He was taken aback at first and
then diverted.

"Damn his impudence," he chuckled to himself. "Damn his impudence."

CXVII

Philip had written to Athelny to tell him that he was doing a locum in
Dorsetshire and in due course received an answer from him. It was written
in the formal manner he affected, studded with pompous epithets as a
Persian diadem was studded with precious stones; and in the beautiful
hand, like black letter and as difficult to read, upon which he prided
himself. He suggested that Philip should join him and his family in the
Kentish hop-field to which he went every year; and to persuade him said
various beautiful and complicated things about Philip's soul and the
winding tendrils of the hops. Philip replied at once that he would come on
the first day he was free. Though not born there, he had a peculiar
affection for the Isle of Thanet, and he was fired with enthusiasm at the
thought of spending a fortnight so close to the earth and amid conditions
which needed only a blue sky to be as idyllic as the olive groves of
Arcady.

The four weeks of his engagement at Farnley passed quickly. On the cliff
a new town was springing up, with red brick villas round golf links, and
a large hotel had recently been opened to cater for the summer visitors;
but Philip went there seldom. Down below, by the harbour, the little stone
houses of a past century were clustered in a delightful confusion, and the
narrow streets, climbing down steeply, had an air of antiquity which
appealed to the imagination. By the water's edge were neat cottages with
trim, tiny gardens in front of them; they were inhabited by retired
captains in the merchant service, and by mothers or widows of men who had
gained their living by the sea; and they had an appearance which was
quaint and peaceful. In the little harbour came tramps from Spain and the
Levant, ships of small tonnage; and now and then a windjammer was borne in
by the winds of romance. It reminded Philip of the dirty little harbour
with its colliers at Blackstable, and he thought that there he had first
acquired the desire, which was now an obsession, for Eastern lands and
sunlit islands in a tropic sea. But here you felt yourself closer to the
wide, deep ocean than on the shore of that North Sea which seemed always
circumscribed; here you could draw a long breath as you looked out upon
the even vastness; and the west wind, the dear soft salt wind of England,
uplifted the