FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   >>  
M. CHAPTER XVII THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW There came to me one day a surprise, a marked hour among my weeks struck calm. Charles, Cloe, and Aileen had been wont to visit me regularly; once Selwyn had dropped in on me; but I had not before been honoured by a visit from Sir Robert Volney. He sauntered into my cell swinging a clouded cane, dressed to kill and point device in every ruffle, all dabbed with scented powder, pomatum, and jessamine water. To him, coming direct from the strong light of the sun, my cell was dark as the inside of Jonah's whale. He stood hesitating in the doorway, groping with his cane for some guide to his footsteps. For an instant I drew back, thinking he had come to mock me; then I put the idea from me. However much of evil there was in him, Volney was not a small man. I stepped forward to greet him. "Welcome to my poor best, Sir Robert! If I do not offer you a chair it is because I have none. My regret is that my circumstances hamper my hospitality." "Not at all. You offer me your best, and in that lies the essence of hospitality. Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred, Egad," returned my guest with easy irony. All the resources of the courtier and the beau were his. One could but admire the sparkle and the versatility of the man. His wit was brilliant as the play of a rapier's point. Set down in cold blood, remembered scantily and clumsily as I recall it, without the gay easy polish of his manner, the fineness is all out of his talk. After all 'tis a characteristic of much wit that it is apposite to the occasion only and loses point in the retelling. He seated himself on the table with a leg dangling in air and looked curiously around on the massive masonry, the damp floor, the walls oozing slime. I followed his eye and in some measure his thoughts. "Stone walls do not a prison make," I quoted gaily. "Ecod, they make a pretty fair imitation of one!" he chuckled. I was prodigious glad to see him. His presence stirred my sluggish blood. The sound of his voice was to me like the crack of a whip to a jaded horse. Graceful, careless, debonair, a man of evil from sheer reckless wilfulness, he was the one person in the world I found it in my heart to both hate and admire at the same time. He gazed long at me. "You're looking devilish ill, Montagu," he said. I smiled. "Are you afraid I'll cheat the hangman after all?" His eyes wander
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   >>  



Top keywords:
admire
 

hospitality

 

Volney

 
Robert
 

curiously

 

looked

 

dangling

 

seated

 

retelling

 

measure


thoughts

 
prison
 

masonry

 
CHAPTER
 
oozing
 

massive

 

characteristic

 

remembered

 

scantily

 

rapier


versatility

 

sparkle

 

VALLEY

 

brilliant

 

clumsily

 
recall
 

apposite

 

fineness

 

polish

 

manner


occasion

 

person

 
devilish
 

hangman

 

wander

 

afraid

 

Montagu

 

smiled

 

wilfulness

 

reckless


prodigious
 
presence
 

stirred

 

chuckled

 

imitation

 
pretty
 

sluggish

 
Graceful
 
careless
 

debonair