Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall

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      Stillfleet and His News

       Table of Contents

      Home!

      The Arago landed me at midnight in mid-winter. It was a dreary night. I drove forlornly to my hotel. The town looked mean and foul. The first omens seemed unkindly. My spirits sank full fathom five into Despond.

      But bed on shore was welcome after my berth on board the steamer. I was glad to be in a room that did not lurch or wallow, and could hold its tongue. I could sleep, undisturbed by moaning and creaking woodwork, forever threatening wreck in dismal refrain.

      It was late next morning when a knock awoke me. I did not say, “Entrez,” or “Herein.”

      Some fellows adopt those idioms after a week in Paris or a day in Heidelberg, and then apologize, — “We travellers quite lose our mother tongue, you know.”

      “Come in,” said I, glad to use the vernacular.

      A Patrick entered, brandishing a clothes-broom as if it were a shillalah splintered in a shindy.

      “A jontlemin wants to see yer honor,” said he.

      A gentleman to see me! Who can it be? I asked myself. Not Densdeth already! No, he is probably also making a late morning of it after our rough voyage. I fear I should think it a little ominous if he appeared at the threshold of my home life, as my first friend in America. Bah! Why should I have superstitions about Densdeth? Our intimacy on board will not continue on shore. What’s Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba?”

      “A jontlemin to see yer honor,” repeated the Pat, with a peremptory flourish of his weapon.

      “What name, Patrick?”

      “I misremember the name of him, yer honor. He’s a wide-awake jontlemin, with three mustasshes, — two on his lip, and one at the pint of his chin.”

      Can it be Harry Stillfleet? I thought. He cannot help being wide-awake. He used to wear his beard à la three-moustache mode. His appearance as my first friend would be a capital omen. “Show him up, Pat!” said I.

      “He shows himself up,” said a frank, electric voice. “Here he is, wide-awake, three moustaches, first friend, capital omen. Hail Columbia! beat the drums! Robert Byng, old boy, how are you?”

      “Harry Stillfleet, old boy, how are you?”

      “I am an old boy, and hope you are so too.”

      “I trust so. It is the best thing that can be said of a full-grown man.”

      “I saw your name on the hotel book,” Stillfleet resumed. “Rushed in to say, ‘How d’ ye do?’ and ‘Good-bye!’ I’m off to-day. Any friends out in the Arago?”

      “No friends. A few acquaintances, — and Densdeth.”

      “Name Densdeth friend, and I cut you bing-bang!”

      “What! Densdeth, the cleverest man I have ever met?”

      “The same.”

      “Densdeth, handsome as Alcibiades, or perhaps I should say Absalom, as he is Hebrewish?”

      “That very Alcibiades, — Absalom, — Densdeth.”

      “Densdeth, the brilliant, the accomplished, — who fascinates old and young, who has been everywhere, who has seen everything, who knows the world de profundis, — a very Midas with the gold touch, but without the ass’s ears? Densdeth, the potent millionnaire?”

      “Yes, Byng. And he can carry a great many more adjectives. He has qualities enough to make a regiment of average men. But my friends must be built of other stuff.”

      “So must mine, to tell the truth, Harry. But he attracts me strangely. His sardonic humor suits one side of my nature.”

      “The cynical side?”

      “If I have one. The voyage would have been a bore without him. I had never met and hardly heard of him before; but we became intimate at once. He has shown me much attention.”

      “No doubt. He knows men. You have a good name. You are to be somebody on your own account, we hope. Besides, Densdeth was probably aware of your old friendship with the Denmans.”

      “He never spoke of them.”

      “Naturally. He did not wish to talk tragedy.”

      “Tragedy! What do you mean?”

      “You have not heard the story of Densdeth and Clara Denman!” cried Stillfleet, in surprise.

      “No. Shut up in Leipsic, and crowding my studies to come СКАЧАТЬ