第21章

YE'LL TAK' THE HIGH ROAD AND I'LL TAK' THELOW ROADThe day broke with a scream of wind out of the prairies and such cloudbursts of snow that Joe could see neither bank of the river as he made his way down the big bend of ice.

The wind struck so bitterly that now and then he stopped and, panting and gasping, leaned his weight against it.The snow on the ground was caught up and flew like sea spume in a hurricane;it swirled about him, joining the flakes in the air, so that it seemed to be snowing from the ground upward as much as from the sky downward.

Fierce as it was, hard as it was to fight through, snow from the earth, snow from the sky, Joe was grateful for it, feeling that it veiled him, making him safer, though he trusted somewhat the change of costume he had effected at Beaver Beach.Arough, workman's cap was pulled down over his ears and eyebrows; a knitted comforter was wound about the lower part of his face; under a ragged overcoat he wore blue overalls and rubber boots;and in one of his red-mittened hands he swung a tin dinner-bucket.

When he reached the nearest of the factories he heard the exhaust of its engines long before he could see the building, so blinding was the drift.

Here he struck inland from the river, and, skirting the edges of the town, made his way by unfrequented streets and alleys, bearing in the general direction of upper Main Street, to find himself at last, almost exhausted, in the alley behind the Pike Mansion.There he paused, leaning heavily against a board fence and gazing at the vaguely outlined gray plane which was all that could be made of the house through the blizzard.He had often, very often, stood in this same place at night, and there was one window (Mrs.Pike's) which he had guessed to be Mamie's.

The storm was so thick that he could not see this window now, but he looked a long time through the thickness at that part of the gray plane where he knew it was.Then his lips parted.

"Good-bye, Mamie," he said, softly.

"Goodbye, Mamie."

He bent his body against the wind and went on, still keeping to the back ways, until he came to the alley which passed behind his own home, where, however, he paused only for a moment to make a quick survey of the premises.A glance satisfied him; he ran to the next fence, hoisted himself wearily over it, and dropped into Roger Tabor's back yard.

He took shelter from the wind for a moment or two, leaning against the fence, breathing heavily;then he stumbled on across the obliterated paths of a vegetable-garden until he reached the house, and beginning with the kitchen, began to make the circuit of the windows, peering cautiously into each as he went, ready to tap on the pane should he catch a glimpse of Ariel, and prepared to run if he stumbled upon her grandfather.But the place seemed empty: he had made his reconnaisance apparently in vain, and was on the point of going away, when he heard the click of the front gate and saw Ariel coming towards him, her old water-proof cloak about her head and shoulders, the patched, scant, faded skirt, which he knew so well, blowing about her tumultuously.At the sound of the gate he had crouched close against the side of the house, but she saw him at once.

She stopped abruptly, and throwing the water-proof back from her head, looked at him through the driven fog of snow.One of her hands was stretched towards him involuntarily, and it was in that attitude that he long remembered her:

standing in the drift which had piled up against the gate almost knee-deep, the shabby skirt and the black water-proof flapping like torn sails, one hand out-stretched like that of a figure in a tableau, her brown face with its thin features mottled with cold and unlovely, her startled eyes fixed on him with a strange, wild tenderness that held something of the laughter of whole companionship in it mingling with a loyalty and championship that was almost ferocious--she looked an Undine of the snow.

Suddenly she ran to him, still keeping her hand out-stretched until it touched his own.

"How did you know me?" he said.

"Know you!" was all the answer she made to that question."Come into the house.I've got some coffee on the stove for you.I've been up and down the street waiting for you ever since it began to get light.""Your grandfather won't--""He's at Uncle Jonas's; he won't be back till noon.There's no one here."She led him to the front-door, where he stamped and shook himself; he was snow from head to foot.

"I'm running away from the good Gomorrah,"he said, "but I've stopped to look back, and I'm a pretty white pillar.""I know where you stopped to look back," she answered, brushing him heartily with her red hands."You came in the alley way.It was Mamie's window."He did not reply, and the only visible token that he had any consciousness of this clairvoyance of hers was a slight lift of his higher eyebrow.

She wasted no time in getting him to the kitchen, where, when she had removed his overcoat, she placed him in a chair, unwound the comforter, and, as carefully as a nurse, lifted the cap from his injured head.When the strip of towel was disclosed she stood quite still for a moment with the cap in her hand; then with a broken little cry she stooped and kissed a lock of his hair, which escaped, discolored, beneath the bandage.

"Stop that!" he commanded, horribly embarrassed.

"Oh, Joe," she cried, "I knew! I knew it was there--but to SEE it! And it's my fault for leaving you--I HAD to go or I wouldn't have--I--""Where'd you hear about it?" he asked, shortly.