Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
"Now," said Raven, coming up from his lounging posture, "I've got to
hustle. You run along and we'll go out somewhere to-night: dine, if you
want to, and drop in at a show. But, for heaven's sake, don't go to
digging up graveyards and expecting me to reconstruct your ancestors
from as few bones as we've got of Old Crow's. You bore me sometimes,
horribly, Dick. And that's the truth."
Dick did go away, though with an inarticulate remonstrance on his
tongue. But Raven was good-natured and yet decided, and even went to the
door with him, propelling him by a firm yet affectionate hand on his
shoulder.
They did dine out that night in a manner mildly bohemian, really
determined upon by Raven to show Dick he wasn't incapable yet of the
accepted forms of diversion, afflictingly dull though they might prove.
VII
In less than a week Raven, hurried beyond any design of his own by
Dick's anxious attentions, had actually gone. Once in the train on the
way into the uplands where Wake Hill lies, he reflected, with a smile,
that Dick had really helped him inconceivably in this matter of haste.
He might have loitered along, dallying with the wisdom of going, and
possibly ended by not going at all. But Dick's insistence on formulating
the situation, his neatness and energy in getting all the emotions of
the case into their proper pigeon holes, had so harassed and then bored
him that he had worked like a beaver, he told himself, to get off and
escape them altogether. And not a word from Amelia, either to his
telegram or Dick's letter. Things were looking up. It might be Amelia
had been elected to some new and absorbing organization for putting the
social edifice still more irretrievably into the disorder it seemed bent
for, in which case she might forget the inner wobblings of such an
inconspicuous nomad as a brother in metaphysical pangs. He became
recklessly optimistic, as the train climbed higher into the hills, and
luxuriated in it, conscious all the time that it was altitude that was
intoxicating him, not any real hope of hoodwinking Amelia. You couldn't
do that so easily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account