England -- Fiction; Experimental fiction; Psychological fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- England -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
Magnanimity, virtue--such words when Jacob used them in talk with Bonamy
meant that he took control of the situation; that Bonamy would play
round him like an affectionate spaniel; and that (as likely as not) they
would end by rolling on the floor.
"And Greece?" said Bonamy. "The Parthenon and all that?"
"There's none of this European mysticism," said Jacob.
"It's the atmosphere. I suppose," said Bonamy. "And you went to
Constantinople?"
"Yes," said Jacob.
Bonamy paused, moved a pebble; then darted in with the rapidity and
certainty of a lizard's tongue.
"You are in love!" he exclaimed.
Jacob blushed.
The sharpest of knives never cut so deep.
As for responding, or taking the least account of it, Jacob stared
straight ahead of him, fixed, monolithic--oh, very beautiful!--like a
British Admiral, exclaimed Bonamy in a rage, rising from his seat and
walking off; waiting for some sound; none came; too proud to look back;
walking quicker and quicker until he found himself gazing into motor
cars and cursing women. Where was the pretty woman's face?
Clara's--Fanny's--Florinda's? Who was the pretty little creature?
Not Clara Durrant.
The Aberdeen terrier must be exercised, and as Mr. Bowley was going that
very moment--would like nothing better than a walk--they went together,
Clara and kind little Bowley--Bowley who had rooms in the Albany, Bowley
who wrote letters to the "Times" in a jocular vein about foreign hotels
and the Aurora Borealis--Bowley who liked young people and walked down
Piccadilly with his right arm resting on the boss of his back.
"Little demon!" cried Clara, and attached Troy to his chain.
Bowley anticipated--hoped for--a confidence. Devoted to her mother,
Clara sometimes felt her a little, well, her mother was so sure of
herself that she could not understand other people being--being--"as
ludicrous as I am," Clara jerked out (the dog tugging her forwards). And
Bowley thought she looked like a huntress and turned over in his mind
which it should be--some pale virgin with a slip of the moon in her
hair, which was a flight for Bowley.
The colour was in her cheeks. To have spoken outright about her
mother--still, it was only to Mr. Bowley, who loved her, as everybody
must; but to speak was unnatural to her, yet it was awful to feel, as
she had done all day, that she MUST tell some one.
"Wait till we cross the road," she said to the dog, bending down.
Happily she had recovered by that time.
"She thinks so much about England," she said. "She is so anxious---"
Bowley was defrauded as usual. Clara never confided in any one.
"Why don't the young people settle it, eh?" he wanted to ask. "What's
all this about England?"--a question poor Clara could not have answered,
since, as Mrs. Durrant discussed with Sir Edgar the policy of Sir Edward
Grey, Clara only wondered why the cabinet looked dusty, and Jacob had
never come. Oh, here was Mrs. Cowley Johnson...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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