Through the Postern Gate: A Romance in Seven DaysBarclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
General
Through the Postern Gate: A Romance in Seven Days
Barclay, Florence L. (Florence Louisa)
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Love stories
"I will provide you with a paper," said the Professor, and hailed a
passing boy. He laid the paper on her lap, and disappeared.
The train started.
Christobel looked out of the window as they slowly steamed across the
bridge over the Thames. She loved the flow of the river, with its
constant procession of barges, dredges, boats, and steamers; a silent,
moving highway, right through the heart of the noisy whirl of London
street-traffic. They ran past old St. Saviour's Church, now promoted
to be Southwark Cathedral; out through the suburbs, until streets
became villas, woods and meadows appeared, and the train ran through
Chislehurst--peaceful English resting-place where lie entombed the
bright Imperial hopes of France--then on through Sevenoaks, into the
bowery green of the Kentish hop-gardens.
After passing Sevenoaks, she took up the Professor's paper and glanced
at it. Somehow she had felt sure it would be the _Daily Graphic_. It
was the _Daily Mirror_! She had never held a halfpenny illustrated
paper in her hands before. No doubt it was an excellent paper, and met
the need of an immense number of people, to whom an additional
halfpenny a day would be a consideration. But, that the Professor,
when providing her with one paper, should have chosen a halfpenny
instead of a penny paper, seemed to hold a curious significance, and
called up sudden swift memories of the Boy. He would have bought
_Punch_, the _Graphic_, the _Illustrated_, the _Spectator_, and a
_Morning Post_, plumped them all down on the seat in front of her; then
sat beside her, and talked, the whole journey through, so that she
would not have had a moment in which to open one of them.
(Oh, Boy dear! Don't look at this _Daily Mirror_. You might misjudge
the good Professor. With your fifty thousand a year, how can you be
expected to understand a mind which _must_ consider ha'pence, even when
brides and wedding journeys are concerned. _Do_ keep away, Boy dear.
This is not your wedding journey.)
Then she opened the _Daily Mirror_, and there looked out at her, from
its central page, the merry, handsome, daring face of her own Little
Boy Blue!
He was seated in his flying machine, steering-wheel in hand, looking
out from among many wires. His cap was on the back of his head; his
bright eyes looked straight into hers; his firm lips, parted in a
smile, seemed to be saying: "I jolly well mean to do it." Beneath was
an account of him, and a description of the flight he was to attempt on
that day, across the Channel, circling round Boulogne Cathedral, and
back. He was to start at two o'clock. At that very moment he must be
in mid-air.
Oh, Little Boy Blue! Little Boy Blue! You have a way of making hearts
stand still.
* * * * *
The boarding-house proved to be a place decidedly conducive to the
taking of a fresh-air cure; because nobody remained within its four
walls, if the weather could possibly admit of their going out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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