"Well," he resumed, "any place is better than this conventional England. One of the greatest annoyances to me is the state of society in it; so you are wise to squat elsewhere."
"Indeed! How?" asked Morley, watching his cigar smoke as it curled away in the breeze that came from the sea, whose breakers they could now hear bursting on the rocks.
"Because that state compels us, as if we wore a vizard—a mask—to conceal our suspicions, our loves, and our hatreds—yes, Mr. Ashton, still more especially our hatreds—under a suave and cold-blooded exterior."
"The result of good breeding, I presume?"
"The result of cursed conventionality, I call it. The stronger the hate, too often, the brighter and softer is the smile that conceals it. Maladette! 'Tis not so in some of the sunny lands where I have been, and where a little homicide, now and then, is considered but a casual occurrence."
The captain was in what Morley and Mr. Basset were wont to term one of his "bitter and bouncing moods"—moods which rather amused them; so as this was scarcely a moment in which to proffer the ring, Morley lit another cigar, and to put off the time until he could meet Ethel, strolled on till they reached the summit of the cliffs, from whence could be seen the far extent of the dark blue sea, that stretched away to the south-west, with the sails that dotted it, shining red, rather than white, in the ruddy light of the setting sun. There, too, was visible the smoke of more than one steamer, rolling far astern, like a long and fading pennant on the sky.
So the rivals continued to ramble on in no very companionable mood, for Morley was happy and abstracted, while Hawkshaw was bitter and quarrelsome, till the deep hoarse booming of the breakers announced that they were close to Acton Chine, towards which, as if by silent and tacit consent, they proceeded.
The evening was lovely, and its calm beauty increased as the sun set and twilight stole on.
With the shrill practical whistle of an occasional locomotive on the London and North-Western line, there came on the breath of the soft west wind the more poetical tinkling of the waggon-bells from the dusty highway, in the green vale far down below; and now, though the placid air rang joyously, the evening chime from the broad, low Norman spire of Acton church, the solid outline of which stood defined and dark against the flush of the saffron sky beyond.
And with the breeze that wafted the sound came the fragrant perfume of the ripening fields, their warmth and fertility, as if it had stolen "o'er a bed of violets." Sunk in deepening shadow now, green Acton Chase, with all its great oaks blending in a mass, stretched far away in the distance to the foot of the uplands.