He went on reading and Emmeline watched him while he read.
As she knew or had learned involuntarily, it was not great literature, a modest affair compared with the works of Thackeray, Carlyle, or Ruskin—but why bother about style when you have such a tale to tell? The matter not the manner grips. Was it gripping father? He had assumed a dogged, almost aggressive air, he frowned; but this did not really indicate that he was quarrelling with the book, it only meant that as he was very little used to book-reading as a pastime, he felt that a superior concentration of the intellect was necessary.
Watching him, she had again that odd sense of strangeness; as though he had not been really her father, but somebody that she scarcely knew and did not in the least care for. How strange! Certainly she had never seen him or understood him as now, suddenly, unexpectedly.
She observed his bushy yet straggling grey eyebrows, his inch of close-cropt whisker, his bald head with long strands of hair idiotically plastered across it from the fat neck, his leathery complexion, the creases and furrows of his chin and cheeks. He was well dressed, in a suitable manner—but suitable to what? The well-starched shirt, the black satin tie, the glossy dinner jacket gave him no true dignity, concealed not one of his defects. He was a ruin, a man run to seed; large without being strong, too stout about the middle, too slack about the knees, no steel and whipcord anywhere about this sprawling unimpressive bulk. No force of any sort behind that stupid frown! But he was kindly by nature, well-intentioned, thoroughly good according to his lights; only stupid—stupid, stupid as the Albert Hall is round, as Exhibition Road is wide, as Queen’s Gate straight and Kensington Gore flat.
Then she thought how cruel it was that she should thus judge him instead of pitying him—she, with this immense gladness in her heart.
She glanced at her mother, from whose relaxed grasp the newspaper was again slipping, and a yearning compassion for both parents came in response to the call. Poor dears.
The book had gripped father; he read on resolutely, but as yet of course he was only at the beginning, still in Patagonia. Stitching very slowly she thought about it. It was so simple, yet so wonderful, so very wonderful.
He had been “messing about” among the gold-diggings of Cape Horn. “The Gold-diggings of Cape Horn”—inaudibly she re-articulated the words to herself, just to feel them again on her vocal cords. Like all other words that concerned him, they had magic in them. For instance, Tierra del Fuego—the Land of Fire—Tierra del Fuego. And beyond all else, the Andes. The Andes—it seemed to her that the very first time she heard that word when she was a child, she should have thrilled through and through. The word should have taken possession of her by reason of its mystery and might.
Well then, he was moving northward among those islands, trying his luck at the gold-digging, and doing no good. “I don’t think I am a lucky man, Miss Verinder. No, I have never been very lucky. How I go on warning you against myself, don’t I? But, just as I have been frank to you about important matters, I won’t deceive you about small ones. Never mind. Hang it, the luck turns. I shall get my luck one day.” Well then—while her father read the book she talked to herself about it: Since he was at a loose end, no big thing on hand, the idea had come to him to land on the mainland, and go along the gigantic spine of the Andes in its entire length from south to north, say four thousand miles. And he had achieved his purpose, alone and on foot—seeing marvellous things, doing marvellous things all the way.