Chapter XLII - Page 2

He had been to the working-class picnics too often in his
earlier life not to know what they were like, and as he entered the
park he experienced a recrudescence of all the old sensations.
After all, they were his kind, these working people. He had been
born among them, he had lived among them, and though he had strayed
for a time, it was well to come back among them.

"If it ain't Mart!" he heard some one say, and the next moment a
hearty hand was on his shoulder. "Where you ben all the time? Off
to sea? Come on an' have a drink."

It was the old crowd in which he found himself - the old crowd,
with here and there a gap, and here and there a new face. The
fellows were not bricklayers, but, as in the old days, they
attended all Sunday picnics for the dancing, and the fighting, and
the fun. Martin drank with them, and began to feel really human
once more. He was a fool to have ever left them, he thought; and
he was very certain that his sum of happiness would have been
greater had he remained with them and let alone the books and the
people who sat in the high places. Yet the beer seemed not so good
as of yore. It didn't taste as it used to taste. Brissenden had
spoiled him for steam beer, he concluded, and wondered if, after
all, the books had spoiled him for companionship with these friends
of his youth. He resolved that he would not be so spoiled, and he
went on to the dancing pavilion. Jimmy, the plumber, he met there,
in the company of a tall, blond girl who promptly forsook him for
Martin.

"Gee, it's like old times," Jimmy explained to the gang that gave
him the laugh as Martin and the blonde whirled away in a waltz.
"An' I don't give a rap. I'm too damned glad to see 'm back.
Watch 'm waltz, eh? It's like silk. Who'd blame any girl?"

But Martin restored the blonde to Jimmy, and the three of them,
with half a dozen friends, watched the revolving couples and
laughed and joked with one another. Everybody was glad to see
Martin back. No book of his been published; he carried no
fictitious value in their eyes. They liked him for himself. He
felt like a prince returned from excile, and his lonely heart
burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed. He made a mad day
of it, and was at his best. Also, he had money in his pockets,
and, as in the old days when he returned from sea with a pay-day,
he made the money fly.

Once, on the dancing-floor, he saw Lizzie Connolly go by in the
arms of a young workingman; and, later, when he made the round of
the pavilion, he came upon her sitting by a refreshment table.
Surprise and greetings over, he led her away into the grounds,
where they could talk without shouting down the music. From the
instant he spoke to her, she was