The Reverberator | Page 7

as direct as a
beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of
particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large
fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy
speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a "good thing"; and as he sat
there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he might
very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his song
or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. And he had
grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply because he
had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune in the
discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up the wind.
The second factor in his little addition was that he was an unassuming
father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, and his
daughters represented all society for him. He thought much more and
much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and

railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated
property. He never compared them with other girls; he only compared
his present self with what he would have been without them. His view
of them was perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of
life and Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr.
Dosson had not perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter's
beauty: he would scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he
would of a valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated
up to the eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in
later days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving
books behind her. Moreover wasn't her French so good that he couldn't
understand it?
The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only
directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he
was under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for
it to have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would
have been the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course;
there were lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which
he simply floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This
appeared to be one of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that
he should soon again inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow.
When his daughters were out for any time the occasion affected him as
a "weather-breeder"--the wind would be then, as a kind of consequence,
GOING to rise; but their now being out with a remarkably bright young
man only sweetened the temporary calm. That belonged to their
superior life, and Mr. Dosson never doubted that George M. Flack was
remarkably bright. He represented the newspaper, and the newspaper
for this man of genial assumptions represented--well, all other
representations whatever. To know Delia and Francie thus attended by
an editor or a correspondent was really to see them dancing in the
central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had slightly more than
usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant surprise. The vision
to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient distance, and melted
into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences of Mr. Flack in other
relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel at Liverpool, and in the
cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but he would have thought
himself simple had he not had two or three strong convictions: one of

which was that the children should never go out with a gentleman they
hadn't seen before. The sense of their having, and his having, seen Mr.
Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mere placidity of his
personally foregoing the young man's society in favour of Delia and
Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that the streets and
shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the safest place for
young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful gentleman ensured
safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the fact of his knowing so
much and having it all right there. If a big newspaper told you
everything there was in the world every morning, that was what a big
newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never
supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr.
Flack's and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of
such happy chances--and in one way or another they kept
occurring--his girls might have seemed lonely, which was not the way
he struck himself. They