"Yes—you always see everything. But one didn't want Fulvia to be more upset than she was. How have you got on at home—with—?"
"Oh, very well. We've done lots of botany." Ethel's face lighted up with fun, and Nigel thought it was with a recollection of enjoyment. He suddenly remembered Tom Elvey, and Fulvia's words about Tom.
Then, before the two could arrive at an understanding, Lance dashed in, shouting a string of inquiries about the day's adventure; and the little tête-à-tête was over.
[CHAPTER XI]
"THE WORLD FORGETTING"
"'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates,
At a safe distance, where the dying sound
Falls, a soft murmur, on the uninjured ear.
Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
To some secure and more than mortal height,
That liberates and exempts me from them all."
—COWPER.
AT the mouth of the river upon which Newton Bury was built, and an hour or more distant by train from Newton Bury, was a certain small town, Burrside by name, the pet watering-place of the Newton Bury people. In summer, Burrside was gay with brass bands, and well-dressed promenaders; in summer therefore it was contemptuously eschewed by Mr. Carden-Cox. But in winter, when nobody went to Burrside, when it was transformed into an Arabia Deserta of empty lodgings and unfrequented streets, then Mr. Carden-Cox was given to betaking himself thither for a week or a fortnight of blissful quiet—"the world forgetting, by the world forgot."
It is not at all disagreeable to be forgotten by the world for a few days, just when one happens to be in the right mood. Not that Mr. Carden-Cox ever did forget the world of human beings to which he belonged, or ever really believed that the said world forgot him; but he thought he did, which came to much the same thing.
On such occasions, he found it agreeable to hug his solitude, to muse over the peculiarities of his own nature, to admire his own individuality of taste in thus fleeing the world, and to picture what friends might be saying about his absence. A curious mode of "forgetting the world"; but few people carry out their theories consistently.
One or two weeks ended, Mr. Carden-Cox's gregarious side was wont to come uppermost. By that time he had usually had enough of solitude, and was glad to return to his circle of acquaintances, finding a new pleasure in relating to them his Burrside experiences. Some of the said acquaintances privately called this return "coming out of his sulks," and nothing could persuade those unreasonable people that he had not fled in a huff. But nobody ever ventured to hint to himself that such an interpretation of his lofty communing with Nature was a possibility.