Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Splendid Spur<br />Being Memoirs of the Adventures of Mr. John Marvel, a Servant of His Late Maj by Arthur Quiller-Couch (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📖
- Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch
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“That I be, tho'. Have had fairing enow—wi' a man!”
Nor for a great part of the way home would she speak to me. But meeting, by Pound Scawens (a hamlet close to the road), with some friends going to the fair, she stopp'd for a while to chat with them, whilst I rode forward: and when she overtook me, her brow was clear again.
“Am a hot headed fool, Jack, and have spoil'd thy day for thee.”
“Nay, that you have not,” said I, heartily glad to see her humble, for the first time in our acquaintance: “but if you have forgiven me that which I could not help, you shall take this that I bought for you, in proof.”
And pulling out the mirror, I lean'd over and handed it to her.
“What i' the world be this?” she ask'd, taking and looking at it doubtfully.
“Why, a mirror.”
“What's that?”
“A glass to see your face in,” I explained.
“Be this my face?” She rode forward, holding up the glass in front of her. “Why, what a handsome looking gal I be, to be sure! Jack, art certain 'tis my very own face?”
“To be sure,” said I amazed.
“Well!” There was silence for a full minute, save for our horses' tread on the high road. And then—
“Jack, I be powerful dirty!”
This was true enough, and it made me laugh. She looked up solemnly at my mirth (having no sense of a joke, then or ever) and bent forward to the glass again.
“By the way,” said I, “did you mark a carriage just outside the crowd, by the Cheap Jack's booth?—with a white-hair'd gentleman seated inside?”
Joan nodded. “Master Hannibal Tingcomb: steward o' Gleys.”
“What!”
I jumped in my saddle, and with a pull at the bridle brought Molly to a standstill.
“Of Gleys?” I cried. “Steward of Sir Deakin Killigrew that was?”
“Right, lad, except the last word. 'That is,' should'st rather say.”
“Then you are wrong, Joan: for he's dead and buried, these five months. Where is this house of Gleys? for to-morrow I must ride there.”
“'Tis easy found, then: for it stands on the south coast yonder, and no house near it: five mile from anywhere, and sixteen from Temple, due south. Shall want thee afore thou startest, Jack. Dear, now! who'd ha' thought I was so dirty?”
The cottage door stood open as we rode into the yard, and from it a faint smoke came curling, with a smell of peat. Within I found the smould'ring turves scattered about as on the day of my first arrival, and among them Joan's father stretch'd, flat on his face: only this time the eat was curl'd up quietly, and lying between the old man's shoulder blades.
“Drunk again,” said Joan shortly.
But looking more narrowly, I marked a purplish stain on the ground by the old man's mouth, and turned him softly over.
“Joan,” said I, “he's not drunk—he's dead!”
She stood above us and looked down, first at the corpse, then at me, without speaking for a time: at last—-
“Then I reckon he may so well be buried.”
“Girl,” I call'd out, being shocked at this callousness, “'tis your father—and he is dead!”
“Why that's so, lad. An he were alive, shouldn't trouble thee to bury 'n.”
And so, before night, we carried him up to the bleak tor side, and dug his grave there; the black cat following us to look. Five feet deep we laid him, having dug down to solid rock; and having covered him over, went silently back to the hovel. Joan had not shed a single tear.
CHAPTER XIV. — I DO NO GOOD IN THE HOUSE OF GLEYS.
Very early next morning I awoke, and hearing no sound in the loft above (whither, since my coming, Joan had carried her bed), concluded her to be still asleep. But in this I was mistaken: for going to the well at the back to wash, I found her there, studying her face in the mirror.
“Luckily met, Jack,” she said, when I was cleansed and freshly glowing: “Now fill another bucket and sarve me the same.”
“Cannot you wash yourself?” I ask'd, as I did so.
“Lost the knack, I reckon. Stand thee so, an' slush the water over me.”
“But your clothes!” I cried out, “they'll be soaking wet!”
“Clothes won't be worse for a wash, neither. So slush away.”
Therefore, standing at three paces' distance, I sent a bucketful over her, and then another and another. Six times I filled and emptied the bucket in all: and at the end she was satisfied, and went, dripping, back to the kitchen to get me my breakfast.
“Art early abroad,” she said, as we sat together over the meal.
“Yes, for I must ride to Gleys this morning.”
“Shan't be sorry to miss thee for a while. Makes me feel so shy—this cleanliness.” So, promising to be back by nightfall, I went presently to saddle Molly: and following Joan's directions and her warnings against quags and pitfalls, was soon riding south across the moor and well on my road to the House of Gleys.
My way leading me by Braddock Down, I turned aside for a while to examine the ground of the late fight (tho' by now little was to be seen but a piece of earthwork left unfinish'd by the rebels, and the fresh mounds where the dead were laid); and so 'twas high noon—and a dull, cheerless day—before the hills broke and let me have sight of the sea. Nor, till the noise of the surf was in my ears, did I mark the chimneys and naked grey walls of the house I was bound for.
'Twas a gloomy, savage pile of granite, perch'd at the extremity of a narrow neck of land, where every wind might sweep it, and the waves beat on three sides the cliff below. The tide was now at the full, almost, and the spray flying in my face, as we crossed the head of a small beach, forded a stream, and scrambled up the rough road to the entrance gate.
A thin line of smoke blown level from one chimney was all the sign of life in the building: for the narrow lights of the upper story were mostly shuttered, and the lower floor was hid from me by a high wall enclosing
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