It was good to be alone, to have loosed his moorings,
and to be drifting away where no eyes, once kind, would turn from him,
or turn on him with pity. Out there in Algiers, a town of which he had
the vaguest conception, there would be people who read the papers, of
course, and people who loved to gossip; but Stephen felt a pleasant
confidence that Nevill Caird would know how to protect him from such
people. He would not have to meet many strangers. Nevill would arrange
all that, and give him plenty to think about during his weeks of
freedom.
Algiers seemed a remote place to Stephen, who had loved life at home too
passionately to care for foreign travel. Besides, there was always a
great deal to do in England at every season of the year, and it had been
difficult to find a time convenient for getting away. Town engagements
began early in the spring, and lasted till after Cowes, when he was keen
for Scotland. Being a gregarious as well as an idle young man, he was
pleased with his own popularity, and the number of his invitations for
country-house visits. He could never accept more than half, but even so,
he hardly saw London until January; and then, if he went abroad at all,
there was only time for a few days in Paris, and a fortnight on the
Riviera, perhaps, before he found that he must get back. Just after
leaving Oxford, before his father's death, he had been to Rome, to
Berlin, and Vienna, and returned better satisfied than ever with his own
capital; but of course it was different now that the capital was
dissatisfied with him.
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