But Dunstan was looking far ahead along the vista of the leafy road. He said no more, only as Minga, sitting back, tried to start up some of their old rallying songs and sallies the boy kept repeating dreamily, "She called us mates and it seems queer, for somehow I've always thought—you heard? She called us 'Mates,' Minga."
Perhaps it was the gypsy's prophecy making them conscious, perhaps it was the green world surrounding them like a round egg surrounding primal man and woman. But they grew silent and awed as though they walked toward a large surcharged destiny, so as they halted the car and took out their lunch basket they felt constrained; the rescue of Terence O'Brien would not take place until nearly five o'clock; they must pass the time alone together in this cathedral solemnity of summer. They tried not to look at each other for fear they should see in each other's eyes things that would snatch away their control. They stood a little away from each other, troubled, questioning, half afraid, yet curious.
CHAPTER XXIV
"TERRY!"
Evening came heavily, the river, flattened to an unearthly yellow calm, had thrown back all day field-heaviness, the prolific scent of grasses. The house was hot, the trees held lax droop of layered leaves. Languidly in the tepid air moved hundreds of unseen little ships of pollen, bringing to human breathing a thickness as of a new element. The fire-flies carrying their lanterns slowly up from dark grass, clotted beneath a shrub, or hung in tiny constellations by a tree; while out on the roadways the black automobiles rolled pompously like haughty monsters whose eyes, scornful and contemptuous, looked far ahead past all poetry of tree and water toward future summer nights when all the world should be a shattering brilliance of moving engines.
The house seemed to ache with loneliness and the desolation of souls at variance. There was no noisy gathering of the Bunch on the porch of the Judge's home. Miss Aurelia worried over the absence of Minga and Dunstan. She had retired early to "collect her thoughts," she told herself, supporting this enterprise by taking with her a novel by which her friend, Mrs. Spoyd, set great store and which, so its owner told Miss Aurelia, contained "not one unpleasant thing." Miss Aurelia who read a chapter out of "Something" every night, now read a blissful chapter out of this novel. Here there were such minute descriptions of crockery and curtains as delighted her soul; here married people all "got on" well; in this book the children arrayed in fresh pinks and blues played happily with clean spools or pretty blocks against backgrounds of hollyhocks. The little brooks ran without roiling, mad dogs kept away from villages and arranged their lives to be killed when convenient by intrepid lads educated for the purpose. The minister was handsome, good and healthy, and said what was expected, the doctor cured all fractures whether of skull or mind, the tax collector sent in his bills only when people had the money, and the young people sprang up together in couples like Noah's ark and married and started on a wonderful advertisement-perfected housekeeping.
"Why?" asked Miss Aurelia, yawning and settling down for the night. "Why don't more people write pleasant books and plays like this? I think all writers who write disagreeable things should be snubbed and made to feel uncomfortable, they should not be asked to dinner nor treated politely in any way until they stop writing about slums and dirty people and of unpleasant married problems. That," said Miss Aurelia, putting out the light, "would soon discourage them from writing horrid books, and then life would become normal and we should forget the things we don't want to think about. I should think," soliloquized Miss Aurelia, putting her handkerchief under her pillow, "that writers should realize that unless they write only about normal things that they will never be popular."
It was after ten, but Sard had not gone up-stairs, yet the figure of the Judge, sitting aloof in one corner of the piazza, smoking and staring at the river, magnetized while it antagonized her. Her father had not spoken to her since the day Colter went away. The girl believed that he knew in some way that she had met Colter after his forbidding it. She could explain the seeming disobedience of this final interview. She wanted to explain it. With all the misery of her young heart she wanted to explain.