E-Book, Englisch, Band 23, 4131 Seiten
Reihe: Delphi Series Nine
E-Book, Englisch, Band 23, 4131 Seiten
Reihe: Delphi Series Nine
ISBN: 978-1-78656-407-8
Verlag: Delphi Classics Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Tarkington's life and works
* Concise introductions to the major texts
* All 35 novels, with individual contents tables
* Includes the complete Growth trilogy and the complete Penrod novels
* Many rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Famous works such as 'The Magnificent Ambersons' and 'Penrod' are fully illustrated with their original artwork
* Rare story collections available in no other collection
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories
* Easily locate the short stories you want to read
* Rare plays - available in no other collection
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
* Updated with 11 novels, 1 play and an autobiographical novel
CONTENTS:
The Growth Trilogy
The Penrod Series
The Novels
The Gentleman from Indiana (1899)
Monsieur Beaucaire (1900)
Cherry (1901)
The Two Vanrevels (1902)
The Beautiful Lady (1905)
The Conquest of Canaan (1905)
The Guest of Quesnay (1907)
His Own People (1907)
The Flirt (1913)
Penrod (1914)
The Turmoil (1915)
Penrod and Sam (1916)
Seventeen (1916)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)
Ramsey Milholland (1919)
Harlequin and Columbine (1921)
Alice Adams (1921)
Gentle Julia (1922)
The Midlander (1924)
Women (1925)
The Plutocrat (1927)
Claire Ambler (1928)
Young Mrs. Greeley (1929)
Mary's Neck (1929)
Penrod Jashber (1929)
Mirthful Haven (1930)
Wanton Mally (1932)
Rumbin Galleries (1932)
Presenting Lily Mars (1933)
The Lorenzo Bunch (1935)
The Fighting Littles (1941)
The Heritage of Hatcher Ide (1941)
Kate Fennigate (1943)
Image of Josephine (1945)
The Show Piece (1946)
The Shorter Fiction
In the Arena (1905)
Beasley's Christmas Party (1909)
The Spring Concert (1916)
Captain Schlotterwerz (1919)
The Fascinating Stranger and Other Stories (1923)
The Short Stories
List of Short Stories in Chronological Order
List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order
The Plays
The Man from Home (1908)
Beauty and the Jacobin (1912)
The Gibson Upright (1919)
The Trysting Place (1923)
The Non-Fiction
The Rich Man's War (1917)
The Autobiography
The World Does Move (1928)
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
CHAPTER II. THE STRANGE LADY
IT WAS JUNE. From the patent inner columns of the “Carlow County Herald” might be gleaned the information (enlivened by cuts of duchesses) that the London season had reached a high point of gaiety; and that, although the weather had grown inauspiciously warm, there was sufficient gossip for the thoughtful. To the rapt mind of Miss Selina Tibbs came a delicious moment of comparison: precisely the same conditions prevailed in Plattville. Not unduly might Miss Selina lay this flattering unction to her soul, and well might the “Herald” declare that “Carlow events were crowding thick and fast.” The congressional representative of the district was to deliver a lecture at the court-house; a circus was approaching the county-seat, and its glories would be exhibited “rain or shine”; the court had cleared up the docket by sitting to unseemly hours of the night, even until ten o’clock — one farmer witness had fallen asleep while deposing that he “had knowed this man Hender some eighteen year” — and, as excitements come indeed when they do come, and it seldom rains but it pours, the identical afternoon of the lecture a strange lady descended from the Rouen Accommodation and was greeted on the platform by the wealthiest citizen of the county. Judge Briscoe, and his daughter, Minnie, and (what stirred wonder to an itch almost beyond endurance) Mr. Fisbee! and they then drove through town on the way to the Briscoe mansion, all four, apparently, in a fluster of pleasure and exhilaration, the strange lady engaged in earnest conversation with Mr. Fisbee on the back seat. Judd Bennett had had the best stare at her, but, as he immediately fell into a dreamy and absent state, little satisfaction could be got from him, merely an exasperating statement that the stranger seemed to have a kind of new look to her. However, by means of Miss Mildy Upton, a domestic of the Briscoe household, the community was given something a little more definite. The lady’s name was Sherwood; she lived in Rouen; and she had known Miss Briscoe at the eastern school the latter had attended (to the feverish agitation of Plattville) three years before; but Mildy confessed her inadequacy in the matter of Mr. Fisbee. He had driven up in the buckboard with the others and evidently expected to stay for supper Mr. Tibbs, the postmaster (it was to the postoffice that Miss Upton brought her information) suggested, as a possible explanation, that the lady was so learned that the Briscoes had invited Fisbee on the ground of his being the only person in Plattville they esteemed wise enough to converse with her; but Miss Tibbs wrecked her brother’s theory by mentioning the name of Fisbee’s chief. “You see, Solomon,” she sagaciously observed, “if that were true, they would have invited him, instead of Mr. Fisbee, and I wish they had. He isn’t troubled with malaria, and yet the longer he lives here the sallower-looking and sadder-looking he gets. I think the company of a lovely stranger might be of great cheer to his heart, and it will be interesting to witness the meeting between them. It may be,” added the poetess, “that they have already met, on his travels before he settled here. It may be that they are old friends — or even more.” “Then what,” returned her brother, “what is he doin’ settin’ up in his office all afternoon with ink on his forehead, while Fisbee goes out ridin’ with her and stays for