robert winthrop, laden with bag, overcoat and umbrella, left the sleeping-car in which he had spent most of the last eighteen hours and crossed the narrow platform of the junction to the train which was to convey him the last stage of his journey. it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon—for the florida limited, according to custom, had been two hours late—and winthrop was both jaded and dirty; and i might add that, since this was his first experience with southern travel, he was also somewhat out of patience.
choosing the least soiled of the broken-springed, red-velveted seats in the white compartment of the single passenger car, he set his bag down and sank weariedly back. through the small window beside him he saw the limited take up its jolting progress once more, and watched the[44] station-agent deposit his trunk in the baggage-car ahead, which, with the single passenger-coach, comprised the corunna train. then followed five minutes during which nothing happened. winthrop sighed resignedly and strove to find interest in the view. but there was little to see from where he sat; a corner of the station, a section of platform adorned with a few bales of cotton, a crate of live chickens, and a bag of raw peanuts, a glimpse of the forest which crept down to the very edge of the track, a wide expanse of cloudless blue sky. through the open door and windows, borne on the lazy sun-warmed air, came the gentle wheezing of the engine ahead, the sudden discordant chatter of a bluejay, and the murmurous voices of two negro women in the other compartment. there was no hint of winter in the air, although november was almost a week old; instead, it was warm, languorous, scented with the odors of the forest and tinged at times with the pleasantly acrid smell of burning pitch-pine from the engine.[45] it was strangely soft, that air, soft and soothing to tired nerves, and winthrop felt its influence and sighed. but this time the sigh was not one of resignation; rather of surrender. he stretched his legs as well as he might in the narrow space afforded them, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. he hadn’t realized until this moment how tired he was! the engine sobbed and wheezed and the negroes beyond the closed door murmured on.
“your ticket, sir, if you please.”
winthrop opened his eyes and blinked. the train was swaying along between green, sunlit forest walls, and at his side the conductor was waiting with good-humored patience. winthrop yielded the last scrap of his green strip and sat up. suddenly the wood fell behind on either side, giving place to wide fields which rolled back from the railroad to disappear over tiny hills. they were fertile, promising-looking fields, chocolate-hued, covered with sere, brown cotton-plants to which here and there tufts of white still clung. rail fences[46] zigzagged between them, and fire-blackened pine stumps marred their neatness. at intervals the engine emitted a doleful screech and a narrow road crossed the track to amble undecidedly away between the fields. at such moments winthrop caught glimpses of an occasional log cabin with its tipsy, clay-chinked chimney and its invariable congress of lean chickens and leaner dogs. now and then a commotion along the track drew his attention to a scurrying, squealing drove of pigs racing out of danger. then for a time the woods closed in again, and presently the train slowed down before a small station. winthrop reached tentatively toward his bag, but at that instant the sign came into sight, “cowper,” he read, and settled back again.
apparently none boarded the train and none got off, and presently the journey began once more. the conductor entered, glanced at winthrop, decided that he didn’t look communicative and so sat himself down in the corner and leisurely bit the corner off a new plug of tobacco.
the fields came into sight again, and once a comfortable-looking residence gazed placidly down at the passing train from the crest of a nearby hill. but winthrop saw without seeing. his thoughts were reviewing once more the chain of circumstances which had led link by link to the present moment. his thoughts went no further back than that painful morning nearly two years before when he had discovered gerald potter huddled over his desk, a revolver beside him on the floor, and his face horrible with the stains of blood and of ink from the overturned ink-stand. they had been friends ever since college days, gerald and he, and the shock had never quite left him. during the subsequent work of disentangling the affairs[48] of the firm the thing haunted him like a nightmare, and when the last obligation had been discharged, winthrop’s own small fortune going with the rest, he had broken down completely. nervous prostration, the physician called it. looking back at it now winthrop had a better name for it, and that was, hell. there had been moments when he feared he would die, and interminable nights when he feared he wouldn’t, when he had cried like a baby and begged to be put out of misery. there had been two months of that, and then they had bundled him off to a sanitarium in the connecticut hills. there he, who a few months before had been a strong, capable man of thirty-eight, found himself a weak, helpless, emaciated thing with no will of his own, a mere sleeping and waking automaton, more interested in watching the purple veins on the backs of his thin hands than aught else in his limited world. at times he could have wept weakly from self-pity.
but that, too, had passed. one sparkling[49] september morning he lay stretched at length in a long chair on the uncovered veranda, a flood of inspiriting sunlight upon him, and a little breeze, brisk with the cool zest of autumn, stirring his hair. and he had looked up from the white and purple hands and had seen a new world of green and gold and blue spread before him at his feet, a twelve-mile panorama of nature’s finest work retouched and varnished overnight. he had feasted his eyes upon it and felt a glad stirring at his heart. and that day had marked the beginning of a new stage of recovery; he had asked, “how long?”
the last week in october had seen his release. he had returned to his long-vacant apartment in new york fully determined to start at once the work of rebuilding his fallen fortunes. but his physician had interposed. “i’ve done what i can for you,” he said, “and the rest is in your own hands. get away from new york; it won’t supply what you need. get into the country somewhere, away from cities and tickers. hunt,[50] fish, spend your time out of doors. there’s nothing organically wrong with that heart of yours, but it’s pretty tired yet; nurse it awhile.”
