It all came back to him now as he sat there on the porch of this splendid mansion with Mrs. Pierce and Joel and the other guests, and though the place was splendid, wealthy and luxurious beyond dreams, the happy, warm, and friendly gaiety of the people, their eager looking-forward to fireworks and the Fourth of July, something free and warm and simple in their relation, recalled again those glorious expeditions of his youth to the little park upon the river, and the crowded streetcars going home, and friendly voices, laughter, and the slamming of a door, and then his father’s voice upon the porch and sleep and silence—it all came back now in tones of unutterable brightness, and the Hudson River lay below him in the great fall and hush of evening light that fell across America, and even as he thought these things, a train rushed by below them on the bank of the river, was hurled instantly past in a projectile flight—a thunderbolted speed, was hurled past them citywards, and was gone at once, leaving nothing behind it but the sound of its departure, a handful of lost echoes in the hills, and the river, the mysterious river, the Hudson River in the great fall and hush of evening light, and all somehow was just as it had always been, and just as he had known he would find it, as it would always be.
LXVI
Later that night, when the other people in the house had gone upstairs to bed, and as he was in the quiet library, making a final, longing, hungrily regretful survey of the treasure-hoard of noble books that walled the great room in their rich and mellow hues from floor to ceiling, Joel came in.
“Look,” he whispered, in his abrupt and casual way, “I’m going to bed now: stay up as long as you please and sleep as late as you like tomorrow morning…. And look,” he whispered casually—and quickly again—“what are you going to do? Do you think you have to go back to the city tomorrow?”
“Yes, Joel: I think I’ll have to—I have an early class the first thing Monday morning, and if I’m going to meet it, I ought to be back by tomorrow night: I think that will be best.”
“It’s been nice having you,” Joel whispered. “It was swell that you could come. And if you really like the place,” he said simply, “I’m glad…. I think it’s a grand place, too…. And look!” he whispered quickly,