supper afterwerds?” Although the problem of Fisbee’s attendance remained a mere maze of hopeless speculation, Mildy had been present at the opening of Miss Sherwood’s trunk, and here was matter for the keen consideration of the ladies, at least. Thoughtful conversations in regard to hats and linings took place across fences and on corners of the Square that afternoon; and many gentlemen wondered (in wise silence) why their spouses were absent-minded and brooded during the evening meal. At half-past seven, the Hon. Kedge Halloway of Amo delivered himself of his lecture; “The Past and Present. What we may Glean from Them, and Their Influence on the Future.” At seven the court-room was crowded, and Miss Tibbs, seated on the platform (reserved for prominent citizens), viewed the expectant throng with rapture. It is possible that she would have confessed to witnessing a sea of faces, but it is more probable that she viewed the expectant throng. The thermometer stood at eighty-seven degrees and there was a rustle of incessantly moving palm-leaf fans as, row by row, their yellow sides twinkled in the light of eight oil lamps. The stouter ladies wielded their fans with vigor. There were some very pretty faces in Mr. Halloway’s audience, but it is a peculiarity of Plattville that most of those females who do not incline to stoutness incline far in the opposite direction, and the lean ladies naturally suffered less from the temperature than their sisters. The shorn lamb is cared for, but often there seems the intention to impart a moral in the refusal of Providence to temper warm weather to the full-bodied. Old Tom Martin expressed a strong consciousness of such intention when he observed to the shocked Miss Selina, as Mr. Bill Snoddy, the stoutest citizen of the county, waddled abnormally up the aisle: “The Almighty must be gittin” a heap of fun out of Bill Snoddy to-night.” “Oh, Mr. Martin!” exclaimed Miss Tibbs, fluttering at his irreverence. “Why, you would yourself. Miss Seliny,” returned old Tom. Mr. Martin always spoke in one key, never altering the pitch of his high, dry, unctuous drawl, though, when his purpose was more than ordinarily humorous, his voice assumed a shade of melancholy. Now and then he meditatively passed his fingers through his gray beard, which followed the line of his jaw, leaving his upper lip and most of his chin smooth-shaven. “Did you ever reason out why folks laugh so much at fat people?” he continued. “No, ma’am. Neither’d anybody else.” “Why is it, Mr. Martin?” asked Miss Selina. “It’s like the Creator’s sayin’, ‘Let there be light.’ He says, ‘Let ladies be lovely—’” (Miss Tibbs bowed)— “and ‘Let men-folks be honest — sometimes;’ and, ‘Let fat people be held up to ridicule till they fall off.’ You can’t tell why it is; it was jest ordained that-a-way.” The room was so crowded that the juvenile portion of the assemblage was ensconced in the windows. Strange to say, the youth of Plattville were not present under protest, as their fellows of a metropolis would have been, lectures being well understood by the young of great cities to have instructive tendencies. The boys came to-night because they insisted upon coming. It was an event. Some of them had made sacrifices to come, enduring even the agony (next to hair-cutting in suffering) of having their ears washed. Conscious of parental eyes, they fronted the public with boyhood’s professional expressionlessness, though they communicated with each other aside in a cipher-language of their own, and each group was a hot-bed of furtive gossip and sarcastic comment. Seated in the windows, they kept out what small breath of air might otherwise have stolen in to comfort the audience. Their elders sat patiently dripping with perspiration, most of the gentlemen undergoing the unusual garniture of stiffly-starched collars, those who had not cultivated chin beards to obviate such arduous necessities of pomp and state, hardly bearing up under the added anxiety of cravats. However, they sat outwardly meek under the yoke; nearly all of them seeking a quiet solace of tobacco — not that they smoked; Heaven and the gallantry of Carlow County forbid — nor were there anywhere visible tokens of the comforting ministrations of nicotine to violate the eye of etiquette. It is an art of Plattville. Suddenly there was a hum and a stir and a buzz of whispering in the room. Two gray old men and two pretty young women passed up the aisle to the platform. One old man was stalwart and ruddy, with a cordial eye and a handsome, smooth-shaven, big face. The other was bent and trembled slightly; his face was very white; he had a fine high brow, deeply lined, the brow of a scholar, and a grandly flowing white beard that covered his chest, the beard of a patriarch. One of the young women was tall and had the rosy cheeks and pleasant eyes of her father, who preceded her. The other was the strange lady. A universal perturbation followed her progress up the aisle, if she had known it. She was small and fair, very daintily and beautifully made; a pretty Marquise whose head Greuze should have painted. Mrs. Columbus Landis, wife of the proprietor of the Palace Hotel, conferring with a lady in the next seat, applied an over-burdened adjective: “It ain’t so much she’s han’some, though she is, that — but don’t you notice she’s got a kind of smart look to her? Her bein’ so teeny, kind of makes it more so, somehow, too.” What stunned the gossips of the windows to awed admiration, however, was the unconcerned and stoical fashion in which she wore a long bodkin straight through her head. It seemed a large sacrifice merely to make sure one’s hat remained in place. The party took seats a little to the left and rear of the lecturer’s table, and faced the audience. The strange lady chatted...
