FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140  
141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   >>   >|  
d ridden ponies, tickled for trout, bird-nested, tumbled off trees, out of duck-punts, through forbidden ice, and into every form of juvenile disgrace, together as boy and girl. Her father and mine had been college friends, and (I believe) had both fallen in love with my mother, at a College ball, and my father won--but all on an understanding of honourable combat. Denistoun set out to travel, quite in the traditional way of the Rejected One. He was a Yorkshire squire with plenty of money, and could afford the prescribed cure. He travelled as far as to Virginia, U.S.A., where he halted, and wooed and won the heiress of a wide estate of cotton and tobacco and a great Palladian house, all devastated and ruined by the War, in which her father had fallen, one of Lee's pet leaders of cavalry. . . . Yes, I know it sounds like a tale out of Ouida: but such things happen, and this thing happened. . . . Denistoun scaled the twenty steps of the Ionic portico, cleft his way through the cobwebs and briers that were living and dying for Dixie, kicked over the grand piano that Dinah's duster still reverentially spared, and carried off the enchanted Princess across the seas to Yorkshire: where in due course she bore him a daughter, Constantia, and, some years later, a son who eventually came into the property but doesn't come into the story. In the meantime it had happened that _I_ saw the light. . . . My mother died, a year later: and after seven years of widowhood my father married again. My sister Sally--the recipient of those long letters you see me inditing o' nights--is my step-sister, and an adored one at that. There you have the family history, or enough of it. The old friendship between my father and Squire Denistoun had never been broken; and now that death had taken away the last excuse for a rivalry which had been felt but to be renounced, Constantia and I-- unconscious brats--shared holidays, as it chanced at my home or hers, in nefarious poaching beside Avon or in gallops between her northern moors and the sea. That is all, or almost all. I have to add that, having fallen into most scrapes with her, I ended by proposing one in which she gently but decisively declined to share the risk. . . . I am inclined to think that, having been so frank with her, and so frequent, in confidences about others to whom my heart was lost, she may have missed the bloom on the recital. . . . But there it was; and that's that,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140  
141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
father
 

fallen

 

Denistoun

 
sister
 

happened

 

Yorkshire

 

mother

 

Constantia

 

adored

 

daughter


history

 
nights
 

family

 
inditing
 
widowhood
 

meantime

 

recipient

 

eventually

 

property

 

married


letters

 

shared

 

declined

 

decisively

 

inclined

 
gently
 

proposing

 

scrapes

 

missed

 

recital


confidences

 

frequent

 
excuse
 

rivalry

 

renounced

 

Squire

 

broken

 

unconscious

 

gallops

 

northern


poaching
 
nefarious
 

holidays

 

chanced

 

friendship

 
Rejected
 

traditional

 
squire
 
plenty
 

travel