The Big Why Read Online Free PDF

by the honour, but I preferred sometimes to be a human being on a quest for the good life, and not a painter.
    Get in, he said, and hapse the door.
    I said so long to Tom Dobie and shook hands with Rupert. His grip and arms were strong. He was a man who kept his sleeves rolled, even in winter.
    Rupert said, When you meet someone youve heard so much good things about, you dont want to meet them.
    Or like them, I said.
    Yes, there’s that too.
    He pushed my suitcase up against the foot of a grandfather clock. It was a new clock, with a pair of stuffed grouse, half white, nesting on top. Rupert had this ginger moustache. He was in his twenties, a svelte man used to doing lots of work with his forearms. He was like me.
    No, leave them on.
    There was a split chimney that arced over the hallway and pushed fireplaces onto either side of the house so you could walk under its heart. Mother did that, he said. One year when father was down the Labrador, she was tired of walking around the hearth, so she blew this hole right through the middle of it.
    I followed him into the dining room. It was hot. There was a red sofa and a big family album. There were evening lamps and books, a piano. There was a good coal fire on.
    I took off my coat.
    No one was there, just an open book of essays by Emerson. A set of brass binoculars in a leather cover flung on the chair cushion. What Rupert had seen us with and then flung. Rupert was a flinger of things. Effeminate but physical. A marathon runner.
    A maid came with a tray of tea.
    This is Emily.
    Pleasure to meet you, Mr Kent.
    She was lovely, a pale young face and green eyes. I was in a place where they introduced the servants.
    You wouldnt have, I said, anything to eat?
    Youre hungry my goodness yes.
    A piece of cheese would be fine. I’m a vegetarian.
    Oh really. Well then you must be hungry. What is it to be a vegetarian?
    As long as it’s not a mammal.
    Some of that turre, Emily.
    Rupert sent her off to make me up a plate.
    The name Emily made me ask him about the Emerson.
    I like, Rupert said, to read work by men my own age.
    And this was a young Emerson.
    I prefer Thoreau.
    Yes, the lover of life.
    Rather than your professional dreamer.
    And he quoted Thoreau: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.
    That’s me, I said.
    Welcome to the woods.
    Rupert pushed two fingers into his red moustache. He explained that his brother, Bob, was returning from a failed venture. A ship, the Karluk , had sunk under him, men were stranded on a Russian island in the Arctic. But his last telegram said he would be home in a month.
    Rupert was here for the winter. He was dormant. His father was upstairs in bed. The fact of this made him realize he had a story. He livened.
    Father was washed overboard, Rupert said. He was going through the water like a duck. They hauled him up like a wet seal, put him in bed. Said his back was awful sore. He’d lost his false teeth. Mother turned him over and found his teeth dug in his back.
    We went up to see him. His wife, Mary, was there reading to him. The Bartlett parents both snug in bed. It felt odd to be so intimate, as if they were my children and I’d come up to tuck them in. William Bartlett was in fine shape, big wrists. He laughed about the teeth.
    Yes if the lads hadnt pulled me out I’d still be in cold storage.
    William Bartlett was arranging a ship for the seal hunt. Forty years he’d captained a ship — he would captain one for fifteen more. Yes, he said, he could remember Brigus when you were either a Bartlett, a Pomeroy, or a sheep.
    Rupert was staying out of the seal hunt. He was gearing up for the Labrador fishery later in the year. He was the younger son and yet he seemed older than his father. Less exuberant. I could tell he was in a funk. He was restless and almost sooky about it, to use a Newfoundland expression. They had been expecting me for weeks.
    I was more than welcome, the father said. To bide as long. I could have the