t
on journeys among other fixed stars of greater magnitude. They came out
in boats over the dark water as though possessed with a passion for
exploring, and then, losing heart, would go back in a hurry, or else
expire. They raced along country roads and vanished in folds of the
hills. They danced and were smitten with idiotic immobility. They were
born, and they died sudden and inexplicable deaths. They were shocked,
or were filled with calm content. Low down on the edge of the shore,
where an open-air cinema was working convulsively, the lights had
collected in some excitement around the screen. Captain Meredith,
raising his night glasses to inspect this novel portent, imagined
himself watching a square hole in a dark spangled curtain, through which
a drama of inconceivable brightness and rapidity could be observed. It
was, the captain imagined whimsically, like watching a huge brain at
work, if such a thing were possible. He occasionally took refuge from
himself in such reflections. Without any pretence to originality, he
occasionally found himself in possession of thoughts for which custom
had provided no suitable phrase. With the humility common to those of
gentle birth who have followed the sea, he kept the results to himself.
Even in letters to his wife, he adhered to the conventional insipidity
that makes an Englishman's letters home one of the wonders of the world.
He had become somewhat fearful of originality, even in others, during
his honeymoon, when he had tried timidly to interest his wife in a novel
he was reading. It was a novel about sailors and the sea, of all things
in the world, and Captain Meredith had been so intrigued with the notion
of a story written about sailors without distorting them out of all
recognition that he couldn't keep it to himself. And he had been
completely nonplussed when his gentle, blonde, and slightly angular
young wife had displayed not merely a tepid lack of interest but
downright dislike. "I don't like it," she had said acidly, and returned
to her own book, an interminable tale of gipsies and highwaymen in
masks, and a "reigning toast" with forty thousand pounds. They had been
married some time before he realized just what it was she didn't like in
the story. And when he realized it, he put the thought from him in
trepidation, for he was prepared to sacrifice everything for her sake.
She embodied for him all that he craved of England. She was typical, as
she bent over their