FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102  
103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   >>   >|  
l eagerness. With a woman's quick instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,--was eating to please her. Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light. "Is't good, Hugh? T'ale was a bit sour, I feared." "No, good enough." He hesitated a moment. "Ye're tired, poor lass! Bide here till I go. Lay down there on that heap of ash, and go to sleep." He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed; the half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and cold shiver. Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag,--yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the heart of things,--at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,--even more fit to be a type of her class. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth reading in this wet, faded thing, half-covered with ashes? no story of a soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce jealousy? of years of weary trying to please the one human being whom she loved, to gain one look of real heart-kindness from him? If anything like this were hidden beneath the pale, bleared eyes, and dull, washed-out-looking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its faint signs: not the half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet he was kind to her: it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats that swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way. She knew that. And it might be that very knowledge had given to her face its apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life. One sees that dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's faces,--in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one guessed it; so the gnawing was the fiercer. She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the far distance,--shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look tow
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102  
103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
smothered
 

warmth

 

vacancy

 
stupor
 

summer

 
looked
 

beneath

 

knowledge

 

instinct

 

torpid


apathy

 
washed
 

hidden

 

bleared

 

trouble

 

furnace

 

clothed

 

swarmed

 

eagerness

 
tender

nature

 

cellar

 
corner
 

listening

 

monotonous

 

fiercer

 

perpetually

 
guessed
 

gnawing

 
uncertain

happened

 

shrinking

 

distance

 

warmest

 
finest
 

vacant

 

rarest

 
brilliant
 

brilliancy

 

delicate


secret

 
intolerable
 

solitude

 

heroic

 

refuse

 

turned

 

pillow

 

unfitting

 

Miserable

 

shiver