After she had gone halfway down a long steep hill, she had to turn back because she had left her only possessions.It was a weary climb, and her heart quaked with terror.But no one appeared, and at last she was once more at the ruins of the fence panel.There lay her sailor hat, the handkerchiefs, wrapped round the toothbrush, the collar--and two stockings, one black, the other brown.And where was her purse? Not there, certainly.She glanced round in swift alarm.No one.Yet she had been absolutely sure she had taken her purse from the sitting-room table when she came upon it, feeling about in the dark.She had forgotten it; she was without a cent!
But she had no time to waste in self-reproaches or forebodings.
Though the stockings would be of no use to her, she took them along because to leave them was to leave a trail.She hastened down the hill.At the bottom ran a deep creek--without a bridge.
The road was now a mere cowpath which only the stoutest vehicles or a horseman would adventure.To her left ran an even wilder trail, following the downward course of the creek.She turned out of the road, entered the trail.She came to a place where the bowlders over which the creek foamed and splashed as it hurried southeastward were big and numerous enough to make a crossing.She took it, went slowly on down the other bank.
There was no sign of human intrusion.Steeply on either side rose a hill, strewn with huge bowlders, many of them large as large houses.The sun filtered through the foliage to make a bright pattern upon the carpet of last year's leaves.The birds twittered and chirped; the creek hummed its drowsy, soothing melody.She was wretchedly weary, and Oh, so hungry! A little further, and two of the great bowlders, tumbled down from the steeps, had cut off part of the creek, had formed a pool which their seamed and pitted and fernadorned walls hid from all observation except that of the birds and the squirrels in the boughs.
At once she thought how refreshed she would be if she could bathe in those cool waters.She looked round, stepped in between the bowlders.She peered out; she listened.She was safe; she drew back into her little inclosure.There was a small dry shelf of rock.She hurried off her clothes, stood a moment in the delicious warmth of the sunshine, stepped into the pool.She would have liked to splash about; but she dared make no sound that could be heard above the noise of the water.Luckily the creek was just there rather loud, as it was expressing its extreme annoyance over the stolid impudence of the interrupting bowlders.While she was waiting for the sun to dry her she looked at her underclothes.She simply could not put them on as they were.She knelt at the edge of the shelf and rinsed them out as well as she could.Then she spread them on the thick tufts of overhanging fern where the hot sun would get full swing at them.The brown stocking of the two mismates she had brought along almost matched the pair she was wearing.As there was a hole in the toe of one of them, she discarded it, and so had one fresh stocking.She dried her feet thoroughly with the stocking she was discarding.Then she put her corsets and her dress directly upon her body.She could not afford to wait until the underclothes dried; she would carry them until she found for herself a more remote and better hiding place where she could await nightfall.She stuffed the stocking with the hole deep into a cleft in the rock and laid a small stone upon it so that it was concealed.Here where there were no traces, no reminders of the human race which had cast her out and pursued her with torture of body and soul, here in the wilderness her spirits were going up, and her young eyes were looking hopefully round and forward.The up-piling horrors of those two days and their hideous climax seemed a dream which the sun had scattered.
Hopefully! That blessed inexperience and sheer imagination of youth enabling it to hope in a large, vague way when to hope for any definite and real thing would be impossible.
She cleaned her tan low shoes with branches of fern and grass, put them on.It is impossible to account for the peculiarities of physical vanity.Probably no one was ever born who had not physical vanity of some kind; Susan's was her feet and ankles.
Not her eyes, nor her hair, nor her contour, nor her skin, nor her figure, though any or all of these might well have been her pleasure.Of them she never thought in the way of pride or vanity.But of her feet and ankles she was both proud and vain--in a reserved, wholly unobtrusive way, be it said, so quietly that she had passed unsuspected.There was reason for this shy, secret self-satisfaction, so amusing in one otherwise self-unconscious.Her feet were beautifully formed and the curves of her instep and ankle were beautiful.She gave more attention now to the look of her shoes and of her stockings than to all the rest of this difficult woodland toilet.She then put on the sailor hat, fastened the collar to her garter, slipped the handkerchiefs into the legs of her stockings.Carrying her underclothes, ready to roll them into a ball should she meet anyone, she resumed her journey into that rocky wilderness.She was sore, she had pains that were the memories of the worst horrors of her hideous dream, but up in her strong, healthy body, up through her strong young soul, surged joy of freedom and joy of hope.Compared with what her lot had been until such a few brief days before, this lot of friendless wanderer in the wilderness was dark indeed.But she was comparing it with the monstrous dream from which it was the awakening.She was almost happy--and madly hungry.
