’I know you for my son’s friend, Mr. Temple:
here is my son, my boy, Harry Lepel Richmond Roy.
Have patience: I shall presently stand unshelled.
I have much to relate; you likewise have your narrative
in store. That you should have lit on me at the
critical instant is one of those miracles which combine
to produce overwhelming testimony—ay, Richie!
without a doubt there is a hand directing our destiny.’
His speaking in such a strain, out of pure kindness
to Temple, huskily, with his painful attempt to talk
like himself, revived his image as the father of my
heart and dreams, and stirred my torpid affection,
though it was still torpid enough, as may be imagined,
when I state that I remained plunged in contemplation
of his stocking of red silk emerging from the full
bronzed breech, considering whether his comparison
of himself to a shell-fish might not be a really just
one. We neither of us regained our true natures
until he was free of every vestige of the garb of Prince
Albrecht Wohlgemuth. Attendants were awaiting
him at the garden-gate of a beautiful villa partly
girdled by rising fir-woods on its footing of bright
green meadow. They led him away, and us to bath-rooms.
CHAPTER XVIII
WE PASS A DELIGHTFUL EVENING, AND I HAVE A MORNING VISION
In a long saloon ornamented with stags’ horns
and instruments of the chase, tusks of boars, spear-staves,
boarknives, and silver horns, my father, I, and Temple
sat down to a memorable breakfast, my father in his
true form, dressed in black silken jacket and knee-breeches,
purple-stockings and pumps; without a wig, I thanked
heaven to see. How blithely he flung out his
limbs and heaved his chest released from confinement!
His face was stained brownish, but we drank old Rhine
wine, and had no eye for appearances.
‘So you could bear it no longer, Richie?’
My father interrupted the narrative I doled out, anxious
for his, and he began, and I interrupted him.
‘You did think of me often, papa, didn’t
you?’
His eyes brimmed with tenderness.
‘Think of you!’ he sighed.
I gave him the account of my latest adventures in
a few panting breaths, suppressing the Bench.
He set my face to front him.
‘We are two fools, Mr. Temple,’ he said.
‘No, sir,’ said Temple.
‘Now you speak, papa,’ said I.
He smiled warmly.
‘Richie begins to remember me.’
I gazed at him to show it was true.
‘I do, papa—I’m not beginning
to.’
At his request, I finished the tale of my life at
school. ’Ah, well! that was bad fortune;
this is good!’ he exclaimed. ’Tis
your father, my son: ’tis day-light, though
you look at it through a bed-curtain, and think you
are half-dreaming. Now then for me, Richie.’
My father went on in this wise excitedly:
Copyrights
The Adventures Harry Richmond — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
