The Reverberator | Page 4

observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's

acquaintance with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in
his crossing the Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year
before, and in some slight association immediately after disembarking,
but that each party had come and gone a good deal since then--come
and gone however without meeting again. It was to be inferred that in
this interval Miss Dosson had led her father and sister back to their
native land and had then a second time directed their course to Europe.
This was a new departure, said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he
understood that it wasn't, as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't
repudiate the accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have
been embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and
even in a suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they
had been capable of that. But now they had come abroad for
longer--ever so much: what they had gone home for was to make
arrangements for a European stay of which the limits were not to be
told. So far as this particular future opened out to her she freely
acknowledged it. It appeared to meet with George Flack's approval--he
also had a big undertaking on that side and it might require years, so
that it would be pleasant to have his friends right there. He knew his
way round in Paris--or any place like that--much better than round
Boston; if they had been poked away in one of those clever suburbs
they would have been lost to him.
"Oh, well, you'll see as much as you want of us--the way you'll have to
take us," Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which that
way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take
anything-- which was just as it came. "Oh well, you'll see what you'll
make of it," the girl returned; and she would give for the present no
further explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if it
however she professed an interest in Mr. Flack's announced
undertaking--an interest springing apparently from an interest in the
personage himself. The man of wonderments and measurements we
have smuggled into the scene would have gathered that Miss Dosson's
attention was founded on a conception of Mr. Flack's intrinsic
brilliancy. Would his own impression have justified that?--would he
have found such a conception contagious? I forbear to ridicule the
thought, for that would saddle me with the care of showing what right
our officious observer might have had to his particular standard. Let us

therefore simply note that George Flack had grounds for looming
publicly large to an uninformed young woman. He was connected, as
she supposed, with literature, and wasn't a sympathy with literature one
of the many engaging attributes of her so generally attractive little
sister? If Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn't a trail of
forgotten Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of
three? The elder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and
railway-carriages, but usually found that she had brought odd volumes.
She considered however that as a family they had an intellectual link
with the young journalist, and would have been surprised if she had
heard the advantage of his acquaintance questioned.
Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as a
prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they
might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him
before. And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general
no ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn't
conveniently have prefigured him, and it was only when you were
conscious of him that you knew you had already somehow paid for it.
To carry him in your mind you must have liked him very much, for no
other sentiment, not even aversion, would have taught you what
distinguished him in his group: aversion in especial would have made
you aware only of what confounded him. He was not a specific person,
but had beyond even Delia Dosson, in whom we have facially noted it,
the quality of the sample or advertisement, the air of representing a
"line of goods" for which there is a steady popular demand. You would
scarce have expected him to be individually designated: a number, like
that of the day's newspaper, would have served all his, or at least all
your, purpose, and you would have vaguely supposed the number
high--somewhere up in the millions. As every copy of the newspaper
answers to its name, Miss Dosson's visitor would have been quite