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In less than a quarter of an hour the entire factory was a mass of fire and there was no chance of checking its progress in the least as the water service needed by the fire department was put out of commission early in the day. The Beckett Company's paper mill, valued at $500,000 for buildings and equipment, collapsed into the flood the following morning.
This vexed me, and I turned away with as haughty an air as could be put on at an instant's notice. The hotel had no private sitting rooms, but the landlord offered Mr. Beckett for our use a small salle de lecture, adjourning the salon public. There were folding doors between, for a wonder with a lock that worked. By the time we'd bathed, and dressed again, it was the hour for dinner, and Mr.
In the uproar of explosions and crashings and jinglings, the small silence of our room with its gay chrysanthemums and shaded candles was like that of a sheltered oasis in a desert storm. Not one of us uttered a sound. Father Beckett took his wife in his arms, and held her tight, her face hidden in his coat. Brian had not even got up from his chair by the table.
A whole block of buildings on the outskirts of Paris, let as apartment houses, is to be bought by Mr. Beckett, for the use of blinded soldiers. Already his agents have got the refusal of the property for him; and with a few changes such as knocking down inner walls and putting in doors where doors don't exist, the houses will become one big mansion, to accommodate five or six hundred men.
Mother Beckett, on the point of accepting for us all, hesitated. The hesitation had to be explained: and the explanation was the O'Farrells. I had hoped we might be spared them, but it was not to be. Our host and hostess, hearing of the travellers of the Red Cross, insisted that they must come, too. Mrs. Beckett was sure they would both be charmed, but as it turned out, she was only half right.
I was grieving for my dead romance, instead of for Brian's broken life: but quickly I woke up. Things were as bad as ever again, and even worse, because of their contrast with the past I'd conjured up. Grief for the death of Jimmy Beckett mingled with grief for Brian, and anxieties about money, in the dull, sickly way that unconnected troubles tangle themselves together in nightmare dreams.
Even if I never see again, except with my spirit's eyes, I shall still be glad!" He doesn't worry at all because carrying out the plan will cost Father Beckett one or more of his millions. What is money for, except to be spent? What pleasure is like spending to do good?
Julian burst out, with a relieved sigh, a more natural colour creeping back to his face. "If Jim Beckett let you go before the war without asking you to marry him, I'm afraid his love couldn't have been very deep not deep enough to make him forgive you after all this time for deceiving his old father and mother the way you have. My God, no! In spite of your beauty, he'd have no mercy on you!"
Beckett is evidently an admirer of Walter Scott; and it is not the least remarkable fact in connection with "Hester," that an author with the good sense to propose to himself such a model, disregarding the more elaborate poets of a later date, should have proved himself so utterly unable to follow that model, except in a few phrases, which were quite appropriate as Scott used them, but are ludicrously out of place in his own verse.
I exclaimed and was surprised to hear on my own lips the name so constantly in my mind. "Well, that's queer she should speak of him, isn't it, Brian? How did you come to think of Herter?" Father Beckett wanted to know. "Was it he?" I insisted. "No. But you'd better tell her, Brian. I guess you'll have to." "There isn't much to tell, really," Brian said.
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