IV

The next day she began her pilgrimage; and His Highness went with her; and a maid from the British Isles.

She had telegraphed to the Sagamore Club for rooms, to make sure, but that was unnecessary, because there were at the moment only three members of the club at the lodge.

Now although she herself could scarcely be considered a member of the Sagamore Angling Club, she still controlled her husband’s shares in the concern, and she was duly and impressively welcomed by the steward. Two of the three members domiciled there came up to pay their respects when she alighted from the muddy buckboard sent to the railway to meet her; they were her husband’s old friends, Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, white-haired, purple-faced, well-groomed gentlemen in the early fifties. The third member was out in the rain fishing somewhere down-stream.

“New man here, madam – a good fellow, but a bad rod – eh, Brent?”

“Bad rod,” repeated Major Brent, wagging his fat head. “Uses ferrules to a six-ounce rod. We splice – eh, Colonel?”

“Certainly,” said the Colonel.

She stood by the open fire in the centre of the hallway, holding her shapely hands out towards the blaze, while her maid relieved her of the wet rain-coat.

“Splice what, Colonel Hyssop, if you please?” she inquired, smiling.

“Splice our rods, madam – no creaky joints and ferrules for old hands like Major Brent and me, ma’am. Do you throw a fly?”

“Oh no,” she said, with a faint smile. “I – I do nothing.”

“Except to remain the handsomest woman in the five boroughs!” said the Major, with a futile attempt to bend at the waist – utterly unsuccessful, yet impressive.

She dropped him a courtesy, then took the glass of sherry that the steward brought and sipped it, meditative eyes on the blazing logs. Presently she held out the empty wine-glass; the steward took it on his heavy silver salver; she raised her eyes. A half-length portrait of her husband stared at her from over the mantel, lighted an infernal red in the fire-glow.

A catch in her throat, a momentary twitch of the lips, then she gazed calmly up into the familiar face.

Under the frame of the picture was written his full hyphenated name; following that she read:

President and Founder

of

The Sagamore Angling Club

1880–1901

Major Brent and Colonel Hyssop observed her in decorously suppressed sympathy.

“I did not know he was president,” she said, after a moment; “he never told me that.”

“Those who knew him best understood his rare modesty,” said Major Brent. “I knew him, madam; I honored him; I honor his memory.”

“He was not only president and founder,” observed Colonel Hyssop, “but he owned three-quarters of the stock.”

“Are the shares valuable?” she asked. “I have them; I should be glad to give them to the club, Colonel Hyssop – in his memory.”

“Good gad! madam,” said the Colonel, “the shares are worth five thousand apiece!”

“I am the happier to give them – if the club will accept,” she said, flushing, embarrassed, fearful of posing as a Lady Bountiful before anybody. She added, hastily, “You must direct me in the matter, Colonel Hyssop; we can talk of it later.”

Again she looked up into her husband’s face over the mantel.

Her bull-terrier came trotting into the hall, his polished nails and padded feet beating a patter across the hardwood floor.

“I shall dine in my own rooms this evening,” she said, smiling vaguely at the approaching dog.

“We hoped to welcome you to the club table,” cried the Major.

“There are only the Major and myself,” added the Colonel, with courteous entreaty.

“And the other – the new man,” corrected the Major, with a wry face.

“Oh yes – the bad rod. What’s his name?”

“Langham,” said the Major.

The English maid came down to conduct her mistress to her rooms; the two gentlemen bowed as their build permitted; the bull-terrier trotted behind his mistress up the polished stairs. Presently a door closed above.

“Devilish fine woman,” said Major Brent.

Colonel Hyssop went to a mirror and examined himself with close attention.

“Good gad!” he said, irritably, “how thin my hair is!”

“Thin!” said Major Brent, with an unpleasant laugh; “thin as the hair on a Mexican poodle.”

“You infernal ass!” hissed the Colonel, and waddled off to dress for dinner. At the door he paused. “Better have no hair than a complexion like a violet!”

“What’s that?” cried the Major.

The Colonel slammed the door.

Up-stairs the bull-terrier lay on a rug watching his mistress with tireless eyes. The maid brought tea, bread and butter, and trout fried crisp, for her mistress desired nothing else.

