The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A NovelPhillips, David Graham
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The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A Novel
Phillips, David Graham
Adventure stories; Fiction
And he--In large presences he was always at his best--in the large
situations of affairs, in these large, tranquillizing horizons of
nature. He, too, began to forget that she was a refined, delicate,
sensitive lady, with nerves that writhed under breaks in manners and
could in no wise endure a slip in grammar, unless, of course, it was one
of those indorsed by fashionable usage. His health came flooding and
roaring back in its fullness; and day by day the difficulty of
restraining himself from loud laughter and strong, plebeian action
became more appalling to him. He would leave the camp, set off at a run
as soon as he got safely out of sight; and, when he was sure of
seclusion in distance, he would "cut loose"--yell and laugh and caper
like a true madman; tear off his superfluous clothes, splash and thresh
in some lonely lake like a baby whale that has not yet had the primary
lessons in how to behave. When he returned to camp, subdued in manner,
like a bad boy after recess, he was, in fact, not one bit subdued
beneath the surface, but the more fractious for his outburst. Each day
his animal spirits surged higher; each day her sway of awe and respect
grew more precarious. She thought his increasing silence, his really
ridiculous formality of politeness, his stammering and red-cheeked dread
of intrusion meant a deepening of the sense of the social gulf that
rolled between them. She recalled their conversation about his
relatives. "Poor fellow!" thought she. "I suppose it's quite impossible
for people of my sort to realize what a man of his birth and bringing up
feels in circumstances like these." Little did she dream, in her
exaltation of self-complacence and superiority, that the "poor fellow's"
clumsy formalities were the thin cover for a tempest of wild-man's wild
emotion.
Curiously, she "got on" his nerves before he on hers. It was through her
habit of rising late and taking hours to dress. Part of his code of
conduct--an interpolation of his own into the Arkwright manual for a
honeymooning gentleman--was that he ought to wait until she was ready to
breakfast, before breakfasting himself. Several mornings she heard
tempestuous sounds round the camp for two hours before she emerged from
her room. She knew these sounds came from him, though all was quiet as
soon as she appeared; and she very soon thought out the reason for his
uproar. Next, his anger could not subdue itself beyond surliness on her
appearing, and the surliness lasted through the first part of breakfast.
Finally, one morning she heard him calling her when she was about
half-way through her leisurely toilette: "Margaret! MARGARET!"
"Yes--what is it?"
"Do come out. You're missing the best part of the day."
"All right--in a minute."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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