CHAPTER XVI
THE WAY THE WIND BLEW
However anxious the wife of Senator Parks had been to impress herself upon New York society, she experienced a delightful sense of relief when the winter of her novitiate was ended. Furling her banners of tactful triumph, she left town immediately after Easter, thereby doing the correct thing and following her own mood, a combination of rare accomplishment.
Many times during the season she had thought of the Lawtons and missed Brooke sorely from the circle of bright young women in their “third and fourth winters,” whom she had the good sense as well as the attraction to draw about her; but the swirl of the pool had been so insistent that she had done little more than to send Brooke one or two cordial, if inconsiderate, notes of invitation to visit her, which of course had not been accepted.
Now that she had moved to the famous Smythers place at Gordon, and found her early passion for outdoor life and her developed taste for luxury at once sufficiently satisfied by its beauty and stimulated by its possibilities, she desired the companionship of some one of taste, a friend and not a timeserver, with whom she could discuss her plans. Immediately her mind reverted to Brooke Lawton, and knowing from Lucy Dean that Gilead was within driving distance from Gordon, she set out in her victoria one exquisite afternoon toward the end of May to locate Brooke. Visiting Mrs. Parks was an elderly New York matron, Mrs. Van Kleek, of particular social importance, who was anxious to run over to her own cottage, recently built in Stonebridge and not yet open for the season, in consequence of which this drive, having a double mission, began immediately after luncheon.
Both coachman and footman, being new importations to the hill country, knew even less about the upper and lower turnpike and maze of cross-roads than did their employer, who had a general idea of the region. It seemed an easy matter to keep the river in sight, and yet the constant desire of the ladies to follow up each pretty lane, with its delicate fringe of wild flowers or drapery of catkins, kept luring them away from it at right angles; so that five o’clock in the afternoon found the sweating horses, as yet unused to anything longer than the drive through the park to Claremont and return, toiling wearily uphill on the upper pike just above Gilead, facing the way in which they desired not to go, but had accomplished by looping about in a figure eight.
The coachman was growing momentarily more anxious lest the horses should break down; the footman was bored and cramped with long sitting; both ladies were weary, quite talked out, and longing for their afternoon tea; while Mrs. Parks was also exasperated at the failure of the excursion.
“Stop a moment, Benson, and let Johnson ask that man in the field yonder if we are on the right road to Stonebridge, and if there is any place near where we can rest,” she said finally. Benson pulled up as well as he could on the incline; Johnson dismounted and interviewed the farmer and, returning with a disgusted expression, said, “Stonebridge is six miles downhill, the way we’ve come up, mum, and if you please Gilead is that village a mile and a half back, mum, we passed a bit ago. This ’ere is the hupper road, the one in the dip below follows the river easy from Gordon to Stonebridge, and he says we’d best get on that.”