The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Patagonia, by Henry James

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Patagonia

Author: Henry James

Release Date: May 21, 2005 [eBook #2427]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PATAGONIA***

Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. Proofing by Jonesey and Richard Carpenter

THE PATAGONIA
by Henry James

CHAPTER I

The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon
Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The
club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow
upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the
hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls. As "every one" was
out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure,
were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I thought with
joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the freshening breeze, the
sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of what I had learned in
the afternoon at the office of the company--that at the eleventh hour an
old ship with a lower standard of speed had been put on in place of the
vessel in which I had taken my passage. America was roasting, England
might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage (which at that season of
the year would probably also be a fine one) was a guarantee of ten or
twelve days of fresh air.

I strolled down the hill without meeting a creature, though I could see
through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse was
peopled with dim forms. I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint's house--she lived
in those days (they are not so distant, but there have been changes) on
the water-side, a little way beyond the spot at which the Public Garden
terminates; and I reflected that like myself she would be spending the
night in Boston if it were true that, as had been mentioned to me a few
days before at Mount Desert, she was to embark on the morrow for
Liverpool. I presently saw this appearance confirmed by a light above
her door and in two or three of her