Читать книгу A Twentieth Century Idealist - Henry Pettit - Страница 12

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IT was at the Club, only a few days later, where the Doctor met Professor Cultus. The usual preliminaries of greeting had hardly passed from hearing before the Professor seemed unusually anxious to know certain details about the Far East, details about modes of travel and such things,—in fact, asked so many questions quite unlike his usual mode of conversation, that the Doctor pricked up his ears with delight, evidently having some suspicions, and finally asked the direct question: “Why don’t you go and see for yourself?”

Professor Cultus laughed, and then frankly acknowledged the situation: “Mrs. Cultus and Adele are so bent on seeing the Orient before it becomes civilized, as they evidently expect, that I have no peace. Mrs. Cultus is reading ‘O. K.’ between the lines of ‘The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney,’ as if one ought to throw some light upon the other. She says she wants to make the acquaintance of some of those Khidmatgars and Maharajas while they yet stand upon their native heath. I’ve told her they don’t wear kilts like MacGregor, but ’twas no use. She immediately wished to know what they did wear. I suppose I’m in for it. They’ve been talking the matter over at intervals all winter, but now! now! O now! we have it from thin soup to thick coffee.”

“Better give in,” said the Doctor, laughing heartily.

“Well, just between us, I have;—but I haven’t told them so, not as yet. I rather take to the notion myself since I can see my way to get off, but I don’t quite understand the modus operandi—how one man can manage civilized women in a land where women don’t generally count for much. Did you say the Taj could now be seen without an elephant ride? That’s the sort of thing I must know beforehand; two civilized women on one wild beast might demoralize the beast.”

The bare possibility of having the Cultus party in the East at the same time with themselves, sent Paul to call upon Adele as quickly as he could pick up his hat and rush out. These two young members put their heads together and practically settled all details, both possible and impossible, before the older members of the party could well realize what they were talking about. Youth forever! American style! Action! Action! Action! with occasional application of the brake.

Mrs. Cultus was greatly in favor of having four in their own party.

“Une partie carree is always so much more workable when travelling,” she said, “and besides, Adele ought to have some one nearer her own age. I don’t intend to follow Adele into every dirty native haunt she may take a notion to visit. Now if we can only find some one of the modern Investigating-Civil Club, or of the Literary-Reformation Reportorial Society, we shall be in clover all through the tour; we can report progress in print whenever we wish, and have a book ready as soon as we return.”

“But, Mother, you are too grasping,” exclaimed Adele, “only a literary corps can assimilate the whole thing.”

“No! Not quite!” said Mrs. Cultus. “We need only report our own progress, not the rotation-progress-of-the-earth. Now that I come to think of it, perhaps I’d better do the reporting myself. The society column generally puts in what I send them,—and then I’m sure of what is said. Oh! I have an idea! It’s a companion for you, Adele, that troubles me! Now I come to think of it, whom would you like?” But before any one could reply, Mrs. Cultus continued:

“Why, Miss Winchester, of course! Now if she can be persuaded,—Adele, you know how to coax her,—that will be the very thing.” Professor Cultus made no objection, and the delighted Adele took it up as if the persuasion of Miss Winchester were a foregone conclusion.

Adele and Paul found Miss Winchester in her own study, her writing-table littered with odds and ends, apparently, really notes such as literary workers are apt to jot down when a passing thought or phrase seems worth keeping; loose slips of paper and packages held by gum bands, pieces pinched at the ends with mysterious folds, also things tucked away under blotters where she couldn’t find them, and so forth. The Persuasion Committee, Adele Chairman, entered,—a gale of wind among the papers. Action first and the ideas picked up afterwards. Rapturous greeting between the girl chums;—then Adele exclaimed, “Oh! Frank! If you love me do consent to come with us.”

“Caramels or Gibraltars? Which is it this time?” laughed Miss Winchester.

“Please put on your bonnet and come,” gushed Paul, manly mindful of the importance of such things.

“O Frank! We’re just wild to have you.”

“Well, please become sane again, take a seat;—no, not on that box, it’s precious!”

Adele dashed her hat and gloves on the writing-table, utterly regardless of pens, ink, papers or blotters. “Now, my dear, no nonsense,—do say yes.”

“My dear Adele, I do love you very much, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Adele produced a printed list of routes for travellers. “There!” Miss Winchester noticed an illustration of the Sphynx on the cover. “I never made her acquaintance,” said she, and a comical expression played over her features as she tried to divine what Adele expected the Sphynx to tell.

