The Broad Highway by Jeffery Farnol (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📖

oh, curse it! Goodby! dear lad.” So he turned, and walked up the steps into his great, lonely house.

“O Wings! with thy slender grace, and tireless strength, if ever thou didst gallop before, do thy best to-day! Spurn, spurn the dust ‘neath thy fleet hoofs, stretch thy graceful Arab neck, bear me gallantly to-day, O Wings, for never shalt thou and I see its like again.”

Swift we flew, with the wind before, and the dust behind, past wayside inns where besmocked figures paused in their grave discussions to turn and watch us by; past smiling field and darkling copse; past lonely cottage and village green; through Sevenoaks and Tonbridge, with never a stop; up Pembry hill, and down, galloping so lightly, so easily, over that hard, familiar road, which I had lately tramped with so much toil and pain; and so, as evening fell, to Sissinghurst.

A dreamy, sleepy place is Sissinghurst at all times, for its few cottages, like its inn, are very old, and great age begets dreams. But, when the sun is low, and the shadows creep out, when the old inn blinks drowsy eyes at the cottages, and they blink back drowsily at the inn, like the old friends they are; when distant cows low at gates and fences; when sheep-bells tinkle faintly; when the weary toiler, seated sideways on his weary horse, fares, homewards, nodding sleepily with every plodding hoof-fall, but rousing to give one a drowsy “good night,” then who can resist the somnolent charm of the place, save only the “Bull” himself, snorting down in lofty contempt—as rolling of eye, as curly of horn, as stiff as to tail as any indignant bull ever was, or shall be.

But as I rode, watching the evening deepen about me, soft and clear rose the merry chime of hammer and anvil, and, turning aside to the smithy, I paused there, and, stooping my head, looked in at the door.

“George!” said I. He started erect, and, dropping hammer and tongs, came out, running, then stopped suddenly, as one abashed.

“Oh, friend!” said I, “don’t you know me?”

“Why—Peter—” he stammered, and broke off.

“Have you no greeting for me, George?”

“Ay, ay—I heerd you was free, Peter, and I was glad—glad, because you was the man as I loved, an’ I waited—ay, I’ve been waitin’ for ‘ee to come back. But now you be so changed—so fine an’ grand—an’ I be all black wi’ soot from the fire—oh, man! ye bean’t my Peter no more—”

“Never say that, George—never say that,” I cried, and, leaping from the saddle, I would have caught his hand in mine, but he drew back.

“You be so fine an’ grand, Peter, an’ I be all sooty from the fire!” he repeated. “I’d like to just wash my ‘ands first.”

“Oh, Black George!” said I, “dear George.”

“Be you rich now, Peter?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“A gentleman wi’ ‘orses an’ ‘ouses an’ servants?”

“Well—what of it?”

“I’d—like to—wash my ‘ands first, if so be you don’t mind, Peter.”

“George,” said I, “don’t be a fool!” Now, as we stood thus, fronting each other in the doorway, I heard a light step upon the road behind me, and, turning, beheld Prudence.

“Oh, Prue, George is afraid of my clothes, and won’t shake hands with me!” For a moment she hesitated, looking from one to the other of us—then, all at once, laughing a little and blushing a little, she leaned forward and kissed me.

“Why, George!” said she, still blushing, “how fulish you be. Mr. Peter were as much a gentleman in his leather apron as ever he is in his fine coat—how fulish you be, George!” So proud George gave me his hand, all grimy as it was, rejoicing over me because of my good fortune and mourning over me because my smithing days were over.

“Ye see, Peter, when men ‘as worked together—and sorrowed together—an’ fou’t together—an’ knocked each other down—like you an’ me—it bean’t so easy to say ‘good-by’—so, if you must leave us—why—don’t let’s say it.”

“No, George, there shall be no ‘good-bys’ for either one of us, and I shall come back—soon. Until then, take my mare—have her made comfortable for me, and now—good night—good night!”

And so, clasping their loving hands, I turned away, somewhat hurriedly, and left them.

