imatic influences have no effect, and robust middle age,
if it perceive them, goes on its way steadfast or stolid, with a _cela
passera, tout passera_. But on the feeble and the failing such times
fall with a weight of fretful despondency; and so they fell on Mr
Sharnall.

He was very restless about the time of the mid-day meal. There came up
a thick, dark fog from the sea, which went rolling in great masses over
Cullerne Flat, till its fringe caught the outskirts of the town. After
that, it settled in the streets, and took up its special abode in
Bellevue Lodge; till Miss Euphemia coughed so that she had to take two
ipecacuanha lozenges, and Mr Sharnall was forced to ring for a lamp to
see his victuals. He went up to Westray's room to ask if he might eat
his dinner upstairs, but he found that the architect had gone to London,
and would not be back till the evening train; so he was thrown upon his
own resources.

He ate little, and by the end of the meal depression had so far got the
better of him, that he found himself standing before a well-known
cupboard. Perhaps the abstemiousness of the last three days had told
upon him, and drove him for refuge to his usual comforter. It was by
instinct that he went to the cupboard; he was not even conscious of
doing so till he had the open door in his hand. Then resolution
returned to him, aided, it may be, by the reflection that the cupboard
was bare (for the Bishop had taken away the whisky), and he shut the
door sharply. Was it possible that he had so soon forgotten his
promise--had come so perilously near falling back into the mire, after
the bright prospects of the last days, after so lucid an interval? He
went to his bureau and buried himself in Martin Joliffe's papers, till
the Burgess Bell gave warning of the afternoon service.

The gloom and fog made way by degrees for a drizzling rain, which
resolved itself into a steady downpour as the afternoon wore on. It was
so heavy that Mr Sharnall could hear the indistinct murmur of millions
of raindrops on the long lead roofs, and their more noisy splash and
spatter as they struck the windows in the lantern and north transept.
He was in a bad humour as he came down from the loft. The boys had sung
sleepily and flat; Jaques had murdered the tenor solo with his strained
and raucous voice; and old Janaway remembered afterwards that Mr
Sharnall had never vouchsafed a good-afternoon as he strode angrily down
the aisle.