After a week or so of the new atmosphere of the tiny library she summed up her life as follows, and was able to state that the routine of her days never varied: She rose at seven and dressed. George’s train went at eight, and she sat with him at table through a breakfast of hot bread, meat, potatoes and coffee. Then her husband put on his coat and hat and took his leave without even bidding her good-by. She felt lonely when the butcher and the grocer had gone. When she had given her directions to Eliza, it was never more than ten o’clock. In days past she had been used to walk out to the library and get a book, or wander into a neighbor’s “and sit a while,” but of late there commenced from the early morning a period of rocking and reading in the library. In the evening George returned from New York only in time to come to the table without the formality of washing his hands.
These were her interests. Too timid to go to Town Club meetings, too simple-minded to be of any great importance in the different Slocum circles, she kept to herself. Her sole interest would naturally be her husband; him she saw from seven P. M. to seven A. M.; or, rather, she slept beside him during these hours—for directly after dinner he would throw himself down on the lounge in his library and smoke and read till at nine o’clock she roused him and sent him to bed in their common bedroom, in their common bed.
George, tired and devitalized by his strenuous life, absorbed by his own and his employer’s affairs, fell asleep at once. But his companion, more alive than she knew, would lie awake until long past midnight, her body unfatigued, her mind restless, her wakeful eyes staring into the dark which had for her no emotion and no mystery.
One afternoon she found she had read through a whole book without stopping, and for the first time in her life had been absorbed. She got up and turned off the steam heat and opened the window.
“It must be ninety here with these radiators! You either freeze or stew.”
The air came in bluffly, its unfriendly edges met her cheeks; before they could be refreshed she was cold in her thin muslin shirt-waist.
She had risen in expression of a sudden need of air, a sudden sense of suffocation, but she thought only that she was “nervous,” and would go out and take a walk. A little later, a golf cape over a short coat of material known as “covert”—short-skirted, a gray felt hat on her head—Mrs. George Warrener was seen by her neighbors to be going “uptown.”
Not until she had left the village, keeping steady pace up the hill toward the Golf Club, did she feel that she had “let off steam.” The quick motion set free the tension of her nerves, and she almost forgot the acute sensation that drove her from the house. At the golf links she approached the course and stood by the fence, near to one of the last bunkers.
The field was sparsely dotted with the golfers. A red dash in the distance, a green dash, indicated the players who bent in bright sweaters over their sticks. Two men came across the ground close to her—strangers—she saw that instantly, and regarded them with the curiosity of a resident. The man who was playing, his club swung over his shoulder, his driver in his hand, was short and stout, with smooth, red cheeks and bright eyes under shaggy brows. His shoes were large and heavy, his golf stockings thick, and his fustian clothes rough and well made. His companion, a younger man in a loose-sleeved overcoat, had a soft felt hat on his head and a lighted cigar in his hand. The older man said to him, laughing:
“There you are, old man! If you’re really caddying for me, you’ll have to ferret the ball out of that ditch by the fence. I saw it roll down.”