The Dawlish Road was a meandering sort of road, and the afternoon was made for wanderers … or so Anne and Lewis thought as they prowled along it, now and then pausing to enjoy a sudden sapphire glimpse of the strait through the trees or to snap a particularly lovely bit of scenery or picturesque little house in a leafy hollow. It was not, perhaps, quite so pleasant to call at the houses themselves and ask for subscriptions for the benefit of the Dramatic Club, but Anne and Lewis took turns doing the talking … he taking on the women while Anne manipulated the men.
“Take the men if you’re going in that dress and hat,” Rebecca Dew had advised. “I’ve had a good bit of experience in canvassing in my day and it all went to show that the better-dressed and better-looking you are the more money … or promise of it … you’ll get, if it’s the men you have to tackle. But if it’s the women, put on the oldest and ugliest things you have.”
“Isn’t a road an interesting thing, Lewis?” said Anne dreamily. “Not a straight road, but one with ends and kinks around which anything of beauty and surprise may be lurking. I’ve always loved bends in roads.”
“Where does this Dawlish Road go to?” asked Lewis practically … though at the same moment he was reflecting that Miss Shirley’s voice always made him think of spring.
“I might be horrid and school-teacherish, Lewis, and say that it doesn’t go anywhere … it stays right here. But I won’t. As to where it goes or where it leads to … who cares? To the end of the world and back, perhaps. Remember what Emerson says … ‘Oh, what have I to do with time?’ That’s our motto for today. I expect the universe will muddle on if we let it alone for a while. Look at those cloud shadows … and that tranquillity of green valleys … and that house with an apple tree at each of its corners. Imagine it in spring. This is one of the days people feel alive and every wind of the world is a sister. I’m glad there are so many clumps of spice ferns along this road … spice ferns with gossamer webs on them. It brings back the days when I pretended … or believed … I think I really did believe … that gossamer webs were fairies’ tablecloths.”
They found a wayside spring in a golden hollow and sat down on a moss that seemed made of tiny ferns, to drink from a cup that Lewis twisted out of birch bark.
“You never know the real joy of drinking till you’re dry with thirst and find water,” he said. “That summer I worked out west on the railroad they were building, I got lost on the prairie one hot day and wandered for hours. I thought I’d die of thirst and then I came to a settler’s shack, and he had a little spring like this in a clump of willows. How I drank! I’ve understood the Bible and its love of good water better ever since.”
“We’re going to get some water from another quarter,” said Anne rather anxiously. “There’s a shower coming up and … Lewis, I love showers, but I’ve got on my best hat and my second-best dress. And there isn’t a house within half a mile.”
“There’s an old deserted blacksmith’s forge over there,” said Lewis, “but we’ll have to run for it.”
Run they did and from its shelter enjoyed the shower as they had enjoyed everything else on that carefree, gypsying afternoon. A veiled hush had fallen over the world. All the young breezes that had been whispering and rustling so importantly along the Dawlish Road had folded their wings and become motionless and soundless. Not a leaf stirred, not a shadow flickered. The maple leaves at the bend of the road turned wrong side out until the trees looked as if they were turning pale from fear. A huge cool shadow seemed to engulf them like a green wave … the cloud had reached them. Then the rain, with a rush and sweep of wind. The shower pattered sharply down on the leaves, danced along the smoking red road and pelted the roof of the old forge right merrily.
“If this lasts …” said Lewis.
But it didn’t. As suddenly as it had come up, it was over and the sun was shining on the wet, glistening trees. Dazzling glimpses of blue sky appeared between the torn white clouds. Far away they could see a hill still dim with rain, but below them the cup of the valley seemed to brim over with peach-tinted mists. The woods around were pranked out with a sparkle and glitter as of springtime, and a bird began to sing in the big maple over the forge as if he were cheated into believing it really was springtime, so amazingly fresh and sweet did the world seem all at once.
“Let’s explore this,” said Anne, when they resumed their tramp, looking along a little side road running between old rail fences smothered in goldenrod.
“I don’t think there’s anybody living along that road,” said Lewis doubtfully. “I think it’s only a road running down to the harbor.”
“Never mind … let’s go along it. I’ve always had a weakness for side roads … something off the beaten track, lost and green and lonely. Smell the wet grass, Lewis. Besides, I feel in my bones that there is a house on it … a certain kind of house … a very snappable house.”
Anne’s bones did not deceive her. Soon there was a house … and a snappable house to boot. It was a quaint, old-fashioned one, low in the eaves, with square, small-paned windows. Big willows stretched patriarchal arms over it and an apparent wilderness of perennials and shrubs crowded all about it. It was weather-gray and shabby, but the big barns beyond it were snug and prosperous-looking, up-to-date in every respect. “I’ve always heard, Miss Shirley, that when a man’s barns are better than his house, it’s a sign that his income exceeds his expenditure,” said Lewis, as they sauntered up the deep-rutted grassy lane.
“I should think it was a sign that he thought more of his horses than of his family,” laughed Anne. “I’m not expecting a subscription to our club here, but that’s the most likely house for a prize contest we’ve encountered yet. It’s grayness won’t matter in a photograph.”
“This lane doesn’t look as if it were much traveled,” said Lewis with a shrug. “Evidently the folks who live here aren’t strongly sociable. I’m afraid we’ll find they don’t even know what a dramatic club is. Anyhow, I’m going to secure my picture before we rouse any of them from their lair.”
The house seemed deserted, but after the picture was taken they opened a little white gate, crossed the yard and knocked on a faded blue kitchen door, the front door evidently being like that of Windy Poplars, more for show than for use … if a door literally hidden in Virginia creeper could be said to be for show.
They expected at least the civility which they had hitherto met in their calls, whether backed up with generosity or not. Consequently they were decidedly taken aback when the door was jerked open and on the threshold appeared, not the smiling farmer’s wife or daughter they had expected to see, but a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty, with grizzled hair and bushy eyebrows, who demanded unceremoniously,
“What do you want?”
“We have called, hoping to interest you in our High School Dramatic Club,” began Anne, rather lamely. But she was spared further effort.
“Never heard of it. Don’t want to hear about it. Nothing to do with it,” was the uncompromising interruption, and the door was promptly shut in their faces.
“I believe we’ve been snubbed,” said Anne as they walked away.
“Nice amiable gentleman, that,” grinned Lewis. “I’m sorry for his wife, if he has one.”
“I don’t think he can have, or she would civilize him a trifle,” said Anne, trying to recover her shattered poise. “I wish Rebecca Dew had
