But his success was only
partial, for while his body gave itself to the whisper of the ungoverned
breezes, while his hands held the ropes, and his eyes watched the subtle
proceedings of the weather, and his ears listened to the serial stories
of the waves, and to the conversational peregrinations of his Ancient
Mariner about the China Seas in bygone days, his mind was still in
London, still busily concerned itself with the very things that should
now undergo a sea change and vanish in ozone. Recent events oppressed
him, to the occasional undoing of the old salt, well accustomed to the
seasick reverence of his despairing clients on board the _Star of the
Sea_. When the mind of a man has once fallen into the habit of prancing
in a circle like a circus horse, it is difficult to drive it back into
the public streets, to make it trot serenely forward in its ordinary
ways. And Julian had with him a ring-master in the person of the ignorant
Rip. Whenever his eyes fell on Rip, curled uneasily in the bottom of the
swinging boat, he went at a tangent back to Harley Street, and the
strange finale of his evening with the doctor.
It had been a curious tableau divided by a door. Levillier and he stood
on one side tugging mightily at the intent mastiffs, which strained at
their collars, dropping beads of foam from their grinning jaws, savages,
instead of calm companions.
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