XLII
SHE had settled low in the seat, her mouth and chin hidden in the folds of the satin wrap; her face seemed as chill as marble, her youth cruel, disdainful. But her undeniable courage commanded his admiration, the unwavering gaze of her eyes into the dark. He wondered if, back of her crisp defenses, she were happy. He knew from observation that she led an almost isolated existence... she had gathered about her no circle of her own age, she indulged in none of the rapturous confidences, friendships, so sustaining to other girls. The peculiar necessities of her father had accomplished this. Yet he was aware that she cherished a general contempt for youth at large, for a majority of the grown, for that matter. Contempt colored her attitude to a large extent: that and happiness did not seem an orderly pair.
He felt, rather than saw, the influence of the dawn behind him; it was as though the grey air grew more transparent. Annot twisted about. “Oh! turn, turn!” she cried; “the day! we are driving away from it.” A sudden intoxicating freshness streamed like a sparkling birdsong over the world, and Anthony's dejection vanished with the gloom now at their backs. Delicate lavender shadows grew visible upon the grass, the color shifted tremulously, like the shot hues of changeable silks, until the sun poured its ore into the verdant crucible of the countryside.
“I am most frightfully hungry,” Annot admitted with that entire frankness which he found so refreshing. “I wonder—” On either hand fields, far farmhouses, reached unbroken to the horizon; before them the road rose between banks of soft, brown loam, apparently into the sky. But, beyond the rise, they came upon a roadside store, its silvery boards plastered with the garish advertisements of tobaccos, and a rickety porch, now undergoing a vigorous sweeping at the hands of an old man with insecure legs, upon whose faded personage was stamped unmistakably the initials “G. A. R.”
Anthony brought the car to a halt, and returned his brisk and curious salutation. “Shall I bring out some crackers?” he asked from the road. But she elected to follow him into the store. The interior presented the usual confusion of gleaming tin and blue overalls, monumental cheeses and cards of buttons, a miscellany of ludicrously varied merchandise. Annot found a seat upon a splintered church pew, now utilized as a secular resting place, while Anthony foraged through the shelves. He returned with the crackers, and a gold lump of dates, upon which they breakfasted hugely. “D'y like some milk?” the aged attendant inquired, and forthwith dipped it out of a deep, cool and ringing can.
Afterward they sat upon the step and smoked matutinal cigarettes. The day gathered in a shimmering haze above the vivid com, the emerald of the shorn fields; the birds had already subsided from the heat among the leaves. Anthony saw that the lamps of the car were still alight, a feeble yellow flicker, and turned them out. He tested the engine; and, finding it still running, turned with an unspoken query to Annot. She rose slowly.
The wrap slipped from her bare shoulders and her dinner gown with its high sulphur girdle, the scrap of black lace about her hair, presented a strange, brilliantly artificial picture against the blistered, gaunt boards of the store, with, at its back, the open sunny space of pasture, wood and sky.
“It's barely twenty miles back,” she told him, once more settled at his side. The old man regarded them from under one gnarled palm, the other tightly clasped about the broom handle; his jaw was dropped; incredulity, senile surprise, claimed him for their own.