ilgrim on the highroad to
Perfection and that very inconvenient animal "the wild bull in a net,"
kept up warfare within Richard Calmady. They were hard at it even yet,
when, in the fair freshness of the September morning--the grasses and
hedge-fruit, the wild flowers, and the low-growing, tangled coppices by
the roadside, still heavy with dew--he drove over to Westchurch. The
day was bright, with flying cloud and a westerly breeze. The dust was
laid, and the atmosphere, cleared by the storm of the preceding
afternoon, had a smack of autumn in it. It was one of those delicious,
yet distracting, days when the sea calls, and when whosoever loves
seafaring grows restless, must seek movement, seek the open, strain his
eyes towards the margin of the land--be the coast-line never so far
distant--tormented by desire for sight of the blue water, and the
strong and naked joys of the mighty ridge and furrow where go the
gallant ships.

With the upspringing of the wind at dawn, that calling of the sea had
made itself heard to Richard. At first it suggested only the practical
temptation of putting the _Reprieve_ into commission, and engaging Lady
Calmady to go forth with him on a three or four months' cruise. But
that, as he speedily convinced himself, was but a pitifully cheap
expedient, a shirking of voluntarily assumed responsibility, a childish
cheating of discontent, rather than an honestly attempted cure of it.
If cure was to be achieved, the canker must be excised, boldly cut out,
not overlaid merely by some trifle of partially concealing plaster. For
he knew well enough--as all sea-lovers know--and, as he drove through
the dappled sunlight and shadow, frankly admitted--that though the sea
itself very actually and really called, yet its calling was the voice
and symbol of much over and above itself. For in it speaks the eternal
necessity of going forward, that hunger and thirst for the absolute and
ultimate which drives every human creature whose heart and soul and
intellect are truly animate. And to him, just now, it spoke more
particularly of the natural instincts of his manhood--of ambition, of
passion, of headlong desire of sensation, excitement, adventure, of
just all that, in fact, which he had forsworn, had agreed with himself
to cast aside and forget. And, thinking of this, suspicion assailed him
that forswearing had been slightly insincere and perfunctory. He
accused himself of nourishing the belief that giving, he w