“the programme sounds attractive,” winthrop had replied, smilingly, “but it’s expensive. practically i am penniless. give me a year to gather the threads up again and get things a-going once more, and i’ll take your medicine gladly.”
the physician had shrugged his shoulders with a grim smile.
“i have never heard,” he replied, “that the hunting or fishing was especially good in the next world.”
“what do you mean?” asked winthrop, frowning.
“just this, sir. you say you can’t afford to take a vacation. i say you can’t afford not to take it. i’ve lived a good deal longer than you and i give you my word i never saw a poor man who wasn’t a whole lot better off than any dead one of my acquaintance. i don’t want to frighten you, but i tell you frankly that if you stay here[51] and buckle down to rebuilding your business you’ll be a damned poor risk for any insurance company inside of two weeks. it’s better to live poor than to die rich. take your choice.”
winthrop had taken it. after all, poverty is comparative, and he realized that he was still as well off as many a clerk who was contentedly keeping a family on his paltry twenty or thirty dollars a week. he sub-rented his apartment, paid what bills he owed out of the small balance standing to his name at the bank, and considered the question of destination. it was then that he had remembered the piece of property in florida which he had taken over for the firm and which, having been the least desirable of the assets, had escaped the creditors. he went to the telephone and called up the physician.
“how would florida do?” he had asked. “good place to play invalid, isn’t it?”
“i don’t care where you go,” was the response, “so long as there’s pure air and sunshine there, and as long as you give[52] your whole attention to mending yourself.”
he had never been in florida, but it appealed to him and he believed that, since he must live economically, there could be no better place; at least there would be no rent to pay. so he had written to major cass, whose name he had come across in looking over his partner’s papers, and had started south on the heels of his letter. the trip had been a hard one for him, but now the soft, fragrant air that blew against his face through the open car window was already soothing him with its caressing touch and whispering fair promises of strengthening days. a long blast of the whistle moved the conductor to a return of animation and winthrop awoke from his thoughts. the train was slowing down with a grinding of hand-brakes. through the window he caught glimpses of gardens and houses and finally of a broad, tree-lined street marching straight away from the railroad up a sloping hill to a gray stone building with a wooden cupola which[53] seemed to block its path. then the station threw its shadow across him and the train, with many jerks and much rattling of coupling, came to a stop.
“corunna,” drawled the conductor.
outside, on the platform which ran in front of the station on a level with the car floors, winthrop looked about him with mingled amusement and surprise. in most places, he thought, the arrival of the daily train was an event of sufficient importance to people the station platform with spectators. but here he counted just three persons beside himself and the train crew. these were the two negresses who had travelled with him and the station agent. there was no carriage in sight; not even a dray for his trunk. he applied to the agent.
“take that street over yonder,” said the agent, “and it’ll fetch you right square to the major’s office, sir. i’ll look after your bag until you send for it. you tell the nigger to ask me for it, sir.”
so winthrop yielded the bag, coat and[54] umbrella and started forth. the station and the adjoining freight-shed stood, neutral-hued, under the wide-spreading branches of several magnificent live-oaks, in one of which, hidden somewhere in the thick greenery, a thrush was singing. this sound, with that of the panting of the tired engine, alone stirred the somnolent silence of mid-afternoon. a road, deep with white sand, ambled away beneath the trees in the direction of the wide street which winthrop had seen from the car and to which he had been directed. it proved to be a well-kept thoroughfare lined with oaks and bordered by pleasant gardens in front of comfortable, always picturesque and sometimes handsome[55] houses. the sidewalks were high above the street, and gullies of red clay, washed deep by the heavy rains, divided the two. in front of the gates little bridges crossed the gullies. the gardens were still aflame with late flowers and the scent of roses was over all. winthrop walked slowly, his senses alert and enravished. he drew in deep breaths of the fragrant air and sighed for very contentment.
“heavens,” he said under his breath, “the place is just one big rest cure! if i can’t get fixed up here i might as well give up trying. i wonder,” he added a moment later, “if every one is asleep.”
there was not a soul in sight up the length of the street, but from one of the houses came the sound of a piano and, as he glanced toward its embowered porch, he thought he caught the white of a woman’s gown.
