The theme of _Maradick at Forty_ again gets into the life of every man
and every woman; a theme equally timely in 1000 B.C., 1000 A.D. and
10000 A.D.--the question of what is to be done when a man wakes up to
find himself getting almost old, with life slipping from him to the next
generation. One may smile at the white slave terror, and be quite
selfish as regards educational movements, but one cannot smile away the
progress of one's self from the forties into the fifties.
Maradick, strong, large, well-bred, a capable stock broker, awakes at
forty to find that life has eluded him. He has married respectably--his
fussy little wife does not love him. His children are dutiful--they are
not admiring. His business is safe--it is not absorbing.
While spending the summer at the "Man at Arms," that marvelous dark old
inn with unexpected bits of gardens and tower rooms rambling over the
Cornwall cliffs and fronting a vast sweep of sea and sky, he meets with
a young man to whom life and poetry are real, to whom women and seas are
"bully! marvelous!" The youngster's youth stirs Maradick to demand that
he no longer be taken for granted by wife and children and business--and
life! He plunges into a spiritual adventure which is the Adventure of
Everyman.