The Last Drive and Other Stories

After a month of New York, having taken too large a dose of teas and dinners and motor rides, Sackerville was unspeakably bored. Then he received a request for an interview from someone in the State Department at Washington. At the end of three days he was back in the metropolis, more restless than before. The evening of his return he dined with some friends at a downtown club; the company was congenial, the wines were good and Sackerville drank more than was necessary. The next morning he woke up with a headache.

“I’m sick of this place anyway,” he said to himself, yawning at the window.

He dressed, breakfasted, packed his bag and caught the ten o’clock train for Utica.

He was turning back to an early page in his book of life. It was in Utica that he had spent his first seventeen years in the world, for the most part an orphan and penniless. In all the nineteen years since he had left, the day after his graduation from high school, he had not been back; he had not found time, and, besides, his memories of youth were not cheerful. One in particular — that of Melissa Hayes, with her red hair and white skin and large blue eyes. She had been in his class.

What a curious mechanism is the human heart! Violent emotions may fill it, break it, and in a short time depart, leaving no trace of their passage; while some youthful impression, hardly noticed at the time, may find its place in a little corner and then, as the years pass, gradually and silently steal its way to the center.

Sackerville could remember now that he had admired Melissa Hayes nineteen years before, but he had no recollection of any eager passion for her. One night, however, asleep in the Chinese wilderness, he had dreamed of her red hair on his face and the thought of her had held him ever since. In the desert, in the midst of rough engineering camps, at moments of peril, amid the comforts of a Paris or Berlin hotel, he had thought of her; not always — for he was an enormously active man — but often. There had been at least one girl — the daughter of the French consul at Cairo — whom he would have married but for the memory of Melissa Hayes. And other women, too — but he did not care to think of them.

So he was going to Utica to visit his boyhood friend, Andrew Beach, with whom he had corresponded at intervals. He pulled a letter out of his coat pocket as he leaned back in the chair of the pullman. It was on a business letterhead: “Andrew Beach, Fancy Groceries, Wholesale and Retail.” He smiled. Queer how men could bury themselves under bags of potatoes in a little upstate town and get happiness out of it! Old Andy, too. Was he happy? Sackerville wondered.

Then he thought of Melissa Hayes and admitted to himself that it was her red hair which was taking him back to Utica. It was absurd, of course; probably she didn’t live there anymore and certainly she was married. He told himself that the image in his heart was not Melissa Hayes at all; it was a memory, an abstract desire, an ideal. It could make no difference if he saw her and spoke to her — the disturbing image would remain in his heart to tantalize him forever; but he wanted to see her—

And it was of her he thought as the train flew swiftly along the bank of the Hudson. He leaned back in his chair with an unopened book on his knees, gazing through the window at the curving outline of the hills across the river. He found himself getting impatient the other side of Albany; then, as he neared his destination, he was taken with a curious reluctance, almost a timidity. He was sorry he had come. But when the train stopped he leaped to the platform, summoned a cab and gave the address on Andrew Beach’s letterhead.

Ten minutes later he was shaking hands with Andy in a little office with the word “Private” on the door. After the first greetings the two men stood looking at each other in silence for some time.

“You’ve changed a lot, old man,” said Sackerville. Indeed, it was difficult to believe that this little fat, bustling grocer, already half bald, was his old boyhood friend. There was nothing to go by, no feature he could place — but yes, the eyes. They had the same sly, twinkling expression he remembered so well. Come to think of it, this was just the sort of man one would have expected Andy Beach to grow into. No doubt he was adept at the tricks of the trade.

“Yes, I’m doing fine,” the grocer was saying. “Three floors here and a warehouse over on Fillmore Street; you know, opposite old Pat’s livery stable. I’ve got the biggest wholesale business in the city. Show you my plant in the morning—” he glanced at his watch — “too late now. We’ll go home and have some dinner. Mrs. Beach will sure be glad to see you. Got your bag?”

“Yes, but I’ll send it down to the hotel,” said Sackerville.

But Andrew Beach wouldn’t hear of that. Let his friend Harry stay at a hotel? He should say not! His wife would never forgive him! He gave some orders to subordinates in the office, linked his arm in Sackerville’s and led him out to the curb where a motor-car was waiting with a chauffeur on the seat.