Part 14 (1/2)

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 rea.s.suring 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 refres.h.i.+ng.

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 cus.h.i.+oned 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 couldn'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?”

SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER

MONDAY, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it had rained. Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, it had rained and rained and rained and rained and rained, till by Friday night the great blue mountains loomed like a chunk of ruined velvet, and the fog along the valley lay thick and gross as mildewed porridge.

It was a horrid storm. Slop and s.h.i.+ver and rotting leaves were rampant.

Even in Alrik's snug little house the chairs were wetter than moss.

Clothes in the closets hung lank and clammy as undried bathing-suits.

Worst of all, across every mirror lay a breathy, sad gray mist, as though ghosts had been back to whimper there over their lost faces.

It had never been so before in the first week of October.

There were seven of us who used to tryst there together every year in the gorgeous Scotch-plaid Autumn, when the reds and greens and blues and browns and yellows lapped and overlapped like a festive little kilt for the Young Winter, and every crisp, sweet day that dawned was like the taste of cider and the smell of grapes.