Whereupon he wheeled around.
First the route lay uphill towards Delancey Castle. It was a stiffish climb. The sun, beating upon the white roadway, flung waves of heat up from it. They shimmered before his spectacled, short-sighted eyes in an irritating glaring dance. His round, cherubic face was glowing to a deep crimson before he was half-way up the ascent. The vision he had conjured up of the seashore might truly be poetical, but I question the poetry in the appearance of the little man trudging towards that vision. Yet this is unkind. Who are we to judge from appearances? Truly may poetic aspirations be hidden beneath the most unlikely exteriors.
At the top of the hill, Corin paused, looking reflectively down the long avenue. Exhaustion rather than reflection prompted the pause, nevertheless he gave vent to a sage one.
“Omne ignotum pro magnifico,” he remarked, “by which token, I fancy, our young American friend down yonder had a very different conception of what he was going to find up here. He has found less magnificence than irksomeness, I take it. Now, I wonder why karma——”
But I refuse to follow Corin in his meditative flights in this direction. It is sufficient to note that we see him, from the remark I have given you, in like mind with three at least of our other characters herein mentioned.
His meditation on the mysteries of karma completed, and his exhaustion being in part, at least, lessened, Corin pursued his way. His route was level now, leading presently to a footpath across an expanse of short grass. Here he came upon full view of the sea—blue, sparkling, radiant, dotted with white- and red-winged sailing boats.
Coming at length to a rough, descending track, he made his way down it. It brought him into a cove, a place of white sand, smooth and gleaming.
Truly here was all that his vision had expected. The grass-crowned cliffs sloped down to the cove in rugged grey walls, samphire-covered. Nor did the grey rocks stop abruptly on reaching the white sand, but ran out into it, as if eager to gain to the sun-kissed water. Little pools lay among them, mirrors reflecting the blue of the sky. In the pools waved feathery fronds of sea-weed—pink, crimson, and brown; tiny silver fish darted hither and thither; sea anemones stretched forth dainty flower-like tentacles.
“This,” remarked Corin to his soul, “was worth the tramp.”
And he sat down on the warm white sand.