There was a full moon, and Langbourne walked about the town, unable to
come into the hotel and go to bed. The deep yards of the houses gave out
the scent of syringas and June roses; the light of lamps came through
the fragrant bushes from the open doors and windows, with the sound of
playing and singing and bursts of young laughter. Where the houses stood
near the street, he could see people lounging on the thresholds, and
their heads silhouetted against the luminous interiors. Other houses,
both those which stood further back and those that stood nearer, were
dark and still, and to these he attributed the happiness of love in
fruition, safe from unrest and longing.
His own heart was tenderly oppressed, not with desire, but with the
memory of desire. It was almost as if in his faded melancholy he were
sorry for the disappointment of some one else.
At last he turned and walked back through the streets of dwellings to
the business centre of the town, where a gush of light came from the
veranda of his hotel, and the druggist's window cast purple and yellow
blurs out upon the footway. The other stores were shut, and he alone
seemed to be abroad. The church clock struck ten as he mounted the steps
of his hotel and dropped the remnant of his cigar over the side.
He had slept badly on the train the night before, and he had promised
himself to make up his lost sleep in the good conditions that seemed to
offer themselves. But when he sat down in the hotel office he was more
wakeful than he had been when he started out to walk himself drowsy.
The clerk gave him the New York paper which had come by the evening
train, and he thanked him, but remained musing in his chair. At times he
thought he would light another cigar, but the hand that he carried to
his breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did not
smoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproach
which did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yet
he could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang did
not heighten the luxury of his psychological experience.
He rose and asked the clerk for a lamp, but he turned back from the
stairs to inquire when there would be another New York mail. The clerk
said there was a train from the south due at eleven-forty, but it seldom
brought any mail; the principal mail was at seven. Langbourne thanked
him, and came back again to beg the clerk to be careful and not have him
called in the morning, for he wished to sleep. Then he went up to his
room, where he opened his window to let in the night air. He heard a dog
barking; a cow lowed; from a stable somewhere the soft thumping of the
horses' feet came at intervals lullingly.