Chapter 22

CHAPTER XXII.

For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this
same afternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour
was a drowsy one, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily
on body and mind. The meridian demon was upon him; he was
possessed by that bored and hopeless post-prandial melancholy
which the coenobites of old knew and feared under the name of
"accidie." He felt, like Ernest Dowson, "a little weary." He
was in the mood to write something rather exquisite and gentle
and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the same
time--how should he put it?--a little infinite. He thought of
Anne, of love hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the
ideal kind of love, the hopeless kind--the quiet, theoretical
kind of love. In this sad mood of repletion he could well
believe it. He began to write. One elegant quatrain had flowed
from beneath his pen:

"A brooding love which is at most
The stealth of moonbeams when they slide,
Evoking colour's bloodless ghost,
O'er some scarce-breathing breast or side..."

when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He
looked down from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld,
talking, laughing together. They crossed the courtyard in front,
and passed out of sight through the gate in the right-hand wall.
That was the way to the green close and the granary; she was
going to sit for him again. His pleasantly depressing melancholy
was dissipated by a puff of violent emotion; angrily he threw his
quatrain into the waste-paper basket and ran downstairs. "The
stealth of moonbeams," indeed!

In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in
wait. Denis tried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan's eye
glittered like the eye of the Ancient Mariner.

"Not so fast," he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with
pointed nails--"not so fast. I was just going down to the flower
garden to take the sun. We'll go together."

Denis abandoned himself; Mr. Scogan put on his hat and they went
out arm in arm. On the shaven turf of the terrace Henry Wimbush
and Mary were playing a solemn game of bowls. They descended by
the yew-tree walk. It was here, thought Denis, here that Anne
had fallen, here that he had kissed her, here--and he blushed
with retrospective shame at the memory--here that he had tried to
carry her and failed. Life was awful!

"Sanity!" said Mr. Scogan, suddenly breaking a long silence.
"Sanity--that's what's wrong with me and that's what will be
wrong with you, my dear Denis, when you're old enough to be sane
or insane. In a sane world I should be a great man; as things
are, in this curious establishment, I am nothing at all; to all