Just before the steam-boat excursion, and indeed before the day of Nigel's arrival was known, Mr. Carden-Cox had decided on a trip to Burrside. He and one of the Churchwardens had had a "tiff" on the subject of certain Church funds, and Mr. Carden-Cox had come off worst in the encounter. The said Churchwarden was a good man, albeit somewhat blunt; and Mr. Carden-Cox was not always in the right; but as an immediate result of the affair, he grew tired of the Newton Bury world, and resolved to flee.
Nigel's arrival altered the complexion of things, and slew his desire for solitude. However, Mr. Carden-Cox disliked to change his plans; it looked "unsettled" to do so, and he counted "unsettledness" tantamount to weakness. So he merely deferred the trip for a few days, and then vanished. Nobody saw him later than the morning after the steam-yacht excursion.
Once at Burrside, he liked the change, as usual, after a fashion. Banishment from the conventional round of commonplaces was in theory agreeable to him; and the Burrside natives, if commonplace, were not conventional. Mr. Carden-Cox found their simplicity delightful. He never grew weary of the old sailor on the shore, who knew Nigel and could talk of Nigel by the hour together; and his landlady from the same cause was a perpetual pleasure. The landlady, a highly respectable woman, looked upon him with a touch of compassionate interest, as "not quite all right there!" But this he could not guess, and she did her best for his comfort.
Mr. Carden-Cox was a man greatly addicted to letter-writing. He had not much to do besides, except to take care of himself, and to sit in judgment upon others—an employment in which he was a proficient. Idleness was abhorrent to him, and enforced work hardly less so, while letter-writing exactly suited his nervous nature and dilettante tastes. He could begin and leave off when he liked, could write as much or as little on any one subject as he chose, could be secure against interruption and opposition, at least till he had said his say; could expatiate to any extent on his own feelings; and above all, could indulge in a comfortable belief in the overcrowded state of his time. Let him write as many letters as he would, there were always more which might be written; and until Mr. Carden-Cox should achieve the impossible horizon-chase of "no further demands" in the correspondence line, he was enough pressed with business to be able to grumble. What true Englishman could want more?
"My letters are legion—legion!" he groaned complacently, surveying the pile beside his breakfast-plate, three mornings after his arrival at Burrside.
"Legion!" he repeated, looking at his landlady for sympathy, as she placed a covered dish upon the table; for even in the enjoyment of solitude somebody to be appealed to is necessary, and he had nobody else.
Mrs. Simmons was commonplace enough, being of no particular age, and having no particular features; but she was not, for all that, without her own individuality.
"Legion!" reiterated Mr. Carden-Cox. "How would you like to have all these to answer?" He lifted the pile as he spoke, weighing it in both hands, with a deprecating and mournful smile. He would by no means have liked not "to have all these to answer"; but none the less, he pitied himself.
Mrs. Simmons smoothed down a corner of the tablecloth, which had "got rucked up," as she expressed it. "I'm sure I don't know how ever I should get through 'em, sir, what with the dusting and cooking," she said.
"Cooking! Ah!—" Mr. Carden-Cox answered with mild benignity.