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Updated: June 23, 2025
Everybody had risen from necessity; chairs were pushed back, skirts drawn aside as the heavy table, staggering, lurching, moved out across the floor; and they all followed, striving to keep their finger-tips on the top. Portlaw was speechless; Shiela pale, tremulous, bewildered; Tressilvain's beady eyes shone like the eyes of a surprised rat; but his wife and Malcourt took it calmly.
Since Malcourt's arrival he and Portlaw had joyously waded into whatever gaiety offered, neck-deep; Portlaw had attached himself to the Club with all the deliberation of a born gourmet and a hopeless gambler; Malcourt roamed society and its suburbs, drifting from set to set and from coterie to coterie, always an opportunist, catholic in his tastes, tolerant of anything where pretty women were inclined to be amiable.
She was standing there, pale as a corpse, struggling into a heavy coat. "Did you hear?" "Yes." He aided her with her coat. "Do you think you had better go over?" "Yes, I must go." She was trembling so that he could scarcely get her into the coat. "Probably," he said, "Portlaw doesn't know what he's talking about.... Shiela, do you want me to go with you " "No no! Oh, hurry "
Alida Ascott. Trouble had begun the previous autumn with a lively exchange of notes between them concerning the shooting of woodcock on Mrs. Ascott's side of the boundary. Then Portlaw stupidly built a dam and diverted the waters of Painted Creek.
At the gangway the younger man bade adieu to Malcourt and Portlaw, laughing as the latter indignantly requested to know why Hamil wasted his time attending to business. Malcourt drew him aside: "So you're going to rig up a big park and snake preserve for Neville Cardross?" "I'm going to try, Louis. You know the family, I believe, don't you?" Malcourt gazed placidly at him.
I only wanted to see how the novel was coming out before somebody takes the book away from me." "You talk like a pint of shoe-strings," growled Portlaw; "you'd better find out whose horse has been denting the lawn all over and tearing off several yards of sod." "I know already," said Malcourt. "Well, who had the nerve to " "None of your bally business, dear friend.
"Alida," he ventured plaintively. "Mr. Portlaw!" so suddenly swinging on him that he lost all countenance and blurted out: "I I only want to make amends and be friends." "I expect you to make amends," she said in a significantly quiet voice, which chilled him with the menace of damages unlimited.
For a while she lay sobbing in her arm-chair, white hands clinched, biting at her lips to choke back the terror and grief. "As soon as your self-command returns my commands are void," he said coolly. "Nobody here shall see you as you are. If you can't protect yourself it's my duty to do it for you.... Do you want Portlaw to see you? Wayward? these doctors and nurses and servants?
"Oh, don't begin that sort of thing the moment you get here!" protested Portlaw. "My heavens, man! there's no hurry. Can't you smoke a cigar and play a card or two " "You know I've other commissions " "Oh, of course; but I hoped you'd have time to take it easy. I've looked forward to having you here so has Malcourt; he thinks you're about right, you know. And he makes damn few friends among men "
There was no indiscriminate generosity in that attachment; he never voluntarily increased Malcourt's salary or decreased his responsibilities; he got out of his superintendent every bit of labour and every bit of amusement he could at the lowest price Malcourt would take; yet, in spite of that he really cared for Malcourt; he secretly admired his intellectual equipment; feared it, too; and the younger man's capacity for dissipation made him an invaluable companion when Portlaw emerged from his camp in November and waddled forth upon his annual hunt for happiness.
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