Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Patagonia by James Henry
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 534 lines and 25344 words, and 11 pages
"Not through talking too much, surely."
"I don't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very handsome."
"So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be shut up. I like her being placed under my 'care'!" my friend cried.
"She'll be under Jasper's," I remarked.
"Ah he won't go," she wailed--"I want it too much!"
"But I didn't see it that way. I have an idea he'll go."
"Why didn't he tell me so then--when he came in?"
"He was diverted by that young woman--a beautiful unexpected girl sitting there."
"Diverted from his mother and her fond hope?--his mother trembling for his decision?"
"Well"--I pieced it together--"she's an old friend, older than we know. It was a meeting after a long separation."
"Yes, such a lot of them as he does know!" Mrs. Nettlepoint sighed.
"Such a lot of them?"
"He has so many female friends--in the most varied circles."
"Well, we can close round her then," I returned; "for I on my side know, or used to know, her young man."
"Her intended?"--she had a light of relief for this.
"The very one she's going out to. He can't, by the way," it occurred to me, "be very young now."
"How odd it sounds--her muddling after him!" said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
"Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if, she might change her mind at the last moment."
"About her marriage?
"About sailing. But she won't change now."
"Yes, I shall go"--he was finally at peace about it. "I've got my telegram."
"Oh your telegram!"--I ventured a little to jeer.
"That charming girl's your telegram."
"Oh you humbug!" she replied. But she was of course delighted.
People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison rare men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said: "I think you mentioned last night a name I know--that of Mr. Porterfield."
"Oh no I didn't!" she answered very straight while she smiled at me through her closely-drawn veil.
"Then it was your mother."
"Very likely it was my mother." And she continued to smile as if I ought to have known the difference.
"I venture to allude to him because I've an idea I used to know him," I went on.
"Oh I see." And beyond this remark she appeared to take no interest; she left it to me to make any connexion.
"That is if it's the same one." It struck me as feeble to say nothing more; so I added "My Mr. Porterfield was called David."
"Well, so is ours." "Ours" affected me as clever.
"I suppose I shall see him again if he's to meet you at Liverpool," I continued.
"Well, it will be bad if he doesn't."
It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did: that only came later. So I remarked that, not having seen him for so many years, it was very possible I shouldn't know him.
"Well, I've not seen him for a considerable time, but I expect I shall know him all the same."
"Oh with you it's different," I returned with harmlessly bright significance. "Hasn't he been back since those days?"
"I don't know," she sturdily professed, "what days you mean."
"When I knew him in Paris--ages ago. He was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture."
"Well, he's studying it still," said Grace Mavis.
"Hasn't he learned it yet?"
"I don't know what he has learned. I shall see." Then she added for the benefit of my perhaps undue levity: "Architecture's very difficult and he's tremendously thorough."
"Oh yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have become quite a foreigner if it's so many years since he has been at home."
She seemed to regard this proposition at first as complicated; but she did what she could for me. "Oh he's not changeable. If he were changeable--"
Then, however, she paused. I daresay she had been going to observe that if he were changeable he would long ago have given her up. After an instant she went on: "He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You can't make much by it."
I sought to attenuate her rather odd maidenly grimness. "It depends on what you call much."
"It doesn't make you rich."
"Oh of course you've got to practise it--and to practise it long."
"Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says."
Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were so calm an implication that the gentleman in question didn't live up to his principles. But I checked myself, asking her if she expected to remain in Europe long--to what one might call settle.
"Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it has taken me to go out."
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page