CONDENSED NOVELS(压缩小说)

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CONDENSED NOVELS

by BRET HARTE

CONDENSED NOVELS

HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME

DOES.

BY CH--S R--DE.

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER I.

The Dodds were dead. For twenty year they had slept under the green

graves of Kittery churchyard. The townfolk still spoke of them kindly. The

keeper of the alehouse, where David had smoked his pipe, regretted him

regularly, and Mistress Kitty, Mrs. Dodd's maid, whose trim figure always

looked well in her mistress's gowns, was inconsolable. The Hardins were

in America. Raby was aristocratically gouty; Mrs. Raby, religious. Briefly,

then, we have disposed of--

1. Mr. and Mrs. Dodd (dead). 2. Mr. and Mrs. Hardin (translated).

3. Raby, baron et femme. (Yet I don't know about the former; he came

of a long-lived family, and the gout is an uncertain disease.)

We have active at the present writing (place aux dames)--

1. Lady Caroline Coventry, niece of Sir Frederick.

2. Faraday Huxley Little, son of Henry and Grace Little, deceased.

Sequitur to the above, A HERO AND HEROINE.

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER II.

On the death of his parents, Faraday Little was taken to Raby Hall. In

accepting his guardianship, Mr. Raby struggled stoutly against two

prejudices: Faraday was plain-looking and sceptical.

"Handsome is as handsome does, sweetheart," pleaded Jael,

interceding for the orphan with arms that were still beautiful. "Dear knows,

it is not his fault if he does not look like--his father," she added with a

great gulp. Jael was a woman, and vindicated her womanhood by never

entirely forgiving a former rival.

"It's not that alone, madam," screamed Raby, "but, d--m it, the little

rascal's a scientist,--an atheist, a radical, a scoffer! Disbelieves in the Bible,

ma'am; is full of this Darwinian stuff about natural selection and descent.

Descent, forsooth! In my day, madam, gentlemen were content to trace

their ancestors back to gentlemen, and not to--monkeys!"

"Dear heart, the boy is clever," urged Jael.

"Clever!" roared Raby; "what does a gentleman want with

cleverness?"

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER III.

Young Little WAS clever. At seven he had constructed a telescope; at

nine, a flying-machine. At ten he saved a valuable life.

Norwood Park was the adjacent estate,--a lordly domain dotted with

red deer and black trunks, but scrupulously kept with gravelled roads as

hard and blue as steel. There Little was strolling one summer morning,

meditating on a new top with concealed springs. At a little distance before

him he saw the flutter of lace and ribbons. A young lady, a very young

lady,--say of seven summers,-- tricked out in the crying abominations of

the present fashion, stood beside a low bush. Her nursery-maid was not

present, possibly owing to the fact that John the footman was also absent.

Suddenly Little came towards her. "Excuse me, but do you know what

those berries are?" He was pointing to the low bush filled with dark

clusters of shining--suspiciously shining--fruit.

"Certainly; they are blueberries."

"Pardon me; you are mistaken. They belong to quite another family."

Miss Impudence drew herself up to her full height (exactly three feet

nine and a half inches), and, curling an eight of an inch of scarlet lip, said,

scornfully. "YOUR family, perhaps."

Faraday Little smiled in the superiority of boyhood over girlhood.

"I allude to the classification. That plant is the belladonna, or deadly

nightshade. Its alkaloid is a narcotic poison."

Sauciness turned pale. "I--have--just--eaten--some!" And began to

whimper. "O dear, what shall I do?" Then did it, i. e. wrung her small

fingers and cried.

"Pardon me one moment." Little passed his arm around her neck, and

with his thumb opened widely the patrician-veined lids of her sweet blue

eyes. "Thank Heaven, there is yet no dilation of the pupil; it is not too

late!" He cast a rapid glance around. The nozzle and about three feet of

garden hose lay near him.

"Open your mouth, quick!"

It was a pretty, kissable mouth. But young Little meant business. He

put the nozzle down her pink throat as far as it would go.

CONDENSED NOVELS

"Now, don't move."

He wrapped his handkerchief around a hoopstick. Then he inserted

both in the other end of the stiff hose. It fitted snugly. He shoved it in and

then drew it back.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The young patrician was as amenable to this

law as the child of the lowest peasant.

She succumbed. It was all over in a minute. Then she burst into a small

fury.

"You nasty, bad--UGLY boy."

Young Little winced, but smiled.

"Stimulants," he whispered to the frightened nursery-maid who

approached; "good evening." He was gone.

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER IV.

The breach between young Little and Mr. Raby was slowly widening.

Little found objectionable features in the Hall. "This black oak ceiling and

wainscoating is not as healthful as plaster; besides, it absorbs the light.

The bedroom ceiling is too low; the Elizabethan architects knew nothing

of ventilation. The color of that oak panelling which you admire is due to

an excess of carbon and the exuvia from the pores of your skin--"

"Leave the house," bellowed Raby, "before the roof falls on your

sacrilegious head!"

