United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And she would never know. If Comus possessed one useless gift to perfection it was the gift of laughing at Fate even when it had struck him hardest. One day, perhaps, the laughter and mockery would be silent on his lips, and Fate would have the advantage of laughing last. A door closed and Francesca Bassington sat alone in her well- beloved drawing-room.
They had been doing it while he was playing in the cricket-fields at school, while he was spending Christmas holidays in Paris, while he was going his careless round of theatres, dances, suppers and card-parties, just as they were doing it now; they would be doing it when there was no one alive who remembered Comus Bassington.
On the evening of a certain November day, two years after the events heretofore chronicled, Francesca Bassington steered her way through the crowd that filled the rooms of her friend Serena Golackly, bestowing nods of vague recognition as she went, but with eyes that were obviously intent on focussing one particular figure.
As Comus hadn't got a study Lancelot spent a feverish half-hour in looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice. "Everything is very jolly here," wrote Lancelot to his sister Emmeline. "The prefects can give you an awful hot time if they like, but most of them are rather decent. Some are Beasts. Bassington is a prefect though only a junior one. He is the Limit as Beasts go.
The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost cause, rang with insistent mockery through his brain: "Better loved you canna be, Will ye ne'er come back again?" If it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile for ever. His epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would be, Comus Bassington, the boy who never came back.
Is it the young man who was with you in the Park this morning?" asked Suzette. "Let me see, who was I with in the Park this morning? A very good- looking dark boy? Oh no, not Comus Bassington. Someone you know by name, anyway, and I expect you've seen his portrait in the papers." "A flying-man?" asked Mrs. Brankley. "Courtenay Youghal," said Elaine. Mrs.
"The good-looking Bassington boy? Oh, dead, or rubber-growing or sheep-farming or something of that sort." The farewell dinner which Francesca had hurriedly organised in honour of her son's departure threatened from the outset to be a doubtfully successful function. In the first place, as he observed privately, there was very little of Comus and a good deal of farewell in it.
Dear Winifred, you know, who speaks so beautifully and feelingly at my gatherings for old women, he's made her look just an ordinary dairy-maidish blonde; and Francesca, who is quite the most soulless woman I've ever met, well, he's given her quite " "Hush," said Serena, "the Bassington boy is just behind you."
The droll lightheartedness which won Comus Bassington such measure of popularity as he enjoyed among his fellows did not materially help to endear him to the succession of masters with whom he came in contact during the course of his schooldays.
Remembering her ordeal of the previous evening Francesca permitted herself a certain feeling of amusement as she read the merciless stabs inflicted on the newly-appointed Governor; then she came to the signature at the foot of the letter, and the laughter died out of her eyes. "Comus Bassington" stared at her from above a thick layer of blue pencil lines marked by Henry Greech's shaking hand.
Word Of The Day