Doyle - The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle
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The Lost World
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Published:
1912
Type(s):
Novels, Adventure
Source:
Wikisource
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About Doyle:
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a
Scottish author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock
Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field
of crime fiction, and the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a
prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historic-
al novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.
Conan was originally a given name, but Doyle used it as part of his
surname in his later years.
Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Doyle:
•
(1892)
•
(1893)
•
(1923)
•
(1905)
•
(1902)
•
(1887)
•
(1890)
•
(1917)
•
(1915)
•
(1928)
Copyright:
This work is available for countries where copyright is
Life+70.
Cette oeuvre est disponible pour les pays où le droit d'auteur est de 70
ans après mort de l'auteur.
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2
Chapter
1
There Are Heroisms All Round Us
Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon
earth,—a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-
natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything
could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of
such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart
that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of
his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a
subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.
For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup
about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depre-
ciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.
"Suppose," he cried with feeble violence, "that all the debts in the
world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted
upon,—what under our present conditions would happen then?"
I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon
which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity,
which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in
my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic
meeting.
At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All
that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which will
send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse alternat-
ing in his mind.
She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the
red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof! We had been
friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same com-
radeship which I might have established with one of my fellow-reporters
upon the Gazette,—perfectly frank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly un-
sexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her
ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling
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begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old
wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent
head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure— these, and
not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion.
Even in my short life I had learned as much as that—or had inherited it
in that race memory which we call instinct.
Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold
and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicately bronzed skin,
almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair, the large liquid eyes, the
full but exquisite lips,—all the stigmata of passion were there. But I was
sadly conscious that up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it
forth. However, come what might, I should have done with suspense
and bring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, and better
be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.
So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long
and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me, and
the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof. "I have a presentiment
that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish you wouldn't; for things
are so much nicer as they are."
I drew my chair a little nearer. "Now, how did you know that I was
going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.
"Don't women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the
world was ever taken unawares? But—oh, Ned, our friendship has been
so good and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don't you feel how
splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able to
talk face to face as we have talked?"
"I don't know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with— with the
station-master." I can't imagine how that official came into the matter;
but in he trotted, and set us both laughing. "That does not satisfy me in
the least. I want my arms round you, and your head on my breast,
and—oh, Gladys, I want——"
She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed to
demonstrate some of my wants. "You've spoiled everything, Ned," she
said. "It's all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing comes in! It
is such a pity! Why can't you control yourself?"
"I didn't invent it," I pleaded. "It's nature. It's love."
"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different. I have never felt it."
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"But you must—you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys,
you were made for love! You must love!"
"One must wait till it comes."
"But why can't you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?"
She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand—such a gracious,
stooping attitude it was—and she pressed back my head. Then she
looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.
"No it isn't that," she said at last. "You're not a conceited boy by nature,
and so I can safely tell you it is not that. It's deeper."
"My character?"
She nodded severely.
"What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No, really, I
won't if you'll only sit down!"
She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to
my mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive and bestial
it looks when you put it down in black and white!—and perhaps after all
it is only a feeling peculiar to myself. Anyhow, she sat down.
"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"
"I'm in love with somebody else," said she.
It was my turn to jump out of my chair.
"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the expression of
my face: "only an ideal. I've never met the kind of man I mean."
"Tell me about him. What does he look like?"
"Oh, he might look very much like you."
"How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that I don't
do? Just say the word,—teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut, theosophist, su-
perman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only give me an idea what
would please you."
She laughed at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the first place, I
don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "He would be a
harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim.
But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who
could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great
deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but
always the glories he had won; for they would be reflected upon me.
Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife's life of him I could so
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