Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.
Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb.
She leaned back in the buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white splendor above.
Even when they had passed out and were driving down the long slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke.
Still with rapt face she gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background.
Through Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still in silence.
When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child had not spoken.
She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically as she could talk.
“I guess you’re feeling pretty tired and hungry,” Matthew ventured to say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the only reason he could think of.
“But we haven’t very far to go now—only another mile.”
She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.
“Oh, Mr. Cuthbert,” she whispered, “that place we came through—that white place—what was it?”
“Well now, you must mean the Avenue,” said Matthew after a few moments’ profound reflection.
“It is a kind of pretty place.”
“Pretty?
Oh, pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough.
Oh, it was wonderful—wonderful.
It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by imagination.
It just satisfies me here”—she put one hand on her breast—“it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache.
Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?”
“Well now, I just can’t recollect that I ever had.”
“I have it lots of time—whenever I see anything royally beautiful.
But they shouldn’t call that lovely place the Avenue.
There is no meaning in a name like that.
They should call it—let me see—the White Way of Delight.
Isn’t that a nice imaginative name?
When I don’t like the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of them so.
There was a girl at the asylum whose name was Hepzibah Jenkins, but I always imagined her as Rosalia DeVere.
Other people may call that place the Avenue, but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight.
Have we really only another mile to go before we get home?
I’m glad and I’m sorry.
I’m sorry because this drive has been so pleasant and I’m always sorry when pleasant things end.
Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure.
And it’s so often the case that it isn’t pleasanter.
That has been my experience anyhow.
But I’m glad to think of getting home.
You see, I’ve never had a real home since I can remember.
It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming to a really truly home.
Oh, isn’t that pretty!”
They had driven over the crest of a hill.
Below them was a pond, looking almost like a river so long and winding was it.
A bridge spanned it midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of sand-hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a glory of many shifting hues—the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name has ever been found.
Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows.
Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a white-clad girl tip-toeing to her own reflection.
From the marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs.
There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on a slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was shining from one of its windows.
“That’s Barry’s pond,” said Matthew.
“Oh, I don’t like that name, either.
I shall call it—let me see—the Lake of Shining Waters.
Yes, that is the right name for it.