Harry Joscelyn; vol. 3 of 3Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Harry Joscelyn; vol. 3 of 3
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Families -- England -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
It was a long time before she could calm herself down. If there had been
anybody to tell it to, that would have been something; but, as she had
no way of getting rid of her excitement, it blazed up in her higher and
higher. She did not know what to do to calm herself down. She walked
about for nearly an hour, now and then going to the window, leaning half
out, exposing herself to the fresh air and coolness, eagerly looking
for the first early riser, the first window opening, and watching the
little belfry grow black against the lightening sky, then flash and
blaze to the first touch of the sun. Sleep! she could have sooner done
anything else in the world--stretched out her arms like wings and flown,
leaped down from the window, called out to all the city, that was what
she wanted to do--“Harry, Harry!” She seemed to have but one idea left
in the world.
After a while, however, in the desperation of being unable to
communicate her discovery, or do anything to bring herself more clearly
face to face with so wonderful a revelation, Lydia sat down to trace it
again step by step, then lay down on her bed, going over and over the
familiar ground. She fell asleep just as the sunshine began to stream
into her room, and slept soundly for an hour or two in the depths of her
exhaustion; but when she woke it was still early, and a long day before
her. Naturally the first thing she did was to survey again the entire
circumstances, going over them one by one. She had not much experience,
and in her whole life no such lawless incident as a _nuit blanche_, a
night spent without taking off her clothes had ever occurred to Liddy
before. She felt almost guilty as she found herself lying there, her
long hair streaming about her, in her dressing-gown, as she had been
when she first sat down at her window to think. Sometimes the morning
light dissipates the wisest calculations and conclusions of the night,
and turns its theories and revelations into folly; but as she started up
hastily, and began to put her facts together again, no such awakening
occurred. They seemed more conclusive, more certain, in the sober light
of the morning, than they did in the feverish wakefulness of the long,
silent night. She pieced them all together hurriedly, in a tremble of
excitement. He had been there ten years, and it was ten years since
Harry disappeared. He had said nothing about his family, he had even
married without any explanation on that point. He had started at the
sound of her name; he had understood all she said. He had called his
child Ralph--_Ralph!_ after his father, with a prejudice that was
North-country all over; and his name was Harry, so called by his wife,
though he had himself announced as Isaac Oliver. Lydia thought she could
understand exactly what had made him take Isaac Oliver’s name--a moment
of despite and despair, yet humour--a putting down of himself from the
pinnacle of the Joscelyns to the humility of the lowliest servant, an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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