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The Marriages By: Henry James (1843-1916) |
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The Marriages by Henry James
CHAPTER I "Won't you stay a little longer?" the hostess asked while she held
the girl's hand and smiled. "It's too early for every one to go
it's too absurd." Mrs. Churchley inclined her head to one side and
looked gracious; she flourished about her face, in a vaguely
protecting sheltering way, an enormous fan of red feathers.
Everything in her composition, for Adela Chart, was enormous. She
had big eyes, big teeth, big shoulders, big hands, big rings and
bracelets, big jewels of every sort and many of them. The train of
her crimson dress was longer than any other; her house was huge; her
drawing room, especially now that the company had left it, looked
vast, and it offered to the girl's eyes a collection of the largest
sofas and chairs, pictures, mirrors, clocks, that she had ever
beheld. Was Mrs. Churchley's fortune also large, to account for so
many immensities? Of this Adela could know nothing, but it struck
her, while she smiled sweetly back at their entertainer, that she had
better try to find out. Mrs. Churchley had at least a high hung
carriage drawn by the tallest horses, and in the Row she was to be
seen perched on a mighty hunter. She was high and extensive herself,
though not exactly fat; her bones were big, her limbs were long, and
her loud hurrying voice resembled the bell of a steamboat. While she
spoke to his daughter she had the air of hiding from Colonel Chart, a
little shyly, behind the wide ostrich fan. But Colonel Chart was not
a man to be either ignored or eluded. "Of course every one's going on to something else," he said. "I
believe there are a lot of things to night." "And where are YOU going?" Mrs. Churchley asked, dropping her fan and
turning her bright hard eyes on the Colonel. "Oh I don't do that sort of thing!" he used a tone of familiar
resentment that fell with a certain effect on his daughter's ear.
She saw in it that he thought Mrs. Churchley might have done him a
little more justice. But what made the honest soul suppose her a
person to look to for a perception of fine shades? Indeed the shade
was one it might have been a little difficult to seize the
difference between "going on" and coming to a dinner of twenty
people. The pair were in mourning; the second year had maintained it
for Adela, but the Colonel hadn't objected to dining with Mrs.
Churchley, any more than he had objected at Easter to going down to
the Millwards', where he had met her and where the girl had her
reasons for believing him to have known he should meet her. Adela
wasn't clear about the occasion of their original meeting, to which a
certain mystery attached. In Mrs. Churchley's exclamation now there
was the fullest concurrence in Colonel Chart's idea; she didn't say
"Ah yes, dear friend, I understand!" but this was the note of
sympathy she plainly wished to sound. It immediately made Adela say
to her "Surely you must be going on somewhere yourself." "Yes, you must have a lot of places," the Colonel concurred, while
his view of her shining raiment had an invidious directness. Adela
could read the tacit implication: "You're not in sorrow, in
desolation." Mrs. Churchley turned away from her at this and just waited before
answering. The red fan was up again, and this time it sheltered her
from Adela. "I'll give everything up for YOU," were the words that
issued from behind it. "DO stay a little. I always think this is
such a nice hour. One can really talk," Mrs. Churchley went on. The
Colonel laughed; he said it wasn't fair. But their hostess pressed
his daughter. "Do sit down; it's the only time to have any talk."
The girl saw her father sit down, but she wandered away, turning her
back and pretending to look at a picture. She was so far from
agreeing with Mrs. Churchley that it was an hour she particularly
disliked... Continue reading book >>
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Fiction |
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