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قراءة كتاب The Marbeck Inn A Novel

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‏اللغة: English
The Marbeck Inn
A Novel

The Marbeck Inn A Novel

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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agreed, "I can see your meaning, but it's that that roused me to point. Love's like a pan of soup with me. It's got to seethe a while before it boils. But I'm boiling now, and I'm here to tell you so. I've loved you since I saw you, Madge. After Sunday School one day it was, with a wind on that blew the bonny curls across your eyes. I always fancied gold and you're gold twice over." Madge was deeply moved at this idealization of her hair. She had been made more peevishly conscious of its redness than ever by the unsparing comments of the weaving-shed, but she did not see wherein she was gold twice over until he explained it. "I didn't notice that the first day. I only saw your hair. I hadn't the nerve to come close enough to see the colour of your eyes. But when I did, and found them all gold-brown as well, that finished me. I was deep in love to the top of my head. Drowned in it, you might say."

"You're talking a lot of nonsense, George," said Madge, with a fond appreciation that belied her words.

"I'm telling you I love you," he said, "and I'm asking if there's anything that you could see your way to tell me in return. I know I'm not smart, Madge, but I'd work my fingers off to make you happy. Can't you say you love me, lass? Not," he added, "if it isn't true, of course. I wouldn't ask you to tell a lie even to oblige me."

"It might not be a lie," said Madge softly, "but——" She paused so that he was left to guess the rest.

"But," he suggested, "you don't care to go so far as to say it?"

He watched her timidly, with courage oozing out of him. She had all but given him to hope, but now it appeared she had no more to say. "Well, I can understand," he said, half turning towards the door. "I'm not much of a chap, and you might easily have put me down much harder than you did. It's soft letting now, by reason of your tactful ways. I'll... I'll go and see if Mrs. Whitehead has given me yon other blanket."

He was at the door before she stopped him. "George!" she said, "come back. You're getting this all wrong. You know about my brother." George nearly smiled. "It'ud not be your mother's fault if I didn't," he said.

"No," she said; "I suppose everybody knows about his going to the Grammar School. They don't all know what it means." Madge was trying to be loyal to the family ideal, she was trying not to be bitter, but it wasn't easy. It was one thing to go without new hats and the accustomed ways of service, but another to go without George.

"I'd like you to understand that this family puts itself about a bit for Sam's sake. We think he'll go a long way up in the world, and the rest of us aren't doing anything to keep him down. None of us, no matter how it hurts. Are you seeing what I mean?"

He saw. "I'm not class enough for you," he said.

It was a part, but not the whole, of her meaning, and Madge wanted no misapprehensions. "You're class enough for me," she said, "but I'm telling you where the doubt comes in. It's a habit we've got in this family. We think of Sam." That made the matter plain; she loved him, and while he granted there was a certain impediment through Anne's habit of subordinating everything to Sam's interests, he saw no just cause why he should not marry Madge. "I wouldn't knowingly do anything to upset your mother," he said, "but I've told you I'm boiling with my love for you. I'm easily put off my purpose as a rule. I mean to say, supposing I ask Mrs. Whitehead for a kipper for my tea, and she tells me eggs are cheap and she's got an egg instead, I don't make a song about it—so long as the egg's not extra stale. But I'll own I didn't think of Sam in this. I thought it was for you and me to settle by ourselves."

"Sam's in it," said Madge dully. "He's in everything in this house."

Then Anne came in and the disturbance of her entrance, together with the fact that he had finished his passage of "De Senectute" made Sam aware that something was toward. He kept his eyes discreetly on his book, but fluttered the pages of his dictionary no more. He found youth more arresting than old age.

Anne's quick comprehension took the situation in at once. She had been shopping, and as she put her parcels on the dresser she gave Madge the benefit of a wordless reproof. She could say a good deal without opening her mouth, and said it. But Madge was not going to be parted from her George without a fight. Sam apart, George was eligible, and Madge saw this as an unique occasion—the occasion for leaving Sam out. At least, she meant to try.

George was turned craven at sight of Anne and sidled to the door. "I'll be getting on home, I think," he said.

"You wait your hurry," said Madge hardily. "Mother, George has been asking me to wed him."

It was the gage of battle, for Anne knew the fact already. The statement of it was a challenge. She met it coolly. "Has he?" she said. "Well, I hope you told him gently."

And at that George found his second wind of courage, and intervened like a man. "She's told me nothing with her tongue. Nothing for certain. But a blind man on a galloping horse could read the thoughts of her. Mrs. Branstone, I love that girl as if she'd put a spell on me. It's the biggest feeling that's come into my life, and I'm full and bursting with it, or I'd not have the face to expose my inside thoughts to you like this. And if you'll only tell me I can take her, the Mayor in his carriage won't be happier than me."

"You know how steady George is, mother," Madge seconded him.

"He needs to be," said Anne dryly. "He's a window-cleaner."

"I'm steady by nature, Mrs. Branstone, as well as trade. I don't drink. Somehow one glass of ale is enough to make me whimsical, so I take none at all. I know I'm being bowdacious in my love, but I'm moved to plead with you. We'd not be standing in Sam's way. We'd live that quiet and snug you'd never know we're in the town at all." Anne looked at him with a faint trace of appreciation drenched in her profound contempt. A poor creature, but he had his thimbleful of spunk! "It would need to be quiet," she said, "with two to keep on your wage. Are you contented with it?"

Disastrously, he was. "It's a regular job," he said, voicing his pride at being above the ranks of casual workers. In Anne's view, a hopeless case.

"It's a regular rotten job," she retorted, but spoke more softly than her wont. "I've Sam to consider, Madge. You might live quiet, but Sam's brother-in-law has got to make a better show of it than to be seen all over the place at the top of a ladder like a monkey on a stick. I'm not being hard on you, George Chappie, and I've nothing against you bar that you're not good enough. You better yourself and you'll do. Stay as you are, and Madge'ull do the same."

George opened his mouth to speak, but found that nothing came. It was a regular job, it satisfied his ambitions, and her objections were inexplicable. He had shot his bolt and, having no more to say, he went, relapsing to such invertebracy that when he found that Mrs. Whitehead had not added the other blanket to his bed he had nothing to say to her either, but spread a threadbare overcoat on the coverlet and shivered unhappily to sleep.








CHAPTER III—THE HELL-PIKE CLUB

TO a schoolboy of sixteen, love is an imbecile emotion, its victims harmless lunatics, and it is not to be supposed that Sam's interest in the affair of Madge and George was based on intimate understanding. His conspiratorial action came rather as a lark: behind, perhaps, was the recognition that adults did habitually make fools of themselves in this way, that his loyalty in such a case was to Madge who was of his generation, and that Anne in obstructing their marriage was outrunning the constable in her demands for self-sacrifice on his behalf.

Larking, defined as enjoyable interference with other people for motives

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