'He told me he lived in Marlborough Street, I'm sure,' said Mr.

Hale, with a much perplexed air.

'Perhaps it is one of the economies he still practises, to live

in a very small house. But here are plenty of people about; let

me ask.' She accordingly inquired of a passer-by, and was informed that

Mr. Thornton lived close to the mill, and had the factory

lodge-door pointed out to her, at the end of the long dead wall

they had noticed.

The lodge-door was like a common garden-door; on one side of it

were great closed gates for the ingress and egress of lurries and

wagons. The lodge-keeper admitted them into a great oblong yard,

on one side of which were offices for the transaction of

business; on the opposite, an immense many-windowed mill, whence

proceeded the continual clank of machinery and the long groaning

roar of the steam-engine, enough to deafen those who lived within

the enclosure. Opposite to the wall, along which the street ran,

on one of the narrow sides of the oblong, was a handsome

stone-coped house,--blackened, to be sure, by the smoke, but with

paint, windows, and steps kept scrupulously clean. It was

evidently a house which had been built some fifty or sixty years.

The stone facings--the long, narrow windows, and the number of

them--the flights of steps up to the front door, ascending from

either side, and guarded by railing--all witnessed to its age.

Margaret only wondered why people who could afford to live in so

good a house, and keep it in such perfect order, did not prefer a

much smaller dwelling in the country, or even some suburb; not in

the continual whirl and din of the factory. Her unaccustomed ears

could hardly catch her father's voice, as they stood on the steps

awaiting the opening of the door. The yard, too, with the great

doors in the dead wall as a boundary, was but a dismal look-out

for the sitting-rooms of the house--as Margaret found when they

had mounted the old-fashioned stairs, and been ushered into the

drawing-room, the three windows of which went over the front door

and the room on the right-hand side of the entrance. There was no

one in the drawing-room. It seemed as though no one had been in

it since the day when the furniture was bagged up with as much

care as if the house was to be overwhelmed with lava, and

discovered a thousand years hence. The walls were pink and gold;

the pattern on the carpet represented bunches of flowers on a

light ground, but it was carefully covered up in the centre by a

linen drugget, glazed and colourless. The window-curtains were

lace; each chair and sofa had its own particular veil of netting,

or knitting. Great alabaster groups occupied every flat surface,

safe from dust under their glass shades. In the middle of the

room, right under the bagged-up chandelier, was a large circular

table, with smartly-bound books arranged at regular intervals

round the circumference of its polished surface, like

gaily-coloured spokes of a wheel. Everything reflected light,

nothing absorbed it. The whole room had a painfully spotted,

spangled, speckled look about it, which impressed Margaret so

unpleasantly that she was hardly conscious of the peculiar

cleanliness required to keep everything so white and pure in such

an atmosphere, or of the trouble that must be willingly expended

to secure that effect of icy, snowy discomfort. Wherever she

looked there was evidence of care and labour, but not care and

labour to procure ease, to help on habits of tranquil home

employment; solely to ornament, and then to preserve ornament

from dirt or destruction.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024