As Little left the house, Lady Caroline and a handsome boy of about

Little's age entered. Lady Caroline recoiled, and then--blushed. Little

glared; he instinctively felt the presence of a rival.

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER V.

Little worked hard. He studied night and day. In five years he became

a lecturer, then a professor.

He soared as high as the clouds, he dipped as low as the cellars of the

London poor. He analyzed the London fog, and found it two parts smoke,

one disease, one unmentionable abominations. He published a pamphlet,

which was violently attacked. Then he knew he had done something.

But he had not forgotten Caroline. He was walking one day in the

Zoological Gardens and he came upon a pretty picture,--flesh and blood

too.

Lady Caroline feeding buns to the bears! An exquisite thrill passed

through his veins. She turned her sweet face and their eyes met. They

recollected their first meeting seven years before, but it was his turn to be

shy and timid. Wonderful power of age and sex! She met him with perfect

self-possession.

"Well meant, but indigestible I fear" (he alluded to the buns).

"A clever person like yourself can easily correct that" (she, the

slyboots, was thinking of something else).

In a few moments they were chatting gayly. Little eagerly descanted

upon the different animals; she listened with delicious interest. An hour

glided delightfully away.

After this sunshine, clouds.

To them suddenly entered Mr. Raby and a handsome young man. The

gentlemen bowed stiffly and looked vicious,--as they felt. The lady of this

quartette smiled amiably, as she did not feel.

"Looking at your ancestors, I suppose," said Mr. Raby, pointing to the

monkeys; "we will not disturb you. Come." And he led Caroline away.

Little was heart-sick. He dared not follow them. But an hour later he

saw something which filled his heart with bliss unspeakable.

Lady Caroline, with a divine smile on her face, feeding the monkeys!

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER VI.

Encouraged by love, Little worked hard upon his new flying-machine.

His labors were lightened by talking of the beloved one with her French

maid Therese, whom he had discreetly bribed. Mademoiselle Therese was

venal, like all her class, but in this instance I fear she was not bribed by

British gold. Strange as it may seem to the British mind, it was British

genius, British eloquence, British thought, that brought her to the feet of

this young savan.

"I believe," said Lady Caroline, one day, interrupting her maid in a

glowing eulogium upon the skill of "M. Leetell,"--"I believe you are in

love with this Professor." A quick flush crossed the olive cheek of Therese,

which Lady Caroline afterward remembered.

The eventful day of trial came. The public were gathered, impatient

and scornful as the pigheaded public are apt to be. In the open area a long

cylindrical balloon, in shape like a Bologna sausage, swayed above the

machine, from which, like some enormous bird caught in a net, it tried to

free itself. A heavy rope held it fast to the ground.

Little was waiting for the ballast, when his eye caught Lady Caroline's

among the spectators. The glance was appealing. In a moment he was at

her side.

"I should like so much to get into the machine," said the arch-

hypocrite, demurely.

"Are you engaged to marry young Raby," said Little, bluntly.

"As you please," she said with a courtesy; "do I take this as a refusal?"

Little was a gentleman. He lifted her and her lapdog into the car.

"How nice! it won't go off?"

"No, the rope is strong, and the ballast is not yet in."

A report like a pistol, a cry from the spectators, a thousand hands

stretched to grasp the parted rope, and the balloon darted upward.

Only one hand of that thousand caught the rope,--Little's! But in the

same instant the horror-stricken spectators saw him whirled from his feet

and borne upward, still clinging to the rope, into space.

CONDENSED NOVELS

CHAPTER VII.*

* The right of dramatization of this and succeeding chapters is

reserved by the writer.

Lady Caroline fainted. The cold watery nose of her dog on her cheek

brought her to herself. She dared not look over the edge of the car; she

dared not look up to the bellying monster above her, bearing her to death.

She threw herself on the bottom of the car, and embraced the only living

thing spared her,--the poodle. Then she cried. Then a clear voice came

apparently out of the circumambient air:--

"May I trouble you to look at the barometer?"

She put her head over the car. Little was hanging at the end of a long

rope. She put her head back again.

In another moment he saw her perplexed, blushing face over the edge,-

-blissful sight.

"O, please don't think of coming up! Stay there, do!"

Little stayed. Of course she could make nothing out of the barometer,

and said so. Little smiled.

"Will you kindly send it down to me?"

But she had no string or cord. Finally she said, "Wait a moment."

Little waited. This time her face did not appear. The barometer came

slowly down at the end of--a stay-lace.

The barometer showed a frightful elevation. Little looked up at the

valve and said nothing. Presently he heard a sigh. Then a sob. Then, rather

sharply,--

"Why don't you do something?"

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CONDENSEDNOVELS1CONDENSEDNOVELSbyBRETHARTECONDENSEDNOVELS2HANDSOMEISASHANDSOMEDOES.BYCH--SR--DE.CONDENSEDNOVELS3CHAPTERI.TheDoddsweredead.FortwentyyeartheyhadsleptunderthegreengravesofKitterychurchyard.Thetownfolkstillspokeofthemkindly.Thekeeperofthealehouse,whereDavidhadsmokedhispipe,regrettedhimre...

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