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And that was why, just now, he must walk in the darker places, in the smaller streets, until soon he would be, outwardly, himself again. So he chose for his walk the little dark winding path that runs steeply from the Cathedral, along behind Canon's Yard and Bodger's Street, down to the Pol.
Behind him was the Cathedral, to his right Bodger's Street and Canon's Yard, in front of him the bending hill, the river, and then the farther slips where the lights of the gipsy encampment sparkled and shone. Here the air was lovely, cool and soft, and the stars were crowding into the summer sky in their myriads. But his depression did not leave him, nor his loneliness.
Saint Margaret's only memory lingers in the Saint Margaret's Hostel for Women at the top of Bodger's Street, and even that has now a worn and desolate air as though it also were on the edge of departure. In truth, this part of Polchester is neglected and forgotten; it has not sunk like Seatown into dirt and degradation, it has still an air of romance and colour, but the life is gone from it.
Foster was the kind of fanatic who might at any minute decide to put peas in his shoes and walk to Jerusalem; did he so decide, he would abandon, for that decision, all the purposes for which he might at the time be working. Ronder would certainly never walk to Jerusalem. The silence and peace of Canon's Yard when he left Bodger's Street was almost dramatic.
Tom Bodger's clearing for action consisted in turning himself aside so that he could drag a neatly-folded duck bag off the fender, and stuffing his partly-made net and twine, with stirrup, mesh, and needle, inside before tying up the neck with a piece of yarn.
Bodger's Street was already alive with the anticipation of the coming week's festivities. Gas-jets were flaming behind hucksters' booths, all the population of the place was out on the street enjoying the fine summer evening, shouting, laughing, singing, quarrelling.
The trees that clustered over his head seemed to have gathered together all the heat of the day. Everything conspired to annoy him! Bodger's Street, when he turned into it, was, from his point of view, at its very worst, crowded and smelly and rocking with noise. The fields behind Bodger's Street and Canon's Yard sloped down the hill then up again out into the country beyond.
"Hear that?" cried Aleck, wildly. "Yes, I heard it in my sleep. The place is getting open then. There it goes again. It must be a gull." "No, no, no!" cried Aleck, wildly, his voice sounding cracked and broken from the overpowering joy that seemed to choke him. "Don't you know what it is?" "A seagull, I tell you." "No, no, no! It's Tom Bodger's whistle. You listen now."
As it was, his friends selected four more to help put off their boats, and the rest trudged slowly down the pier to form an audience and look on, while under Tom Bodger's direction the damaged boat was lashed by its thwarts to the fresh corners, and then set free and thrust off the step. The rest was easy.
"Tom Bodger's right; the press-gang has landed again, but, instead of going to Rockabie, they've come here." He was as right as Tom Bodger, for at last when he made his way to the edge of the cliff it was to look down on the lanthorns carried by three boats, which were close up to the shingly patch of beach from which the fishing craft put off.
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