Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/451

 noiseless evolutions, to the pole-star, and to Cassiopeia swinging beneath it, low in the north, over my Flora's pillow—my pole-star and journey's end.

Under this soothing reflection I composed myself to slumber, and awoke, to my surprise and annoyance, in a miserable flutter of the nerves. And this fretfulness increased with the hours, so that from Amiens to the coast Mr. Romaine must have had the devil of a time with me. I bolted my meals at the way-houses, chafing all the while at the business of the relays. I popped up and down in the calèche like a shot on a hot shovel. I cursed our pace. I girded at the lawyer's snuff-box and could have called him out upon Calais sands, when we reached them, to justify his vile, methodical use of it. By good fortune we arrived to find the packet ready with her warps, and bundled ourselves on board in a hurry. We sought separate cabins for the night, and in mine, as in a sort of moral bath, the drastic cross seas of the Channel cleansed me of my irritable humour and left me like a rag beaten and hung on a clothes-line to the winds of heaven.

In the grey of the morning we disembarked at Dover, and here Mr. Romaine had prepared a surprise for me. For as we drew to the shore and the throng of porters and waterside loafers, on what should my gaze alight but the beaming countenance of Mr. Rowley! I declare it communicated a roseate flush to the pallid cliffs of Albion. I could have fallen on his neck. On his side the honest lad kept touching his hat and grinning in a speechless ecstasy. As he confessed to me later, "It was either hold my tongue, sir, or call for three cheers." He snatched my valise and ushered us through the crowed to our hotel breakfast. And it seemed he must have filled up his time at Dover with trumpetings of our importance, for the landlord welcomed us on the perron, obsequiously cringing.