The Project Gutenberg EBook of Five Tales, by John Galsworthy

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Title: Five Tales

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2684]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIVE TALES ***

Produced by David Widger

FIVE TALES

By John Galsworthy

"Life calls the tune, we dance."

CONTENTS:

THE FIRST AND LAST THE FIRST AND LAST

A STOIC A STOIC

THE APPLE TREE THE APPLE TREE

THE JURYMAN THE JURYMAN

INDIAN SUMMER OF A FORSYTE [Also posted as Etext #2594]

[In this 1919 edition of "Five Tales" the fifth tale was "Indian
Summer of a Forsyte;" in later collections, "Indian Summer..." became
the first section of the second volume of The Forsyte Saga]

THE FIRST AND LAST

"So the last shall be first, and the first last."--HOLY WRIT.

It was a dark room at that hour of six in the evening, when just the
single oil reading-lamp under its green shade let fall a dapple of
light over the Turkey carpet; over the covers of books taken out of the
bookshelves, and the open pages of the one selected; over the deep blue
and gold of the coffee service on the little old stool with its Oriental
embroidery. Very dark in the winter, with drawn curtains, many rows of
leather-bound volumes, oak-panelled walls and ceiling. So large, too,
that the lighted spot before the fire where he sat was just an oasis.
But that was what Keith Darrant liked, after his day's work--the hard
early morning study of his "cases," the fret and strain of the day
in court; it was his rest, these two hours before dinner, with books,
coffee, a pipe, and sometimes a nap. In red Turkish slippers and his
old brown velvet coat, he was well suited to that framing of glow and
darkness. A painter would have seized avidly on his clear-cut, yellowish
face, with its black eyebrows twisting up over eyes--grey or brown, one
could hardly tell, and its dark grizzling hair still plentiful, in spite
of those daily hours of wig. He seldom thought of his work while he
sat there, throwing off with practised ease the strain of that long
attention to the multiple threads of argument and evidenc