The Way of the Wind | Page 2

her
own hands for Celia's lunch basket. "Youah husband will be out theah."
She closed the lid down and raised her head brightly.
"Whut diffunce does it maik?" she asked, "how ha'd the wind blows if
you've got youah husband?"

Lucy Brown flipped a speck of dust from the hem of Celia's travelling
dress.
"Yes," said she, "and such a husband!"
Celia looked wistfully out over the calm and quiet street, basking in the
sunlight, peacefully minus a ripple of breeze to break the beauty of it,
her large eyes sad.
"I'm afraid of the wind," she complained. "Sto'ms scah me."
And she reiterated:
"I'm afraid of the wind!"
Sarah suddenly ran down the walk on either side of which blossomed
old fashioned flowers, Marsh Marigolds, Johnny-Jump-Ups and
Brown-Eyed Susans. She stood at the front gate, which swung on its
hinges, leaning over it, looking down the road.
"I thoat I heahd the stage," she called back. "Yes. Suah enuf. Heah it is,
comin'."
At that Celia's mother, hurrying fearfully out the door, threw her arms
around her.
Celia fell to sobbing.
"It's so fah away," she stammered brokenly, between her sobs. "I'm
afraid ... to ... go.... It's so fah ... away!"
"Theah! theah!" comforted her mother, lifting up her face and kissing it.
"It's not so fah but you can come back again. The same road comes that
goes, deah one. Theah! Theah!"
"Miss Celia," cried a reproachful voice from the door. "Is you gwine
away, chile, widout tellin' youah black Mammy good-by?"
Celia unclasped her mother's arms, fell upon the bosom of her black

Mammy and wept anew.
"De Lawd be wid you, chile," cooed the voice of the negress, musical
with tenderness, "an' bring you back home safe an' soun' in His own
time."
The stage rolled up with clash and clatter and flap of curtain.
It stopped at the gate. There ensued the rush of departure, the driver,
after hoisting the baggage of his one passenger thereto, looking stolidly
down on the heartbreak from the height of his perch, his long whip
poised in midair.
Celia's friends swarmed about her. They kissed her. They essayed to
comfort her. They thrust upon her gifts of fruit and flowers and dainties
for her lunch.
They bore her wraps out to the cumbersome vehicle which was to
convey her to Lexington, the nearest town which at that time boasted of
a railroad. They placed her comfortably, turning again and again to give
her another kiss and to bid her good-by and God-speed.
It was as if her heartstrings wrenched asunder at the jerk of the wheels
that started the huge stage onward.
"Good-by, good-by!" she cried out, her pale face at the window.
"Good-by," they answered, and Mansy Storm, running alongside, said
to her:
"You give my love to Seth, Celia. Don't you fo'get."
Then breathlessly as the stage moved faster:
"If evah the Good Lawd made a man a mighty little lowah than the
angels," she added, "that man's Seth."
The old stage rumbled along the broad white Lexington pike, past
houses of other friends, who stood at gates to wave her farewell.

It rumbled past little front yards abloom with flowers, back of which
white cottages blinked sleepily, one eye of a shuttered window open,
one shut, past big stone gates which gave upon mansions of more
grandeur, past smaller farms, until at length it drew up at the tollgate.
Here a girl with hair of sunshine, coming out, untied the pole and raised
it slowly.
"You goin' away, Miss Celia?" she asked in her soft Southern brogue,
tuneful as the ripple of water. "I heah sumbody say you was goin'
away."
Celia smothered a sob.
"Yes," she answered, "I am goin' away."
"It's a long, long way out theah to the West," commented the girl
wistfully as she counted out the change for the driver, "a long, long
way!"
As if the way had not seemed long enough!
Celia sobbed outright.
"Yes," she assented, "it is a long, long way!"
"I am sawy you ah goin', Miss Celia," said the girl. "Good-by. Good
luck to you!" And the stage moved on, Celia staring back at her with
wide sad eyes. The girl leaned forward, let the pole carefully down and
fastened it. As she did so a ray of sunshine made a halo of her hair.
Celia flung herself back into the dimness of the corner and wept out her
heart. It seemed to her that, with the letting down of that pole, she had
been shut out of heaven.
CHAPTER II.
[Illustration]

In all her life Celia had not travelled further from her native town than
Lexington, which was thirty miles away. It was not necessary. She
lived in the garden spot of the world, an Eden with