Page:Master Eustace (1920).djvu/219

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Benvolio
209


tainments were over he never made a direct transition to his little scholar's cell, with its garden view. He went out and wandered for an hour through the dark, sleeping streets of the town, ridding himself of the fumes of wine, and feeling not at all tipsy, but intensely, portentously sober. More than once, when he came back and prepared to go to bed, he had seen the first faint glow of dawn trembling upward over the tree tops of his garden. His friends, coming to see him, often found the greater room empty, and, advancing, pounded at the door of his chamber. But he frequently kept quiet, not desiring in the least to see them, knowing exactly what they were going to say, and not thinking it worth hearing. Then, hearing them stride away, and the outer door close behind them, he would come forth and take a turn in his slippers, over his Persian carpets, and glance out of the window and see his defeated visitant stand scratching his chin in the sunny square, and then laugh lightly to himself as is said to be the habit of the scribbling tribe in moments of production.

Although he had a family he enjoyed extreme liberty. His family was so large, his brothers and sisters so numerous, that he could absent himself constantly and be little missed. Sometimes he used this privilege freely; he tired of people whom he had seen very often, and he had seen, of course, an