Love stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Scotland -- Fiction
another almost at right angles, but she kept straight on. There was no
one from whom to ask the way; and had there been anyone she probably
would not have seen him. A little way on there was another cross-road
but of minor importance; then further on she came to a place of
difficult choice. Another cross-road, again almost at right angles;
but the continuance of the road she was on showed it to be but a poor
road ill-kept. So, too, was that to her left; but the road to the
right was broad and well kept. It was undoubtedly the main road; and
so keeping to the rule she had hitherto obeyed, she followed it.
She was now feeling somehow in better heart; the fit of crying had
relieved her, and some of her courage had come back. She wanted
comforting--wanted it badly; but those whose comfort only could
prevail were far away; one behind her in Scotland, the others still
far away at Ambleside. The latter thought made her desperate. She put
on more speed--and with her thoughts and anxieties not in the present
but the future, ran up a steep bank. There was a quick snap of
something in front of the car; the throbbing of the engine suddenly
ceased. With the shock she had been thrown forward upon the wheel, but
fortunately the speed had not been great enough to cause her serious
injury. The lamps made the fog sufficiently luminous for her
movements, and she scrambled out of the car. She knew she could do
nothing, for she was absolutely ignorant of the mechanism, and she had
no mechanical skill. The only thing she could do was to go along the
road on the blind chance of meeting or finding some one who could help
her, or who might be able to assist her in finding better help. And so
with a heavy heart, and feet that felt like lead, she went out into
the fog. It was a wrench for her to leave the car which in the
darkness and the unknown mystery of the fog seemed by comparison a
sort of home or shelter. It was an evidence of the mechanical habit of
the mind, which came back to her later, that through all her weariness
and distress she thought to pin up her white frock before setting out
on the dusty journey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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