Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Diana of Kara-Kara by Wallace Edgar
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 2396 lines and 56959 words, and 48 pages
Mr. Collings scratched his nose.
"An elderly person, of course?"
"I don't know." She shrugged her indifference.
"I suppose so. If he's nice. All the nice men are married--present company excepted."
"You have cabled and written, of course: there is no objection to your going to--er--Mr. Selsbury's?"
"None whatever." She was overridingly brisk. "He will be delighted to have me."
"Twenty!" said Mr. Cathcart and shook his head. "An infant in law! I really think we must know more about Mr. Selsbury and his condition before--eh, Collings?"
Mr. Collings looked appealingly at the girl; she had never seemed more or looked less orphaned than at that moment.
"It would be wise, perhaps--?" he no more than suggested.
When Diana smiled her eyes wrinkled up and you saw both rows of her small white teeth.
"I have taken my cabin: a lovely one. With a bathroom and sitting-room. The walls are panelled in blue brocade silk and there is a cute little brass bedstead in the middle--so that you can fall out either side."
Mr. William Cathcart felt it was the moment to bring down his foot.
"I am afraid I cannot consent to your going," he said quietly.
"Why?" Up went her chin.
"Yes, why?" demanded Mr. Collings. He was anxious to know.
"And grandfather," she said calmly. "But does that matter? There was a lad of sixty trying to find opportunities for squeezing my hand all the way down in the train from Bendigo. Age means nothing if your heart is young."
"Exactly!" said Mr. Collings, whose heart was very young.
"One moment, little friend of the poor," said Diana. She threw several priceless law books and a pile of affidavits from a chair and sat down. "A few moments ago--correct me if I am wrong: I seldom am--you produced your hoary Mr. Loco Parentis to crush me to the earth. Meet Colonel Locus Standi!"
"Eh?" said William, dithered.
"My knowledge of legal formula is slight," said Diana gravely. "I have lived a pure and a sheltered life amidst the rolling grass lands of Kara-Kara, but ignorant orphan though I am...."
Mr. Collings sighed.
"...I understand that before a lawyer applies to the courts he must have a client. For no lawyer, except perhaps a lawyer who has been crossed in love and is not quite sane, goes to law without a client."
Mr. William Cathcart shrugged his shoulders.
"You must make your own bed," he said.
"The court can't even make me do that," she replied.
Mr. Cathcart saw her walking across to him and took up his pen hastily.
"Uncle Cathcart," she said in a low voice, "I did so hope and pray that we should part friends! Every night when I kneel by my bed and say 'Please, God, give Uncle Cathcart a sense of humour and make him a nice man,' I have expected the miracle to happen."
Uncle Cathcart wriggled.
"Have your own way," he said loudly. "I can't put an old head on young shoulders. Those who live longest will see most."
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating," she added gently. "You forgot that one."
At luncheon, Mr. Collings tapped the ash of his cigar into the coffee saucer.
"What is this fellow like--this Selsbury?"
"He's wonderful!" she said dreamily. "He rowed six in the University eight--I'm simply crazy about him."
The startled Mr. Collings gazed at her in fascinated horror.
"Is he crazy about you?" he gasped.
Diana smiled. She was adjusting her nose with the aid of a mirror concealed in the flap of her handbag.
"He will be," she said softly.
Neither by nature crazy, nor by inclination eccentric, Mr. Gordon Selsbury had at moments serious but comfortable doubts as to whether he was not a little abnormal; whether he was not, in fine, one of those rare and gifted mortals to whom was given Vision beyond the ordinary. His environment was the commonplace City of London; his occupation a shrieking incongruity for a spiritual man--he was an insurance broker. And a prosperous insurance broker.
Sometimes he sat before the silver fire grate of his sitting-room, amazed at the contradictory evidence of his own genius. Here was a man with a Conscious Soul, beside whom other men were clods, vegetables, animals of the field, slaves to their material demands. Lifted above the world and its peculiarly grimy interests, he was a man whose spiritual head rose above fog and was one with the snow-capped mountains and the blue skies. And yet--here was the truly astonishing thing--he could grapple most practically with these materialists and could tear from the clenched and frenzied paws large quantities of soiled and greasy money....
"No, Trenter, I shall be out to-morrow afternoon. Will you please tell Mr. Robert that I will see him at my office. Thank you, Trenter."
Trenter inclined his head respectfully and went back to the telephone.
"No, sir, Mr. Selsbury will not be at home to-morrow."
Bobbie Selsbury was annoyed.
"Will you tell him that he promised to play in a foursome with me, tell him--ask him to come to the telephone."
Gordon got up from his tapestried armchair with an expressionless face. Before the servants he revealed nothing in the least degree emotive.
"Yes, yes, I know!" wearily. "But I had a prior engagement. You must get somebody else. Old Mendlesohn ... what's the matter with him? Rubbish, my dear fellow.... At any rate, you must get somebody--I'm tremendously busy to-morrow.... I don't feel like discussing my business on the telephone. Good-bye."
He paced his dignified way to his den. Gordon Selsbury once rowed six in the Varsity boat--there were crossed oars above his fireplace, though he thought the display in bad taste. He had once been a fresher whose chief joy in life had been to steal policemen's helmets and ride a bicycle down forbidden pathways, and to sprint from proctors. It seemed difficult to believe. He was tall and good-looking in the Apollo Belvedere manner. Fair, with a forehead which was large and thoughtful, he baffled instant analysis by carrying through life two inches of sidewhisker on either cheek. Men seeing him first thought he wrote music or played a 'cello. Women on introduction guessed him as a dancer of amazing agility, or possibly a film artist.
"Trenter...."
Trenter waited, his head attentively thrust forward, a simulation of intense interest on his sharp features. He continued to wait, even as Gordon continued to frown at the fireplace.
"Trenter...."
"Yes, sir?"
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page