(From _The Dial_)
His greatest pleasure in life came always at dusk. Its prelude was
the reading of the evening paper in the train that took him out
of the city. By long association the very unfolding of the grimy
ink-smelling sheets was part of the ritual: his dark eyes dilated, he
felt himself begin to “grin,” the staggering load of business detail,
under which he had struggled all day in the office, was instantly
forgotten. He read rapidly, devoured with rapacious eyes column
after column--New York, London, Paris, Lisbon--wars, revolutions,
bargains in umbrellas, exhibitions of water colors. This consumed
three-quarters of the journey. After that he watched the procession
of houses, walls, trees, reeling past in the mellow slant light, and
began already to feel his garden about him. He observed the flight
of the train unconsciously, and it was almost automatically, at the
unrealized sight of a certain group of trees, oddly leaning away from
each other, like a group of ballet dancers expressing an extravagance
of horror, that he rose and approached the door.
The sense of escape was instant. Sky and earth generously took him,
the train fled shrieking into the vague bright infinity of afternoon.
The last faint wail of it, as it plunged into a tunnel, always seemed
to him to curl about his head like a white tentacle, too weak to be
taken seriously. Then, in the abrupt silence, he began climbing the
long hill that led to his house. He walked swiftly, blowing tattered
blue clouds of smoke over his shoulders, revolving in his mind the
items of news amusing enough to be reported to Hilda; such as that
Miss Green, the stenographer, who had for some time been manifesting
a disposition to flirt with him, today, just after closing, when
everybody else had gone out, had come to him, blushing, and asked
him to fasten the sleeve of her dress. A delicious scene! He smiled
about the stem of his pipe, but exchanged his smile for a laugh when,
looking in through a gap in his neighbor’s hedge, he found himself
staring into the depraved eyes of a goat. This would add itself to
the episode of Miss Green, for these eyes were precisely hers. He
turned the corner and saw his house before him, riding on the hill
like a small ship on a long green wave. The three children were
playing a wild game of croquet, shrieking. Louder sounds arose at his
appearance, and as he strode across the lawn they danced about him
chattering and quarreling.
“Daddy, Martha won’t play in her turn, and I say--”
“Marjorie takes the heavy mallet--”
The chorus rose shrill about him, but he laughed and went into the
house, shouting only, “Out of the way! I’m in a hurry! The beans are
dying, the tomatoes are clamoring for me, the peas are holding out
their hands!”
“Daddy says the beans are dying. Isn’t he silly?”
“Let’s get to the garden before daddy does.”
As he closed the door he heard the shrieks trailing off round the
corner of the house, diminuendo. He hung up coat and hat with a rapid
gesture and hurried to the kitchen. Hilda, stirring the cocoa with a
long spoon, looked round at him laconically.
“Chocolate!” he shouted, and pulled a cake of chocolate out of his
pocket. He was astonished, he rolled his eyes, for it appeared to
have been sat upon--“in the train.” Hilda shrieked with laughter. He
thrust it into her apron pocket and fled up the stairs to change.
He could not find his old flannel trousers. Not in the cupboard--not
in the bureau. He surrendered to an impulse to comic rage. “Not
under the bed!” he cried. He thrust his head out of the window that
overlooked the garden and addressed his children.
“Martha! Bring my trousers here this instant!”
He drew in his head again from the shower of replies that flew up at
him like missiles and going to the door roared down to his wife.
“I’ve lost my trousers!”
Then he found them in the closet behind the door and, laughing, put
them on.