The Riddle of the Sands | Page 5

a sense of complacent martyrdom, when, with his keen
appreciation of the social calendar, he is doomed to the outer solitude
of London in September. I say 'martyrdom', but in fact the case was
infinitely worse. For to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a
pleasurable thing, and the true tragedy of my position was that I had
passed that stage. I had enjoyed what sweets it had to offer in ever
dwindling degree since the middle of August, when ties were still fresh
and sympathy abundant. I had been conscious that I was missed at
Morven Lodge party. Lady Ashleigh herself had said so in the kindest
possible manner, when she wrote to acknowledge the letter in which I
explained, with an effectively austere reserve of language, that
circumstances compelled me to remain at my office. 'We know how
busy you must be just now', she wrote, 'and I do hope you won't
overwork; we shall all miss you very much.' Friend after friend 'got
away' to sport and fresh air, with promises to write and chaffing
condolences, and as each deserted the sinking ship, I took a grim
delight in my misery, positively almost enjoying the first week or two
after my world had been finally dissipated to the four bracing winds of
heaven.
I began to take a spurious interest in the remaining five millions, and
wrote several clever letters in a vein of cheap satire, indirectly
suggesting the pathos of my position, but indicating that I was
broad-minded enough to find intellectual entertainment in the scenes,
persons, and habits of London in the dead season. I even did rational
things at the instigation of others. For, though I should have liked total
isolation best, I, of course, found that there was a sediment of
unfortunates like myself, who, unlike me, viewed the situation in a
most prosaic light. There were river excursions, and so on, after

office-hours; but I dislike the river at any time for its noisy vulgarity,
and most of all at this season. So I dropped out of the fresh air brigade
and declined H--'s offer to share a riverside cottage and run up to town
in the mornings. I did spend one or two week-ends with the Catesbys in
Kent; but I was not inconsolable when they let their house and went
abroad, for I found that such partial compensations did not suit me.
Neither did the taste for satirical observation last. A passing thirst,
which I dare say many have shared, for adventures of the fascinating
kind described in the New Arabian Nights led me on a few evenings
into some shady haunts in Soho and farther eastward; but was finally
quenched one sultry Saturday night after an hour's immersion in the
reeking atmosphere of a low music-hall in Ratcliffe Highway, where I
sat next a portly female who suffered from the heat, and at frequent
intervals refreshed herself and an infant from a bottle of tepid stout.
By the first week in September I had abandoned all palliatives, and had
settled into the dismal but dignified routine of office, club, and
chambers. And now came the most cruel trial, for the hideous truth
dawned on me that the world I found so indispensable could after all
dispense with me. It was all very well for Lady Ashleigh to assure me
that I was deeply missed; but a letter from F--, who was one of the
party, written 'in haste, just starting to shoot', and coming as a tardy
reply to one of my cleverest, made me aware that the house party had
suffered little from my absence, and that few sighs were wasted on me,
even in the quarter which I had assumed to have been discreetly alluded
to by the underlined all in Lady Ashleigh's 'we shall all miss you'. A
thrust which smarted more, if it bit less deeply, came from my cousin
Nesta, who wrote: 'It's horrid for you to have to be baking in London
now; but, after all, it must be a great pleasure to you' (malicious little
wretch!) 'to have such interesting and important work to do.' Here was
a nemesis for an innocent illusion I had been accustomed to foster in
the minds of my relations and acquaintances, especially in the breasts
of the trustful and admiring maidens whom I had taken down to dinner
in the last two seasons; a fiction which I had almost reached the point
of believing in myself. For the plain truth was that my work was neither
interesting nor important, and consisted chiefly at present in smoking
cigarettes, in saying that Mr So-and-So was away and would be back

about 1st October, in being absent for lunch from twelve till two, and in
my spare moments making