Erskine
Childers’s THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS continues to enthrall me. Here Carruthers has
finally learned why Davies has lured him into what so-far has seemed a
ridiculously unaccountable enterprise:
Close in
the train of Humour came Romance, veiling her face, but I knew it was the
rustle of her robes that I heard in the foam beneath me; I knew that it was she
who handed me the cup of sparkling wine and bade me drink and be merry. Strange
to me though it was, I knew the taste when it touched my lips. It was not that
bastard concoction I had tasted in the pseudo-Bohemias of Soho; it was not the
showy but insipid beverage I should have drunk my fill of at Movern Lodge; it
was the purest of her pure vintages, instilling the ancient inspiration which,
under many guises, quickens thousands of better brains than mine, but whose
essence is always the same: The gay pursuit of a perilous quest.
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