CHAPTER XI

"THE WORLD FORGETTING"

"'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd; To hear the roar she sends through all her gates, At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls, a soft murmur, on the uninjured ear. Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced To some secure and more than mortal height, That liberates and exempts me from them all." —COWPER.

AT the mouth of the river upon which Newton Bury was built, and an hour or more distant by train from Newton Bury, was a certain small town, Burrside by name, the pet watering-place of the Newton Bury people. In summer, Burrside was gay with brass bands, and well-dressed promenaders; in summer therefore it was contemptuously eschewed by Mr. Carden-Cox. But in winter, when nobody went to Burrside, when it was transformed into an Arabia Deserta of empty lodgings and unfrequented streets, then Mr. Carden-Cox was given to betaking himself thither for a week or a fortnight of blissful quiet—"the world forgetting, by the world forgot."

It is not at all disagreeable to be forgotten by the world for a few days, just when one happens to be in the right mood. Not that Mr. Carden-Cox ever did forget the world of human beings to which he belonged, or ever really believed that the said world forgot him; but he thought he did, which came to much the same thing.

On such occasions, he found it agreeable to hug his solitude, to muse over the peculiarities of his own nature, to admire his own individuality of taste in thus fleeing the world, and to picture what friends might be saying about his absence. A curious mode of "forgetting the world"; but few people carry out their theories consistently.

One or two weeks ended, Mr. Carden-Cox's gregarious side was wont to come uppermost. By that time he had usually had enough of solitude, and was glad to return to his circle of acquaintances, finding a new pleasure in relating to them his Burrside experiences. Some of the said acquaintances privately called this return "coming out of his sulks," and nothing could persuade those unreasonable people that he had not fled in a huff. But nobody ever ventured to hint to himself that such an interpretation of his lofty communing with Nature was a possibility.

Just before the steam-boat excursion, and indeed before the day of Nigel's arrival was known, Mr. Carden-Cox had decided on a trip to Burrside. He and one of the Churchwardens had had a "tiff" on the subject of certain Church funds, and Mr. Carden-Cox had come off worst in the encounter. The said Churchwarden was a good man, albeit somewhat blunt; and Mr. Carden-Cox was not always in the right; but as an immediate result of the affair, he grew tired of the Newton Bury world, and resolved to flee.

Nigel's arrival altered the complexion of things, and slew his desire for solitude. However, Mr. Carden-Cox disliked to change his plans; it looked "unsettled" to do so, and he counted "unsettledness" tantamount to weakness. So he merely deferred the trip for a few days, and then vanished. Nobody saw him later than the morning after the steam-yacht excursion.

Once at Burrside, he liked the change, as usual, after a fashion. Banishment from the conventional round of commonplaces was in theory agreeable to him; and the Burrside natives, if commonplace, were not conventional. Mr. Carden-Cox found their simplicity delightful. He never grew weary of the old sailor on the shore, who knew Nigel and could talk of Nigel by the hour together; and his landlady from the same cause was a perpetual pleasure. The landlady, a highly respectable woman, looked upon him with a touch of compassionate interest, as "not quite all right there!" But this he could not guess, and she did her best for his comfort.

Mr. Carden-Cox was a man greatly addicted to letter-writing. He had not much to do besides, except to take care of himself, and to sit in judgment upon others—an employment in which he was a proficient. Idleness was abhorrent to him, and enforced work hardly less so, while letter-writing exactly suited his nervous nature and dilettante tastes. He could begin and leave off when he liked, could write as much or as little on any one subject as he chose, could be secure against interruption and opposition, at least till he had said his say; could expatiate to any extent on his own feelings; and above all, could indulge in a comfortable belief in the overcrowded state of his time. Let him write as many letters as he would, there were always more which might be written; and until Mr. Carden-Cox should achieve the impossible horizon-chase of "no further demands" in the correspondence line, he was enough pressed with business to be able to grumble. What true Englishman could want more?

