Lucilla, Pontycroft—Pontycroft, Lucilla! How far away they seemed.... Their names stirred her heart as she pronounced them. But even so—was not this best? The present Miss Adgate in a short skirt, a blue, soft felt hat, tip-tilted over her eyes, a stick in her hand, her thoughts for all society; Miss Adgate with this hardy New England nature for background,—Ruth Adgate taking a solitary walk upon her own land, with the feeling that good will and satisfaction smiled at her because of her presence there, was not this the Real person who had found her true niche in the world?
“How singular,” she reflected. “The transformation has taken place overnight. It is almost as though I had been here forever! And to-day I feel as though I had a destiny—as though Fate had something up her sleeve here for me. I've begun like one of Henry Harland's heroines and I'm convinced that whatever the Powers are preparing for me—I shall accept it here,—just as I accept all this—gratefully, gaily, without demur.”
Ruth glanced at the violet hills and the guileless meadows and a thrill passed through her. She jumped up, a white hand held to shade her face.
“Basta! I've rested long enough, the sun here is too hot,” said Miss Adgate. “I think I'll discover what lies beyond, in the heart of that wood there,” and off she started, blushing at her emotion.
A company of crows in a distant field caw-cawed, querulously, at her. Their raucous voices fitted the rough woodland, the vigorous autumn smells, the haze of the mellow golden morning. She came again to the little brown brook gurgling quietly over its bed of brown stones and leaves and the fancy took her to follow its course. Wet feet were of no consequence, determined to see all of her possessions Ruth skirted its purling side and discovered presently that here the brook, lifted from the earth by hand of artifice, was confined to a long, shallow, wooden aqueduct, an aqueduct open to the air and to the tracery of boughs above and to blue skies reflected in the water. Through this conduit the little brook bubbled and bounded, clear as crystal; icy cold to the touch as she dipped her hand in and let the water run along her wrist.
“Ah,” thought the young lady, “this must be our famous spring!—I've reached the headquarters of the Nile or I'm very near them.” And through the trees in truth, she perceived, further on, a rough hut, built to protect the stream's source from inroads of man and beasts.
She sat herself on a fallen tree trunk, leaned back and gazed with half-closed eyelids into the network of branches—oaks, larches, birch, hazel, maple,—nearly bare of foliage. Here again, the ground, checkered with green moss-patches was interspersed with little plants, “which must be all a-flower in the spring,” thought Ruth and she vowed that when spring came she would return to pluck them.
Then—presto!... Without a note of warning—the agreeable independence of her mood vanished. Lucilla, Pontycroft!... Her mind, her heart, her very soul yearned for them. And a homesick longing for the finished, for the humanly beautiful, the artistically beautiful,—an intense craving and desire for a familiar European face—smote her.
“But,——-” she puzzled, “would they, those I want most to see, could they endure this wilderness? No—not Lucilla! Not Lucilla with her love of luxury and her disdain of short skirts.” She laughed. “Pontycroft? Perhaps,” her heart fluttered. She knew he doted upon old, formal gardens, well-clipped lawns; had delight in the glorious army of letters and of art,—that he found in the society too, of princes, entertainment. Still, it might be possible.... He would, at all events, have some whimsical thing to say about it all. She began to fancy that she heard his voice.
“If he were here,” Ruth told herself, “I should ask him to interpret the horrid vision I had last night.” Ruth shivered as she recalled it; rapidly she began an imaginary conversation.