And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes:”
quoted Tony. “Tennyson, and jolly good at that.”
“Don’t know it,” said Maradick rather gruffly. “Bad for your business. Besides, what do those chaps know about life? Shut themselves up in their rooms and made rhymes over the fire. What could they know?”
“Oh, some of them,” said Tony, “knew a good bit. But I’m sorry I quoted. It’s a shocking habit, and generally indulged in to show superiority to your friends. But the sky is just like that to-night. Drawn lightly across as though it hid all sorts of things on the other side.”
Maradick made no answer, and they walked on in silence. They reached the end of the hotel garden, and passed through the little white gate into a narrow path that skirted the town wall and brought you abruptly out into the market-place by the church. It passed along a high bank that towered over the river Ess on its way to the sea. It was rather a proud little river as little rivers go, babbling and chattering in its early, higher reaches, with the young gaiety suited to country vicarages and the paper ships of village children; and then, solemn and tranquil, and even, perhaps, a little important, as it neared the town and gave shelter to brown-sailed herring-boats, and then, finally, agitated, excited, tumultuous as it tumbled into its guardian, the sea.
To-night it passed contentedly under the walls of the town, singing a very sleepy little song on its way, and playing games with the moonlight and the stars. Here the noise of the fair was hidden and everything was very still and peaceful. The footsteps of the two men were loud and clear. The night air had straightened Maradick’s brain and he was more at peace with the world, but there was, nevertheless, a certain feeling of uneasiness, natural and indeed inevitable in a man who, after an ordered and regulated existence of many years, does something that is unusual and a little ridiculous. He had arrived, as was, indeed, the case with so many persons of middle age, at that deliberate exclusion of three sides of life in order to grasp fully the fourth side. By persistent practice he had taught himself to believe that the other three sides did not exist. He told himself that he was not adaptable, that he had made his bed and must lie on it, that the moon was for dreamers; and now suddenly, in the space of a day, the blind was drawn from the window before which he had sat for fifteen years, and behold! there were the stars!
Then Tony began again. It had been said of him that his worst fault was his readiness to respond, that he did not know what it was to be on his guard, and he treated Maradick now with a confidence and frankness that was curiously intimate considering the length of their acquaintance. At length he spoke of Alice Du Cane. “I know my people want it, and she’s an awful good sort, really sporting, and the kind of girl you’d trust to the end of your days. A girl you’d be absolutely safe with.”
“Do you care about her?” said Maradick.