And all the while a tenderer vision would rise before my eyes, clothed
with its pitiful romance--the Cradlebow, like some sadly out-of-fashion
guest, arising unsolicited out of a half-forgotten dreamland, passing
indeed both the ideal strength of the warlike Stephen and the gentleness
of the saintly Arthur, but, alas! so crude, so unworldly, so ridiculously
poor! And the vision extended and then narrowed helplessly to a home in
one of the forlorn houses in Wallencamp by the sea, with its dingy walls
and bare floors, its general confusion of objects and misery, and my
lord's grand eyes obscured, perchance, behind clouds of tobacco smoke,
while I set the scanty table and fried the briny herrings.
With a shudder for romance, I returned to the contemplation of wealth and
respectability; and took up graciously, once more, the briefly abandoned
idea of duty.
I had often been told that it was my duty to accommodate myself to other
people's views. Perhaps I should accomplish my designs for
self-immolation, and thus, in one sense, effect my highest spiritual
good, by marrying the fisherman and accommodating myself to his
views--ah! but how could that be, I reflected, unsmilingly, when my views
were so infinitely superior to his!
I wondered, for one thing, why he should have entertained, of late, such
an excessive dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants.
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