That September day? It is a tall white mile-stone on my way. I can look back and see its every detail. On its eve James and I sat for the last time on the barn-bridge and he sang of Annie Laurie and Nellie Gray. And when we heard my mother calling me, we stood together and gave the college yell.
"I s'pose, Davy," he said, as we were moving toward the house, "folks will think I'm a little peculiar, but I'm going to give that cheer every night, just for old times' sake--for your sake, Davy."
Our elders have a fashion of making like inopportune remarks when we are struggling to keep our hearts high. It seemed as though they were trying to break my spirit. My mother's white silence, my father's long prayer, James feverishly coming and going on that last morning--little things like these almost made me abandon my great plans. But pride sustained me--that same pride which sends men into battle for foolish causes. I wanted to hurry the fall of the blow. I even protested against my parents and Mr. Pound driving with me to the railroad, and they did not understand. I had to meet their last embraces under the eyes of the motley crowd who had come to the station to see the train, and under such conditions I dared not show emotion. Again they did not understand and were a little hurt by my coldness. I sprang up the car steps jauntily. To show my independence I stood by the smoker door and waved a smiling farewell to the silent, wondering three. I did not wait there, as they waited, looking after me, but turned, tossed my new bag into a rack, threw myself into a seat, and crossed my legs with the nonchalance of one who left home every day.
The river travelled with me out of the valley. I looked from the car window and saw it at my side, and together we went away. I was silent, wondering at the shadow which seemed to overcast the earth. The little river was bright in the noonday sun--a cheery fellow-traveller through the green land. I leaned from the car window in the suddenly born hope that I might see the three still figures, back there in the hot glare of the station. But the river had turned, and I saw not the roofs of Pleasantville dozing in the sun like the very dogs, nor the court-house tower and the tall steeples that pierced her shade, but a high wall of mountains. We seemed to be driving straight for their heart. The river's mood was mine. It shrank from that forbidding wall and the mysteries beyond; it swept in a wide curve into pleasant lowlands. And now I looked across it northward, to other mountains--to _my_ mountains, to the friendly heights that watched over _my_ valley. Closing my eyes I saw it as on that morning when Penelope and I rode in terror from the woods. I looked across it as it lay in the broad day, under the kindly eye of God, across the rolling green, checkered with the white of blossoming orchards and the brown of the fallow, past the village spires and up the long slope to the roof among the giant oaks. You've had enough, the river seemed to say; and, turning, it charged boldly into the other mountain's heart. I went with it, but my face was pressed against the pane, that those who travelled with me might not see.