第53章

Behind all this, I think, and confirming my feeling, was the fact that Miss Colton did not repeat her call.A week or more passed and she did not come.I caught glimpses of her occasionally in the auto, or at the post-office, but I took care that she should not see me.I did not wish to be seen, though precisely why I could not have explained even to myself.The memory of that night in the rain, and of our meetings in the grove, troubled me because I could not keep them from my mind.They kept recurring, no matter what Idid or where I went.No, I did not want to meet her again.

Somehow, the sight and memory of her made me more dissatisfied and discontented than ever.I found myself moodily wishing for things beyond my reach, longing to be something more than I was--more than the nobody which I knew I must always be.I remembered my feelings on the morning of the day when I first saw her.Now they seemed almost like premonitions.

I kept away; not only from her, but from George Taylor and Captain Dean and the townspeople.I went to the village scarcely at all.

Sim Eldredge, who had evidently received orders from headquarters to drop the Lane "agency," troubled me no more, merely glowering reproachfully when we met; and Alvin Baker, whose note had been renewed, although he hailed me with effusive cordiality, did not press his society upon me, having no axe to grind at present.Zeb Kendrick was using the Lane again, but he took care to bring no more "billiard roomers" as passengers.I had as yet heard nothing from my quarrel with Tim Hallet.

I spent a good deal of my time in the Comfort, or wandering about the shore and in the woods.One warm, cloudy morning the notion seized me to go up to the ponds and try for black bass.There are bass in some of the larger ponds--lakes they would be called anywhere else except on Cape Cod--and, if one is lucky, and the weather is right, and the bait tempting, they may be caught.This particular morning promised to furnish the proper brand of weather, and a short excursion on the flats provided a supply of shrimps and minnows for bait.Dorinda, who happened to be in good humor, put up a lunch for me and, at seven o'clock, with my rod and landing net in their cases, strapped, with my fishing boots and coffee pot, to my back, and my bait pail in one hand and lunch basket in the other, I started on my tramp.It was a long four miles to Seabury's Pond, my destination, and Lute, to whom, like most country people, the idea of a four-mile walk was sheer lunacy, urged my harnessing the horse and driving there.But I knew the overgrown wood roads and the difficulty of piloting a vehicle through them, and, moreover, I really preferred to go afoot.So Imarched off and left him protesting.

Very few summer people--and only summer people or irresponsible persons like myself waste time in freshwater fishing on the Cape--knew where Seabury's Pond was.It lay far from macadam roads and automobile thoroughfares and its sandy shores were bordered with verdure-clad hills shutting it in like the sides of a bowl.To reach it from Denboro one left the Bayport road at "Beriah Holt's place," followed Beriah's cow path to the pasture, plunged into the oak and birch grove at the southern edge of that pasture, emerged on a grass-grown and bush-encumbered track which had once been the way to some early settler's home, and had been forsaken for years, and followed that track, in all its windings, until he saw the gleam of water between the upper fringe of brush and the lower limbs of the trees.Then he left the track and clambered down the steep slope to the pond.

I am a good walker, but I was tired long before I reached the slope.The bait pail, which I refilled with fresh water at Beriah's pump, grew heavier as I went on, and I began to think Lute knew what he was talking about when he declared me to be "plumb crazy, hoofin' it four mile loaded down with all that dunnage."However, when the long "hoof" was over, and I sat down in a patch of "hog-cranberry" vines for a smoke, with the pond before me, Iwas measurably happy.This was the sort of thing I liked.Here there were no Shore Lane controversies, but real independence and peace.

After my smoke was finished and I had rested, I carried my "dunnage" around to the point where I intended to begin my fishing, put the lunch basket in a shady place beneath the bushes, and the bait pail in the water nearby, changed my shoes for the fishing boots, rigged my rod and was ready.

At first the fishing was rather poor.The pond was full of perch and they were troublesome.By and by, however, I hooked a four-pound pickerel and he stirred my lagging ambition.I waded on, casting and playing beyond the lily pads and sedge.At last I got my first bass, a small one, and had scarcely landed him than a big fellow struck, fought, rose and broke away.That was spur sufficient.All the forenoon I waded about the shores of that pond.When at half-past eleven the sun came out and I knew my sport was over, for the time at least, I had four bass--two of them fine ones--and two, pickerel.Then I remembered my appetite and Dorinda's luncheon.

I went back to the point and inspected the contents of the basket.

Sandwiches, cold chicken, eggs, doughnuts and apple puffs.They looked good to me.Also there were pepper and salt in one paper, sugar in another, coffee in a third, and milk in a bottle.Icollected some dry chips and branches and prepared to kindle a fire.As I bent over the heap of sticks and chips I heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the woods near by.