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