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Updated: May 14, 2025
And Ardworth steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the creaking stairs. On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye, searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chair set by the fireless hearth. And from amidst a mass of coverings a pale face emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor.
He was obliged to leave his wife and children in Aberdeen, and to tramp himself on foot to Banff, so that he might earn the necessary money to bring them back; for the cash he had got for the collection had all gone in paying expenses. It is almost too sad to relate; and no wonder poor Edward felt crushed indeed when he got back once more to his lonely shoemaker's bench and fireless fireside.
His rooms, according to Dick's report, were fireless and ill kept, but he stuck to them because his landlady, whom he had fished out of some financial plight, had difficulty in obtaining other lodgers. He belonged to no clubs, and wandered out alone for his meals, mysteriously refusing the hospitality which his friends pressed on him.
She found him sitting, his heels on the upper part of a chimney-piece with a fireless grate, reading the Millenial Star. The hot April sun, streaming through the windows of his office, had caused him to take off his coat, which was no longer thread-bare. His shirt sleeves were fine enough and white; the high hat that was pushed far on the back of his head was highly polished.
The old-fashioned and heavy chairs the brown wainscot walls the little cupboard recessed as it were to the right of the fire-place, and piled with morsels of Indian china and long taper wine glasses the small window-panes set deep in the wall, giving a dim view of a bleak and melancholy-looking garden in the rear yea, the very floor he trod the very table on which he leant the very hearth, dull and fireless as it was, opposite his gaze all took a familiar meaning in his eye, and breathed a household voice into his ear.
Pierre whose heart was oppressed by his reception, and who realised the utter destitution of this family by the sight of the bare, fireless room, and the distressed mournfulness of its three inmates decided all the same to repeat his question: "Madame, do you know an old workman named Laveuve in the house?"
He felt pretty confident, too, that they would hardly attempt to play the burglar game in his presence, but he was curious to see how far they would go, and he was not unarmed. "Be so good as to follow me, gentlemen," he said in his stiff way, and led them in the desired direction. The master's room, though fireless, was warm. In silence they entered, their footfalls soundless on the heavy carpet.
Call of hungry waters, patter of driving rain, sough of the weird wind, it requires good company and a red-coal fire to offset their moanings of eternity. Yet though the fireless tropics could not supply one, and she lacked the other, the storm voices were hardly responsible for Ethel Steiner's sadness the third morning after her arrival.
The rats had devoured his face. But it was particularly on an evening of the last winter that Pierre's heart had overflowed with pity. Awful in winter time are the sufferings of the poor in their fireless hovels, where the snow penetrates by every chink. The Seine rolls blocks of ice, the soil is frost-bound, in all sorts of callings there is an enforced cessation of work.
It is always a son's duty to spare his father pain." Then he bowed, wheeled, and went out of the room. Two hours later Robin was still lying completely dressed on his bed in the dark. It was a plain little chamber where he lay, fireless, yet not too cold, since it was wainscoted from floor to ceiling, and looked out eastwards upon the pleasaunce, with rooms on either side of it.
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