CHAPTER XXI
Christian strolled aimlessly about for a long time in the closely packed congeries of streets, little and big, behind St. Paul’s. It happened to be all new ground to him, and something novel was welcome to his troubled and restless mind. He loitered from one window to another, examining their contents gravely; at the old book stalls he took down numbers of volumes and looked laboriously through them, as if conducting an urgent search for something.
His jumbled thoughts were a burden to him. He could get nothing coherent from them, It was not even clear to his perception whether he was really as dejected and disconsolate as he ought to be.
He had only recently been plunged into despairing depths of sadness, and it was fitting that he should still be racked with anguish. Yet there was no actual pain—there was not even a dogged insensibility to the frivolous distractions of the moment. He became exceedingly interested in an old copy of Boutell, for example, and hunted eagerly through the multitude of heraldic cuts to see if the white bull on a green ground of the Torrs was among them. His disappointment at not finding it was so keen that for the instant it superseded his abiding grief. His discovery of this fact entertained him; he was almost capable of laughing in amusement at it. Then, in self-condemnation, he sought to call up before his mental vision the picture of Frances, as she had looked when they had said good-bye. The image would not come distinctly. Her face eluded him; he could only see her walking away, instead, under the feeble green of the young trees. None the less, he said deliberately to himself that he was unhappy beyond the doom of most men, and that the hope had gone out of his life.
The day had turned out unexpectedly warm. In the middle of his shapeless musings, the ornate sign of a Munich brewery on a cool, shaded doorway suddenly attracted him. The dusky, restful emptiness of the place inside seemed ideally to fit his mood. He went in, and seated himself with a long sigh of satisfaction at one of the tables. Here, in this mellow quiet, over the refreshing contents of the big, covered stone mug, he could think peacefully and to advantage. He lit a cigar, and leaning back in comfort, gave the signal to his thoughts to arrange and concentrate themselves.
What should he do next? Yes—that was far more to the point than mooning over the irrevocable past. He had left Duke Street with hardly any plan beyond not returning thither. Luggage of some sort he would have to have—changes of linen and the like, and the necessary articles of the toilet. It was his intention to buy these as the need of them arose—and the character of his purchases would also depend a good deal, of course, upon the decision he should come to concerning his movements. He had said that he would leave England—and now he asked himself whether there was anything to prevent his departure that very evening. One of the deepest charms of travel must be to start off on the instant, upon the bidding of the immediate whim, and descend upon your destination before there has been time to cheapen it by thinking about it. Why should he not eat the morrow’s breakfast in the Hague—and dine at Amsterdam? Similarly, he could within twenty-four hours be watching the marriage of Mosel and Rhine at Coblenz—or gazing upon the wide, wet, white sands of the Norman shore from the towering battlements of St. Michel. A hundred storied towns, vaguely pictured in his imagination, beckoned to him from across the Channel. Upon reflection, it seemed to him that Holland offered the most wooing invitation. He asked the waiter for Bradshaw, and noted the salient points of the itinerary from Queen borough.
It was now three o’clock. There was plenty of time for all purchases, and a leisurely dinner before going to Victoria. It occurred to him that the dinner must be very good—a luxurious kind of farewell repast.
He would make a memorandum now of the things he ought to buy here in London. Holland was by all accounts a dear place—and moreover he had heard that the Dutch customs examination was by no means troublesome. It would be more intelligent to complete practically his outfit here. He took out a pencil, and began feeling in his coat-pocket for a bit of paper. The hand brought out, beside Lady Milly’s note about the Private View, three or four unopened letters. He had entirely forgotten their existence—and stared at them now in puzzled indecision. It was not a sensible thing, or a fair thing either, to tear up and destroy unread the message which some one else had been at pains to transcribe for you. But on the other hand, these missives belonged to the stupid and intolerable life in Duke Street, with which he had definitely parted company. It might even be said, in one sense, that he was not the person to whom they were addressed.