"My letters are legion—legion!" he groaned complacently, surveying the pile beside his breakfast-plate, three mornings after his arrival at Burrside.

"Legion!" he repeated, looking at his landlady for sympathy, as she placed a covered dish upon the table; for even in the enjoyment of solitude somebody to be appealed to is necessary, and he had nobody else.

Mrs. Simmons was commonplace enough, being of no particular age, and having no particular features; but she was not, for all that, without her own individuality.

"Legion!" reiterated Mr. Carden-Cox. "How would you like to have all these to answer?" He lifted the pile as he spoke, weighing it in both hands, with a deprecating and mournful smile. He would by no means have liked not "to have all these to answer"; but none the less, he pitied himself.

Mrs. Simmons smoothed down a corner of the tablecloth, which had "got rucked up," as she expressed it. "I'm sure I don't know how ever I should get through 'em, sir, what with the dusting and cooking," she said.

"Cooking! Ah!—" Mr. Carden-Cox answered with mild benignity.

He knew enough about cooking to believe that a joint would "do" itself, if left before the fire, and that a pudding could be tossed together in five minutes. It seemed absurd to think that dusting or cooking could hinder correspondence, though he would not hurt Mrs. Simmons's feelings by suggesting that she over-estimated her vocation.

"Ah!—" he repeated. "Yes. No doubt. But the Penny Post is a great burden, a great burden. You and I can hardly be thankful enough that in our young days no Penny Post existed. We were spared that trouble."

Mrs. Simmons might be of no particular age, but she was not so old as Mr. Carden-Cox; and naturally she resented being placed on his level.

"Indeed, sir, I don't pretend to be able to go back to them days," she said with emphasis. "And I don't say but what the Penny Post has got its good points; not but what it's got its bad points too. As my father was used to say; for he did live in the times when there wasn't none."

"Everything in life has its advantages and its disadvantages," Mr. Carden-Cox said, looking at her with his bright eyes, as he weighed the postal delivery still. "The question in any particular case is—which overbalances the other? Do the advantages more than compensate for the disadvantages, or vice versa? You perceive? Sometimes there seems to be a complete balance of forces—an equilibrium—the scale will not incline either way."

"No, sir," assented Mrs. Simmons, anxious to escape before she should find herself in a mental quagmire.

"Nothing then remains but to hold one's opinion in abeyance, till one side or the other sinks. You understand?"

"To be sure, sir!" Mrs. Simmons answered, with a heartiness which might almost have meant comprehension. "Poor gentleman!" she was saying to herself. "No, he isn't quite all right there; but I've got to humour him."

"You are a sensible woman; a very sensible woman, Mrs. Simmons," Mr. Carden-Cox stated approvingly. "It is a relief to find one of your sex who can listen to logic, without argumentative opposition."

Mrs. Simmons liked this. "My mother was a sensible woman, sir," she averred, delaying her flight.

"Probably. Like mother, like daughter. But about the Penny Post—that would be a case in point." Mrs. Simmons backed. "The advantages and disadvantages being about equal, one could neither wish to have it done away, nor—" Mr. Carden-Cox paused to examine the handwriting of the uppermost envelope, "nor—I was about to say—"

Mrs. Simmons was gone, and Mr. Carden-Cox never finished his sentence.

He sighed, sat down, enjoyed a cutlet and a cup of coffee, then applied himself slowly to the day's business. As a rule, he delved from top to bottom of the pile with exemplary orderliness; but this morning his weighing process had shaken out a thick envelope, addressed in Daisy's childish handwriting, which proved irresistible. Mr. Carden-Cox drew out the sheet, propped it against the toast-rack, and began to read his favourite's effusion.

"MY DEAR MR. CARDEN-COX,—Fulvie wants me to answer your note, and to tell you all about everybody, as she isn't well enough. She's not ill, I suppose, but she is awfully seedy somehow—hasn't been out of her room since the boat day. Cousin Jamie says it is the chill and the shock. And mother is worried, and father is depressed, and Nigel's hand doesn't get on; so we are in a sort of hospital state.

