Lewis took the note and walked out. He opened it absently and read:
Lew darling, I have heard. They will tell you that I am out. I'm not out, but I am broken. I cannot let you see me. Dear, I have given you all that I had to give.
He stood stock-still and read the words again, then he raised his eyes and looked slowly about him. Street, faces, trees, walls, and towers faded from his view. He stood in the midst of an illimitable void. A terror of loneliness fell upon him. He felt as though his full heart must speak or break, but in all his present world there was no ear to hear. Suddenly the impulse of a lifetime, often felt, seldom answered, came to him with an insistence that would not be denied. Go to Natalie. Tell Natalie.
CHAPTER LIII
Spring was in the very act of birth when Lewis found himself once more in the old carryall threading the River Road. This time he sat beside Old William, and the horses plodded along slowly, tamed by the slack reins lying neglected on their backs. Old William was not driving. His hands, loosely holding the lines, lay on his knees. Down his pink cheeks and into his white beard crawled tears from his wide blue eyes.
"Glen dead! Little Glen Leighton dead!" he said aloud from time to time, and Lewis knew himself forgotten. He forgave the old man for the sake of the picture he conjured—a picture of that other boyhood when "little Glen Leighton" and the wood-cutter had hunted and fished and roamed these crowding hills together.
The next day was one of pouring showers. Twice Lewis left the house, only to be turned back by the rain. He was not afraid of getting wet, but he was afraid of having to talk to Natalie indoors. He could not remember ever having talked to her hemmed in by four walls.
But on the morrow he awoke to clean-washed skies and a fuzzy pale-green carpet that spread across the fields and rose in bumps and mounds over trees and budding shrubs. He left the homestead early, and struck out for Aunt Jed's. As he approached the house, a strange diffidence fell upon him. He was afraid to go in. For an hour he sat on the top rail of a fence and watched.
At last Natalie came out. She started to walk toward him, but presently turned to the right. Lewis followed her. At first she walked fast, but soon she began to pause beside some burst of green or tempting downy mass of pussy-willow, as though she were in two minds whether to fill her arms and rush back, carrying spring into the house or to go on. She went on slowly until she reached the barrier of rails that closed the entrance to Leighton's land of dreams. Here Lewis came up with her.
"Nat," he said, "shall I help you over?"