Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)Wood, Henry, Mrs.
General
Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
Fiction
So thought the gentleman in that solitary boat, our friend Mr. David
Dundyke--or, let us give him the title he had of late aspired to, David
Dundyke, Esquire. He felt, to use his own words, "piping hot;" he sat on
one side of the boat, and the sun burnt his back; he changed to the
other, and it blistered his face; he tried the stern, and the sun seemed
to be all round him. He looked up at the Jura, with a vain longing that
they might be transported from their site to where they could screen him
from his hot tormentor: he turned and gazed at the Alps, and wished he
could see on them a shady place, and that he was in it; but, wherever he
looked and turned, the sun seemed to blind and to scorch him. Some
people, clayey mortals though the best of us are, might have found
poetry, or food for it, in all that lay around; but David Dundyke had no
poetry in his heart, still less in his head. He glanced, with listless,
half-shut eyes, at the two men who were rowing him along; and began to
wonder how any men could be induced to row, that burning day, even to
obtain a portion of the world's idol--money. David Dundyke cared not,
not he, for the scenery around; he never cared for anything in his life
that was not substantial and tangible. What was the common scenery of
nature to him, since it could not add to his wealth or enhance his
importance?--and that was all the matter at _his_ heart. He had never
looked at it all the way from London to Geneva; he did not look at that
around him now. Geneva itself, its lovely surrounding villas, its
picturesque lake, the glorious chain of mountains on either side, even
Mont Blanc in the distance, were as nothing to him. For some days after
his arrival at Geneva, the mountain had remained obstinately enshrouded
in clouds; but one evening that he and his wife were walking outside the
town with Mr. Hardcastle, it was pointed out to him, standing proudly
forth in all its beauty; and he had stared at it with just as much
interest as he would have done at the hill in Greenwich Park covered
with snow. He had seen the lovely colour, the dark, brilliant blue of
the Rhone's waters, as they escaped from the lake to mingle with those
of the thick, turbulent Arve; and he did not care to notice the contrast
in the streams. There were no associations in his mind connected with
that fair azure lake, whence coursed the one; he had no curiosity as to
the never-changing glaciers that were the source of the other.
But, had Mr. Dundyke's soul been wholly given up to poetry and
sentiment, it would have been lost that day in the overpowering heat. He
bore it as long as he could, and then suddenly told the men to bear to
the right and put him on shore. This movement had been observed by Mr.
Hardcastle, from the little island, as you may remember. The men, not
sorry perhaps to be off the lake themselves, inured though they were to
Geneva's August sun, made speedily for a shady place, and landed him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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