A little while ago and he had seemed a lonely man among
the hills, but indeed he was not lonely, these men had been with him
all the time, and he was free to wander, to sit here, to think and
choose simply because those men down there were not free. HE WAS
SPENDING THEIR LEISURE. . . . Not once but many times with Prothero
had he used the phrase RICHESSE OBLIGE. Now he remembered it. He
began to remember a mass of ideas that had been overlaid and
stifling within him. This was what Merkle and the club servants and
the entertainments and engagements and his mother and the artistic
touts and the theatrical touts and the hunting and the elaboration
of games and--Mrs. Skelmersdale and all that had clustered thickly
round him in London had been hiding from him. Those men below there
had not been trusted to choose their work; they had been given it.
And he had been trusted. . . .
And now to grapple with it! Now to get it clear! What work was he
going to do? That settled, he would deal with his distractions
readily enough. Until that was settled he was lax and exposed to
every passing breeze of invitation.
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