Read Online To the Ends of the Earth by William Golding - Free Book Online
Authors: William Golding
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Miss Granham had not yet moved from her seat when the door was opened for a lady of a quite different appearance. She appeared young yet richly and frivolously dressed. She came in with such a sweep and flutter that the bonnet fell to the back of her neck, revealing a quantity of golden curls. We rose—or most of us, at least—but with an admirable presence she seated us again at a gesture, went straight to the florid gentleman, leaned over hisshoulder and murmured the following sentence in accents of exquisite, far, far too exquisite, beauty.
“Oh Mr Brocklebank, at last she has contrived to retain a mouthful of consom!”
Mr Brocklebank boomed us an explanation.
“My child, my little Zenobia!”
Miss Zenobia was at once offered a choice of places at the table. Miss Granham declared she was leaving so that her place at it was free if another cushion might be brought. But the young lady, as I must call her, replied with whimsical archness that she had relied on Miss Granham to protect her virtue among so many dangerous gentlemen.
“Stuff and nonsense, ma’am,” said Miss Granham, even more severely than she had addressed your humble servant, “stuff and nonsense! Your virtue is as safe here as anywhere in the vessel!”
“Dear Miss Granham,” cried the lady with a languishing air, “I am sure your virtue is safe anywhere!”
This was gross, was it not? Yet I am sorry to say that from at least one part of the saloon there came a shout of laughter, for we had reached that part of dinner where ladies are better out of the way and only such as the latest arrival was proving to be can keep in countenance . Deverel, I and Summers were on our feet in a trice but it was the army officer, Oldmeadow, who escorted Miss Granham from our midst. The voice of the port-wine gentleman boomed again. “Sit by me, Zenobia, child.”
Miss Zenobia fluttered in the full afternoon sunlight that slanted across the great stern window. She held her pretty hands up to shield her face.
“It is too bright, Mr Brocklebank, pa!”
“Lord ma’am,” said Deverel, “can you deprive us poor fellows in the shadows of the pleasure of looking at you?”
“I must,” she said, “I positively must and will, take the seat vacated by Miss Granham.”
She fluttered round the table like a butterfly, a painted lady perhaps. I fancy that Deverel would have been happy to have her by him but she sank into the seat between Summers and me. Her bonnet was still held loosely by a ribbon at the back of her neck so that a charming profusion of curls was visible by her cheek and ear. Yet it seemed to me even at the first sight that the very brightness of her eyes—or the one occasionally turned on me—owed a debt to the mysteries of her toilette and her lips were perhaps a trifle artificially coral. As for her perfume—
Does this appear tedious to your lordship? The many charmers whom I have seen to languish, perhaps in vain, near your lordship—devil take it, how am I to employ any flattery on my godfather when the simple truth—
To return. This bids fair to be a lengthy expatiation on the subject of a young woman’s appearance. The danger here is to invent. I am, after all, no more than a young fellow ! I might please myself with a rhapsody for she is the only tolerable female object in our company! There! Yet—and here I think the politician, the scurvy politician, as my favourite author would have it, is uppermost in my mind. I cannot get me glass eyes. I cannot rhapsodize. For Miss Zenobia is surely approaching her middle years and is defending indifferent charms before they disappear for ever by a continual animation which must surely exhaust her as much as they tire the beholder. A face that is never still cannot be subjected to detailed examination. May it not be that her parents are taking her to the Antipodes as a last resort? After all, among the convicts and Aborigines, among the emigrants and pensioned soldiers, the warders, the
“Oh Mr Brocklebank, at last she has contrived to retain a mouthful of consom!”
Mr Brocklebank boomed us an explanation.
“My child, my little Zenobia!”
Miss Zenobia was at once offered a choice of places at the table. Miss Granham declared she was leaving so that her place at it was free if another cushion might be brought. But the young lady, as I must call her, replied with whimsical archness that she had relied on Miss Granham to protect her virtue among so many dangerous gentlemen.
“Stuff and nonsense, ma’am,” said Miss Granham, even more severely than she had addressed your humble servant, “stuff and nonsense! Your virtue is as safe here as anywhere in the vessel!”
“Dear Miss Granham,” cried the lady with a languishing air, “I am sure your virtue is safe anywhere!”
This was gross, was it not? Yet I am sorry to say that from at least one part of the saloon there came a shout of laughter, for we had reached that part of dinner where ladies are better out of the way and only such as the latest arrival was proving to be can keep in countenance . Deverel, I and Summers were on our feet in a trice but it was the army officer, Oldmeadow, who escorted Miss Granham from our midst. The voice of the port-wine gentleman boomed again. “Sit by me, Zenobia, child.”
Miss Zenobia fluttered in the full afternoon sunlight that slanted across the great stern window. She held her pretty hands up to shield her face.
“It is too bright, Mr Brocklebank, pa!”
“Lord ma’am,” said Deverel, “can you deprive us poor fellows in the shadows of the pleasure of looking at you?”
“I must,” she said, “I positively must and will, take the seat vacated by Miss Granham.”
She fluttered round the table like a butterfly, a painted lady perhaps. I fancy that Deverel would have been happy to have her by him but she sank into the seat between Summers and me. Her bonnet was still held loosely by a ribbon at the back of her neck so that a charming profusion of curls was visible by her cheek and ear. Yet it seemed to me even at the first sight that the very brightness of her eyes—or the one occasionally turned on me—owed a debt to the mysteries of her toilette and her lips were perhaps a trifle artificially coral. As for her perfume—
Does this appear tedious to your lordship? The many charmers whom I have seen to languish, perhaps in vain, near your lordship—devil take it, how am I to employ any flattery on my godfather when the simple truth—
To return. This bids fair to be a lengthy expatiation on the subject of a young woman’s appearance. The danger here is to invent. I am, after all, no more than a young fellow ! I might please myself with a rhapsody for she is the only tolerable female object in our company! There! Yet—and here I think the politician, the scurvy politician, as my favourite author would have it, is uppermost in my mind. I cannot get me glass eyes. I cannot rhapsodize. For Miss Zenobia is surely approaching her middle years and is defending indifferent charms before they disappear for ever by a continual animation which must surely exhaust her as much as they tire the beholder. A face that is never still cannot be subjected to detailed examination. May it not be that her parents are taking her to the Antipodes as a last resort? After all, among the convicts and Aborigines, among the emigrants and pensioned soldiers, the warders, the
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