The Shadow of the Rope eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 288 pages of information about The Shadow of the Rope.

The Shadow of the Rope eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 288 pages of information about The Shadow of the Rope.

So Langholm came back from sultry London to a world of smoke and rain, with furnaces flaring through the blurred windows, and the soot laid with the dust in one of the grimiest towns in the island; but he soon shook both from his feet, and doubled back upon the local line to a rural station within a mile and a half of his cottage.  This distance he walked by muddy ways, through the peculiarly humid atmosphere created by a sky that has rained itself out and an earth that can hold no more, and came finally to his dripping garden by the wicket at the back of the cottage.  There he stood to inhale the fine earthy fragrance which atoned somewhat for a rather desolate scene.  The roses were all washed away.  William Allen Richardson clung here and there, in the shelter of the southern eaves, but he was far past his prime, and had better have perished with the exposed beauties on the tiny trees.  The soaking foliage had a bluish tinge; the glimpse of wooded upland, across the valley through the gap in the hedge of Penzance briers, lay colorless and indistinct as a faded print from an imperfect negative.  A footstep crunched the wet gravel at Langholm’s back.

“Thank God you’ve got back, sir!” cried a Yorkshire voice in devout accents; and Langholm, turning, met the troubled face and tired eyes of the woman next door, who kept house for him while living in her own.

“My dear Mrs. Brunton,” he exclaimed, “what on earth has happened?  You didn’t expect me earlier, did you?  I wired you my train first thing this morning.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t that, sir.  It’s—­it’s the poor young gentleman—­”

And her apron went to her eyes.

“What young gentleman, Mrs. Brunton?”

“Him ‘at you saw i’ London an’ sent all this way for change of air!  He wasn’t fit to travel half the distance.  I’ve been nursing of him all night and all day too.”

“A young gentleman, and sent by me?” Langholm’s face was blank until a harsh light broke over it.  “What’s his name, Mrs. Brunton?”

“I can’t tell you, sir.  He said he was a friend of yours, and that was all before he took ill.  He’s been too bad to answer questions all day.  And then we knew you’d soon be here to tell us.”

“A foreigner, I suppose?”

“I should say he was, sir.”

“And did he really tell you I had sent him?”

“Well, I can’t say he did, not in so many words, but that was what I thought he meant.  It was like this, sir,” continued Mrs. Brunton, as they stood face to face on the wet gravel:  “just about this time yesterday I was busy ironing, when my nephew, the lad you used to send with letters, who’s here again for his summer holidays, comes to me an’ says, ‘You’re wanted.’  So I went, and there was a young gentleman looking fit to drop.  He’d a bag with him, and he’d walked all the way from Upthorpe station, same as I suppose you have now; but yesterday was the hottest day we’ve had, and I never did see living face so like the dead.  He had hardly life enough to ask if this was where you lived; and when I said it was, but you were away, he nodded and said he’d just seen you in London; and he was sure he might come in and rest a bit.  Well, sir, I not only let him do that, but you never will lock up anything, so I gave him a good sup o’ your whiskey too!”

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The Shadow of the Rope from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.