Harry Joscelyn; vol. 2 of 3Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Harry Joscelyn; vol. 2 of 3
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Families -- England -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
He grew furious with confusion and bewilderment. He
had not been thought specially strong on the Fells, but here his
North-country muscles told. He pushed away the crowd, who he thought
were making a joke of him, and took up his own portmanteau. “The
gentleman is all right,” said some one beside him; “you have no
education, you are without manners, you others,” and somebody took off a
hat and made a salutation, somebody who reached to about Harry’s elbow.
It was civil, and the first part of the sentence had been said in
English, so Harry, learning by experience, conquered his wrath, and was
civil too. “Can I perhaps indicate a hotel?” this new personage said;
“Mister is an English?” Harry stood still and looked down upon his new
acquaintance, not quite clear as to the meaning of what he said. He was
a little man, small and dainty, dressed with quaint care, with high
shirt-collars, and a large black cravat tied in a bow, and the most
shining of black hats, which he took off when he spoke. He was
olive-complexioned, with big, dark, soft Italian eyes. “Mister is an
English?” he said; “by paternity I am an English, too. I will indicate a
hotel if the gentleman chooses. It will deliver him from _la canaglia_,
what you call this rabbel,” he added, with an ingratiating smile, and a
great rattle of his _r’s_. It was mere good-nature, but Harry was by no
means sure of this, and he knew that foreigners were deceivers. “Thanks,
I won’t trouble you,” he said, abruptly, and lifting his portmanteau--it
was not a big one--strode away. He felt angry and depressed, yet
excited. The astonished look of the little man, who made him another
bow, and replaced his hat with a shrug of his shoulders at the
Englishman’s want of manners, added to his discomfiture. Perhaps he had
made a fool of himself by refusing those good offices which were offered
to him, Harry thought. Perhaps he would have been a bigger fool had he
accepted. Perhaps they were all in a conspiracy to rob him. He strode on
and on, somewhat ashamed of his own appearance with the portmanteau, as
if he were too poor to pay anyone to carry it, and thoroughly
bewildered altogether amid the sounds and sights which he did not
understand. But at the end he got into an inn where there was some one
who spoke English, not such a usual accomplishment in these days as it
is now; and where he got a room which was very strange of aspect to the
untravelled young man. The half hour which he passed there, seated upon
the odd little bed, with his portmanteau at his feet upon the tiled
floor, all so strange, so desolate to Harry, was as terrible a moment as
he had ever passed in his life. His very soul was discouraged, sunk low
in his breast with a kind of physical drop and downfall. It was all he
could do not to burst out crying in his forlornness and helplessness and
solitude. What could he do in a place where he did not understand a
word? In many cases novelty is delightful, but there are some in which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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