onsolation. Tolerant
of tobacco, although he did not smoke, he fronted the fire, envying Gower
Woodseer the contemplative pipe, which for half a dozen puffs wafted him
to bracing deserts, or primaeval forests, or old highways with the
swallow thoughts above him, down the Past, into the Future. A pipe is
pleasant dreams at command. A pipe is the concrete form of philosophy.
Why, then, a pipe is the alternative of a friar's frock for an escape
from women. But if one does not smoke! . . . Here and there a man is
visibly in the eyes of all men cursed: let him be blest by Fortune; let
him be handsome, healthy, wealthy, courted, he is cursed.

Fleetwood lay that night beneath the roof of the Royal Sovereign. Sleep
is life's legitimate mate. It will treat us at times as the faithless
wife, who becomes a harrying beast, behaves to her lord. He had no sleep.
Having put out his candle, an idea took hold of him, and he jumped up to
light it again and verify the idea that this room . . . He left the bed
and strode round it, going in the guise of an urgent somnambulist, or
ghost bearing burden of an imperfectly remembered mission. This was the
room.

Reason and cold together overcame his illogical scruples to lie down on
that bed soliciting the sleep desired. He lay and groaned, lay and
rolled. All night the Naval Monarch with the loose cheeks and jelly smile
of the swinging sign-board creaked. Flaws of the North-easter swung and
banged him. He creaked high, in complaint,--low, in some partial
contentment. There was piping of his boatswain, shrill piping--shrieks of
the whistle. How many nights had that most ill-fated of brides lain
listening to the idiotic uproar! It excused a touch of craziness. But how
many? Not one, not two, ten, twenty:--count, count to the exact number of
nights the unhappy girl must have heard those mad colloquies of the
hurricane boatswain and the chirpy king. By heaven! Whitechapel, after
one night of it, beckons as a haven of grace.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS

The night Lord Fleetwood had passed cured him of the wound Carinthia
dealt, with her blunt, defensive phrase and her Welshman. Seated on his
coach-box, he turned for a look the back way leading to Esslemont, and
saw rosed crag and mountain forest rather than the soft undulations of
parkland pushing green meadows or brown copse up the slopes under his
eye. She had never been courted: she deserved a siege. She was a dau