United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She seemed to be ashamed of her kindness to Mr Shushions, and to wish to efface any impression of amiability that she might have made on Edwin. But she could not have done so. "Well," he said to himself, "there's no getting over it. You're the biggest caution I've ever come across!" His condition was one of various agitation.
More than once, after reflecting on her, he had laughed, and said lightly to himself: "Well, the chances are I shall never see her again! Funny girl!" But the recollection of her gesture with Mr Shushions prevented him from dismissing her out of his head with quite that lightness... "I'm ordered to tell you that Mr Orgreave will be down in a few minutes," she said. "Hello!" he exclaimed.
Mr Shushions's tear was the tear of the creator looking upon his creation and marvelling at it. Mr Shushions loved Darius as only the benefactor can love the benefited.
"I've preached in the pulpits o' our Connexion," said Mr Shushions with solemn, quavering emotion, "for over fifty year, as you know. But I'd ne'er gi' out another text if Primitives had ought to do wi' such a flouting o' th' Almighty. Nay, I'd go down to my grave dumb afore God!"
Not he, however, but she jumped down first and pushed towards the barrow. She made the path, and he followed. She protested to the policeman, and he too modestly seconded her. Yet the policeman, ignoring her, addressed himself to Edwin Clayhanger. Hilda was infuriated. It appeared that old Mr. Shushions had had a ticket for the platform, but had lost it.
He felt himself, and had always felt himself, to be the last man in the world capable of figuring with authority in a public altercation. He loathed public altercations. The name of Shushions meant nothing to him; he had forgotten it, if indeed he had ever wittingly heard it. And he did not at first recognise the old man. Descended from the barrel, he was merely an item in the loose-packed crowd.
He found Darius alone in the drawing-room, in front of an uncustomary fire, garden-clay still on his boots, and "The Christian News" under his spectacles. The Sunday before the funeral of Mr Shushions had been so unusual and so distressing that Darius had fallen into arrear with his perusals.
Her cold, almost daemonic smile! Her sobs! Her sudden retreats! What was at the back of it all? He remembered her divine gesture over the fond Shushions. He remembered the ecstatic quality of her surrender in the shop. He remembered her first love-letter: "Every bit of me is absolutely yours."
As he stood furious and impotent in the hall, he thought, with his imagination quickened by the memory of Mr Shushions: "When you're old, and I've got you" he clenched his fists and his teeth "when I've got you and you can't help yourself, by God it'll be my turn!" And he meant it. He seized his overcoat and hat, and putting them on anyhow, strode out.
Edwin had never considered his father as an exemplar. He was a just and unmerciful judge of his father, against whom he had a thousand grievances. And in his heart he resentfully despised Mr Shushions, and decided again that he was a simpleton, and not a very tactful one. But then he saw a round yellow tear slowly form in the red rim of the old man's eye and run crookedly down that wrinkled cheek.
Word Of The Day