"Is this the first time you have been up here in the mountains, Richard? " her father asked me, turning in his chair towards me.
"I've never been within a hundred miles of here before, sir. It's a different country up here, but I suppose you would think the same about the coast, wouldn't you？"
"Oh, but Father used to live in Norfolk," Gretchen said."Didn't you, Father？"
"I lived there for nearly three years."
There was something else he would say, and both of us waited for him to continue.
"Father is a master mechanic," Gretchen whispered to me."He works in the railroad shops."
"Yes," he said after a while. "I've lived in many places, but here is where I wish to stay."
My first thought was to ask him why he preferred the mountains to other sections, but suddenly I was aware that both he and Gretchen were strangely silent. Between them, I sat wondering about it.
After a while he spoke again, not to me and not to Gretchen, but as though he were speaking to someone else on the porch, a fourth person whom I had failed to see in the darkness. I waited, tense and excited, for him to continue.
Gretchen moved her chair a few inches closer to mine, her motions gentle and without sound. The warmth of the river came up and covered us like a blanket on a chill night.
"After Gretchen and the other two girls lost their mother,"he said, almost inaudibly, bending forward over his knees and gazing out across the broad green river, "after we lost their mother, I came back to the mountains to live. I couldn't stay in Norfolk, and I couldn't stand it in Baltimore. This was the only place on earth where I could find peace. Gretchen remembers her mother, but neither of you can yet understand how it is with me. Her mother and I were born here in the mountains, and we lived here together for almost twenty years. Then after she left us, I moved away, foolishly believing that I could forget. But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. A man can't forget the mother of his children, even though he knows he will never see her again."
Gretchen leaned closer to me, and I could not keep my eyes from her darkly framed profile beside me. The river below us made no sound, but the warmth of its vapor would not let me forget that it was still there.
Her father had bent farther forward in his chair until his arms were resting on his knees, and he seemed to be trying to see someone on the other side of the river, high on the mountain top above it. His eyes strained, and the shaft of light that came through the open doorway fell upon them and glistened there. Tears fell from his face like fragments of stars, burning into his quivering hands until they were out of sight.
Presently, still in silence, he got up and moved through the doorway. His huge shadow fell upon Gretchen and me as he stood there momentarily before going inside. I turned and looked toward him but, even though he was passing from sight, I could not keep my eyes upon him.
Gretchen leaned closer against me, squeezing her fingers into the hollow of my hand and touching my shoulder with her cheeks as though she were trying to wipe something from them. Her father's footsteps grew fainter, and at last we could no longer hear him.
Somewhere below us, along the bank of the river, an express train crashed down the valley, creaking and screaming through the night. Occasionally its lights flashed through the openings in the darkness, dancing on the broad green river like polar lights in the north, and the metallic echo of its steel rumbled against the high walls of the mountains. Gretchen clasped her hands tightly over my hand, trembling to her finger tips.
"Richard, why did you come to see me? "
Her voice was mingled with the screaming metallic echo of the train that now seemed far off.
I had expected to find her looking up into my face, but when I turned to her, I saw that she was gazing far down into the valley, down into the warm waters of the river. She knew why I had come, but she did not wish to hear me say why I had.
I did not know why I had come to see her, now. I had liked Gretchen, and I had desired her above anyone else I knew.But I could not tell her that I loved her, after having heard her father speak of love. I was sorry I had come, now after having heard him speak of Gretchen's mother as he did. I knew Gretchen would give herself to me, because she loved me; but I had nothing to give her in return. She was beautiful, very beautiful, and I had desired her. That was before. Now, I knew that I could never again think of her as I had come prepared.
"Why did you come, Richard？"
"Why? "
"Yes, Richard; why? "
My eyes closed, and what I felt was the memory of the star-pointed lights twinkling down in the valley and the warmth of the river flowing below and the caress of her fingers as she touched my arm.
"Richard, please tell me why you came."
"I don't know why I came, Gretchen."
"If you only loved me. as I love you, Richard, you would know why."
Her fingers trembled in my hand. I knew she loved me.There had been no doubt in my mind from the first. Gretchen loved me.
"Perhaps I should not have come," I said. "I made a mistake, Gretchen. I should have stayed away."
"But you will be here only for tonight, Richard. You are leaving early in the morning. You aren't sorry that you came, for just this short time, are you, Richard? "
"I'm not sorry that I am here, Gretchen, but I should not have come. I didn't know what I was doing. I haven't any right to come here. People who love each other are the only ones —"
"But you do love me just a little, don't you, Richard? You couldn't possibly love me nearly so much as I love you, but can't you tell me that you do love me just a little? I'll feel much happier after you have gone, Richard."
"I don't know," I said, trembling.
"Richard, please—"