Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/557

THE AMERICAN ; that came back to him and back; and as this happened, with a force which seemed physically to express itself in a sudden upward choking, he would lean forward, when the waiter had left the room, and, resting his arms on the table, bury his troubled face. He remained in England till midsummer and spent a month in the country, wandering among cathedrals, hanging about castles and ruins. Several times, taking a walk from his inn across sweet field-paths and through ample parks, he stopped by a well-worn stile, looked across through the early evening at a grey church tower, with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling rooks, and remembered that such things might have been part of the intimacy of his honeymoon. He had never been so much alone nor indulged so little in chance talk. The period of recreation appointed by Mrs. Tristram had at last expired and he asked himself what he should next do. She had written to propose he should join her in the Pyrenees, but he was not in the humour to return to France. The simplest thing was to repair to Liverpool and embark on the first American steamer. He proceeded accordingly to that seaport and secured his berth; and the night before sailing he sat in his room at the hotel and stared down vacantly and wearily at an open portmanteau. A number of papers lay upon it, which he had been meaning to look over; some of them might conveniently be destroyed. But he at last shuffled them roughly together and pushed them into a corner of the bag; they were business papers and he was in no humour for sorting them. Then he drew forth his pocket-book and took out 527