As soon as Mr. Van Patten dropped to sleep for his morning nap, Barnes determined to suggest to the girl a plan he had conceived during breakfast. That it would impress Aunt Philomela as audacious he had no doubt; that it would meet with kindlier interest from Miss Van Patten, he dared hope. With the decided improvement in the old gentleman’s condition the spirit of the whole household rose high. Not only had he slept well during the night, but he had partaken of a fairly good breakfast.
The morning hour had also been easier for Barnes. Mr. Van Patten had clung to the young boy—the boy before he had become himself and was still merely his father’s boy. Barnes had scarcely more to do than listen. Alaska had been forgotten.
The morning itself, too, gave courage. The sun, now in supreme authority, held in the bondage of shadows every unsightly thing and marshaled forth to the front its legions of the beautiful. Everywhere it put youth in command; chief of all on the saffron road which ran before the brick house and later connected with other roads which in turn connected with still other roads until a path was made clear across the continent.
The road summoned forth. It beckoned. The wonder was, thought Barnes as from his window he caught glimpses of it winding in and out among the trees up the hill and so on, either way, until it ran straight into an ocean—the wonder was how these young fellows hereabouts resisted its call. If a man but followed it in its intricacies he would pass, on the way, every palace and hovel in the land. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, a traveler would come upon them every one. These tawny ribbons drained every spring of human life. They demanded their toll of time from all the world. And in the end, when the legs failed, all the world was finally borne over this same road and lowered to one side of it. The wonder was, then, that instead of a few dreaming poets and a few lawless vagabonds that all the young men in the world were not caught by the spell of the highway and the pageant it promised.
But what of the spell of the houses by the side of the highway? They cried halt to the young men. Ah, there lay the explanation—the road after all was subservient to the houses by its side.
But there were many houses by the side of the road; how did each house choose its own? By the eyes of the women who dwelt in the houses. Clearly then, the houses themselves were subservient.
Were the eyes of the women then the final masters? Here was a problem for a philosopher. He knew only that he himself had been stopped, with the road beckoning him on.
Miss Van Patten was busy for an hour with her household tasks before she returned to where Barnes had stationed himself at the foot of the Dutch door. A snow-white apron made her look very business-like. Aunt Philomela was for the moment carelessly absent. Here was Opportunity.
“I had in mind,” he said, “going to the next village for my suit-case. I checked it there thinking at first to ride through but the station below here tempted me and I got off.”
“I’ll send John for it,” she replied, wondering that she herself had not anticipated his need. The reason was, though her modesty made her refrain from offering the explanation, that she never associated baggage with men folk. To her they were always as untrammeled and unburdened as her saddle horse Aladdin.