Their Silver Wedding Journey - Volume 2 , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. They found Burnamy expecting them at the station in Carlsbad, and she scolded him like a mother for taking the trouble to meet them, while she kept back for the present any sign of knowing that he had staid over a day with the Triscoes in Leipsic. He was as affectionately glad to see her and her husband as she could have wished, but she would have liked it better if he had owned up at once about Leipsic. He did not, and it seemed to her that he was holding her at arm's-length in his answers about his employer. He would not say how he liked his work, or how he liked Mr. Stoller; he merely said that they were at Pupp's together, and that he had got in a good day's work already; and since he would say no more, she contented herself with that.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947943
Langue	English

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PART II.
XXVI.
They found Burnamy expecting them at the station inCarlsbad, and she scolded him like a mother for taking the troubleto meet them, while she kept back for the present any sign ofknowing that he had staid over a day with the Triscoes in Leipsic.He was as affectionately glad to see her and her husband as shecould have wished, but she would have liked it better if he hadowned up at once about Leipsic. He did not, and it seemed to herthat he was holding her at arm's-length in his answers about hisemployer. He would not say how he liked his work, or how he likedMr. Stoller; he merely said that they were at Pupp's together, andthat he had got in a good day's work already; and since he wouldsay no more, she contented herself with that.
The long drive from the station to the hotel was bystreets that wound down the hill-side like those of an Italianmountain town, between gay stuccoed houses, of Southern rather thanof Northern architecture; and the impression of a Latin country washeightened at a turn of the road which brought into view a colossalcrucifix planted against a curtain of dark green foliage on thebrow of one of the wooded heights that surrounded Carlsbad. Whenthey reached the level of the Tepl, the hill-fed torrent thatbrawls through the little city under pretty bridges within walls ofsolid masonry, they found themselves in almost the only vehicle ona brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan world. Germansin every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black gabardines,with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their blackvelvet derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests inflowing robes and brimless high hats; Russians in caftans andCossacks in Astrakhan caps, accented the more homogeneous masses ofwestern Europeans, in which it would have been hard to say whichwere English, French or Italians. Among the vividly dressed ladies,some were imaginably Parisian from their chic costumes, but theymight easily have been Hungarians or Levantines of taste; someAmericans, who might have passed unknown in the perfection of theirdress, gave their nationality away in the flat wooden tones oftheir voices, which made themselves heard above the low hum of talkand the whisper of the innumerable feet.
The omnibus worked its way at a slow walk among thepromenaders going and coming between the rows of pollard locusts onone side and the bright walls of the houses on the other. Under thetrees were tables, served by pretty bareheaded girls who ran to andfrom the restaurants across the way. On both sides flashed andglittered the little shops full of silver, glass, jewelry,terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and all the idle frippery ofwatering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, and they suggestedSaratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no place else inthe world, as the crowd which might have been that of other citiesat certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its habitualeffect.
“Do you like it? ” asked Burnamy, as if he owned theplace, and Mrs. March saw how simple-hearted he was in hisreticence, after all. She was ready to bless him when they reachedthe hotel and found that his interest had got them the only roomsleft in the house. This satisfied in her the passion for size whichis at the bottom of every American heart, and which perhaps aboveall else marks us the youngest of the peoples. We pride ourselveson the bigness of our own things, but we are not ungenerous, andwhen we go to Europe and find things bigger than ours, we aremagnanimously happy in them. Pupp's, in its altogether differentway, was larger than any hotel at Saratoga or at Niagara; and whenBurnamy told her that it sometimes fed fifteen thousand people aday in the height of the season, she was personally proud ofit.
She waited with him in the rotunda of the hotel,while the secretary led March off to look at the rooms reserved forthem, and Burnamy hospitably turned the revolving octagonal case inthe centre of the rotunda where the names of the guests were putup. They were of all nations, but there were so many New Yorkerswhose names ended in berg, and thal, and stern, and baum that sheseemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on Broadway. Alarge man of unmistakable American make, but with so little thatwas of New England or New York in his presence that she might notat once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quilltoothpick in the corner of his mouth. He had a jealous blue eye,into which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straightmouth stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawnychin-beard, and he wore his soft hat so far back from his highforehead (it showed to the crown when he took his hat off) that hehad the effect of being uncovered.
