DOI article:
Moore, Arthur: Second toughts
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27812#0117
By Arthur Moore 11 3
haunted by forebodings to which he had not cared to assign a
shape too definite ; phantoms which he exorcised hopefully, with
a tacit reliance on a trick of falling on his feet which had seldom
failed his need. He consoled himself with the thought that
London was home, England was home ; he would meet old
comrades in the streets perhaps, assuredly at his club, and such
encounters would be so much the more delightful if they were
fortuitous, unexpected. The plans which he had laid so carefully
pacing the long deck of the P. and O. boat in the starlight, or,
more remotely, lying awake through the hot night hours under a
whining punkah in his lonely bungalow, had all implied, however
vaguely and impersonally, a certain companionship. He was dimly
conscious that he had cousins somewhere in the background ; he
had long since lost touch with them, but he would look them up.
He had two nieces, still in their teens, the children of his only
sister who had died ten years ago ; he had never seen them, but
their photographs were charming—they should be overwhelmed
with such benefactions as a bachelor uncle with a well-lined purse
may pleasantly bestow. His friends—the dim legion that was to
rise about his path—should take him to see Sarah Bernhardt (a
mere name to him as yet) at the Gaiety, to the new Gilbert and
Sullivan opera at the Savoy ; they should enlighten him as to the
latent merits of the pictures at Burlington House ; they should
dine with him, shoot with him, be introduced to his Indian
falcons ; in a word, he would keep open house, in town and
country too, for all good fellows and their pretty wives. It had
even occurred to him, as a possibility neither remote nor unattrac-
tive, that he might himself one day possess a pretty wife to
welcome them.
His sanguine expectations encountered their first rebuff when
he found the Piccadilly Club, which had figured so often in the
dreams
haunted by forebodings to which he had not cared to assign a
shape too definite ; phantoms which he exorcised hopefully, with
a tacit reliance on a trick of falling on his feet which had seldom
failed his need. He consoled himself with the thought that
London was home, England was home ; he would meet old
comrades in the streets perhaps, assuredly at his club, and such
encounters would be so much the more delightful if they were
fortuitous, unexpected. The plans which he had laid so carefully
pacing the long deck of the P. and O. boat in the starlight, or,
more remotely, lying awake through the hot night hours under a
whining punkah in his lonely bungalow, had all implied, however
vaguely and impersonally, a certain companionship. He was dimly
conscious that he had cousins somewhere in the background ; he
had long since lost touch with them, but he would look them up.
He had two nieces, still in their teens, the children of his only
sister who had died ten years ago ; he had never seen them, but
their photographs were charming—they should be overwhelmed
with such benefactions as a bachelor uncle with a well-lined purse
may pleasantly bestow. His friends—the dim legion that was to
rise about his path—should take him to see Sarah Bernhardt (a
mere name to him as yet) at the Gaiety, to the new Gilbert and
Sullivan opera at the Savoy ; they should enlighten him as to the
latent merits of the pictures at Burlington House ; they should
dine with him, shoot with him, be introduced to his Indian
falcons ; in a word, he would keep open house, in town and
country too, for all good fellows and their pretty wives. It had
even occurred to him, as a possibility neither remote nor unattrac-
tive, that he might himself one day possess a pretty wife to
welcome them.
His sanguine expectations encountered their first rebuff when
he found the Piccadilly Club, which had figured so often in the
dreams