One day on his college barge, while he was waiting for a picnic party to start, he seemed to get nearer than before. Out on that western sea, as he saw it, it was fresh, blowing weather, with a clear hot sky above. It was hard work rowing, for the wind was against him, and the sun scorched his forehead. The air seemed full of scents—and sounds, too, sounds of faraway surf and wind in trees. He rested for a moment on his oars and turned his head. His heart beat quickly, for there was a rift in the mist, and far through a line of sand ringed with snow-white foam.
Somebody shook him roughly—“Come on, Colin, old man. They’re all waiting for you. Do you know you’ve been half asleep?”
Colin rose and followed silently, with drowsy eyes. His mind was curiously excited. He had looked inside the veil of mist. Now he knew what was the land he sought.
He made the voyage often, now that the spell was broken. It was short work to launch the boat, and, whereas it had been a long pull formerly, now it needed only a few strokes to bring him to the Rim of the Mist. There was no chance of getting farther, and he scarcely tried. He was content to rest there, in a world of curious scents and sounds, till the mist drew down and he was driven back to shore.
The change in his environment troubled him little. For a man who has been an idol at the University to fall suddenly into the comparative insignificance of Town is often a bitter experience; but Colin, whose thoughts were not ambitious, scarcely noticed it. He found that he was less his own master than before, but he humbled himself to his new duties without complaint. Many of his old friends were about him; he had plenty of acquaintances; and, being “sufficient unto himself,” he was unaccustomed to ennui. Invitations showered upon him thick and fast. Matchmaking mothers, knowing his birth and his father’s income, and reflecting that he was the only child of his house, desired him as a son-in-law. He was bidden welcome everywhere, and the young girls, for whose sake he was thus courted, found in him an attractive mystery. The tall good-looking athlete, with the kind eyes and the preposterously nervous manner, wakened their maidenly sympathies. As they danced with him or sat next to him at dinner, they talked fervently of Oxford, of the north, of the army, of his friends. “Stupid, but nice, my dear,” was Lady Afflint’s comment; and Miss Clara Etheridge, the beauty of the year, declared to her friends that he was a “dear boy, but so awkward.” He was always forgetful, and ever apologetic; and when he forgot the Shandwicks’ theatre-party, the Herapaths’ dance, and at least a dozen minor matters, he began to acquire the reputation of a cynic and a recluse.
“You’re a queer chap, Col,” Lieutenant Bellew said in expostulation.
Colin shrugged his shoulders; he was used to the description.
“Do you know that Clara Etheridge was trying all she knew to please you this afternoon, and you looked as if you weren’t listening? Most men would have given their ears to be in your place.”
“I’m awfully sorry, but I thought I was very polite to her.”
“And why weren’t you at the Marshams’ show?”
“Oh, I went to polo with Collinson and another man. And, I say, old chap, I’m not coming to the Logans tomorrow. I’ve got a fence on with Adair at the school.”
Little Bellew, who was a tremendous mirror of fashion and chevalier in general, looked up curiously at his tall friend.
“Why don’t you like the women, Col, when they’re so fond of you?”
“They aren’t,” said Colin hotly, “and I don’t dislike ’em. But, Lord! they bore me. I might be doing twenty things when I talk nonsense to one of ’em for an hour. I come back as stupid as an owl, and besides there’s heaps of things better sport.”
The truth was that, while among men he was a leader and at his ease, among women his psychic balance was so oddly upset that he grew nervous and returned unhappy. The boat on the beach, ready in general to appear at the slightest call, would delay long after such experiences, and its place would be taken by some woman’s face for which he cared not a straw. For the boat, on the other hand, he cared a very great deal. In all his frank wholesome existence there was this enchanting background, this pleasure-garden which he cherished more than anything in life. He had come of late to look at it with somewhat different eyes. The eager desire to search behind the mist was ever with him, but now he had also some curiosity about the details of the picture. As he pulled out to the Rim of the Mist sounds seemed to shape themselves on his lips, which by-and-by grew into actual words in his memory. He wrote them down in scraps, and after some sorting they seemed to him a kind of Latin. He remembered a college friend of his, one Medway, now reading for the Bar, who had been the foremost scholar of his acquaintance; so with the scrap of paper in his pocket he climbed one evening to Medway’s rooms in the Temple.
The man read the words curiously, and puzzled for a bit. “What’s made you take to Latin comps so late in life, Colin? It’s baddish, you know, even for you. I thought they’d have licked more into you at Eton.”
Colin grinned with amusement. “I’ll tell you about it later,” he said. “Can you make out what it means?”
“It seems to be a kind of dog-Latin or monkish Latin or something of the sort,” said Medway. “It reads like this: ‘Soles occidere solent’ (that’s cribbed from Catullus,