There was no moon, but the night was luminous with stars, and, as I strode along, my eyes were often lifted to the “wonder of the heavens,” and I wondered which particular star was Charmian’s and which mine.

Reaching the Hollow, I paused to glance about me, as I ever did, before descending that leafy path; and the shadows were very black and a chill wind stirred among the leaves, so that I shivered, and wondered, for the first time, if I had come right —if the cottage had been in Charmian’s mind when she wrote.

Then I descended the path, hurrying past a certain dark spot. And, coming at last within sight of the cottage, I paused again, and shivered again, for the windows were dark and the door shut. But the latch yielded readily beneath my hand, so I went in, and closed and barred the door behind me.

For upon the hearth a fire burned with a dim, red glow that filled the place with shadows, and the shadows were very deep.

“Charmian!” said I, “oh, Charmian, are you there have I guessed right?” I heard a rustle close beside me, and, in the gloom, came a hand to meet and clasp my own; wherefore I stooped and kissed those slender fingers, drawing her into the fireglow; and her eyes were hidden by their lashes, and the glow of the fire seemed reflected in her cheeks.

“The candles were so—bright, Peter,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“And so—when I heard you coming—”

“You heard me?”

“I was sitting on the bench outside, Peter.”

“And, when you heard me—you put the candles out?”

“They seemed so—very bright, Peter.”

“And shut the door?”

“I only—just—closed it, Peter.” She was still wrapped in her cloak, as she had been when I first saw her, wherefore I put back the hood from her face. And behold! as I did so, her hair fell down, rippling over my arm, and covering us both in its splendor, as it had done once before.

“Indeed—you have glorious hair!” said I. “It seems wonderful to think that you are my wife. I can scarcely believe it—even yet!”

“Why, I had meant you should marry me from the first, Peter.”

“Had you?”

“Do you think I should ever have come back to this dear solitude otherwise?”

Now, when I would have kissed her, she turned her head aside.

“Peter.”

“Yes, Charmian?”

“The Lady Sophia Sefton never did gallop her horse up the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

“Didn’t she, Charmian?”

“And she couldn’t help her name being bandied from mouth to mouth, or ‘hiccoughed out over slopping wineglasses,’ could she?”

“No,” said I, frowning; “what a young fool I was!”

“And, Peter—”

“Well, Charmian?”

“She never was—and never will be—buxom, or strapping—will she? ‘buxom’ is such a—hateful word, Peter! And you—love her? —wait, Peter—as much as ever you loved Charmian Brown?”

“Yes,” said I; “yes—”

“And—nearly as much as—your dream woman?”

“More—much more, because you are the embodiment of all my dreams—you always will be Charmian. Because I honor you for your intellect; and worship you for your gentleness, and spotless purity; and love you with all my strength for your warm, sweet womanhood; and because you are so strong, and beautiful, and proud—”

“And because, Peter, because I am—just—your loving—Humble Person.”

And thus it was I went forth a fool, and toiled and suffered and loved, and, in the end, got me some little wisdom.

And thus did I, all unworthy as I am, win the heart of a noble woman whose love I pray will endure, even as mine will, when we shall have journeyed to the end of this Broad Highway, which is Life, and into the mystery of the Beyond.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Broad Highway, by Jeffery Farnol

END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROAD HIGHWAY ***

This file should be named brhgw10.txt or brhgw10.zip Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, brhgw11.txt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, brhgw10a.txt

Etext prepared by Polly Stratton and Andrew Sly

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our Web sites at: http://gutenberg.net or http://promo.net/pg

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).

Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03

Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, as it appears in our Newsletters.

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 If they reach just 1-2% of the world’s population then the total will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year’s end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

eBooks Year Month

1 1971 July 10 1991 January 100 1994 January 1000 1997 August 1500 1998 October 2000 1999 December 2500 2000 December 3000 2001 November 4000 2001 October/November 6000 2002 December* 9000 2003 November* 10000 2004 January*