A Rough Shaking
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George MacDonald. A Rough Shaking
Chapter I. How I Came to know Clare Skymer
Chapter II. With his parents
Chapter III. Without his parents
Chapter IV. The new family
Chapter V. His new home
Chapter VI. What did draw out his first smile
Chapter VII. Clare and his brothers
Chapter VIII. Clare and his human brothers
Chapter IX. Clare the defender
Chapter X. The black aunt
Chapter XI. Clare on the farm
Chapter XII. Clare becomes a guardian of the poor
Chapter XIII. Clare the vagabond
Chapter XIV. Their first helper
Chapter XV. Their first host
Chapter XVI. On the tramp
Chapter XVII. The baker’s cart
Chapter XVIII. Beating the town
Chapter XIX. The blacksmith and his forge
Chapter XX. Tommy reconnoitres
Chapter XXI. Tommy is found and found out
Chapter XXII. The smith in a rage
Chapter XXIII. Treasure trove
Chapter XXIV. Justifiable burglary
Chapter XXV. A new quest
Chapter XXVI. A new entrance
Chapter XXVII. The baby has her breakfast
Chapter XXVIII. Treachery
Chapter XXIX. The baker
Chapter XXX. The draper
Chapter XXXI. An addition to the family
Chapter XXXII. Shop and baby
Chapter XXXIII. A bad penny
Chapter XXXIV. How things went for a time
Chapter XXXV. Clare disregards the interests of his employers
Chapter XXXVI. The policeman
Chapter XXXVII. The magistrate
Chapter XXXVIII. The workhouse
Chapter XXXIX. Away
Chapter XL. Maly
Chapter XLI. The caravans
Chapter XLII. Nimrod
Chapter XLIII. Across country
Chapter XLIV. A third mother
Chapter XLV. The menagerie
Chapter XLVI. The angel of the wild beasts
Chapter XLVII. Glum Gunn
Chapter XLVIII. The puma
Chapter XLIX. Glum Gunn’s revenge
Chapter L. Clare seeks help
Chapter LI. Clare a true master
Chapter LII. Miss Tempest
Chapter LIII. The gardener
Chapter LIV. The Kitchen
Chapter LV. The wheel rests for a time
Chapter LVI. Strategy
Chapter LVII. Ann Shotover
Chapter LVIII. Child-talk
Chapter LIX. Lovers’ walks
Chapter LX. The shoe-black
Chapter LXI. A walk with consequences
Chapter LXII. The cage of the puma
Chapter LXIII. The dome of the angels
Chapter LXIV. The panther
Chapter LXV. At home
Chapter LXVI. The end of Clare Skymer’s boyhood
Отрывок из книги
The lingering, long-drawn-out table d’hôte dinner was just over in one of the inns on the cornice road. The gentlemen had gone into the garden, and some of the ladies to the salotto, where open windows admitted the odours of many a flower and blossoming tree, for it was toward the end of spring in that region. One had sat down to a tinkling piano, and was striking a few chords, more to her own pleasure than that of the company. Two or three were looking out into the garden, where the diaphanous veil of twilight had so speedily thickened to the crape of night, its darkness filled with thousands of small isolated splendours—fire-flies, those “golden boats” never seen “on a sunny sea,” but haunting the eves of the young summer, pulsing, pulsing through the dusky air with seeming aimlessness, like sweet thoughts that have no faith to bind them in one. A tall, graceful woman stood in one of the windows alone. She had never been in Italy before, had never before seen fire-flies, and was absorbed in the beauty of their motion as much as in that of their golden flashes. Each roving star had a tide in its light that rose and ebbed as it moved, so that it seemed to push itself on by its own radiance, ever waxing and waning. In wide, complicated dance, they wove a huge, warpless tapestry with the weft of an ever vanishing aureate shine. The lady, an Englishwoman evidently, gave a little sigh and looked round, regretting, apparently, that her husband was not by her side to look on the loveliness that woke a faint-hued fairy-tale in her heart. The same moment he entered the room and came to her. He was a man above the middle height, and from the slenderness of his figure, looked taller than he was. He had a vivacity of motion, a readiness to turn on his heel, a free swing of the shoulders, and an erect carriage of the head, which all marked him a man of action: one that speculated on his calling would immediately have had his sense of fitness satisfied when he heard that he was the commander of an English gun-boat, which he was now on his way to Genoa to join. He was young—within the twenties, though looking two or three and thirty, his face was so browned by sun and wind. His features were regular and attractive, his eyes so dark that the liveliness of their movement seemed hardly in accord with the weight of their colour. His wife was very fair, with large eyes of the deepest blue of eyes. She looked delicate, and was very lovely. They had been married about five years. A friend had brought them in his yacht as far as Nice, and they were now going on by land. From Genoa the lady must find her way home without her husband.
The lights in the room having been extinguished that the few present might better see the fire-flies, he put his arm round her waist.
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The Porsons stood for a moment stunned, came to their senses, and made haste to enter the building. With white faces and trembling hands, they drew aside the heavy leather curtain that hung within the great door, but could for a moment see nothing; the air inside seemed filled with a solid yellow dust As their eyes recovered from the sudden change of sunlight for gloom, however, they began to distinguish the larger outlines, and perceived that the floor was one confused heap of rafters and bricks and tiles and stones and lime. The centre of the roof had been a great dome; now there was nothing between their eyes and the clear heaven but the slowly vanishing cloud of ruin. In the mound below they could at first distinguish nothing human—could not have told, in the dim chaos, limbs from broken rafters. Eager to help, they dared not set their feet upon the mass—not that they feared the walls which another shock might bring upon their heads, but that they shuddered lest their own added weight should crush some live human creature they could not descry. Three or four who had received little or no hurt, were moving about the edges of the heap, vaguely trying to lift now this, now that, but yielding each attempt in despair, either from its evident uselessness, or for lack of energy. They would give a pull at a beam that lay across some writhing figure, find it immovable, and turn with a groan to some farther cry. How or where were they to help? Others began to come in with white faces and terror-stricken eyes; and before long the sepulchral ruin had little groups all over it, endeavouring in shiftless fashion to bring rescue to the prisoned souls.
The Porsons saw nothing they could do. Great beams and rafters which it was beyond their power to move an inch, lay crossed in all directions; and they could hold little communication with those who were in a fashion at work. Alas, they were little better than vainly busy, while the louder moans accompanying their attempts revealed that they added to the tortures of those they sought to deliver! The two saw more plainly now, and could distinguish contorted limbs, and here and there a countenance. The silence, more and more seldom broken, was growing itself terrible. Had they known how many were buried there, they would have wondered so few were left able to cry out. At moments there was absolute stillness in the dreadful place. The heart of Mrs. Porson began to sink.
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