, would appraise him of the possible presence of burglars above. A bright metal clock ticked noisily on a deal bureau, and, on a table beside a pitcher and glass, two books had been arranged with precise disarray; they proved, upon investigation, to be a volume of the Edib. Rev. LXIX, and a bound collection of the proceedings of the Linean Society.
He saw by the noisy clock that it was nearly seven, and, hastily washing, responded immediately to the summons of the bell. A small, covered porch framed the kitchen door, where he entered to find a long room dimly lit, and a dinner set at the end of a table. A bulky woman with a flushed countenance and massive ankles in white cotton stockings set before him half a broiled chicken, an artichoke with a bowl of yellow sauce, and a silver jug of milk.
“God knows it's a queer meal to put to a hearty young lad,” she observed; “but it's all was ordered. There's not a pitata in the house,” she added in palpable disgust. A younger woman in a frilled apron appeared from within, carrying a tray of used dishes. She had a trim figure, and a broad face glowing with rude vitality, which, with an assumption of disdain, she turned upon Anthony. “I'd never trust myself with him in the machine,” she observed to the older woman, “and him not more than a child.”
“Be holding your impudent clatter,” the other commanded, “you're not required to go out with him at all.”
“Mr. Hardinge says, will you see him in the library when you have done,” the former shot at Anthony over a shapely shoulder. “You can walk through the dining room to where he is beyond.”
The library was a somber chamber: its long windows were draped with stiff folds of green velvet, its walls occupied by high bookcases with leaded glass doors and ornamental Gothic points under the ceiling. A massive desk was piled with papers, pamphlets, printed reports, comparative tables of figures, an hundred and one huddled details; the table beneath a glittering crystal chandelier was hardly better; even the floor was stacked with books about the chair where Anthony found his employer. The latter looked up absently from a printed sheet as Anthony entered.
“Positively,” he pronounced, “there are not enough dominants to secure Mendel's position.” His expression was profoundly disturbed.
“Yes, sir,” Anthony replied non-committally. “The consequences of that,” the other continued, “are beyond prediction.” Silence descended upon him; his fixed gaze seemed to be contemplating some unexpected catastrophe, some grave peril, opened before him in the still chamber. “I am at a temporary loss!” he ejaculated suddenly; “we are all at a loss... unless my experiments in pure descent warrant—” Suddenly he became aware of Anthony's presence. “Oh!” he said pleasantly; “glad you got fixed up. Say nothing more to Annot—it's all nonsense, taking it out of your salary. That's what I wanted to see you for,” he added; “what salary do you require? what did you get at your last place?”
Anthony made a swift calculation of the distance to California, the probable cost of carriage. “I should like seventy-five,” he pronounced finally. His conscience suddenly and uncomfortably awoke in the presence of the other's unquestioning generosity. “Perhaps I'd better tell you that I don't intend to stay here long.... I am anxious to get to California.”
But Rufus Hardinge had already forgotten him. “Seventy-five,” he had murmured, with a satisfied nod, and once more concentrated his attention upon the sheet in his hand. As Anthony returned through the dining room he found Annot Hardinge arranging a spray of scarlet verbena in a glass vase.
“Has father spoken to you about the salary you are to get?” she asked. He paused, cap in hand. “I told him that you were positively not to get above eighty.”
“I told him seventy-five. He seemed contented.”
“He would have been contented if you had said seven hundred and fifty.” Then, to discountenance any criticism of her father's intelligence, she added: “He is a very famous biologist, you know. The people about here don't understand those things, but in London, in Paris, in Berlin, he is easily one of the greatest men alive. He is carrying the Mendelian theory to its absolute, logical conclusion.”
“He said something about that to me,” Anthony commented; “it seemed to upset him.”
A cloud appeared upon her countenance; then, coldly, “That will do,” she told him.
Once more in the informal garage he lit the gas jet on either wall, and, in the bubbling, watery light, found the automobile caked with mud and grease, the tires flat, the wires charred and the cylinders coated with carbon. A pair of old canvas trousers were hanging from a nail, and, donning them and connecting a length of hose to a convenient faucet, he began the task of putting the machine in order. It was past eleven when he finished for the night, and mounting with cramped and stiffened muscles to his room, he fell into immediate slumber.
ON the following morning he wrote a brief, reassuring note to his father; then, over another page, hesitated with poised pen. “Dear Eliza,” he finally began, then once more fell into indecision. “I wish I were back on the Wingo-hocking with you,” he embarked. “That was splendid, having you in the canoe, with no one else; the whole world seemed empty except for you and me. It's no joke of an emptiness without you.
I have been delayed in reaching California, but I'll soon be out there now, working like thunder for our wedding.
“Mostly I can't realize it, it's too good to be true—you seem like a thing I dreamed about, in a dream all full of moonlight and white flowers. It's funny but I smell lilacs, you know like you picked, everywhere. Last night, cleaning a car just soaked in dirt and greasy smells, that perfume came out of nothing, and hung about so real that it hurt me. And all the time I kept thinking that you were standing beside me and smiling. I knew better, but I had to look more than once.
