Jeanne of the MarshesOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
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Jeanne of the Marshes
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Detective and mystery stories; English fiction -- 20th century
"Yes!" Forrest answered. "I suppose you would say that they have let me
off lightly. I wish I could feel so. If ever a man was sick of those
dirty disreputable foreign places, where one holds on to life and
respectability only with the tips of one's fingernails, I am. I think I
shall chuck it, Ena. I am tired of those foreign crowds, suspicious,
semi-disreputable. There's something wrong with every one of them. Even
the few decent ones you know very well speak to you because you are in
a foreign country, and would cut you in Pall Mall."
"It isn't so bad as that," the Princess said calmly. "There are some of
the places worth living in. You must live a quieter life, spend less,
and find distractions. You used to be so fond of shooting and golf."
He laughed hardly.
"How am I to live," he demanded, "away from the card-tables? What do
you suppose my income is? A blank! It is worse than a blank, for I owe
bills which I shall never pay. How am I going to live from day to day
unless I go on the same infernal treadmill. I am an adventurer, I
know," he went on, "but what is one to do who has the tastes and
education of a gentleman, and not even money enough to buy a farm and
work with one's hands for a living?"
The Princess moved to the window and back again.
"I, too, Nigel," she said, "have had shocks. Jeanne has come back. She
has been at Salthouse all the time."
"It was probably she, then, who sent for De la Borne," Forrest said
wearily.
"Perhaps so," the Princess assented, "but listen to this. It will
surprise you. She came back and she told De Brensault in this room only
a short while ago that her supposed fortune was a myth. De Brensault
took it like a lamb. He wants to marry her still."
Forrest looked up in amazement.
"And will he?" he asked.
"Oh, I do not know!" the Princess answered. "Nigel, I am sick of life
myself. There are times when everything you have been trying for seems
not worth while, when even one's fundamental ideas come tottering down.
Just now I feel as though every stone in the foundation of what has
seemed to me to mean life, is rotten and insecure. I am tired of it.
Shall I tell you what I feel like doing?"
"Yes!" he answered.
"I have a little house in Silesia, where I am still a great lady,
half-a-dozen servants, perhaps, farms which bring in a trifle of money.
I think I will go and live there. I think I will get up in the mornings
as Jeanne does, and try to love my mountains, and go about amongst my
people, and try to spell life with different letters. Come with me,
Nigel. There is shooting and fishing there, and horses wild enough for
even you to find pleasure in riding. We have tried many things in life.
Let us make one last throw, and try the land of Arcady."
He looked at her, at first in amazement. Afterwards some change seemed
to come into his face, called there, perhaps, by what he saw in hers.
"Ena," he said, "you mean it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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