At the tiny inn-window he made periodic arrivals, looked out unseeing at a cart, a wall of flint and Flemish brick, and a moonlit country, then weighed anchor, and swerved away on another voyage; then arrived anew, looked out, saw nothing, and weighed.
He walked now in the dark of the valley of humiliation, with those words written in flame in his brain: “This is my favoured lot—my exaltation to afflictions high”: he had allowed a woman to say them to him, and he went “I!”
He, the richest of men, was, therefore, that night poorer than any wretch, brought right down, naked, exposed to death, and he filled that chamber with his moans: “God have mercy upon me! a vulgar rich man...a dreadful contented clown....”
But toward morning he lay calmer, weeping like Peter, and at peace.
Being without money, he sent the next day a small stone to Loveday, asking him to sell it; also to meet old Tom Bates on the night appointed, and keep him till he, Hogarth, came to London.
Four days later he received the money in the name of “Mr. Beech”, but the old Bates had not kept the rendezvous; and a month later a detective agency discovered that the fisher was dead.
At Hadston Hogarth remained two months, the most occupied man anywhere, yet passing for a lounger in the townlet.
Here and now he was descended deep into himself, aspiring to greatness, set on high designs; and, as the days passed, his thoughts more and more took form, though sometimes, with a sudden heart-pang, he would flinch and shrink, pierced by a consciousness of the unwieldy thing which he was at; and he would mutter: “I must be mad”. Anon he would start and cower at a distinct sound of cannon in his ears.
Usually, during the day, he had with him an atlas, a pair of compasses.
One day he took train, to see the sea.