The Air Trust Part 17

A certain tinge of bitterness crept into his voice. In health, he knew, a woman of this cla.s.s would not suffer him even to touch her hand.

"_Don't_ ask me who I am, please. And I--I won't ask _your_ name. We're of different worlds, I guess. But for the moment, Fate has levelled the barriers. Just let it go at that. And now, if you can stay here, all right; perhaps I can hike back to the next house, below here, and telephone, and summon help."

"How far is it?" she asked, looking at him with wonder in her lovely eyes--wonder, and new thoughts, and a strange kind of longing to know more of this extraordinary man, so strong, so gentle, so unwilling to divulge himself or ask her name.

"How far?" he repeated. "Oh, four or five miles. I can make it in no time. And with luck, I can have an auto and a doctor here before dark.

Well, does that suit you?"

"Don't go, please," she answered. "I--I may be still a little weak and foolish, but--somehow, I don't want to be left alone. I want to be kept from remembering, from thinking of those last, awful moments when the car was running away; when it struck the wall, at the turn; when I was thrown out, and--and knew no more. Don't go just yet," the girl entreated, covering her eyes with both hands, as though to shut out the horrible vision of the catastrophe.

"All right," Gabriel answered. "Just as you please. Only, if I stay, you must promise to stop thinking about the accident, and try to pull together."

"I promise," she agreed, looking at him with strange eyes. "Oh dear,"

she added, with feminine inconsequentiality, "my hair's all down, and Lord knows where the pins are!"

He smiled to himself as she managed, with the aid of such few hairpins as remained, to coil the coppery meshes once more round her head and even somewhat over the bandage, and secure them in place.

At sight of his face as he watched her, she too smiled wanly--the first time he had seen a real smile on her mouth.

"I'm only a woman, after all," she apologized. "You don't understand.

You can't. But no matter. Tell me--why need you go, at all?"

"Why? For help, of course."

"There's sure to be a motor, or something, along this road, before very long," she answered. "Put up some signal or other, to stop it. That will save you a long, long walk, and save me from--remembering! I need you here with me," she added earnestly. "Don't go--please!"

"All right, as you will," the man made reply. "I'll rig a danger-signal on the road; and then all we can do will be to wait."

This plan he immediately put into effect, setting his knapsack in the middle of the road and piling up brush and limbs of trees about it.

"There," he said to himself, as he surveyed the result, "no car will get by _that_, without noticing it!"

Then he returned to the sugar-house, some hundred yards back from the highway in the grove, now already beginning to grow dim with the shadows of approaching nightfall. The glowing coals of the fire gleamed redly, through the rough place. The girl, still lying on her bed of leaves and auto-robes, with the mutilated shawl drawn over her, looked up at him with an expression of trust and grat.i.tude. For a second, only one, something quick and vital gripped at the wanderer's heart--some vague, intangible longing for a home and a woman, a longing old as our race, deep-planted in the inmost citadel of every man's soul. But, half-impatiently, he drove the thought away, dismissed it, and, smiling down at her with cheerful eyes and white, even teeth, said rea.s.suringly:

"Everything's all right now. The first machine that pa.s.ses, will take you to civilization."

"And you?" she asked. "What of you, then?"

"Me? Oh, I'll hike," he answered. "I'll plug along just as I was doing when I found you."

"Where to?"

"Oh, north."

"What for?"

"Work. Please don't question me. I'd rather you wouldn't."

She pondered a moment.

"Are you--what they call a--workingman?" she presently resumed.

"Yes," said he. "Why?"

"And are you happy?"

"Yes. In a way. Or shall be, when I've done what I mean to do."

"But--forgive me--you're very poor?"

"Not at all! I have, at this present moment, more than eighteen dollars in my pocket, and I have _these_!"

He showed her his two hands, big and sinewed, capable and strong.

"Eighteen dollars," she mused, half to herself. "Why, I have spent that, and more, for a single ounce of a new perfume--something very rare, you know, from j.a.pan."

"Indeed? Well, don't tell _me_," he replied. "I'm not interested in how you spend money, but how you get it."

"Get it? Oh, father gives me my allowance, that's all."

"And he squeezes it out of the common people?"

She glanced at him quickly.

"You--you aren't a Socialist, into the bargain, are you?" she inquired.

"At your service," he bowed.

"This is strange, strange indeed," she said. "Tell me your name."

"No," he refused. "I'd still rather not. Nor shall I ask yours. Please don't volunteer it."

Came a moment's silence, there in the darkening hut, with the fire-glow red upon their faces.

"Happy," said the girl. "You say you're happy. While I--"

"Are not unhappy, surely?" asked Gabriel, leaning forward as he sat there beside her, and gazing keenly into her face.

"How should I know?" she answered. "Unhappy? No, perhaps not. But vacant--empty--futile!"

"Yes, I believe you," Gabriel judged. "You tell me no news. And as you are, you will ever be. You will live so and die so. No, I won't preach.

I won't proselytize. I won't even explain. It would be useless. You are one pole, I the other. And the world--the whole wide world--lies between!"

Suddenly she spoke.

"You're a Socialist," said she. "What does it mean to be a Socialist?"

He shook his head.