A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by Harry Harrison Read Free Book Online

have felt his eyes upon her for she glanced up and her startled expression broke into a smile of such warmth that, if possible, his powers of speech were removed even farther from accessi-bility.
    “Why Gus, here! What a pleasant surprise.” He smiled in response, ca-pable of nothing more coherent. “Have you met Joyce Boardman? I don’t think you have, she’s just home from the far East. Joyce, my fiancé.
    Captain Augustine Washington.”
    He took the offered hand, bow-ing slightly, vaguely aware of an attractive female presence, nothing more. “A pleasure. Iris, I hate to break in like this but I’ve just come up from Cornwall and I’ll be going back in the morning. Would it be possible to see you now, to talk to you?”
    Other words were on her lips but she must have detected something unusual in his manner, or his voice, for she changed them before she spoke, and when she did so it was with a firm decisiveness unusual in a girl just past twenty.
    “Of course. Madame Clotilda’s fainting spell seems to have interrupted matters and if the doctor does speak again Joyce can tell me all about it tomorrow. That will be all right with you, won’t it, Joyce dear?” Joyce dear had little chance to an-swer, or protest, because Iris went on in a rush of words perhaps to fore-stall any utterance of this type. “That’s so kind of you. When the car comes tell them I’ve already gone home by cab.”
    Then she was on his arm and they were going up the aisle. While the commissionaire was calling a cab Washington realized that the issue had to be faced at once.
    “Before the cab comes I must tell you—your father and I have had a difference of opinion.”
    “The easiest thing in the world to do. I am at it all the time. Poor Daddy is certainly the firmest minded man in the world.”
    “I’m afraid this is more serious. He has forbidden me the house and, this is even harder to say, does not want us to see each other ever again.”
    She was silent in thought for a long moment and the happy smile slowly vanished from her face. But she held his arm no less tightly for which he loved her, if it were pos-sible, ever much the more.
    “Then we shall talk about it and you must tell me everything that has happened. We’ll go—let me see—to the lounge in the Great Western Ho-tel at Paddington. It’s on the way home and I remember you liked the tea and cakes there.”
    In the privacy of the cab, while they crossed the rain-filled darkness of Hyde Park, he told her what had happened. Told her everything except the irrelevant details of his con-fidential talk with Cornwallis, ex-plained why the appointment was being made and how important it was both to the company and to him, then closed by repeating almost word for word the final and decisive conversation with her father. When he had finished they were already at the hotel and there was nothing more that could be said until they had climbed the grand staircase and been seated, ordered the tea and cakes, and it must be admitted a double brandy for him since he felt greatly in need of one, and the si-lence lasted until the tea had been poured.
    “This is a terrible thing to have happen, Gus, a terrible thing.”
    “You don’t think your father is right, do you?”
    “I don’t have to think whether he is right or not, I only have to remem-ber that he is my father.”
    “Iris, darling, you can’t mean that! You’re a girl of the Twentieth Cen-tury, not a Victorian shadow of a woman. You have the vote now, or at least you will next year when you are of age, women have a freedom under Elizabeth they never knew be-fore.”
    “We do, and I know it, and I do love you, dear Gus. But this cannot do away with my family ties. And you said it yourself, I have not attained my majority, nor will I for six months, and I still remain in my fa-ther’s house.”
    “You can’t mean—”
    “But I do, and it hurts me to have to say it. Until you and Daddy resolve this terrible thing