The Worn Doorstep

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

I came to a cross road, or cross path, grassy paths both, with creeping green moss among the roots of the trees on either side. It was hard to decide which way to go; I chose the right and pulled the rein; Puck chose the left and started. I tugged at the right and told him to go on; he said he wouldn't; again I told him, and he shook his head, shook himself all over with his head down, until his harness rattled. When I told him a third time, he stamped, kicked, and pulled with all his might to the left. Of course he got his way; some people passed; I was not going to be convicted of inadequate horsemanship, being only an American, so I assumed a calm and masterful British look, as if that were the way I had all along meant to go, and we jogged on. The self-satisfaction in that little creature's air! He turned his head around now and then, trying to see how I was taking it; having had his own way, he went at a jolly pace; he loves to start rabbits and make the pheasants fly up. Presently, at a turn in the road, he shied; he did it quite theatrically, as if he had worked it all out in his mind and had achieved the intended effect. He expected me to be startled and to rein him in, fighting to control him, but I did nothing of the kind. I merely let the reins lie loose and watched him; he subsided very suddenly and dejectedly at having lost his fun.

Then I saw what he was shying at and stopped him; I think that he had known all along what he was going to find! There, under a great oak tree, partly hidden by tall bracken, lay a girl with her eyes closed, her hat partly off her head, looking like one who was very tired and had fallen in her tracks to go to sleep. In a minute I was at her side, holding tightly to the reins, for fear of what that little wretch might do, but he was as immovable as Stonehenge.

She was quite young, very wan and pale, fairly well dressed but crumpled looking. Her hair was dark, and her eyes, when she slowly opened them, proved to be dark also.

I do not know yet whether she had fainted, or whether she was asleep from exhaustion; her poor feet showed that she had walked many miles, for the soles of her shoes were worn through. At sight of me she sat up, looking frightened, but, evidently finding that I was not so terrible, at length smiled back,—a faint little smile. I knew enough to be silent at first; this is something that I have learned from animals: there are sympathies, understandings, that antedate words. When I asked her very softly if she were ill, she shook her head, not understanding. I tried French, and, though my French is odd, I know, she brightened, clasped her hands together, giving a great sigh, and then tears began to roll down her face. That villain of a pony looked around now and then as if to say: "Who was right about the road? You would never have found her if I had not had my way."

If he had been commissioned by the government to help in giving first aid, he could not have acted with more sense of responsibility than he did in helping me take her home, standing motionless while she climbed into the cart, so weak with hunger, she confessed, that she could hardly move,—then speeding fast where the road was smooth, and going very slowly where the carters' wheels have left deep ruts in the mossy soil. He really has more than human sense at times! Don, of his own accord, leaped in beside the fugitive; at times I think that his spirit is really becoming more catholic, and that he demands less in the way of credentials and introductions than of old. The girl's pluck interested me, for, though she could hardly hold herself upright, she refused my help. Suddenly, from nowhere, a phrase flashed into my mind, "L'Independence Beige", and I knew—what afterward proved to be true—that she was one of the many Belgian refugees in England, though why she was wandering about by herself in this remote corner of England I did not know until afterward. As we jogged on, over the meadows and through the village street, she held herself so bravely that nobody stared, though she was white to the lips. She even managed to walk into the house, but, once inside, sank down on the couch and fainted quite away. Madge and I worked over her, giving her drops of warm milk with a wee bit of brandy, taking the shoes from her poor blistered feet, and bathing them. You should have heard Madge when I told her that I thought the girl was one of the fugitive Belgians; to take a red-hot poker to the Kaiser seemed to be her lightest wish for vengeance.

When our guest was in bed, all fresh and clean, with her hair brushed smoothly from her forehead, I could see that she was a sweet and wholesome maiden, with a comely, housewifely air, and my heart ached for her sufferings. She ate a little, then lay with her eyes full of tears that she would not let fall; she kept winking her long lashes to keep them back. Don jumped up beside her and snuggled close; she smiled, lifted her hand to his head for a minute, then she went to sleep. Such sleep I never saw,—deep, long, dreamless; hour by hour she lay there, not moving all night long, for I crept in now and then: I could not sleep. Don kept watch until morning.

She did not waken until after ten; there was a flush in her cheeks, and her eyes were starry, but in her face, young as she seemed, was a foreshadowing of the worn look of age and sorrow that the years should bring, not the German army! She wore an air of wistful questioning to which there is no answer, as she lay twisting weakly a simple ring about her third finger.

We had a funny time trying to talk; La Fontaine's fables and Racine's Athalie, as taught in a young ladies' finishing school, are not the best basis for a conversation on the practical needs of life. I wanted to ask her if she liked sugar and cream in her coffee; all I could think of was

"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,

Ma mère Jézebel devant moi s'est montrée."