Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only about so much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes him more uncomfortable--yes, downright mad!--than to feel that he is being played with. I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with him, and that if I held him now it must be by driving the truth straight home. So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly:
"My friend, don"t think I am merely joking you. I was never more in earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it, but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this."
I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and simply as English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for his roads, I thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, and when he spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in the roads I dealt with, and I explained to him what my roads were. I have never seen a man more intensely interested: he neither moved nor took his eyes from my face.
"And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles," said I, "it was only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds of roads as well as your own."
I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see. I know now how the surgeon must feel at the crucial moment of his accomplished operation. Will the patient live or die?
The road-worker drew a long breath as he came out from under the anesthetic.
"I guess, partner," said he, "you"re trying to put a stone or two in my ruts!"
I had him!
"Exactly," I exclaimed eagerly.
We both paused. He was the first to speak--with some embarra.s.sment:
"Say, you"re just like a preacher I used to know when I was a kid. He was always sayin" things that meant something else and when you found out what he was drivin" at you always felt kind of queer in your insides."
I laughed.
"It"s a mighty good sign," I said, "when a man begins to feel queer in the insides. It shows that something is happening to him."
With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close and friendly--and shovelling again, not saying much. After quite a time, when we had nearly cleaned up the landslide, I heard the husky road-worker chuckling to himself; finally, straightening up, he said:
"Say, there"s more things in a road than ever I dreamt of."
"I see," said I, "that the new spectacles are a good fit."
The road-worker laughed long and loud.
"You"re a good one, all right," he said. "I see what YOU mean. I catch your point."
"And now that you"ve got them on," said I, "and they are serving you so well, I"m not going to sell them to you at all. I"m going to present them to you--for I haven"t seen anybody in a long time that I"ve enjoyed meeting more than I have you."
We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but I have learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far better to find a way to uncover it.
"Same here," said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuine feeling in his voice.
Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I get in and go home with him.
"I want you to see my wife and kids," said he.
The upshot of it was that I not only remained for supper--and a good supper it was--but I spent the night in his little home, close at the side of the road near the foot of a fine hill. And from time to time all night long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by in the smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at my window, and sometimes I heard them sound their bra.s.sy horns.
I wish I could tell more of what I saw there, of the garden back of the house, and of all the road-worker and his wife told me of their simple history--but, the road calls!
When I set forth early this morning the road-worker followed me out to the smooth macadam (his wife standing in the doorway with her hands rolled in her ap.r.o.n) and said to me, a bit shyly:
"I"ll be more sort o"--sort o" interested in roads since I"ve seen you."
"I"ll be along again some of these days," said I, laughing, "and I"ll stop in and show you my new stock of spectacles. Maybe I can sell you another pair!"
"Maybe you kin," and he smiled a broad, understanding smile.
Nothing brings men together like having a joke in common.
So I walked off down the road--in the best of spirits--ready for the events of another day.
It will surely be a great adventure, one of these days, to come this way again--and to visit the Stanleys, and the Vedders, and the Minister, and drop in and sell another pair of specs to the Road-worker. It seems to me I have a wonderfully rosy future ahead of me!
P. S.--I have not yet found out who painted the curious signs; but I am not as uneasy about it as I was. I have seen two more of them already this morning--and find they exert quite a psychological influence.
CHAPTER VI. AN EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN NATURE
In the early morning after I left the husky road-mender (wearing his new spectacles), I remained steadfastly on the Great Road or near it. It was a prime spring day, just a little hazy, as though promising rain, but soft and warm.
"They will be working in the garden at home," I thought, "and there will be worlds of rhubarb and asparagus." Then I remembered how the morning sunshine would look on the little vine-clad back porch (reaching halfway up the weathered door) of my own house among the hills.
It was the first time since my pilgrimage began that I had thought with any emotion of my farm--or of Harriet.
And then the road claimed me again, and I began to look out for some further explanation of the curious sign, the single word "Rest," which had interested me so keenly on the preceding day. It may seem absurd to some who read these lines--some practical people!--but I cannot convey the pleasure I had in the very elusiveness and mystery of the sign, nor how I wished I might at the next turn come upon the poet himself. I decided that no one but a poet could have contented himself with a lyric in one word, unless it might have been a humourist, to whom sometimes a single small word is more blessed than all the verbal riches of Webster himself. For it is nothing short of genius that uses one word when twenty will say the same thing!
Or, would he, after all, turn out to be only a more than ordinarily alluring advertiser? I confess my heart went into my throat that morning, when I first saw the sign, lest it read:
[ RESTaurant 2 miles east ]
nor should I have been surprised if it had.
I caught a vicarious glimpse of the sign-man to-day, through the eyes of a young farmer. Yes, he s"posed he"d seen him, he said; wore a slouch hat, couldn"t tell whether he was young or old. Drove into the bushes (just down there beyond the brook) and, standin" on the seat of his buggy, nailed something to a tree. A day or two later--the dull wonder of mankind!--the young farmer, pa.s.sing that way to town, had seen the odd sign "Rest" on the tree: he s"posed the fellow put it there.
"What does it mean?"
"Well, naow, I hadn"t thought," said the young farmer.
"Did the fellow by any chance have long hair?"
"Well, naow, I didn"t notice," said he.
"Are you sure he wore a slouch hat?"
"Ye-es--or it may a-been straw," replied the observant young farmer.