The Friendly Road Part 27

When I had walked to the corner, I stopped and looked back. She was standing stock-still just where I had left her--a figure I shall never forget.

I have hesitated about telling of a further strange thing that happened to me that night--but have decided at last to put it in. I did not accept Mr. Vedder's invitation: I could not; but I returned to the room in the tenement where I had spent the previous night with Bill Hahn the Socialist. It was a small, dark, noisy room, but I was so weary that I fell almost immediately into a heavy sleep. An hour or more later I don't know how long indeed--I was suddenly awakened and found myself sitting bolt upright in bed. It was close and dark and warm there in the room, and from without came the m.u.f.fled sounds of the city. For an instant I waited, rigid with expectancy. And then I heard as clearly and plainly as ever I heard anything:

"David! David!" in my sister Harriet's voice.

It was exactly the voice in which she has called me a thousand times.

Without an instant's hesitation, I stepped out of bed and called out:

"I'm coming, Harriet! I'm coming!"

"What's the matter?" inquired Bill Hahn sleepily.

"Nothing," I replied, and crept back into bed.

It may have been the result of the strain and excitement of the previous two days. I don't explain it--I can only tell what happened.

Before I went to sleep again I determined to start straight for home in the morning: and having decided, I turned over, drew a long, comfortable breath and did not stir again, I think, until long after the morning sun shone in at the window.

CHAPTER XII. THE RETURN

"Everything divine runs with light feet."

Surely the chief delight of going away from home is the joy of getting back again. I shall never forget that spring morning when I walked from the city of Kilburn into the open country, my bag on my back, a song in my throat, and the gray road stretching straight before me. I remember how eagerly I looked out across the fields and meadows and rested my eyes upon the distant hills. How roomy it all was! I looked up into the clear blue of the sky. There was s.p.a.ce here to breathe, and distances in which the spirit might spread its wings. As the old prophet says, it was a place where a man might be placed alone in the midst of the earth.

I was strangely glad that morning of every little stream that ran under the bridges, I was glad of the trees I pa.s.sed, glad of every bird and squirrel in the branches, glad of the cattle grazing in the fields, glad of the jolly boys I saw on their way to school with their dinner pails, glad of the bluff, red-faced teamster I met, and of the snug farmer who waved his hand at me and wished me a friendly good morning. It seemed to me that I liked every one I saw, and that every one liked me.

So I walked onward that morning, nor ever have had such a sense of relief and escape, nor ever such a feeling of gayety.

"Here is where I belong," I said. "This is my own country. Those hills are mine, and all the fields, and the trees and the sky--and the road here belongs to me as much as it does to any one."

Coming presently to a small house near the side of the road, I saw a woman working with a trowel in her sunny garden. It was good to see her turn over the warm brown soil; it was good to see the plump green rows of lettuce and the thin green rows of onions, and the nasturtiums and sweet peas; it was good--after so many days in that desert of a city--to get a whiff of blossoming things. I stood for a moment looking quietly over the fence before the woman saw me. When at last she turned and looked up, I said:

"Good morning."

She paused, trowel in hand.

"Good morning," she replied; "you look happy."

I wasn't conscious that I was smiling outwardly.

"Well, I am," I said; "I'm going home."

"Then you OUGHT to be happy," said she.

"And I'm glad to escape THAT," and I pointed toward the city.

"What?"

"Why, that old monster lying there in the valley."

I could see that she was surprised and even a little alarmed. So I began intently to admire her young cabbages and comment on the perfection of her geraniums. But I caught her eying me from time to time as I leaned there on the fence, and I knew that she would come back sooner or later to my remark about the monster. Having shocked your friend (not too unpleasantly), abide your time, and he will want to be shocked again. So I was not at all surprised to hear her ask:

"Have you travelled far?"

"I should say so!" I replied. "I've been on a very long journey. I've seen many strange sights and met many wonderful people."

"You may have been in California, then. I have a daughter in California."

"No," said I, "I was never in California."

"You've been a long time from home, you say?"

"A very long time from home."

"How long?"

"Three weeks."

"Three weeks! And how far did you say you had travelled?"

"At the farthest point, I should say sixty miles from home."

"But how can you say that in travelling only sixty miles and being gone three weeks that you have seen so many strange places and people?"

"Why," I exclaimed, "haven't you seen anything strange around here?'"

"Why, no--" glancing quickly around her.

"Well, I'm strange, am I not?"

"Well--"

"And you're strange."

She looked at me with the utmost amazement. I could scarcely keep from laughing.

"I a.s.sure you," I said, "that if you travel a thousand miles you will find no one stranger than I am--or you are--nor anything more wonderful than all this--" and I waved my hand.

This time she looked really alarmed, glancing quickly toward the house, so that I began to laugh.

"Madam," I said, "good morning!"

So I left her standing there by the fence looking after me, and I went on down the road.

"Well," I said, "she'll have something new to talk about. It may add a month to her life. Was there ever such an amusing world!"