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Read Ebook: Œuvres complètes de lord Byron Tome 12 comprenant ses mémoires publiés par Thomas Moore by Moore Thomas Annotator Byron George Gordon Byron Baron Paris Paulin Translator
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Ebook has 1149 lines and 98799 words, and 23 pages
"Ah! I'd like to see you or Blanche takin' over my job," replied her father. "Why, I'll lay there's 'alf a dozen mistakes in the figurin' she's doing at the present moment. Let me see!"
Blanche descended suddenly from visions of Paradise, and put her hand over the sheet of note-paper. "You can't, father," she said.
Gosling looked sly. "Indeed?" he said, with simulated surprise. "And why not? Ain't I to be allowed to judge of the nature of the investment I'm goin' in for? I might give you an 'int or two from the gentleman's point of view."
Blanche shook her head. "I haven't added it up yet," she said.
Gosling did not press the point; he returned to his original position. "I dunno where you ladies 'ud be if you 'adn't no gentlemen to look after you."
Mrs Gosling smirked. "We'll 'ope it won't come to that," she said. "China's a long way off."
"Appears as there's been one case in Russia, though," remarked Gosling. He saw that he had rather a good thing in this threat of male extermination, a pleasant, harmless threat to hold over his feminine dependents; a means to emphasize the facts of masculine superiority and of the absolute necessity for masculine intelligence; facts that were not sufficiently well realized in Wisteria Grove, at times.
Mrs Gosling yawned surreptitiously. She was doing her best to be pleasant, but the subject bored her. She was a practical woman who worked hard all day to keep her house clean, and received very feeble assistance from the daughters for whom her one ambition was an establishment conducted on lines precisely similar to her own.
Millie and Blanche had returned to their calculations and were completely absorbed.
"In Russia? Just fancy," commented Mrs Gosling.
"In Moscow," said Gosling, studying his Evening News. "'E was an official on the trans-Siberian Railway. 'As soon as the disease was identified as a case of the new plague,'" read Gosling, "'the patient was at once removed to the infectious hospital and strictly isolated. He died within two hours of his admission. Stringent measures are being taken to prevent the infection from spreading.'"
"Was 'e a married man?" asked Mrs Gosling.
"Doesn't say," replied her husband. "But the point is that if it once gets to Europe, who knows where it'll stop?"
"They'll see to that, you may be sure," said Mrs Gosling, with a beautiful faith in the scientific resources of civilization. "It said somethin' about that in the bit you've just read."
Gosling was not to be done out of his argument. "Very like," he said. "But now, just supposin' as this 'ere plague did spread to London, and 'alf the men couldn't go to work; where d'you fancy you'd be?"
Mrs Gosling was unable to grasp the intricacies of this abstraction. "Well, of course, every one knows as we couldn't get on without the men," she said.
"Ah! well there you are, got it in once," said Gosling. "And don't you gels forget it," he added turning to his daughters.
Millie only giggled, but Blanche said, "All right, dad, we won't."
The girls returned to their calculations; they had arrived at the stage of cutting out all those items which were not "absolutely necessary." Five pounds had proved a miserably inadequate sum on paper.
Gosling returned to his Evening News, which presently slipped gently from his hand to the floor. Mrs Gosling looked up from her sewing and put a finger on her lips. The voices of Blanche and Millie were subdued to sibilant whisperings.
Gosling had forgotten his economic problems, and his daring abstractions concerning a world despoiled of male activity, especially of that essential activity, as he figured it, the making of money--the wage-earner was enjoying his after-dinner nap, hedged about, protected and cared for by his womankind.
There may have been a quarter of a million wage-earners in Greater London at that moment, who, however much they differed from Gosling on such minor questions as Tariff Reform or the capabilities of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have agreed with him as a matter of course, on the essentials he had discussed that evening.
At half-past nine the click of the letter-box, followed by a resounding double-knock, announced the arrival of the last post. Millie jumped up at once and went out eagerly.
Mr Gosling opened his eyes and stared with drunken fixity at the mantelpiece; then, without moving the rest of his body, he began to grope automatically with his left hand for the fallen newspaper. He found it at last, picked it up and pretended to read with sleep-sodden eyes.
"It's the post, dear," remarked Mrs Gosling.
Gosling yawned enormously. "Who's it for?" he asked.
"Millie! Millie!" called Mrs Gosling. "Why don't you bring the letters in?"
Millie did not reply, but she came slowly into the room, in her hands a letter which she was examining minutely.
"Who's it for, Mill?" asked Blanche, impatiently.
"Father," replied Millie, still intent on her study. "It's a foreign letter. I seem to remember the writing, too, only I can't fix it exactly."
"'Ere, 'and it over, my gel," said Gosling, and Millie reluctantly parted with her fascinating enigma.
"I know that 'and, too," remarked Gosling, and he, also, would have spent some time in the attempt to guess the puzzle without looking up the answer within the envelope, but the three spectators, who were not sharing his interest, manifested impatience.
"Well, ain't you going to open it, father?" asked Millie, and Mrs Gosling looked at her husband over her spectacles and remarked, "It must be a business letter, if it comes from foreign parts."
"Don't get business letters to this address," returned the head of the house, "besides which it's from Warsaw; we don't do nothin' with Warsaw."
At last he opened the letter.
The three women fixed their gaze on Gosling's face.
"Well?" ejaculated Millie, after a silence of several seconds. "Aren't you going to tell us?"
"You'd never guess," said Gosling triumphantly.
"Anyone we know?" asked Blanche.
"Yes, a gentleman."
"Oh! tell us, father," urged the impatient Millie.
"It's from the Mr Thrale, as lodged with us once," announced Gosling.
"Oh! dear, our Mr Fastidious," commented Blanche, "I thought he was dead long ago."
"It must be over four years since 'e left," put in Mrs Gosling.
"Getting on for five," corrected Blanche. "I remember I put my hair up while he was here."
"What's he say?" asked Millie.
"I said it was five years," put in Blanche. "Go on, dad!"
Dad resumed "... 'but I 'ave been in various parts of the world and it 'as been quite impossible to keep up a correspondence. I am writing now to tell you that I shall be back in London in a few days, and to ask you whether you can find a room for me in Wisteria Grove?'"
"Well! I should 'ave thought he'd 'ave written to me to ask that!" said Mrs Gosling.
"So 'e should 'ave, by rights," agreed Gosling. "But 'e's a queer card is Mr Thrale."
"Bit dotty, if you ask me," said Blanche.
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