“Love's different from what I thought it would be; I thought it would be all happy, but it's not that, it's blamed serious. I am always flinching from blows that might fall on you, do you see? Before I went away I saw a man kiss a woman, and they both seemed scared; I understand that now—they loved each other.”
He broke off and gazed out the narrow window over the feathery tops of maples, the symmetrical, bronze tops of a clump of pines. The odor of lilacs came to him illusively; he was certain that Eliza was standing at his shoulder; he could hear a silken whisper, feel an intangible thrill of warmth. He turned sharply, and faced the empty room, the bright, stentorious clock, the table with the pitcher and glass and serious volumes. “Hell!” he exclaimed in angry remonstrance at his credulity. Still shaken by the reality of the impression he wondered if he were growing crazy? The bell above the washstand rang sharply, and, putting the incomplete letter in a drawer, he proceeded over the tanbark path that led to the house.
Annot Hardinge beckoned to him from the porch, and, turning, he passed a conservatory built against the side of the dwelling, where he saw small, identical plants ranged in mathematical rows.
“What is your name?” she demanded abruptly, as he stopped before her. “Anthony,” he told her.
She was dressed in apricot muslin, with a long necklace of alternate carved gold and amber beads, dependent amber earrings, and a flapping white hat with broad, yellow ribbands that streamed downward with her hair. In one hand she held a pair of crumpled white gloves and a soft gold mesh bag.
“You may bring around the car... Anthony,” she directed. “I want to go into town.”
In the heart of the shopping district they moved slowly in an unbroken procession of motor landaulets, open cars and private hansoms, a glittering, colorful procession winding through the glittering, colorful cavern of the shop windows. The sidewalks were thronged with women, brilliant in lace and dyed feathers and jewels, the thin, sustained babble of trivial voices mingled with the heavy, coiling odors of costly perfumes.
When a small heap of bundles had been accumulated a rebellious expression clouded An-not Hardinge's countenance. “Stop at that confectioner's,” she directed, indicating a window filled with candies scattered in a creamy tide, bister, pale mauve, and citrine, over fluted, delicately green satin, against a golden mass of molasses bars. She soon emerged, with a package tied in silver cord, and paused upon the curb. “I want to go out... out, into the heart of the country,” she proclaimed; “this crowd, these tinsel women, make me ill. Drive until I tell you to stop... away from everything.”
When they had left the tangle of paved streets, the innumerable stone façades, she directed their course into a ravine whose steep sides were covered with pines, at the bottom of which a stream foamed whitely over rocky ledges. Beyond, they rose to an upland, where open, undulating hills burned in the blue flame of noon; at their back a trail of dust resettled upon the road, before them a glistening flock of peafowl scattered with harsh, threatening cries. By a gnarled apple tree, whose ripening June apples overhung the road, she called, “stop!”
The motor halted in the spicy, dappled shadow of the tree; at one side a cornfield spread its silken, green tapestry; on the other a pasture was empty, close-cropped, rising to a coronal of towering chestnuts. The road, in either direction, was deserted.
Anthony heard a sigh of contentment at his back: relaxed from the tension of driving he removed his cap, and, with crossed legs, contemplated the sylvan quiet. He watched a flock of blackbirds wheeling above the apple tree, and decided that they had been within easy shot.
“Look over your head!” she cried suddenly; “what gorgeous apples.”
He rose, and, measuring the distance in a swift glance, jumped, and caught hold of a limb, by means of which he drew himself up into the tree. He mounted rapidly, filling his cap with crimson apples; when his pockets were full he paused. Down through the screen of leaves he could see her upturned countenance, framed in the broad, white hat; her expression was severely impersonal; yet, viewed from that informal angle, she did not appear displeased. And, when he had descended, she picked critically among the store he offered. She rolled back the gloves upon her wrists, and bit largely, with youthful gusto. On the road, after a moment's hesitation, Anthony embarked upon the consumption of the remainder. He strolled a short distance from the car, and found a seat upon a low stone-wall.
SOON, he saw, she too left the car, and passed him, apparently ignorant of his presence. But, upon her return, she stopped, and indicated with her foot some feathery plants growing in a ditch by the road. “Horsetails,” she declared; “they are Paleozoic... millions of years old.”
“They look fresh and green still,” he observed. She glanced at him coldly, but his expression was entirely serious. “I mean the species of course. Father has fossils of the Devonian period... they were trees then.” She chose a place upon the wall, ten feet or more from him, and sat with insolent self-possession, whistling an inconsequential tune. There was absolutely no pose about her, he decided; she possessed a masculine carelessness in regard to him. She leaned back, propped upon her arms, and the frank, flowing line of her full young body was like the June day in its uncorseted freedom and beauty.
“If you will get that package from the confectioner's—” she suggested finally. She unfolded the paper, and exposed a row of small cakes, which she divided rigorously in two; rewrapping one division she held it out toward him.