Adele took it up at once. “You never met the Sphynx! Why, that’s just it! Now’s our chance,—don’t you see?” And the Committee started in, one hundred and twenty words to the minute, to explain matters.

Miss Winchester, somewhat confused by the rapidity of Adele’s jumps from place to place in mental travelling, but as responsively elastic as either of the others, took several turns in her office-chair while the others were chatting; but when they landed her among the Himalaya mountains as part of the journey, she gasped for utterance:

“Bless me! You take my breath away.”

“Never mind! Catch it again. Oh, do please! Please do! and come along!”

“But you must give me time to think,” and Miss Winchester began cogitating how she would turn an apparent impossibility into an assured fact.

“Oh, don’t think too much,” exclaimed Adele, when the result of thinking looked precarious. “Just do it,—why, don’t you see? The opportunity of our lives! We shall learn so much.”

Now it so happened, the circumstances being favorable, that Adele’s last appeal touched upon a matter in Miss Winchester’s past experience, and excited a far more potent incentive to join the party than any amount of contagious enthusiasm could ever have accomplished.

Miss Winchester had not long before published a successful novel based upon results of travel, including character sketches, the result of careful observation amid episodes of ordinary life. She had given it the whimsical title of “Upside Down.” Now what could possibly be more opportune than to follow this with others,—say on “Downside Up,” or, better still, “Outside and Inside”? And where could more be found of circumstantial interest than in the Orient? Who knows!—it might lead to still another, “Turned Inside Out,” for the East undoubtedly had many examples of that sort of thing. Being already a member of the literary craft, the opportunity was altogether too good to be lost, every nerve must be strained to reach the other side. It goes without saying that the Chairman of the Persuasion Committee was caught dancing an impromptu tarantelle when Miss Winchester finally told them it might, possibly might, be arranged.

“Oh, then it’s settled positively,” exclaimed Adele; “for if you hesitate you’re lost.”

Paul thought Adele a little witch as she danced with glee, all the time encouraging her friend. He remembered how Adele had bewitched himself also not long before, when she was in quite another mood. Paul laughed outright, but could not keep his eyes from noticing her every movement.

As to Miss Winchester, she took hold of the problem with a vim characteristic of some of the characters of her own creation; she tackled at once the ubiquitous problem known to all men on both sides of the globe as, “How to make both ends meet,” and of course solved it satisfactorily. Some few of the craft-literary, and in some degree all women of whatever persuasion, usually do. So Adele was right,—that settled it. Miss Winchester finally saw her way clear, and joined their party.

It would have been difficult to find a more congenial and vivacious group than Professor and Mrs. Cultus, Miss Winchester and Adele, with their friends the Doctor and Paul, as they met in the salon of the steamer on the eve of departure. Henri Semple, who looked forward to meeting them later on the other side, led the party of chosen friends who came to see them off, and while trying to aid the Doctor and Paul with their hand-baggage, kept dodging Mr. Hammond, one of those antipathetic, ghostly individuals who throw cold water upon such occasions. Mrs. Maxwell sent her butler with an exquisite kedge anchor in rose-buds for Adele, “in case you have no wireless telegraph when wrecked, my dear.”

Amid friends, and flowers sent in kind remembrance, with many kind messages “bon voyage,” there was, nevertheless, just a touch of regret when some one asked Adele how she liked leaving America. She had thus far thought of it as leaving home. Now home was “America” in reference to where she was going,—her first sensation of the broadening effects of travel.

A few moments later all were on deck in gay spirits, Miss Winchester striving to avoid an impolite kodak-fiend in search of celebrities, who was taking snap-shots from the bridge; but she only succeeded in getting herself into a most unconventional attitude, almost doubled up with laughter, strongly suggestive in a finished picture that some one had the mal de mer already. “One ought never to judge by appearances,” remarked the Doctor, as he attempted to shield Miss Winchester from the kodak.

The bell sounded, only passengers were permitted to remain longer on board. The Doctor was saying “I trust we meet again” to one of his trunks, when Semple hurried down the gang-plank waving back “au revoir”; a gamin on the dock instantly echoed back what sounded like “moo-swore, take moo-swore.” Adele waved her handkerchief to Semple, and a Frenchman near by took off his hat, smiling as if the salute were intended for him.

The steamer swung out from the wharf and glided into midstream; amid cheers, and adieus waved in many directions, and kisses thrown to loved ones left behind. America and home, now one and the same, began to recede. They were actually on their way to the Far East.