A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories
said. 
She wondered if it was exactly that, and decided it was not. It was not. He was thinking of her husband as he had known him--only by sight and by report. He remembered the florid gentleman perfectly; he had often seen him tooling his four; he had seen him at the traps in Monte Carlo, dividing with the best shot in Italy; he had seen him riding to hounds a few days before that fatal run of the Shadowbrook Hunt, where he had taken his last fence. Once, too, he had seen him at the Sagamore Angling Club up state. 
"When are you going?" he said, suddenly. 
"To-morrow." 
"I am not to know where?" 
"Why should you?" and then, a little quickly: "No, no. It is a pilgrimage." 
"When you return--" he began, but she shook her head. 
"No, ... no. I do not know where I may be." 
In the April twilight the electric lamps along the avenue snapped alight. The air rang with the metallic chatter of sparrows. 
They mounted the steps of her house; she turned and swept the dim avenue with a casual glance. 
"So you, too, are going north?" she asked, pleasantly. 
"Yes--to-night." 
She gave him her hand. She felt the pressure of his hand on her gloved fingers after he had gone, although their hands had scarcely touched at all. 
And so she went into the dimly lighted house, through the drawing-room, which was quite dark, into the music-room beyond; and there she sat down upon a chair by the piano--a little gilded chair that revolved as she pushed herself idly, now to the right, now to the left. 
Yes, ... after all, she would go; ... she would make that pilgrimage to the spot on earth her husband loved best of all--the sweet waters of the Sagamore, where his beloved club lodge stood, and whither, for a month every year, he had repaired with some old friends to renew a bachelor's love for angling. 
She had never accompanied him on these trips; she instinctively divined a man's desire for a ramble among old haunts with old friends, freed for a brief space from the happy burdens of domesticity. 
The lodge on the Sagamore was now her shrine; there she would rest and think of him, follow his footsteps to his best-loved haunts, wander along the rivers where he had wandered, dream by the streams where he had dreamed. 
She had married her husband out of awe, sheer awe for his wonderful personality. And he was wonderful; faultless in everything--though not so faultless as to be in bad taste, she often told herself. His entourage also was faultless; and the general faultlessness of everything had made her married life very perfect.As she sat thinking in the darkened music-room, something stirred in the hallway outside. She raised her eyes; the white bull-terrier stood in the lighted doorway, looking in at her.

A perfectly 
 Prev. P 17/193 next 
Back Top
Privacy Statement Terms of Service Contact