Left alone, she leaned back, sipping her tea, listening to the million tiny voices of the night. The stillness of the country made her nervous after the clatter of town. Nervous? Was it the tranquil stillness of the night outside that stirred that growing apprehension in her breast till, of a sudden, her heart began a deadened throbbing?

Langham here? What was he doing here? He must have arrived this morning. So that was where he was going when he said he was going north!

After all, in what did it concern her? She had not run away from town to avoid him, … indeed not, … her pilgrimage was her own affair. And Langham would very quickly divine her pious impulse in coming here… And he would doubtless respect her for it… Perhaps have the subtle tact to pack up his traps and leave… But probably not… She knew a little about Langham, … an obstinate and typical man, … doubtless selfish to the core, … cheerfully, naïvely selfish…

She raised her troubled eyes. Over the door was printed in gilt letters:

The President’s Suite.

Tears filled her eyes; truly they were kindly and thoughtful, these old friends of her husband.

And all night long she slept in the room of her late husband, the president of the Sagamore Angling Club, and dreamed till daybreak of … Langham.

V

Langham, clad in tweeds from head to foot, sat on the edge of his bed.

He had been sitting there since daybreak, and the expression on his ornamental face had varied between the blank and the idiotic. That the only woman in the world had miraculously appeared at Sagamore Lodge he had heard from Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent at dinner the evening before.

That she already knew of his presence there he could not doubt. That she did not desire his presence he was fearsomely persuaded.

Clearly he must go – not at once, of course, to leave behind him a possibility for gossip at his abrupt departure. From the tongues of infants and well-fed club-men, good Lord deliver us!

He must go. Meanwhile he could easily avoid her.

And as he sat there, savoring all the pent-up bitterness poured out for him by destiny, there came a patter of padded feet in the hallway, the scrape of nails, a sniff at the door-sill, a whine, a frantic scratching. He leaned forward and opened the door. His Highness landed on the bed with one hysterical yelp and fell upon Langham, paw and muzzle.

When their affection had been temporarily satiated, the dog lay down on the bed, eyes riveted on his late master, and the man went over to his desk, drew a sheet of club paper towards him, found a pen, and wrote:

“Of course it is an unhappy coincidence, and I will go when I can do so decently – to-morrow morning. Meanwhile I shall be away all day fishing the West Branch, and shall return too late to dine at the club table.

“I wish you a happy sojourn here – ”

This he reread and scratched out.

“I am glad you kept His Highness.”

This he also scratched out.

After a while he signed his name to the note, sealed it, and stepped into the hallway.

At the farther end of the passage the door of her room was ajar; a sunlit-scarlet curtain hung inside.

“Come here!” said Langham to the dog.

His Highness came with a single leap.

“Take it to … her,” said the man, under his breath. Then he turned sharply, picked up rod and creel, and descended the stairs.

Meanwhile His Highness entered his mistress’s chamber, with a polite scratch as a “by your leave!” and trotted up to her, holding out the note in his pink mouth.

She looked at the dog in astonishment. Then the handwriting on the envelope caught her eye.

As she did not offer to touch the missive, His Highness presently sat down and crowded up against her knees. Then he laid the letter in her lap.

Her expression became inscrutable as she picked up the letter; while she was reading it there was color in her cheeks; after she had read it there was less.

“I see no necessity,” she said to His Highness – “I see no necessity for his going. I think I ought to tell him so… He overestimates the importance of a matter which does not concern him… He is sublimely self-conscious, … a typical man. And if he presumes to believe that the hazard of our encounter is of the slightest moment … to me …”

The dog dropped his head in her lap.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that!” she said, almost sharply, but there was a dry catch in her throat when she spoke, and she laid one fair hand on the head of His Highness.

A few moments later she went down-stairs to the great hall, where she found Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent just finishing their morning cocktails.

When they could at last comprehend that she never began her breakfast with a cocktail, they conducted her solemnly to the breakfast-room, seated her with empressement, and the coffee was served.

It was a delicious, old-fashioned, country breakfast – crisp trout, bacon, eggs, and mounds of fragrant flapjacks.

“Langham’s gone off to the West Branch; left duty’s compliments and all that sort of thing for you,” observed the Colonel, testing his coffee with an air.

His Highness, who had sniffed the bacon, got up on a chair where he could sit and view the table. Moisture gathered on his jet-black nose; he licked his jowl.

