He tore open the envelope: it was already after one, and probably there would be no answer, since he would see Lord Inverbroom at the Club, where he proposed to have lunch. The note was quite short.Allingham stood up and slowly rolled down his sleeves and put on his blazer. Of course, Gregg was like that, a thorough sportsman, taking the good with the bad. But then he was only twenty-four. You could be like that then, so full of life and high spirits that generosity flowed from you imperceptibly and without effort. At forty you began to shrivel up. Atrophy of the finer feelings. You began to be deliberately and consistently mean and narrow. You took a savage delight in making other people pay for your disappointments.
TWO:The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff. "I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow, Walter, are we?"A GROUP OF JAPANESE LADIES. A GROUP OF JAPANESE LADIES.
FORE:We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette. Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."
FORE:Then take my advice and make your brother go to the seaside with you instead. Youve been rather overworked lately and he has too. A change would do you both good.
FORE:"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep, crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard, ready--aim--"
FORE:"Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own number before they should pass," he added.
FORE:It did not take a long time to prepare Frank's wardrobe for the journey. His grandmother had an impression that he was going on a whaling voyage, as her brother had gone on one more than sixty years before. She proposed to give him two heavy jackets, a dozen pairs of woollen stockings, and a tarpaulin hat, and was sure he would need them. She[Pg 22] was undeceived when the difference between a sea voyage of to-day and one of half a century ago was explained to her. The housemaid said he would not need any thick clothing if he was going to Japan, as it was close to Jerusalem, and it was very hot there. She thought Japan was a seaport of Palestine, but Mary made it clear to her that Japan and Jaffa were not one and the same place. When satisfied on this point, she expressed the hope that the white bears and elephants wouldn't eat the poor boy up, and that the natives wouldn't roast him, as they did a missionary from her town when she was a little girl. "And, sure," she added, "he won't want any clothes at all, at all, there, as the horrid natives don't wear nothing except a little cocoanut ile which they rubs on their skins."You are very good to suggest that, he said. But it would be utterly out of the question. Well, Sir Thomas, I envy you your library. And here, I see, is your new catalogue. Miss Propert told me she was working at it. May I look at it? Yes, indeed, that is admirably done. Author and title of the book and illustrator as well, all entered. Her father was a great friend of mine. She may have told you that very tragic story.
FORE:I dont believe you could be stupid, said Alice with her infernal calmness, that again terrified him.A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. "Miss Charlotte say ef you want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down."
THREE:"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of couriers. And yonder came the sun.
THREE:"I was fifteen years old when I pulled my first oar in a whale-boat; I was boat-steerer at eighteen, and second mate at twenty, and before I was twenty-one I had known what it was to be in the mouth of a sperm-whale. It is hardly necessary to say that I got out of it as fast as I could, and didn't stop to see if my hair was combed and my[Pg 62] shirt-collar buttoned. A man has no time to put on frills under such circumstances.
Suddenly Keelings anger evaporated, leaving only a sore throbbing place where it had burned.That grim mouth, which she had always thought so forbidding and unsympathetic, suddenly wore to her a perfectly new aspect: it was strong and tender."Oh, Mr. Gregg, they say the Devil's come to Great Wymering at last. I'm not surprised to 'ear it, for the goings on in this town 'ave been something terrible since the war. What with the drinking and the young people doing just as they like."Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in mine; you're afraid to look."Fo' to quile dat golden cha--ain.