“No, no,” he protested seriously. “I'm not hungry.”
“It's past two,” she informed him, “and we can't possibly be back in time for luncheon. I'd rather not hold this out any longer.” He relieved her without further words. “Two brioche and two babas,” she enumerated. He resumed his place, and then consumed the cakes without further speech.
“The study of biology,” she informed him later, with a gravity appropriate to the subject, “makes a great many small distinctions seem absurd. When you get accustomed to thinking in races, and in millions of years, the things your friends fuss about seem absurd. And so, if you like, why, smoke.”
It was his constant plight that, between the formal restrictions of his position, and the vigorous novelty of her speech, Anthony was constantly at a loss. “Perhaps,” he replied inanely; “I know nothing about those things.”
She flashed over him a candid, amber gaze that singularly resembled her father's. “You are not at all acquisitive,” she informed him; “and it's perfectly evident that you are the poorest sort of chauffeur. You drive very nicely,” she continued with severe justice. “One could trust you in a crisis; but it is little things that make a chauffeur, and in the little things,” she paused to indicate a globe of cigarette smoke that instantly dissolved, “you are like—that.”
He moodily acknowledged to himself the truth of her observation, but such acumen he considered entirely unnecessary in one so young; he did not think it becoming. He contrasted her, greatly to her detriment, with the elusive charm of Eliza Dreen; the girl before him was too vivid, too secure; he felt instinctively that she was entirely free from the bonds, the conventions, that held the majority of girls within recognized, convenient limits. Her liberty of mind upset a balance to which both heredity and experience had accustomed him. The entire absence of a tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, and he took refuge in imponderable silence.
“Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood creatures in the classic pastorals.”
A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many unintelligible words he had regained his poise—this was the usual, the familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions; its tone had deceived him only at the beginning.
In the stillness which followed other blackbirds, equally within shot, winged over the apple tree; the shadow of the boughs crept farther and farther down the road. She rose vigorously. “I must get back,” she announced. She remained silent during the return, but Anthony, with the sense of direction cultivated during countless days in the fields and swales, found the way without hesitation.
When she left the car he slowly backed and circled to the carriage house. As he splashed body and wheels with water, polished the metal, dried and dusted the cushions, the crisp, cool voice of Annot Hardinge rang in his ears. He divined something of her isolated existence, her devotion to the absorbed, kindly man who was her father, and speculated upon her matured youth. She recalled his sister Ellie, for whose inflexible integrity he cherished a deep-seated admiration; but both left him cold before the poignant tenderness of Eliza... Eliza, the unforgettable, who loved him.
AFTER an unsubstantial dinner of grilled sweetbreads and mushrooms, and a frozen pudding, he continued his interrupted letter: “But there isn't any use in my trying to write my love in words; it won't go into words, even inside of me I can't explain it—it seems as if instead of its being a part of me that I am a part of it, of something too big for me to see the end of.” Then he became practicable, and wrote optimistically of the things that were soon to be.
There was a letter box at the upper corner of the street, and, passing the porch, he saw the biologist sunk in an attitude of profound dejection. His daughter sat with bare arms and neck at his side; her hair was bound in a gleaming mass about her ears, and one hand was laid upon the man's shoulder, while she patted Thomas Huxley with the other. The dog rose, growling belligerently at the unfamiliar figure, but sank again beneath a sharp command. When he returned Rufus Hardinge greeted him, and turned to his daughter with a murmured suggestion, but she shook her head in decisive negation. A light shone palely in the long windows at their back. The sun, at its skyey, evening toilette, seemed, in the rosy glow of westering candles, to scatter a cloud of powdered gold over the worn and huddled shoulders of the world.
Suddenly, seemingly in reconsideration of her decision, she called, “Oh, Anthony!” and he retraced his steps to the porch. “My father suggests that you sit here,” she told him distantly. “He says that you are very young, and that solitude is not good for you.”
“Annot,” the older man protested humorously, “you have mangled my intent beyond any recognition.” With an unstudied, friendly gesture he tended Anthony his cigar case. A deep preoccupation enveloped him; he sat with loose hands and unseeing eyes. In the deepening twilight his countenance was grey. Anthony had taken a position upon the edge of the porch, his feet in the fragrant grass, out of which fireflies rose glimmering, mounting higher and higher, until, finally, they disappeared into the night above, in the pale birth of the stars.
A deep silence enfolded them until in an unexpected, low voice, Rufus Hardinge repeated mechanically aloud lines called, evidently, out of a memory of long ago:
''Within thy beams, Oh, Sun! or who could find,
While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That too,” he paused, groping in his memory for
the words:
“That too such countless orbs thou madst us
blind.”
The girl rose, and drew his head into her warm, young arms. “Don't, father,” she cried, in a sudden, throbbing apprehension; “please... please. You have the clearest, most beautiful eyes in the world. Think of all they have seen and understood—” He patted her absently. Anthony moved silently away.