During the few days that elapsed before their departure the Duchess did succeed in getting a glimpse at what was weighing on Alistair’s mind. She saw with secret concern that he really did doubt if he were worthy of such a girl as Hero, and that this doubt might even prove an obstacle to the fulfilment of her desires. It was necessary to encourage him, and give him confidence in himself, and the conscientious mother was surprised to find herself in the strange part of an apologist, extenuating instead of aggravating her son’s misdoing. Her first faltering attempts in this direction brought about a beautiful change in the whole intercourse between the pair. Caroline was deeply touched to see how the prodigal son’s nature softened and expanded under this rare indulgence. They began to be happy together; the poor woman secretly feared that she must be doing wrong.
When Alistair rose on the first morning in their new home, and stepped out of his bedroom window on to the little balcony that overlooked the Emerald Coast, he repeated to himself the two lines of Keats in which the essence of all poetry is distilled:
“Magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,”
The house, which had been Hero’s choice for them, stood on the far edge of a little headland dividing a sandy bay from the broad haven of the Rance. The surrounding sea was ringed with a crescent of rocks and islets in the midst of which green Cézembre glowed—
“The captain jewel in the carcanet.”
Something, that seemed the mast of a wrecked ship, rose up in melancholy memorial from one seaweed-covered ledge on which the waves were now foaming softly, like a child that tries to kiss away the recollection of its passion. On his right hand, across the shallow glistening tides of the estuary, the tall spire of St. Malo lifted itself like a more stately mast above the white walls of the islet city of the corsairs. Far to the west the grey cape of Freher watched the Atlantic billows, like a grim warder of the Breton coast. And over all the summer haze lay like a spell of strong imagination, and conjured up a legendary world.
It was a leaf of poetry that lay outspread before him, and he read it with a poet’s eye. The faculty of toil, the long labour of the midnight lamp, the fortunate strategy of words, had been denied to Alistair Stuart, and therefore he was not a poet. Remained the gift of wonder and of worship, and by that talisman he still had power to people the sweeping landscape with mysterious life; the Tritons rose and called each other from the waves, old Proteus lifted a slumbering head and listened from his cave, and on the rocks the Sirens sang.
He had risen in that happy mood when every little thing becomes a spring of joy. The coffee foaming in its thick white cup, that woke him with its fragrance, and the shell-like bread, were delightful reminders that he had come to a lighter-hearted land. He dressed himself in pearl-grey flannels, and wandered out into the garden with a wide-rimmed panama over his brows, and drank the scent of roses and carnations, intoxicated by all the beauty round him, like a man risen from a sick-bed. His thoughts went back to the life he had just left, and he wondered that he could have lived it for so long. All the dark speculations, the impulses that had moved him to go down into sheol, seemed to have suddenly become as unreal as the imaginary dangers of the night forest are to the traveller coming out on the broad highway at dawn.