The Wild Olive | Page 4

and opening his eyes upon the stars. But
to do the same thing from compulsion, because men had closed up their
ranks and ejected him from their midst, was an outrage he would not
accept. In the darkness his head went up, while his eyes burned with a
fire more intense than that of any of the mild beacons from the towns
below, as he strode back to the old root-hedge and leaped it.
He felt the imprudence, not to say the uselessness, of the movement, as
he made it; and yet he kept on, finding himself in a field in which cows
and horses were startled from their munching by his footstep. It was
another degree nearer to the organized life in which he was entitled to a
place. Shielded by a shrubbery of sleeping goldenrod, he stole down
the slope, making his way to the lane along which the beasts went out
to pasture and came home. Following the trail, he passed a meadow, a
potato-field, and a patch of Indian corn, till the scent of flowers told
him he was coming on a garden. A minute later, low, velvety domes of
clipped yew rose in the foreground, and he knew himself to be in touch
with the civilization that clung, like a hardy vine, to the coves and
promontories of the lake, while its tendrils withered as soon as they
were flung up toward the mountains. Only a few steps more, and,
between the yews, he saw the light streaming from the open doors and
windows of a house.
It was such a house as, during the two years he had spent up in the high
timber-lands, he had caught sight of only on the rare occasions when he
came within the precincts of a town--a house whose outward aspect,
even at night, suggested something of taste, means, and social position
for its occupants. Slipping nearer still, he saw curtains fluttering in the
breeze of the August evening, and Virginia creeper dropping in heavily
massed garlands from the roof of a columned veranda. A French

window was open to the floor, and within, he could see vaguely, people
were seated.
The scene was simple enough, but to the fugitive it had a kind of
sacredness. It was like a glimpse into the heaven he has lost caught by a
fallen angel. For the moment he forgot his hunger and weakness, in this
feast for the heart and eyes. It was with something of the pleasure of
recognizing long-absent faces that he traced the line of a sofa against
the wall, and stated to himself that there was a row of prints hanging
above it. There had been no such details as these to note in his cell, nor
yet in the courtroom which for months had constituted his only change
of outlook Insensibly to himself, he crept nearer, drawn by the sheer
spell of gazing.
Finding a gate leading into the garden, he opened it softly, leaving it so,
in order to secure his retreat. From the shelter of one of the rounded
yew-trees he could make his observations more at ease. He perceived
now that the house stood on a terrace, and turned the garden front, its
more secluded aspect, in his direction. The high hedges, common in
these lakeside villages, screened it from the road; while the open
French window threw a shaft of brightness down the yew-tree walk,
casting the rest of the garden into gloom.
To Norrie Ford, peeping furtively from behind one of the domes of
clipped foliage, there was exasperation in the fact that his new position
gave him no glimpse of the people in the room. His hunger to see them
became for the minute more insistent than that for food. They
represented that human society from which he had waked one morning
to find himself cut off, as a rock is cut off by seismic convulsion from
the mainland of which it has formed a part. It was in a sort of effort to
span the gulf separating him from his own past that he peered now into
this room, whose inmates were only passing the hours between the
evening meal and bedtime. That people could sit tranquilly reading
books or playing games filled him with a kind of wonder.
When he considered it safe he slipped along to what he hoped would
prove a better point of view, but, finding it no more advantageous, he
darted to still another. The light lured him as it might lure an insect of

the night, till presently he stood on the very steps of the terrace. He
knew the danger of his situation, but he could not bring himself to turn
and steal away till he had fixed the picture of that cheerful