"Fulvia and Nigel want padre very much to consult cousin Jamie about himself, and he won't. At least he says 'some day, perhaps,' and he keeps putting it off. He is talking again about going abroad, and I can't think what for. It is such a stupid time of the year for going abroad—nothing to see or do. We think he wants to escape Fulvie's birthday, but why should he? Of course we must give up making a fuss, if he isn't well and doesn't like it. At least Fulvie says so.

"I slept in Fulvie's room last night, because she seemed to need somebody, and she did nothing but talk and ramble about all sorts of nonsense, and call out to Nigel to help her. I suppose she fancied she was burning or drowning, by the things she said.

"I believe she thinks herself worse than she really is; for last night she seized hold of me, and said, 'Daisy, if I die, tell Nigel—' and then she went off into a mutter. I said, 'You're not going to die; nonsense, Fulvie, it is just a cold!' But she did not hear me, and began again, 'Tell Nigel, he and Ethel—he and Ethel—' and then she burst out crying, and she did cry so! I asked her what she meant about Nigel and Ethel, and Fulvie said, 'Oh, when he marries Ethel—and when I'm dead!' I couldn't get her to say anything more that was rational, except, 'Nobody knows—nobody must know,' and she sobbed herself off into a sort of stupid state, not like sleep.

"This morning I told her what she had said, and she wouldn't believe me. She was angry, and she asked how I could be so ridiculous. Then she said I had been dreaming, and she made me promise not to tell madre, or Nigel, or cousin Jamie. Of course we don't tell anything to padre, and Anice is no good; but I'm sure somebody ought to know the sort of state she is in, and so I thought I would tell you, because we always tell you nearly everything in our house. Only please don't let out that I have said so much.

"I wonder if Nigel ever will marry Ethel. Don't you? I like Ethel very much. He is always going there, and trying to see her; but Ethel has so much to do that I don't believe he very often succeeds, and then he looks melancholy. And mother is so unhappy whenever he goes. I do wish mother didn't mind everything so much. I mean to give up minding things, and to take everything just as it comes. And I don't mean ever to worry mother by caring too much for anybody. But I don't think Nigel notices how she feels, exactly as he used to do.

"I meant to tell you lots more, but there is no time, and I must stop. Mother wants me for something.—Ever yours affectionately,

"DAISY BROWNING."

Mr. Carden-Cox sat for ten minutes in a brown study. Then he rang for the removal of the breakfast things, and turned over the pile of letters remaining. Among them, he found a short note from Nigel, written with the left hand, and a few lines from Ethel.

"DEAR MR. CARDEN-COX,—Can you give me the name of that law-book which you mentioned on the boat? I want to read it. Excuse this scrawl.

"Fulvia seems poorly still—cannot leave her room.—Ever yours,

"N. B."

"DEAR MR. CARDEN-COX,—Could you possibly let my father have your magic-lantern next week? It is asking a great deal at short notice, but he wants to get up the Infants' Treat earlier than was intended, and we have so little time to arrange anything.

"We are very sorry Fulvia is so ill. Of course you hear all about everything, or else I would tell you more. Nigel seems rather anxious about her, but I do not know that anybody else is. His hand is bad still.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

"ETHEL ELVEY."

In answer to these Mr. Carden-Cox wrote, with great deliberation, three letters, and also a fourth to Fulvia. By inserting a good deal of chit-chat, he managed to fill up exactly one sheet to each, signing his name at the bottom of the fourth page.

Then he fell into a state of flurry, and scribbled four postscripts on four additional half-sheets. His state of mind was shown by the fact that, instead of writing P.S. at the top of each half-sheet, he wrote N.B., not discovering his own blunder. After all, the one was as good as the other, though unusual. He thrust the postscripts into the four stamped and addressed envelopes, paying small heed to the addresses, and hurried to the post-box round a near corner. Not unnaturally, each postscript went to a wrong destination.