To leave his three companions free to run down to the sea’s edge, Mr. Quincunx possessed himself of the clumsy paper parcels containing the hats they had relinquished and also of the little girl’s red shawl, and resting on a seat with these objects piled up by his side he proceeded to light a cigarette and gaze placidly about him. The worst of his plunge into activity being over,—for, whatever happened, the initial effort was bound to be the worst,—the wanderer from Dead Man’s Lane chuckled to himself with bursts of cynical humour as he contemplated the situation they were in.
But what a relief it was to see the clear-shining foam-sprinkled expanse of water lying spread out before him! Like the younger Andersen, Mr. Quincunx had a passionate love of Weymouth, and never had he loved it more than he did at that moment! He greeted the splendid curve of receding cliffs—the White Nore and St. Alban’s Head—with a sigh of profound satisfaction, and he looked across to the massive bulk of Portland, as though in its noble uncrumbling stone—stone that was so much nearer to marble than to clay—there lurked some occult talisman ready to save him from everything connected with Leo’s Hill.
Yes, the sea was what he wanted just then! How well the salt taste of it, the smell of its sun-bleached stranded weeds, its wide horizons, its long-drawn murmur, blent with the strange new mood into which that morning’s events had thrown him!
How happy the little Dolores looked, between Lacrima and Vennie, her dark curls waving in the wind from beneath her grey cap!
All at once his mind reverted to James Andersen, lying now alone and motionless, under six feet of yellow clay. Mr. Quincunx shivered. After all it was something to be alive still, something to be still able to stroke one’s beard and stretch one’s legs, and fumble in one’s pocket for a “Three Castles” cigarette!
He wondered vaguely how and when this young St. Catharine of theirs intended to marry him to Lacrima. And then what? Would he have to work frightfully, preposterously hard?
He chuckled to himself to think how blank Mr. Romer would look, when he found that both his victims had been spirited away in one breath. What a girl this Vennie Seldom was!
He tried to imagine what it would be like, this business of being married. After all, he was very fond of Lacrima. He hoped that dusky wavy hair of hers were as long as it suggested that it was! He liked girls to have long hair.
Would she bring him his tea in the morning, sometimes, with bare arms and bare feet? Would she sit cross-legged at the foot of his bed, while he drank it, and chatter to him of what they would do when he came back from his work?
His work! That was an aspect of the affair which certainly might well be omitted.