Part 23 (2/2)

He took an opportunity of seating himself by Mrs. Warricombe, with whom as yet he had held no continuous dialogue.

'Has there been anything of interest at the London theatres lately?'

she asked.

'I know so little of them,' G.o.dwin replied, truthfully. 'It must be several years since I saw a play.'

'Then in that respect you have hardly become a Londoner.'

'Nor in any other, I believe,' said Peak, with a smile. 'I have lived there ten years, but am far from regarding London as my home. I hope a few months more will release me from it altogether.'

'Indeed!--Perhaps you think of leaving England?'

'I should be very sorry to do that--for any length of time. My wish is to settle somewhere in the country, and spend a year or two in quiet study.'

Mrs. Warricombe looked amiable surprise, but corrected herself to approving interest.

'I have heard some of our friends say that their minds get unstrung, if they are long away from town, but I should have thought that country quietness would be much better than London noise. My husband certainly finds it so.'

'People are very differently const.i.tuted,' said G.o.dwin. 'And then it depends much on the nature of one's work.'

Uttering these commonplaces with an air of reflection, he observed that they did not cost him the self-contempt which was wont to be his penalty for concession to the terms of polite gossip; rather, his mind accepted with grat.i.tude this rare repose. He tasted something of the tranquil self-content which makes life so enjoyable when one has never seen a necessity for shaping original remarks. No one in this room would despise him for a plat.i.tude, were it but recommended with a pleasant smile. With the Moxeys, with Earwaker, he durst not thus have spoken.

When the hour of separation was at hand, Buckland invited his guest to retire with him to a part of the house where they could smoke and chat comfortably.

'Moorhouse and Louis are f.a.gged after their twenty mile stretch this morning; I have caught both of them nodding during the last few minutes. We can send them to bed without apology.'

He led the way upstairs to a region of lumber-rooms, whence a narrow flight of steps brought them into a gla.s.s-house, octangular and with pointed tops, out upon the roof. This, he explained, had been built some twenty years ago, at a time when Mr. Warricombe amused himself with photography. A few indications of its original purposes were still noticeable; an easel and a box of oil-colours showed that someone--doubtless of the younger generation--had used it as a painting-room; a settee and deep cane chairs made it an inviting lounge on a warm evening like the present, when, by throwing open a hinged wall, one looked forth into the deep sky and tasted the air from the sea.

'Sidwell used to paint a little,' said Buckland, as his companion bent to examine a small canvas on which a landscape was roughed in. It lay on a side table, and was half concealed by an ordnance map, left unfolded. 'For the last year or two I think she has given it up. I'm afraid we are not strong in matters of art. Neither of the girls can play very well, though of course they both tinkle for their own amus.e.m.e.nt. Maurice--the poor lad who was killed--gave a good deal of artistic promise; father keeps some little water-colours of his, which men in that line have praised--perhaps sincerely.'

'I remember you used to speak slightingly of art,' said G.o.dwin, as he took an offered cigar.

'Did I? And of a good many other things, I daresay. It was my habit at one time, I believe, to grow heated in scorn of Euclid's definitions.

What an interesting book Euclid is! Half a year ago, I was led by a talk with Moorhouse to go through some of the old ”props”, and you can't imagine how they delighted me. Moorhouse was so obliging as to tell me that I had an eminently deductive mind.'

He laughed, but not without betraying some pleasure in the remark.

'Surprising,' he went on, 'how very little such a mind as Moorhouse's suggests itself in common conversation. He is really profound in mathematics, a man of original powers, but I never heard him make a remark of the slightest value on any other subject. Now his sister--she has studied nothing in particular, yet she can't express an opinion that doesn't bear the stamp of originality.'

G.o.dwin was contented to muse, his eyes fixed on a brilliant star in the western heaven.

'There's only one inconsistency in her that annoys and puzzles me,'

Buckland pursued, speaking with the cigar in his mouth. 'In religion, she seems to be orthodox. True, we have never spoken on the subject, but--well, she goes to church, and carries prayer-books. I don't know how to explain it. Hypocrisy is the last thing one could suspect her of. I'm sure she hates it in every form. And such a clear brain!--I can't understand it.'

The listener was still star-gazing. He had allowed his cigar, after the first few puffs, to smoulder untasted; his lips were drawn into an expression very unlike the laxity appropriate to pleasurable smoking.

When the murmur of the pines had for a moment been audible, he said, with a forced smile:

'I notice you take for granted that a clear brain and religious orthodoxy are incompatible.'

The other gave him a keen look.

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