The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913Various
General
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Various
Periodicals
Just how bad the situation was growing, just how fitfully the pot was
boiling, how it was even fanned by his own disregard of it, was utterly
aside from the observation of Furniss. He never knew, for example,
and probably would not have cared if he did, that there had been a
proposition to expel him from the Fitchly Country Club. But, then, as
was pointed out by Carter of the firm of Carter, Pills & Carter, who
did take an occasional criminal case, if an action were instituted
against Furniss, it must necessarily involve the guileless Helen, and,
whatever might be the popular verdict, just how much she could be
called an accomplice would be a decision extremely delicate for the
trained legal mind. It was certain that Furniss’s face had borne no
scratches when the lights went on again.
So Butley boiled and chafed under his natural injunction against
punching Furniss, and bit his lip, and bided his time, until ultimately
it began to react on Helen, whose original emotions had been as simple
as those of the criminal. He boiled and chafed and bided his time until
the desperate Helen resolved on a terrible step--no less than an actual
move to the walls of Ilium. She wrote a note, and invited Furniss to
meet her in the private dining-room of the Fitchly Inn.
He went. We will not flatter Furniss. Any note in a feminine
handwriting would have brought him just the same, and his mood was not
of the most elevated. His dim, uncertain stirrings of the dramatic on
the morning of the thirty-first had gone permanently back to sleep, and
on this particular day he had reasons to be distinctly savage, for he
had just lost a forty-thousand-dollar order for the off-set drill, and
he had no active inclinations toward mushrooms. Still, business was
business, and one had to buy luncheon for two, anyway.
So Helen met him, and Helen pleaded. Aside from the boiling of Butley,
her feminine sense of the just had told her that wrong must be
righted and happy endings must prevail. She had not the rude melodrama
of her consort, which saw a trouncing as the only fit remedy for
non-patrons of husbandry; but she had, nevertheless, an Emersonian
theory of compensation, which perceived that the apparent impunity of
the outrager was contrary to the ultimate laws of existence. So Helen
pleaded, and Paris got mad. He didn’t like Butley, anyway. He would
apologize to Helen, but he wouldn’t to Menelaus. He couldn’t see that
the affair was international, anyway. It seemed to him distinctly
Parisian. But Helen wore a tailored gown with a fringe of lace at her
neck, so Paris surrendered, and the entente cordiale was restored.
He promised to apologize at the Quoits Club that very day, and that
evening, at a prearranged dinner, the nations would banquet in harmony.
Seven stalwart oxen would be killed, a libation poured to the gods, and
for seven hours--
But just then the waiter brought the bill.
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.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account