Full night had come when he got off the train at the town where Joel was to meet him. After the heavy rains of the afternoon, and the stormy sunset, the sky had cleared completely: a great moon blazed in the cloudless bowl of a depthless sky; after the rain, and the sultry swelter of the city streets, the tainted furnace-fumes of city breath, the air was clean and fresh, and marvellously sweet, and the great earth waited, and was still enormously, and one always knew that it was there.
The engine panted for a moment with a hoarse, metallic resonance, in the baggage-car someone threw mail-bags and thick bundles of evening papers off onto the platform, there was the swinging signal of a brakesman’s lantern, the tolling of the engine bell, thick, hose-like jets of steam blew out of her, the terrific pistons moved like elbows, caught, bore down, the terrific flanges spun for a moment, the short, squat funnel belched explosive thunders of hot smoke, the train rolled past with a slow, protesting creak of ties, a hard-pressed rumble of the heavy coaches, and was on her way again.
Then the train was gone, and there was nothing but the rails, the earth, the moon, the river, and strong silence — and the haunting and immortal visage of America by night. It was there, and it was there for ever, and he had always known it, and it abode there and was still, and there was something in his heart he could not utter. The rails swept northward towards the dark, and in the moon the rails were like two living strands of burning silver, and between the rails the heavy ballast rock was white as lunar marble, and the brown wooden ties were resinous and dry and very still.
Sheer beside the tracks, the low banks of the ballast-fill sloped to the edges of the mighty river. And the river blazed there in the great blank radiance of the moon, cool waters gently lapped small gluts and pockets of the shore, and in the great wink of the moon the river blazed more brightly than elves’ gold. And farther off, where darkness met it, the light was broken into scallop-shells of gold; it swam and shimmered in a billion winks of fire like a school of herrings on the water, and beyond all that there was just the dark, the cool-flowing mystery of velvet-hearted night, the silent, soundless surge and coolness of the strange, the grand, the haunting, the unceasing river.
Far, far away in darkness, on the other shore — more than a mile away — the river met the fringes of the land, but where the river ended, or the land began, was hard to say. There was just THERE a greater darkness, perhaps just by a shade, a deeper, dark intensity of night — a dark, perhaps, a shade less lucent, smooth, and fluid, by an indefinable degree more solid.
Yet there were lights there — there were lights — a bracelet of a few, hard lights along the river, a gem-like incandescence, few and hard and bright, and so poignantly lost and lonely in enormous darkness as are all lights in America, sown sparsely on the enormous viewless mantle of the night, and by that pattern so defining it — a scheme of sparse, few lights, hard, bright and small, sown there upon night’s enormous darkness, the great earth’s secret and attentive loneliness, its huge, abiding mystery.
And for ever, beyond the mysterious river’s farthest shore, the great earth waited in the darkness, and was still. It waited there with the huge, attentive secrecy of night and of America, and of the wilderness of this everlasting earth on which we live; and its dark visage that we cannot see was more cruel, strange and lonely than the visage of dark death, and its rude strength more savage and destructive than a tiger’s paw, and its wild, mysterious loveliness more delicate than magic, more desireful than a woman’s flesh, and more thrilling, secret and seductive than a woman’s love.
As he stood there, tranced in that powerful spell of silence and of night, he heard swift footsteps running down the station stairs, he turned and saw Joel Pierce approaching. He ran forward quickly, his tall, thin figure clad in a blue coat and white flannels, alive with the swift boyish eagerness that was one of his engaging qualities.
“Gosh!” he said, in his eager whispered tone, panting a little as he came up, “— I’m sorry that I’m late: we have people staying at the house; I had to drive a woman who’s been staying with us to Poughkeepsie — I tried to get you there, but your train had already gone. I drove like hell getting here. — It’s good to see you!” he burst out in his eager whispering way — at once so gentle, and so friendly and spontaneous —“It’s SWELL that you could come!” he whispered enthusiastically. “Come on! They’re all waiting for you!”
And picking up his friend’s valise, he walked swiftly across the platform and began to climb the stairs.
Although Joel Pierce would have spoken in this way to any friend — to anyone for whom he had a friendly feeling, however casual — and although the other youth knew that he would have spoken this way to many other people — the words filled him with happiness, with an instinctive warmth and affection for the person who had spoken them. Indeed, the very fact that there was in Joel’s words — in all his human relationships — this curious impersonality, gave what he said an enhanced value. For in this way Joel revealed instinctively what everyone who knew him well felt about him — an enormous decency and radiance in his soul and character, a wonderfully generous and instinctive friendliness towards humanity — that became finer and more beautiful because of its very impersonality.
This warm, instinctive humanity was evident in all he did, it came out somehow in the most casual words and relationships with people. For example, when they went upstairs into the station waiting-room, which was completely empty, Joel paused for a moment at the booking-office window and spoke to a man in shirt-sleeves inside.
“Joe,” he said casually yet in his eager, whispering way, “if Will comes down will you tell him not to wait? I’ve got everyone: there’ll be no one else tonight.”
“All right, Mr. Pierce,” the man said quietly. “If I see him, I’ll tell him.”
