The Wayfarers Part 38

Only fifty miles from a great city, the little station seemed like the typical lodge in a wilderness; as far as one could see up or down the track, on either side were wooded hills. A vast silence seemed to be gathering from unseen fastnesses, to halt in this spot.

There were no houses and no light to be seen anywhere, except that one swinging on the pole above, and the moon which was just rising. It was, in fact, one of those places which consist of the far, back-lying acres of the great country-owners, and which seem to the casual traveler forgotten or unknown in their extent and apparently primitive condition.

The other railroad, six or seven miles away, went past the country towns and the facaded mansions and the conventional horticultural grounds of the possessors of these uncultivated tracts of woodland.

To the women sitting on the bench, wrapped around by the loneliness and the intense stillness of the oncoming night, the whole expedition appeared at last unveiled in all its grim betrayal. While Lois had been exaltedly imaginative, had resolved so desperately, had acted so daringly, there had never been, from the inception of the scheme, any chance that it could succeed. For the first time since Lois had left home, a wild seething anxiety for Justin possessed her. How could she have left him? She must go back to him at once!

"Oh, Dosia, we must get home again; we must get home!" she cried, starting up so vehemently that the baby in her arms screamed, startled, and Lois walked up and down distractedly hus.h.i.+ng him, and then, as he still wailed, sat down once more and bared her white bosom to quiet him, talking the while in a low tone: "We will have to get back; Dosia, we must start at once."

"We will have to walk to Haledon," said Dosia.

"Yes, yes. Perhaps we may come to some farmhouse where they will let us have a wagon, or one may pa.s.s us on the way and give us a lift. It is seven miles to Haledon-that isn't very far! I often walked five miles with Justin before I was married, and a mile or two more is nothing.

There are plenty of trains from Haledon."

"Oh, we can do it easily enough," said Dosia, though her heart was as lead within her breast. "You had better eat some of these biscuits before we start," she advised, taking them out of the bag; and Lois munched them obediently, and drank some tepid water from a pitcher which Dosia had found inside. As she put it back again in its place, she slipped to the side of the platform and looked down the moon-filled narrow valley.

Through all this journey Dosia had carried double thoughts; her voice called where none might hear. It spoke to far distances now as she whispered, with hands outspread:

"Oh, _why_ weren't you in when I went for you? Why didn't you come and take care of us, when I needed you so much? Why did you let us go off this way? You might have known! Why _don't_ you come and take care of us? There's no one to take care of us but you! _You_ could!" A dry sob stopped the words-the deep, inherent cry of womankind to man for help, for succor. She stooped over and picked up an oak-leaf that had lain on the ground since the winter, and pressed it to her bosom, and sent it fluttering off on a gust of wind down the incline, as if it could indeed take her message with it, before she went back to Lois.

After some hesitation as to the path,-one led across the rails from where they were sitting,-they finally took that behind the station, which broadened out into a road that lay along the wooded slope above, from which they could look down at intervals and see the track below.

One side of that road was bordered by a high wire fencing inclosing pieces of woodland, sometimes so thick as to be impenetrable, while along other stretches there would be glimpsed through the trees some farther open field. To the right toward the railway, there were only woods and no fencing.

The two walked off briskly at first, but the road was of a heavy, loose, shelving soil in which the foot sank at each step; the gra.s.s at the edge was wet with dew and intersected by the ridged, branching roots of trees; the pace grew, perforce, slower and slower still. They took turns in carrying the baby, whose small bundled form began to seem as if weighted with lead.

Far over on what must have been the other side of the track, they occasionally saw the light of a house; at one place there seemed to be a little hamlet, from the number of lights. They were clearly on the wrong bank; they should have crossed over at the station. The only house they came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened and charred with fire. There was only that endless line of wire fencing along which they pushed forward painfully, with dragging step; instead of pa.s.sing any given point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they could never get farther on. Wire fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and trees. Trees! They became nightmarishly oppressive in those dark, solemn ranks and groups-those silent thicknesses; the air grew chill beneath them; terror lurked in the shadows. Oh, to get out from under the trees, away into the open, with only the clear sky overhead! If that road to the house of Eugene Larue had seemed a part of infinity in the dimness of the unknown, what was this?

They sat down now every little while to rest, Dosia's voice coaxing and cheering, and then got up to shake the earth out of their shoes and struggle on once more-bending, s.h.i.+vering, leaning against each other for support; two silent and puny figures, outside of any connection with other lives, toiling, as it seemed, against the universe, as women do toil, apparently futile of result.

Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the side of the road, clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile shot by-a cheerful monster that spoke of life in towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation behind it. Why hadn't they seen it before? Why hadn't they tried to hail it when they _did_ see? To have had such a chance and lost it! It seemed to have come and gone too swiftly for coherent thought. Once they were frightened almost uncontrollably by a group of men approaching with strange sounds-a group of Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They pa.s.sed on, still jabbering, two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there were more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and trees-and trees-

"Do you suppose we'll _ever_ get out of here?" asked Lois at last, dully.

"Why, of course; we can't help getting out, if we keep on," said Dosia, in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone.

It was she who was helper and guide now.

"Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave him? How far do you think we have walked, Dosia?"

