The Literary Sense

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Nesbit Edith. The Literary Sense

THE UNFAITHFUL LOVER

ROUNDING OFF A SCENE

THE OBVIOUS

THE LIE ABSOLUTE

THE GIRL WITH THE GUITAR

THE MAN WITH THE BOOTS

THE SECOND BEST

A HOLIDAY

THE FORCE OF HABIT

THE BRUTE

DICK, TOM, AND HARRY

MISS EDEN'S BABY

THE LOVER, THE GIRL, AND THE ONLOOKER

THE DUEL

CINDERELLA

WITH AN E

UNDER THE NEW MOON

THE LOVE OF ROMANCE

Отрывок из книги

A SOFT rain was falling. Umbrellas swayed and gleamed in the light of the street lamps. The brightness of the shop windows reflected itself in the muddy mirror of the wet pavements. A miserable night, a dreary night, a night to tempt the wretched to the glimmering Embankment, and thence to the river, hardly wetter or cleaner than the gutters of the London streets. Yet the sight of these same streets was like wine in the veins to a man who drove through them in a hansom piled with Gladstone bags and P. and O. trunks. He leaned over the apron of the hansom and looked eagerly, longingly, lovingly, at every sordid detail: the crowd on the pavement, its haste as intelligible to him as the rush of ants when their hill is disturbed by the spade; the glory and glow of corner public-houses; the shifting dance of the gleaming wet umbrellas. It was England, it was London, it was home – and his heart swelled till he felt it in his throat. After ten years – the dream realised, the longing appeased. London – and all was said.

His cab, delayed by a red newspaper cart, jammed in altercative contact with a dray full of brown barrels, paused in Cannon Street. The eyes that drank in the scene perceived a familiar face watching on the edge of the pavement for a chance to cross the road under the horses' heads – the face of one who ten years ago had been the slightest of acquaintances. Now time and home-longing juggled with memory till the face seemed that of a friend. To meet a friend – this did, indeed, round off the scene of the home-coming. The man in the cab threw back the doors and leapt out. He crossed under the very nose-bag of a stationed dray horse. He wrung the friend – last seen as an acquaintance – by the hand. The friend caught fire at the contact. Any passer-by, who should have been spared a moment for observation by the cares of umbrella and top-hat, had surely said, "Damon and Pythias!" and gone onward smiling in sympathy with friends long severed and at last reunited.

.....

He was genuinely angry; he was back in the past, where he had a right to be angry with her. Her eyes grew soft.

"Do you mean to say that I was wrong– that it was all my fault – that you did love me?"

.....