At his approach Burnamy turned, and with a flushsaid: “Oh! Let me introduce Mr. Stoller, Mrs. March. ”
Stoller took his toothpick out of his mouth andbowed; then he seemed to remember, and took off his hat. “You seeJews enough, here to make you feel at home? ” he asked; and headded: “Well, we got some of 'em in Chicago, too, I guess. Thisyoung man”— he twisted his head toward Burnamy— “found you easyenough? ”
“It was very good of him to meet us, ” Mrs. Marchbegan. “We didn't expect— ”
“Oh, that's all right, ” said Stoller, putting histoothpick back, and his hat on. “We'd got through for the day; mydoctor won't let me work all I want to, here. Your husband's goingto take the cure, they tell me. Well, he wants to go to a gooddoctor, first. You can't go and drink these waters hit or miss. Ifound that out before I came. ”
“Oh, no! ” said Mrs. March, and she wished toexplain how they had been advised; but he said to Burnamy:
“I sha'n't want you again till ten to-morrowmorning. Don't let me interrupt you, ” he added patronizingly toMrs. March. He put his hand up toward his hat, and sauntered awayout of the door.
Burnamy did not speak; and she only asked at last,to relieve the silence, “Is Mr. Stoller an American? ”
“Why, I suppose so, ” he answered, with an uneasylaugh. "His people were
German emigrants who settled in Southern Indiana.That makes him as much
American as any of us, doesn't it? "
Burnamy spoke with his mind on his French-Canadiangrandfather, who had come down through Detroit, when their name wasBonami; but Mrs. March answered from her eight generations of NewEngland ancestry. “Oh, for the West, yes, perhaps, ” and theyneither of them said anything more about Stoller.
In their room, where she found March waiting for heramidst their arriving baggage, she was so full of her pent-upopinions of Burnamy's patron that she, would scarcely speak of theview from their windows of the wooded hills up and down the Tepl.“Yes, yes; very nice, and I know I shall enjoy it ever so much. ButI don't know what you will think of that poor young Burnamy! ”
“Why, what's happened to him? ”
“Happened? Stoller's happened. ”
“Oh, have you seen him, already? Well? ”
"Well, if you had been going to pick out that typeof man, you'd have rejected him, because you'd have said he was toopat. He's like an actor made up for a Western millionaire. Do youremember that American in 'L'Etranger' which Bernhardt did inBoston when she first came? He, looks exactly like that, and he hasthe worst manners. He stood talking to me with his hat on, and atoothpick in his mouth; and he made me feel as if he had bought me,along with Burnamy, and had paid too much. If you don't give him asetting down, Basil, I shall never speak to you; that's all. I'msure Burnamy is in some trouble with him; he's got some sort ofhold upon him; what it could be in such a short time, I can'timagine; but if ever a man seemed to be, in a man's power, he does,in his!
“Now, ” said March, “your pronouns have got so farbeyond me that I think we'd better let it all go till after supper;perhaps I shall see Stoller myself by that time. ”
She had been deeply stirred by her encounter withStoller, but she entered with impartial intensity into the factthat the elevator at Pupp's had the characteristic of always comingup and never going down with passengers. It was locked into itscloset with a solid door, and there was no bell to summon it, orany place to take it except on the ground-floor; but the stairs bywhich she could descend were abundant and stately; and on onelanding there was the lithograph of one of the largest and ugliesthotels in New York; how ugly it was, she said she should never haveknown if she had not seen it there.
The dining-room was divided into the grand saloon,where they supped amid rococo sculptures and frescoes, and theglazed veranda opening by vast windows on a spread of tableswithout, which were already filling up for the evening concert.Around them at the different tables there were groups of faces andfigures fascinating in their strangeness, with that distinctionwhich abashes our American level in the presence of Europeaninequality.
“How simple and unimpressive we are, Basil, ” shesaid, “beside all these people! I used to feel it in Europe when Iwas young, and now I'm certain that we must seem like two faded-inold village photographs. We don't even look intellectual! I hope welook good. ”
“I know I do, ” said March. The waiter went fortheir supper, and they joined in guessing the differentnationalities in the room. A French party was easy enough; aSpanish mother and daughter were not difficult, though whether theywere not South-American remained uncertain; two elderly maidenladies were unmistakably of central Massachusetts, and wereobviously of a book-club culture that had left no leaf unturned;some Triestines gave themselves away by their Venetian accent; buta large group at a farther table were unassignable in the strangelanguage which they clattered loudly together, with bursts oflaughter. They were a family party of old and young, they werehaving a good time, with a freedom which she called baronial; theladies wore wh