"It seems so endless, I can't tell; but we must be nearly at Haledon,"

said Dosia. "Let's sit down and rest awhile here. Oh, Lois, Lois _dear_!" She had taken off her jacket and spread it on the damp gra.s.s for them both to sit on, huddled close together, and now pressed the older woman's head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child in her young arms. "Oh, Lois, Lois!"

Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, there came the murmur of the brook they had pa.s.sed in the train-so long since, it seemed! The moon hung higher above now, pouring a flood of light down through the arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. Something in the utter relaxation of the att.i.tude and manner began to alarm the girl.

"Lois, we must go on," she said, with an anxious note in her voice.

"Lois! You _mustn't_ give up. We can't stay here!"

"Yes, I know," said Lois. She struggled to her feet, and began to walk ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung out her arms to the shadow-embroidered road over which they had just pa.s.sed.

"Oh, why _don't_ you come!" she whispered again intensely, with pa.s.sionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching up to Lois, took the child from her, and again they stumbled on together, haltingly, to the accompaniment of that far-off brook.

The wire fencing ceased, but the road became narrower, the walls of trees darker, closer together, though the soil under foot grew firmer.

They had to stop every few minutes to rest. Lois saw ever before her the one objective point-a dimly lighted room, with Justin stretched out upon the bed, dying, while she could not get there. Hope was crushed out. Death and ruin-that was the end.

The end! There are paths one walks along in life that seem only to end in the barrier of a stone wall, with "No thoroughfare" written on it; there is no way beyond. Yet, when one gets close to that insurmountable, impenetrable barrier, how often there is seen to be some hitherto unnoticed aperture, some little postern-gate by which one can pa.s.s on into the highroad!

"Hark!" said Dosia suddenly, standing still. The sound of a voice trolling drunkenly made itself heard, came nearer, while the women stood terrified. The thing they had both unspeakably dreaded had happened; the moonlight brought into view the unmistakable figure of a tramp, with a bundle swung upon his shoulder. No terror of the future could compare with this one, that neared them with the seconds, swaying unsteadily from side to side of the road, as the tipsy voice alternately muttered and roared the reiterated words:

"For I have come from Pad-dy land, The land-I do adore!"

They had fled, crouching into the bushes at the edge of the path, and he pa.s.sed with his eyes on the ground, or he must have seen-a blotched, dark-visaged, leering creature, living in an insane world of his own.

They waited until he was far out of sight before creeping, all of a tremble, from their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly near-the pad, pad, pad of a runner, a tall figure as one saw it through the lights and shadows under the trees, capless and coatless, with sleeves rolled up, arms bent at the elbows, and head held forward.

Suddenly the pace slackened, stopped.

"Great _heavens_!" said the voice of Bailey Girard.

"Oh, it's you, it's you!" cried Dosia, running to him with an ineffable, revealing gesture, a lovely motion of her upflinging arms, a pa.s.sion of joy in the face upraised to his, that called forth an instantly flas.h.i.+ng, all-embracing light in his.

In that moment there was an acknowledgment in each of an intimacy that went back of all words, back of all action. The arms that upheld her gripped her close to him as one who defends his own as he said tensely:

"That beast ahead, did he touch you?"

"Oh, no; he didn't see us. We hid!" She tried to explain in hurrying, disconnected sentences. "I've been longing and _praying_ for you to come! I tried to let you know before we started, and you weren't there.

Lois was half crazy about Justin. Come to her now! She wanted to see Mr.

Larue, and he was gone. We've walked from Collingswood; we have the baby with us."

"The _baby_!"

"Yes; she couldn't leave him behind. Oh, it's been so terrible! If you had only known!"

"Oh, why didn't I?" he groaned. "I ought to have known-I _ought_ to have known! I was in that motor that must have pa.s.sed you; it was just a chance that I got out to walk." They had reached the place where Lois sat, and he bent over her tenderly. She smiled into his anxious eyes, though her poor face was sunken and wan.

"I'm glad it's you," she whispered. "You'll help me to get home!"

"Dear Mrs. Alexander! I want to help you to more than that. I want you to tell me everything." He pressed her hand, and stood looking irresolutely down the road.

"I could go to Haledon, and send back a carriage for you; it's three miles further on."

"No, no, no! Don't leave us!" the accents came in terror from both. "We can walk with you. Only don't leave us!"

"Very well; we'll try it, then."

He took the warm bundle that was the sleeping child from Lois, saying, as she half demurred, "It's all right; I've carried 'em in the Spanish-American War in Cuba," holding it in one arm, while with the other he supported Lois. The dragging march began again, Dosia, stumbling sometimes, trying to keep alongside of him, so that when he turned his head anxiously to look for her she would be there, to meet his eyes with hers, bravely scorning fatigue.

The trees had disappeared now from the side of the road; long, swelling, wild fields lay on the slopes of the hillside, broken only by solitary clumps of bushes-fields deserted of life, broad resting-places for the moonlight, which illumined the farthest edge of the scene, although the moon itself was hidden by the crest of a hill. And as they went on, slowly perforce, he questioned Lois gently; and she, with simple words, gradually laid the facts bare.

"Oh, why didn't Alexander tell me all this?" he asked pitifully, and she answered:

"He said it was no use; he said you had no money."