After Many a Summer Dies the Swan Read Online Free PDF Page A

graduate!” He brayed again, triumphantly. “Go and talk foreign languages to them” He was silent for a moment; then, pursuing an unexplicit association of ideas, “My agent in London,” he went on, “the man who picks up things for me there—he gave me your name. Told me you were the right man for those—what do you call them? You know, those papers I bought this summer. Roebuck? Hobuck?”
    â€œHauberk,” said Jeremy, and with a gloomy satisfaction noted that he had been quite right. The man had never read one’s books, never even heard of one’s existence. Still, one had to remember that he had been called Jelly-Belly when he was young.
    â€œHauberk,” Mr. Stoyte repeated with a contemptuous impatience. “Anyhow, he said you were the man.” Then, without pause or transition, “What was it you were saying, about your sex life, when you started that foreign stuff on me?”
    Jeremy laughed uncomfortably. “One was implying that it was normal for one’s age.”
    â€œWhat do you know about what’s normal at your age?” said Mr. Stoyte. “Go and talk to Dr. Obispo about it. It won’t cost you anything. Obispo’s on salary. He’s the house physician.” Abruptly changing the subject, “Would you like to see the castle?” he asked. “I’ll take you round.”
    â€œOh, that’s very kind of you,” said Jeremy effusively. And for the sake of making a little polite conversation, he added: “I’ve already seen your burial ground.”
    â€œSeen my burial ground?” Mr. Stoyte repeated in a tone of suspicion: suspicion turned suddenly to anger. “What the hell do you mean?” he shouted.
    Quailing before his fury, Jeremy stammered something about the Beverly Pantheon and that he had understood from the chauffeur that Mr. Stoyte had a financial interest in the company.
    â€œI see,” said the other, somewhat mollified, but still frowning. “I thought you meant . . .” Mr. Stoyte broke off in the middle of the sentence, leaving the bewildered Jeremy to guess what he had thought. “Come on,” he barked; and, bursting into movement, he hurried towards the entrance to the house.

Chapter III
    T HERE was silence in Ward Sixteen of the Stoyte Home for Sick Children; silence and the luminous twilight of drawn Venetian blinds. It was the mid-morning rest period. Three of the five small convalescents were asleep. A fourth lay staring at the ceiling, pensively picking his nose. The fifth, a little girl, was whispering to a doll as curly and Aryan as herself. Seated by one of the windows, a young nurse was absorbed in the latest issue of True Confessions.
    â€œHis heart gave a lurch,” she read. “With a strangled cry he pressed me closer. For months we’d been fighting against just this; but the magnet of our passion was too strong for us. The clamorous pressure of his lips had struck an answering spark within my melting body.
    â€˜Germaine,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t make me wait. Won’t you be good to me now, darling?’
    He was so gentle, but so ruthless too—as a girl in love wants a man to be ruthless. I felt myself swept away by the rising tide of . . .”
    There was a noise outside in the corridor. The door of the ward flew open, as though before the blast of a hurricane, and someone came rushing into the room.
    The nurse looked up with a start of surprise which the completeness of her absorption in “The Price of a Thrill” rendered positively agonizing. Her almost immediate reaction to the shock was one of anger.
    â€œWhat’s the idea?” she began indignantly; then she recognized the intruder and her expression changed. “Why, Mr. Stoyte!”
    Disturbed by the noise, the young nose-picker dropped his eyes from the ceiling, the little girl turned away from her doll.
    â€œUncle Jo!” they