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
