I pretended to look up the road, and then I did look in earnest. No wonder the Schimmelpfennig eye and mouth had worn the leering expression. The blond god in gray tweed was swinging along toward me! I knew that he was blond because he wore no hat and the last rays of the October sun were making a little halo effect about his head. I knew that his-gray clothes were tweed because every well regulated hero on a country road wears tweed. It’s almost a religion with them. He was not near enough to make a glance at his features possible. I turned around and continued my walk. The yellow cart, with its impudent Schimmelpfennig leer, was disappearing in a cloud of dust. Shades of the “Duchess” and Bertha M. Clay! How does one greet a blond god in gray tweed on a country road, when one has him!
The blond god solved the problem for me.
“Hi!” he called. I did not turn. There was a moment’s silence. Then there came a shrill, insistent whistle, of the kind that is made by placing four fingers between the teeth. It is a favorite with the gallery gods. I would not have believed that gray tweed gods stooped to it.
“Hi!” called the voice again, very near now. “Lieber Gott! Never have I seen so proud a young woman!”
I whirled about to face Von Gerhard; a strangely boyish and unprofessional looking Von Gerhard.
“Young man,” I said severely, “have you been a-follerin’ of me?”
“For miles,” groaned he, as we shook hands. You walk like a grenadier. I am sent by the charming Norah to tell you that you are to come home to mix the salad dressing, for there is company for supper. I am the company.”
I was still a bit dazed. “But how did you know which road to take? And when—”
“Wunderbar, nicht wahr?” laughed Von Gerhard. “But really quite simple. I come in on an earlier train than I had expected, chat a moment with sister Norah, inquire after the health of my patient, and am told that she is running away from a horde of blue devils!—quote your charming sister—that have swarmed about her all day. What direction did her flight take? I ask. Sister Norah shrugs her shoulders and presumes that it is the road which shows the reddest and yellowest autumn colors. That road will be your road. So!”
“Pooh! How simple! That is the second`disappointment you have given me to-day.”
“But how is that possible? The first has not had time to happen.”
“The first was yourself,” I replied, rudely.
“I had been longing for an adventure. And when I saw you ‘way up the road, such an unusual figure for our Michigan country roads, I forgot that I was a disappointed old grass widder with a history, and I grew young again, and my heart jumped up into my throat, and I sez to mesilf, sez I: `Enter the hero!’ And it was only you.”
Von Gerhard stared a moment, a curious look on his face. Then he laughed one of those rare laughs of his, and I joined him because I was strangely young, light, and happy to be alive.
“You walk and enjoy walking, yes?” asked Von Gerhard, scanning my face. “Your cheeks they are like—well, as unlike the cheeks of the German girls as Diana’s are unlike a dairy maid’s. And the nerfs? They no longer jump, eh?”
“Oh, they jump, but not with weariness. They jump to get into action again. From a life of too much excitement I have gone to the other extreme. I shall be dead of ennui in another six months.”
“Ennui?” mused he, “and you are—how is it?— twenty-eight years, yes? H’m!”
There was a world of exasperation in the last exclamation.
“I am a thousand years old,” it made me exclaim, “a million!”
“I will prove to you that you are sixteen,” declared Von Gerhard, calmly.
We had come to a fork in the road. At the right the narrower road ran between two rows of great maples that made an arch of golden splendor. The frost had kissed them into a gorgeous radiance.
“Sunshine Avenue,” announced Von Gerhard. “It beckons us away from home, and supper and salad dressing and duty, but who knows what we shall find at the end of it!”
“Let’s explore,” I suggested. “It is splendidly golden enough to be enchanted.”
We entered the yellow canopied pathway.
“Let us pretend this is Germany, yes?” pleaded Von Gerhard. “This golden pathway will end in a neat little glass-roofed restaurant, with tables and chairs outside, and comfortable German papas and mammas and pig-tailed children sitting at the tables, drinking coffee or beer. There will be stout waiters, and a red-faced host. And we will seat ourselves at one of the tables, and I will wave my hand, and one of the stout waiters will come flying. `Will you have coffee,
But, “Oh, no!” I exclaimed, for his mood was infectious. “This is France. Please! The golden pathway will end in a picturesque little French farm, with a dairy. And in the doorway of the farmhouse there will be a red-skirted peasant woman, with a white cap! and a baby on her arm! and sabots! Oh, surely she will wear sabots!”
“Most certainly she will wear sabots,” Von Gerhard said, heatedly, “and blue knitted stockings. And the baby’s name is Mimi!
We had taken hands and were skipping down the pathway now, like two excited children.
“Let’s run,” I suggested. And run we did, like two mad creatures, until we rounded a gentle curve and brought up, panting, within a foot of a decrepit rail fence. The rail fence enclosed a stubbly, lumpy field. The field was inhabited by an inquiring cow. Von Gerhard and I stood quite still, hand in hand, gazing at the cow. Then we turned slowly and looked at each other.
“This pathway of glorified maples ends in a cow,” I said, solemnly. At which we both shrieked with mirth, leaning on the decrepit fence and mopping our eyes with our handkerchiefs.
“Did I not say you were sixteen?” taunted Von Gerhard. We were getting surprisingly well acquainted.
“Such a scolding as we shall get! It will be quite dark before we are home. Norah will be tearing her hair.”
It was a true prophecy. As we stampeded up the steps the door was flung open, disclosing a tragic figure.
