JULIA PIMUNE FLORY

Water is an untamed creature

CHAPTER XX

A SHORT CHAPTER ON BOREDOM

HE weather turned rough on Saturday night and all Sunday a squall blew off the sea. Every chair at the Madeira had its dowager, its book or knitting; and as often as anyone ventured to the door a gust slammed it to the wall to a general discomfort. There is a certain inclination of the head to peer above the glasses which puckers the brow and otherwise marks the face with disapproval.

The ornamental birch logs were lifted from the hearth and a small fire lighted. It did its bit in a tuppenny sort of way to lift the chill. The landlady assured us that such weather at Brighton was almost unknown. She remembered a day like it four years ago, but none since. There will be a blizzard when I

arrive at Paradise. Watering places do their worst for me. A young lady tried her hand at music, but each tune ended in the middle where the sheet was gone. Toward night the hotel sank to solitaire.

Great waves pounded on the sand and broke and whirled in flying spray. At fitful intervals the wind tore apart the clouds for a dazzling flash of sunlight, but it was a treacherous promise and those who ventured out came pelting back with drooping feathers.

But this is Brighton's best. The ocean was no longer the patient beast of commerce, the familiar comrade of idle sport, a housewife who sweeps the beach on the bidding of the moon. It had slept in a vacant dream with children teasing at its rest. It had been the mirror of the clouds. But now in altered mood it stretched gray and sullen to the rim of sky. It flashed with white anger to the shore to assert its primal nature and drown the petty creatures who had plagued its sleep.

I took a bath after lunch, but it was not for cleanliness. Any occupation was good that passed the time.

I was sitting in meditation and the tub, marveling how the little pool about me had been tamed from the riot of the outside storm, when a knock sounded on the door. I sat quiet with that feeling of modesty one has that he must not speak to strangers even through a door when he is ringed about with soap. Persons of fine sensitiveness tell me that they seize a bath robe if a telephone bell catches them undressed.

"Hello!" said the voice.

"Bill!" I cried. "Is that you?"

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Hurry up," he answered. "The sun is out. Let's go for a bus ride.”

And so we did, choosing one at random from a half mile of them that barked for customers along the beach.

We sat on top through rain-soaked glistening country to the town of Pyecombe, where we alighted and took the first bus back.

On our return, although the sky was broken into patches of deep blue, the ocean still pounded in.

"Land" I said, "can be captured to the use of men. Forests are cut away and mountains leveled. Prosperity spreads its cities in wide circuit and sweeps over marsh and plain. But water is an untamed creature. We dip our fingers in it as it lies asleep and we hurl it into spray and say we are its master; but when the wind is up, in derision the ocean laughs."

"Very pretty," said Bill. "When did you think that up?"

"In the tub," I answered.

"Tubs" he replied, "are the home of philosophers. Diogenes, for example, with hot and cold laid on, did his best thinking in a tub.

"Land is fixed" I continued, "but it always changes. Water, on the contrary, changes but is always fixed. Civilization cannot alter it. On shore we marvel if we see a vista unaltered even through a hundred years. But the ocean is to the eye the same as when it was swept by the ships of Greece and men sang at their oars across the purple twilight."

"For myself," said Bill, "I sing when I take a bath.

Tiled rooms are best. I turn on the water and let loose."

"I used to sing," I replied, "when I was young, in the vestibule, with the outer and inner doors closed. And I always sing on the platforms of sleeping cars. A great roar puts me at my best."

It rained again toward night. At the Madeira a dozen Penelopes knitted with vacant thought. An old gentleman tapped the barometer in doubtful hope. The B. of the B. H. sang On the Back Porch. Bill secured a padded chair and soon his chin was sunk within his collar.

A

us that he could not leave London for a week, so after breakfast we called a business meeting. The Devil's Dyke is six miles from Brighton at the top of the Downs. It is said to be thick with char-àbancs and cold lunch but, as it promised a wide prospect to the ocean and pleasant villages on the road beyond, we had hoped to include it on our journey. The morning was still raw, however, with sudden gusts of rain, so we gave up the Dyke for safer travel in a bus along the coast by way of Hove to Steyning.

The legend of the Dyke, nevertheless, is worth the telling for its pretty moral.