SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER
ONDAY, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it had rained. Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, it had rained and rained and rained and rained and rained, till by Friday night the great blue mountains loomed like a chunk of ruined velvet, and the fog along the valley lay thick and gross as mildewed porridge.
It was a horrid storm. Slop and shiver and rotting leaves were rampant. Even in Alrik's snug little house the chairs were wetter than moss. Clothes in the closets hung lank and clammy as undried bathing-suits. Worst of all, across every mirror lay a breathy, sad gray mist, as though ghosts had been back to whimper there over their lost faces.
It had never been so before in the first week of October.
There were seven of us who used to tryst there together every year in the gorgeous Scotch-plaid Autumn, when the reds and greens and blues and browns and yellows lapped and overlapped like a festive little kilt for the Young Winter, and every crisp, sweet day that dawned was like the taste of cider and the smell of grapes.
That is the kind of October well worth living, and seven people make a wonderfully proper number to play together in the country, particularly if six of you are men and women, and one of you is a dog.
Yet, after all, it was October, and October alone, that lured us. We certainly differed astonishingly in most of our other tastes.