City and town life -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction
They were still on the subject when Camilla's step was heard in the
hall. Instead of coming into the library she went swiftly out of the
front door. Miss Eunice, at the window, dropped her knitting.
“Camilla is going out again!”
Mr. Champney rumbled inarticulately. Miss Eunice wondered if Camilla
could have taken the paper upstairs. The young people of this generation
were thoughtless, inconsiderate, and headstrong. But was it not
injustice to Camilla to suspect her of carrying selfishly away her
father's newspaper, a thing so important to his happiness before tea?
Miss Eunice put aside her knitting and left the room, feeling uneasy.
She climbed the stairs and looked into Camilla's room, then climbed
the second flight to the store-room. On the floor of the store-room, in
front of the window, lay the paper, crushed and rumpled. Miss' Eunice
gasped, took it up, and sat down on the tool chest. How could Camilla
have been so rude, so inconsiderate! The staring headlines of the front
page proclaimed: “Hicks Escaped; a Murder and a Suicide. The Incidents
of a Night.”
“Rumours of Important Cabinet Officer's Retirement.”
“Uprising in Southwestern Europe Expected. Rumours from Roumania.”
“Hen-nion and Macclesfield Are Agreed. Improvements projected in Port
Argent.”
“John Murphy knew the Deceased Coglan.”
“Father Harra Orders Plain Funerals for his Flock. Two Carriages and a
Hearse are his Limit.”
None of these proclamations gave Miss Eunice any help in her amazement.
No headline, except “Hennion and Macclesfield,” seemed to have any
bearing on Camilla, and the column beneath that told nothing that
Richard had not already told the family, about a railroad bridge
and station, park improvements and so on; in which, it had been Miss
Eunice's impression, Camilla had taken less interest than was becoming.
She sat on the tool chest, and stared at the front page of the crumpled
newspaper, with a vague sense of distress. The air in the room seemed
tense, the creases across the front of the paper like some wild and
helpless handwriting, but what the interlinear writing meant, or whether
it applied to “John Murphy” or “the deceased Coglan,” or “Hennion and
Macclesfield,” or the “Cabinet officer,” was beyond her. This sign of
Miss Eunice's trouble was sure, that she sat a long time on the old tool
chest, and no more than Camilla remembered that Henry Champney was in
the library, forlorn of his afternoon paper.
When Hennion came to the Champney house again, it was a little before
six. He saw through the door to the library Mr. Champney's white head
bent down drowsily, where he sat in his chair.
Miss Eunice came down the stairs, agitated, mysterious, and beckoned him
into the parlour. She showed him the crumpled newspaper.
“I don't understand Camilla's behaviour, Richard! She went out suddenly.
I found the paper in the store-room. It is so unlike her! I don't
understand, Richard!”
Hennion glanced at the front page, and stood thinking for a moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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