Colville of the Guards, Volume 3 (of 3)Grant, James
General
Colville of the Guards, Volume 3 (of 3)
Grant, James
British -- Afghanistan -- Fiction; Soldiers -- Fiction
She was left, with a slipshod girl in attendance, in a tolerably
comfortable little room, with panelled walls, and having in one
corner a pretty little bed (with one of those enormous square pillows
peculiar to Germany), in another corner a tall cylindrical iron
stove, in which a fire was glowing redly across the polished floor
and on the panels of an antique clothes wardrobe.
She looked from the casement window, and saw the lights in houses
opposite about fifty yards distant, and between them the still, deep,
and gloomy Fleethen ditch, or canal, in which these lights were
tremulously reflected; and something in the chill aspect of the
water, or what it suggested, as it lay just beneath her window, made
her shudder involuntarily.
She was soon to find that she was snared, and more a helpless
prisoner than she had been when on board the _Flying Foam_; for Sir
Redmond had placed her in this abode, knowing where he could find her
again when he chose, and where, if he did _not_ choose, she might
disappear, as so many entrapped English girls do on the Continent,
and never be heard of again; and in gambling, dissipated, and
dissolute Hamburg the muddy waters of its Fleethen hide many an
unknown crime and many a secret sorrow.
Lenchen (or Ellen), the girl who attended her, if slipshod, was
pretty and rosy, but saucy and flippant, though clad, like the usual
Hamburg housemaid, with a piquant lace cap, her white arms bare to
above the elbow, always scrupulously clean, and when she went to
market wore long kid gloves and the gayest of shawls, so disposed
under the arm as to conceal the basket, which is always shaped
unpleasantly like a child's coffin, but containing butter, cheese,
eggs, or whatever has been purchased.
Ignorant of the German language, and ignorant also, as yet, of the
true character of the Frau Wyburg and her attendant Lenchen, and as
their broken English gave--as it always rather absurdly seems to
do--an idea of childish innocence even to the most rascally
foreigner, Ellinor became inspired by a new sense of protection in
the presence of these females--especially of Lenchen; but this
confidence might have received a shock had she seen how that young
lady comported herself with Rolandsburg's uhlans, and other
_soldaten_ in the vicinity of the Dammthor Wall and the _Burger
Militair Kauslie_.
Three days passed, during which she saw and heard nothing of Sir
Redmond. The truth was, that worthy member of the 'upper ten' and
his Fidus Achates--his friend Dolly Dewsnap--having, through the
tipsy insolence of the latter, become involved in a street row at
night with a member of the _Neidergericht_, or Inferior Court, to
avoid the police, who 'wanted them,' had remained closely on board
the yacht in the Binnenhafen, where she was now remasted, and fast
becoming ready for sea in Ringbolt's skilful hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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