“You poor darling!” cried his mistress, rising impulsively, with her plate in her hand. She set the plate on the floor. It was cleaned with a snap, then carefully polished.

“You are fond of your dog, madam,” said the Major, much interested.

“He’s a fine one,” added the Colonel. “Gad! I took him for Langham’s champion at first.”

She bent her head over the dog’s plate.

Later she walked to the porch, followed by His Highness.

A lovely little path invited them on – a path made springy by trodden leaves; and the dog and his mistress strolled forth among clumps of hazel and silver-birches, past ranks of alders and Indian-willows, on across log bridges spanning tiny threads of streams which poured into the stony river.

The unceasing chorus of the birds freshened like wind in her ears. Spring echoes sounded from blue distances; the solemn congress of the forest trees in session murmured of summers past and summers to come.

How could her soul sink in the presence of the young world’s uplifting?

Her dog came back and looked up into her eyes. With a cry, which was half laughter, she raced with him along the path, scattering the wild birds into flight from bush and thicket.

Breathless, rosy, she halted at the river’s shallow edge.

Flung full length on the grass, she dipped her white fingers in the river, and dropped wind-flowers on the ripples to watch them dance away.

She listened to the world around her; it had much to say to her if she would only believe it. But she forced her mind back to her husband and lay brooding.

An old man in leggings and corduroys came stumping along the path; His Highness heard him coming and turned his keen head. Then he went and stood in front of his mistress, calm, inquisitive, dangerous.

“Mornin’, miss,” said the keeper; “I guess you must be one of our folks.”

“I am staying at the club-house,” she said, smiling, and sitting up on the grass.

“I’m old Peter, one o’ the guards,” he said. “Fine mornin’, miss, but a leetle bright for the fish – though I ain’t denyin’ that a small dark fly’d raise ’em; no’m. If I was sot on ketchin’ a mess o’ fish, I guess a hare’s-ear would do the business; yes’m. I jest passed Mr. Langham down to the forks, and I seed he was a-chuckin’ a hare’s-ear; an’ he riz ’em, too; yes’m.”

“How long have you been a keeper here?” she asked.

“How long, ’m? Waal, I was the fustest guard they had; yes’m. I live down here a piece. They bought my water rights; yes’m. An’ they give me the job. The president he sez to me, ‘Peter,’ he sez, jest like that – ‘Peter, you was raised here; you know all them brooks an’ rivers like a mink; you stay right here an’ watch ’em, an’ I’ll do the squar’ by ye,’ he sez, jest like that. An’ he done it; yes’m.”

“So you knew the president, then?” she asked, in a low voice.

“Knew him? —him? Yes’m.”

The old man laughed a hollow, toothless laugh, and squinted out across the dazzling river.

“Knew him twenty year, I did. A good man, and fair at that. Why, I’ve seen him a-settin’ jest where you’re settin’ this minute – seen him a hundred times a-settin’ there.”

“Fishing?” she said, in an awed voice.

“Sometimes. Sometimes he was a-drinkin’ out o’ that silver pocket-pistol o’ his’n. He got drunk a lot up here; but he didn’t drink alone; no’m. There wasn’t a stingy hair in his head; he – ”

“Do you mean the president?” she said, incredulously, almost angrily.

“Him? Yes’m. Him an’ Colonel Hyssop an’ Major Brent; they had good times in them days.”

“You knew the president before his marriage,” she observed, coldly.

“Him? He wasn’t never married, miss!” said the old man, scornfully.

“Are you sure?” she asked, with a troubled smile.

“Sure? Yes’m. Why, the last time he was up here, three year come July Fourth, I seen him a-kissin’ an’ a-huggin’ of old man Dawson’s darter – ”

She was on her feet in a flash. The old man stood there smiling his senile smile and squinting out across the water, absorbed in his garrulous reminiscence.

“Yes’m; all the folks down to the village was fond o’ the president, he was that jolly and free, an’ no stuck-up city airs; no’m; jest free and easy, an’ a-sparkin’ the gals with the best o’ them – ”

The old man laughed and crossed his arms under the barrel of his shot-gun.

“Folks said he might o’ married old man Dawson’s darter if he’d lived. I dun’no’. I guess it was all fun. But I hear the gal took on awful when they told her he was dead; yes’m.”