Part 6 (1/2)
”Down in the Rathskeller,” he added.
A hot rush of confusion struck her and she made no reply, but he went on:
”I've often wondered what these people were like fifty years ago--living on top of the world, best farm land anywhere, fine old homes, lots of servants--nothing to do but enjoy life. Let it slip away from them, didn't they? Must not have known what they had.” He had relaxed and was driving comfortably. And as though wrapped in a mist of his own musing he continued, his eyes fixed on the road before him, ”I've often thought that if I ever got to the point where I could afford it I would get me one of those old places--lot of land--stock it up well, fix up the house. I'd like to leave something like that to my family.” He chuckled. ”They might not appreciate it as much as I do, however.”
”They might,” she replied. ”They might have just as hard a time trying to keep it as--as we have. Conditions might change again in the next fifty years.”
He turned and smiled at her. ”Hadn't thought of that.” The crow's feet were thick about his eyes. ”Who was the boy?--the one you were with the other night.”
Mary Louise flushed in spite of herself. ”Joe--Joe Hooper. You've heard me speak of him.”
”Oh, yes. Lives in Bloomfield, doesn't he?”
”He did. Works here in town now--out at Bromley's.”
He made no further reply, but somehow she felt an unuttered conviction, on the part of the man there beside her, of Joe's loss of heritage. And yet a certain compunction prevented her from making any explanation--that it was not Joe's fault. There was a sort of sacred inviolability about it. A hot little wave of feeling swept over her.
She had treated Joe miserably. She had yielded to her feelings like a child. She ought to have been good sport enough to hide what she had felt. But she hadn't. She was a sn.o.b. She had hoped to conceal that she was not their sort--Joe and Mr. Mosby. In a sense, she had been going back on her own people. As if she were trying to pa.s.s them--trying to keep up with the procession. And yet that was exactly what she was doing. But to show it!
The straight level path of the boulevard came abruptly to an end and the road diverged to the left and mounted swiftly, skirting the incline of a white, chalky hill densely covered with a tangle of scrub oak, buckeye, cedar, and much underbrush. The slanting rays of the sun were shut off abruptly as by a shutter and they rolled between stretches of shade that were mistily fragrant and cool. Even the upper air currents in the s.p.a.ces above the road, up toward the sky, seemed shadowy and unharried by the fierceness of the pa.s.sing sunlight. The motor settled down to the business of climbing, and once Claybrook turned to her with a look of appreciation.
”Some park, this.”
She hardly heard him, so intent was she on watching the road and the occasional glimpses, through the tangle, of declivitous stretches strewn with trunks of fallen trees and rank vegetation, down which the wind went wandering with vague whisperings. They had been suddenly transported out of the world of people into the world of hopes. The city had been left leagues behind.
They made a quick, sharp turn to the right, the road almost doubling back upon itself, and there was a steep grade for a short distance, during which time Mary Louise caught herself leaning forward and holding her breath in an instinctive impulse to help the labouring car. And then they gained the top. Before them lay a tableland of many acres thickly covered with trees. The gra.s.s, in the open s.p.a.ces between, was spa.r.s.e, and there was much moss and lichen and drifts of withered leaves, dried by the sun of more than one summer; and here and there in the northern shadow of some gnarled trunk and in dipping hollows the leaves were packed close in a damp and moulding compress.
Great streamers of wild grape-vine hung precariously from weary limbs and swayed to and fro gently in the wind that came mounting up the slope from the west and went dipping away to the eastward, leaving a soft, shuddering wake. It was as if a mellower spirit hovered about the old giant k.n.o.b resting there, watching with its head all venerably gray, though the sunlight ere it faded was elfishly splas.h.i.+ng the shadow with golden green, and little flecks of crimson and orange came flas.h.i.+ng through the tangle of branches as they pa.s.sed, making light mockery. And then the trees suddenly opened and they came out upon a flat bare knoll, where the road, making a loop, signified that its journey was over. Around the outside edge was a wall of loose stones from which the hill sloped steeply in all directions, and before them, stretching away for miles, lay the country through which they had pa.s.sed, till soft and green and gray in the distance. A huge smoke pall, its feathery top drifting slowly eastward, hung over a cup-shaped depression, and below it stretched a darker line, from which occasionally emerged a solitary stack, or above which a church spire, caught by an errant ray from the setting sun, would flash a momentary beacon. Slowly the mantle seemed to fade and mingle with the twilight, and even as they watched, a light flashed out, a single pin-p.r.i.c.k of a light, and then another and another, as night, gathering in its intensity, swept over the valley, until it was met by an ever-increasing challenge. It was like a myriad host of fairy fire-flies, each diamond pointed, flickering, blinking, never still.
And there settled on the under side of the smoke pall a lurid glow as of banked fires, waiting for the work of another day.
Mary Louise breathed a soft little sigh.
”It does get next to one, some way, doesn't it?” he said.
Rather to her thoughts she replied aloud: ”To think of all those people living there, almost in the grasp of the hand. Think of them moving, scurrying about among those lights. It makes one feel it would be so easy to do things for them, move them about at one's will--from here. And yet----” She was silent a moment, thinking. ”And yet even to be able to raise one's head above it all, to see--and be seen!
Well----”
”That's what I mean to do.” He spoke almost as if she were not there, and his voice, which was as though disembodied, and jarring a bit with its resonance, brought her back to the present.
”It's a hard thing to do and I've come to think it takes sometimes a lifetime, but--it can be done.” He had turned and she could feel his warm breath in her ear. There was a note of a.s.surance in his words and, as she watched, a change came over the scene before her and it all seemed like a huge graying blanket punched full of tiny, bright flat holes. Something had receded, escaped back into the darkness behind it all.
She made no reply.
”I wanted to tell you and it's about as good a time as any. You may be needing some help. It's not all so easy down there. And--well, if you need any help--make the way any easier for you--why, don't hesitate to call on me.”
”That's good of you,” she replied, and wondered at the lack of warmth in her own voice. ”Perhaps I shall.” But she could not help feeling that in some way she had seen what she had seen--alone.
They sat a little longer in silence, and then Mary Louise straightened in her seat and called to him briskly:
”We _must_ be going. Why, it must be eight o'clock. What have I been thinking of?”