V

THE STORY OF ANNA

It is the prime secret of the Open Road (but I may here tell it aloud) that you are to pass nothing, reject nothing, despise nothing upon this earth.  As you travel, many things both great and small will come to your attention; you are to regard all with open eyes and a heart of simplicity.  Believe that everything belongs somewhere; each thing has its fitting and luminous place within this mosaic of human life.  The True Road is not open to those who withdraw the skirts of intolerance or lift the chin of pride.  Rejecting the least of those who are called common or unclean, it is (curiously) you yourself that you reject.  If you despise that which is ugly you do not know that which is beautiful.  For what is beauty but completeness?  The roadside beggar belongs here, too; and the idiot boy who wanders idly in the open fields; and the girl who withholds (secretly) the name of the father of her child.

* * * * *

I remember as distinctly as though it happened yesterday the particular evening three years ago when I saw the Scotch Preacher come hurrying up the road toward my house.  It was June.  I had come out after supper to sit on my porch and look out upon the quiet fields.  I remember the grateful cool of the evening air, and the scents rising all about me from garden and roadway and orchard.  I was tired after the work of the day and sat with a sort of complete comfort and contentment which comes only to those who work long in the quiet of outdoor places.  I remember the thought came to me, as it has come in various forms so many times, that in such a big and beautiful world there should be no room for the fever of unhappiness or discontent.

And then I saw McAlway coming up the road.  I knew instantly that something was wrong.  His step, usually so deliberate, was rapid; there was agitation in every line of his countenance.  I walked down through the garden to the gate and met him there.  Being somewhat out of breath he did not speak at once.  So I said: 

“It is not, after all, as bad as you anticipate.”

“David,” he said, and I think I never heard him speak more seriously, “it is bad enough.”

He laid his hand on my arm.

“Can you hitch up your horse and come with me—­right away?”

McAlway helped with the buckles and said not a word.  In ten minutes, certainly not more, we were driving together down the lane.

“Do you know a family named Williams living on the north road beyond the three corners?” asked the Scotch Preacher.

Instantly a vision of a somewhat dilapidated house, standing not unpicturesquely among ill-kept fields, leaped to my mind.

“Yes,” I said; “but I can’t remember any of the family except a gingham girl with yellow hair.  I used to see her on her way to school,’’

“A girl!” he said, with a curious note in his voice; “but a woman now.”