ary arrangement; he might as well have been in lodgings. At
Pinner, after a twelvemonth, he was beginning to overcome the sense of
strangeness; but a foreboding that he could not long remain there had
always disturbed him. Here, though every probability pointed to a
residence of at least two or three years, he scarcely made an effort to
familiarise himself with the new surroundings; his house was a shelter,
a camp; granted a water-tight roof, and drains not immediately
poisonous, what need to take thought for artificial comforts? Thousands
of men, who sleep on the circumference of London, and go each day to
business, are practically strangers to the district nominally their
home; ever ready to strike tent, as convenience bids, they can feel no
interest in a vicinage which merely happens to house them for the time
being, and as often as not they remain ignorant of the names of streets
or roads through which they pass in going to the railway station.
Harvey was now very much in this case. That he might not utterly waste
his time, he had undertaken regular duties under Cecil Morphew's
direction, and spent some hours daily in Westminster Bridge Road.
Thence he went to his club, to see the papers; and in returning to
Gunnersbury he felt hardly more sense of vital connection with this
suburb than with the murky and roaring street in which he sat at
business. By force of habit he continued to read, but only books from
the circulating library, thrown upon his table pell-mell--novels,
popular science, travels, biographies; each as it came to hand. The
intellectual disease of the time took hold upon him: he lost the power
of mental concentration, yielded to the indolent pleasure of desultory
page-skimming. There remained in him but one sign of grace: the qualms
that followed on every evening's debauch of mind, the headachey
impression that he was going through a morbid experience which somehow
would work its own cure.
Alma seemed quite unaware of any change in him. To his physical comfort
she gave all due attention, anxious lest he should catch cold in this
hideous weather, and doing her best to rule the house as he desired;
but his intellectual life was no concern to her. Herein, of course,
Harvey did but share the common lot of men married; he recognised the
fact, and was too wise to complain of it, even in his own mind. Yet it
puzzled him a little, now and then, that a woman so intelligent as Alma
should in this respect be si
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