A
woman's vanity had wrecked his future. He must hide somewhere for the
night, and get away in the morning, perhaps on board some tramp steamer
bound for Buenos Ayres, or on a junk weighing anchor for Hayti or Java,
or some other distant place. Vague memories of books he had read when a
boy came back to him as he ran through the unkempt wilds of the Regent's
Park. He saw himself a stowaway hidden in a hold, alone with rats and
ships' biscuits. He saw himself working his way out before the mast,
sent aloft in hurricanes on pitch-black nights, or turning the wheel the
wrong way round and bringing the ship to wreck upon iron-bound coasts
swarming with sharks and savages. The lions roared again, and the black
panthers snarled behind their prison bars. He thought of the peaceful
waters of the river Mouse, of the library of Madame, of the happy little
circle of architects and their wives, of all that he must leave.
What wonder if he dropped a tear into the muddy road? What wonder if a
sob rent the bosom of Mr. Ferdinand's now disordered shirt front? On and
on Mr. Sagittarius--or Malkiel the Second, as he may from henceforth
be called--went blindly, on and on till the Park was left behind, till
crescents gave way to squares, and squares to streets.
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