Joel’s car, a small, cheap one of a popular make, was backed up against the station curb: he opened the door and put his friend’s suitcase in the back, then they both got in and drove away.
About two miles back from town upon the crest of a hill that gave a good view of the great moon-wink of the noble and haunting river far below, Joel suddenly, and without slackening his reckless speed, swerved from the concrete highway into a dusty and gravel road that went off to the left. And now they were really in the heart of the deep country: on each side of them the moon-drenched fields and dreaming woods of a noble, grand and spacious land slept in the steep, white silence of the moon. From time to time they would pass corn-fields, the high and silent stature, the cool figure of the corn at night, and see a great barn, or small lights burning in some farmer’s house. Then there would be only the deep, dark mystery of sleeping woods beside the road and once, in a field, a herd of cows, all faced one way, bedded down upon their forequarters, the mottled colours of their hides showing plainly in the blazing radiance of the moon. When they had gone about a mile their road swept into another one that joined it at right angles: between these roads, in the angle that they formed, there was a pleasant house — a wooden structure of eight or ten rooms, white and graceful in the moon, and surrounded by a trim, well-kept lawn and well laid-out flower-plots and gardens.
A swift and pleasurable conviction told the youth that this was Joel’s house: he was therefore surprised when the car shot past without slackening its speed and then turned left upon the other road. He turned to Joel and, almost with a note of protest in his voice, said:
“Don’t you live there? Isn’t that your house?”
“What?” Joel whispered quickly, startled from the focal concentration of his driving. He turned to his companion with a surprised inquiring look. “Oh, THAT house?” he went on at once. “No,” he said softly. “That’s not our house. — That is, it is our house,” he corrected himself, “it belongs to us, but a friend of ours — Margaret Telfair — lives there now. You’ll meet her tonight,” he went on casually. “She’s at the house now. — You’ll LIKE her,” he whispered with soft conviction, “— she’s grand! An INCREDIBLE person!” he whispered enthusiastically.
They drove on in silence for some time: more moon-drenched fields, great barns and little farmhouses, and herds of crouching cattle, more dreaming and mysterious woods, the mysterious shadows of great trees against the road, and secrecy, and sweet balsamic scents and cool-enfolding night. — They were now driving back in the direction of the river: the new road led that way.
“When do we come to your place, Joel?” the other youth asked, when they had driven on in silence for a time. “How far is it?”
“What?” Joel whispered quickly, again turning his radiant and inquiring face. “OUR place? Oh!” he said. “We’re on our place now.”
“ON it?” the other stammered, after a moment’s bewildered pause. “But — but — where — I didn’t see a gate or anything — when? —”
“Oh,” Joel whispered, with an enlightened air. “THAT! We passed it.”
“PASSED it? Where?”
“When we turned in from the main road,” Joel whispered. “Do you remember?”
“The — the MAIN road?” the other stammered. “You — you mean — that concrete highway way back there?”
“Yes,” Joel whispered. “That was the entrance to our place — one of them. It’s not much of an entrance,” he whispered apologetically. “I don’t wonder that you couldn’t see it.”
“Then — then — everything since then — all we passed — all this —?” the other stammered.
“Yes,” Joel whispered, with his radiant, eager look, “that’s it. That’s our place. It’s really grand country,” he went on matter-of-factly. “I want to show you around tomorrow.”
They swept suddenly around a curve of the gravelled road, bordered with fragrant shrubs. Before them stretched out an immense sward of velvet lawn, darkened by the grand and silent stature of great trees. The car swept forward; through the tree-barred vista of the lawn, the outline of a house appeared. It was a dream-house, a house such as one sees only in a dream — the moonlight slept upon its soaring wings, its white purity, and gave the whole enormous structure an aerial delicacy, a fragile loveliness like some enchanted structure that one sees in dreams. And yet, for all this quality of dream-enchantment, there was something hauntingly familiar about it too. The car swept around the drive and halted before the moonlit fa?ade of the house. A back porch level with the ground was flanked by tall, square columns of graceful, slender wood. To one side, far below, beyond the house, and the great moon-sweep of velvet, he could see the wink and glimmer of the Hudson River.
And suddenly that haunting sense of familiarity fused to a blind flash of recognition. The house was the house he had passed a dozen times in darkness, had seen a dozen times at morning from the windows of a speeding train along the river, as he hurtled citywards again from those blind night passages of desire and fury in a town called Troy.
They got out of the car. Joel took his valise, and like a person walking in a dream, he followed him across the porch, into a large and dimly lit entrance-hall. Joel put his valise down in the hall, and turning, whispered:
“Look. I’ll show you your room later. Mums and some other people are waiting for us on the terrace. Let’s go and say hello to them first.”
He nodded, unable to speak, and in silence followed his guide down the hall and through the house. Joel opened a door: the blazing moonlight fell upon the vast, swarded lawn and sleeping woods of that magic domain known as Far Field Farm. And that haunting and unearthly radiance fell as well upon the white wings of that magic house and on a group of its fortunate inhabitants who were sitting on the terrace.
The two young men went out: forms rose to greet them.