“someone’s awake, anyhow,” he thought. “maybe she’s a victim of insomnia.”
the street came to an end in a wide[56] space surrounded by one- and two-story stores and occupied in the centre by a stone building which he surmised to be the court-house. he bore to the right, his eyes searching the buildings for the shingle of major cass. a few teams were standing in front of the town hitching-rails, and perhaps a dozen persons, mostly negroes, were in view. he had decided to appeal for information when he caught sight of a modest sign on a corner building across the square. “l. q. cass, counsellor at law,” he read. the building was a two-story affair of crumbling red brick. the lower part was occupied by a general merchandise store, and the upper by offices. a flight of wooden steps led from the sidewalk along the outside of the building to the second floor. winthrop ascended, entered an open door, and knocked at the first portal. but there was no reply to his demands, and, as the other rooms in sight were evidently untenanted, he returned to the street and addressed himself to a youth who sat on an empty box under the wooden[57] awning of the store below. the youth was in his shirt-sleeves and was eating sugar-cane, but at winthrop’s greeting he rose to his feet, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and answered courteously:
“waynewood is about three-quarters of a mile, sir,” he replied to the stranger’s inquiry. “right down this street, sir, until you cross the bridge over the branch. then it’s the first place.”
he was evidently very curious about the questioner, but strove politely to restrain that curiosity until the other had moved away along the street.
the street upon which winthrop now found himself ran at right angles with that up which he had proceeded from the station. like that, it was shaded from side to side by water-oaks and bordered by gardens. but the gardens were larger, less flourishing, and the houses behind them smaller and less tidy. he concluded that this was an older part of the village. several carriages passed him, and once he paused in the shade to watch the slow approach[58] and disappearance of a creaking two-wheeled cart, presided over by a white-haired old negro and drawn by a pair of ruminative oxen. it was in sight quite five minutes, during which time winthrop leaned against the sturdy bole of an oak and marvelled smilingly.
“and in new york,” he said to himself, “we swear because it takes us twenty minutes to get to wall street on the elevated!”
he went on, glad of the rest, passing from sunlight to shadow along the uneven sidewalk and finally crossing the bridge, a tiny affair over a shallow stream of limpid water which trickled musically over its bed of white sand. beyond the bridge the sidewalk ceased and he went on for a little distance over a red clay road, rutted by wheels and baked hard by the sun. then a picket fence which showed evidence of having once been whitewashed met him and he felt a sudden stirring within him. this was waynewood, doubtless, and it belonged to him. the thought was somehow a very pleasant one. he wondered why.[59] he had possessed far more valuable real estate in his time but he couldn’t recollect that he had ever thrilled before at the thought of ownership.
“oh, there’s magic in this ridiculous air,” he told himself whimsically. “even a toad would look romantic here, i dare say. i wonder if there is a gate to my domain.”
behind the fence along which he made his way was an impenetrable mass of shrubbery and trees. of what was beyond, there was no telling. but presently the gate was before him, sagging wide open on its rusted hinges. from it a straight path, narrow and shadowy, proceeded for some distance, crossed a blur of sunlight and continued to where a gleam of white seemed to indicate a building. the path was set between solid rows of oleander bushes whose lanceolate leaves whispered murmurously to winthrop as he trod the firm, moss-edged path.
the blur of sunlight proved to be a break in the path where a driveway angled across[60] it, curving on toward the house and backward toward the road where, as winthrop later discovered, it emerged through a gate beyond the one by which he had entered. he crossed the drive and plunged again into the gloom of the oleander path. but his journey was almost over, for a moment later the sentinel bushes dropped away from beside him and he found himself at the foot of a flower garden, across whose blossom-flecked width a white-pillared, double-galleried old house stared at him in dignified calm. the porches were untenanted and the wide-open door showed an empty hall. to reach that door winthrop had to make a half circuit of the garden, for directly in front of him a great round bed of roses and box barred his way. in the middle of the bed a stained marble cupid twined garlands of roses about his naked body. winthrop followed the path to the right and circled his way to the drive and the steps, the pleasure of possession kindling in his heart. with his foot on the lowest step he paused and glanced about[61] him. it was charming! find his health here? oh, beyond a doubt he would. ponce de leon had searched in this part of the world for the fountain of youth. who knew but that he, robert winthrop, might not find it here, hidden away in this fragrant, shaded jungle? and just then his wandering glance fell on a sprawling fig-tree at the end of the porch, at a white figure[62] perched in its branches, at a girl’s fresh young face looking across at him with frank and smiling curiosity.
winthrop took off his hat and moved toward the fig-tree.
