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. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (ebook reader 7 inch .txt) 📖
- Author: Charles Dickens
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Book online «Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (ebook reader 7 inch .txt) 📖». Author Charles Dickens
A woman. A solitary woman of some thirty years of age; tall; well-formed; handsome; miserably dressed; the soil of many country roads in varied weather—dust, chalk, clay, gravel—clotted on her grey cloak by the streaming wet; no bonnet on her head, nothing to defend her rich black hair from the rain, but a torn handkerchief; with the fluttering ends of which, and with her hair, the wind blinded her so that she often stopped to push them back, and look upon the way she was going.
She was in the act of doing so, when Harriet observed her. As her hands, parting on her sunburnt forehead, swept across her face, and threw aside the hindrances that encroached upon it, there was a reckless and regardless beauty in it: a dauntless and depraved indifference to more than weather: a carelessness of what was cast upon her bare head from Heaven or earth: that, coupled with her misery and loneliness, touched the heart of her fellow-woman. She thought of all that was perverted and debased within her, no less than without: of modest graces of the mind, hardened and steeled, like these attractions of the person; of the many gifts of the Creator flung to the winds like the wild hair; of all the beautiful ruin upon which the storm was beating and the night was coming.
Thinking of this, she did not turn away with a delicate indignation—too many of her own compassionate and tender sex too often do—but pitied her.
Her fallen sister came on, looking far before her, trying with her eager eyes to pierce the mist in which the city was enshrouded, and glancing, now and then, from side to side, with the bewildered—and uncertain aspect of a stranger. Though her tread was bold and courageous, she was fatigued, and after a moment of irresolution,—sat down upon a heap of stones; seeking no shelter from the rain, but letting it rain on her as it would.
She was now opposite the house; raising her head after resting it for a moment on both hands, her eyes met those of Harriet.
In a moment, Harriet was at the door; and the other, rising from her seat at her beck, came slowly, and with no conciliatory look, towards her.
‘Why do you rest in the rain?’ said Harriet, gently.
‘Because I have no other resting-place,’ was the reply.
‘But there are many places of shelter near here. This,’ referring to the little porch, ‘is better than where you were. You are very welcome to rest here.’
The wanderer looked at her, in doubt and surprise, but without any expression of thankfulness; and sitting down, and taking off one of her worn shoes to beat out the fragments of stone and dust that were inside, showed that her foot was cut and bleeding.
Harriet uttering an expression of pity, the traveller looked up with a contemptuous and incredulous smile.
‘Why, what’s a torn foot to such as me?’ she said. ‘And what’s a torn foot in such as me, to such as you?’
‘Come in and wash it,’ answered Harriet, mildly, ‘and let me give you something to bind it up.’
The woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her own eyes, hid them against it, and wept. Not like a woman, but like a stern man surprised into that weakness; with a violent heaving of her breast, and struggle for recovery, that showed how unusual the emotion was with her.
She submitted to be led into the house, and, evidently more in gratitude than in any care for herself, washed and bound the injured place. Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner, and when she had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her, before resuming her road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her clothes before the fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any evidence of concern in her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and unbinding the handkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet hair fall down below her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking at the blaze.
‘I daresay you are thinking,’ she said, lifting her head suddenly, ‘that I used to be handsome, once. I believe I was—I know I was—Look here!’
She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she would have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as though it were a heap of serpents.
‘Are you a stranger in this place?’ asked Harriet.
‘A stranger!’ she returned, stopping between each short reply, and looking at the fire. ‘Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger. I have had no almanack where I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I don’t know this part. It’s much altered since I went away.’
‘Have you been far?’
‘Very far. Months upon months over the sea, and far away even then. I have been where convicts go,’ she added, looking full upon her entertainer. ‘I have been one myself.’
‘Heaven help you and forgive you!’ was the gentle answer.
‘Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!’ she returned, nodding her head at the fire. ‘If man would help some of us a little more, God would forgive us all the sooner perhaps.’
But she was softened by the earnest manner, and the cordial face so full of mildness and so free from judgment, of her, and said, less hardily:
‘We may be about the same age, you and me. If I am older, it is not above a year or two. Oh think of that!’
She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form would show the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hung down her head.
‘There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is never too late to amend,’ said Harriet. ‘You are penitent?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I am not! I can’t be. I am no such thing. Why should I be penitent, and all the world go free? They talk to me of my penitence. Who’s penitent for the wrongs that have been done to me?’
She rose up, bound her handkerchief about her head, and turned to move away.
‘Where are you going?’ said Harriet.
‘Yonder,’ she answered, pointing with her hand. ‘To London.’
‘Have you any home to go to?’
‘I think I have a mother. She’s as much a mother, as her dwelling is a home,’ she answered with a bitter laugh.
‘Take this,’ cried Harriet, putting money in her hand. ‘Try to do well. It is very little, but for one day it may keep you from harm.’
‘Are you married?’ said the other, faintly, as she took it.
‘No. I live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I would give you more.’
‘Will you let me kiss you?’
Seeing no scorn or repugnance in her face, the object of her charity bent over her as she asked the question, and pressed her lips against her cheek. Once more she caught her arm, and covered her eyes with it; and then was gone.
Gone into the deepening night, and howling wind, and pelting rain; urging her way on towards the mist-enshrouded city where the blurred lights gleamed; and with her black hair, and disordered head-gear, fluttering round her reckless face.
CHAPTER 34. Another Mother and Daughter
In an ugly and dark room, an old woman, ugly and dark too, sat listening to the wind and rain, and crouching over a meagre fire. More constant to the last-named occupation than the first, she never changed her attitude, unless, when any stray drops of rain fell hissing on the smouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention to the whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall again lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought, in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as is the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation on its shore.
There was no light in the room save that which the fire afforded. Glaring sullenly from time to time like the eye of a fierce beast half asleep, it revealed no objects that needed to be jealous of a better display. A heap of rags, a heap of bones, a wretched bed, two or three mutilated chairs or stools, the black walls and blacker ceiling, were all its winking brightness shone upon. As the old woman, with a gigantic and distorted image of herself thrown half upon the wall behind her, half upon the roof above, sat bending over the few loose bricks within which it was pent, on the damp hearth of the chimney—for there was no stove—she looked as if she were watching at some witch’s altar for a favourable token; and but that the movement of her chattering jaws and trembling chin was too frequent and too fast for the slow flickering of the fire, it would have seemed an illusion wrought by the light, as it came and went, upon a face as motionless as the form to which it belonged.
If Florence could have stood within the room and looked upon the original of the shadow thrown upon the wall and roof as it cowered thus over the fire, a glance might have sufficed to recall the figure of Good Mrs Brown; notwithstanding that her childish recollection of that terrible old woman was as grotesque and exaggerated a presentment of the truth, perhaps, as the shadow on the wall. But Florence was not there to look on; and Good Mrs Brown remained unrecognised, and sat staring at her fire, unobserved.
Attracted by a louder sputtering than usual, as the rain came hissing down the chimney in a little stream, the old woman raised her head, impatiently, to listen afresh. And this time she did not drop it again; for there was a hand upon the door, and a footstep in the room.
‘Who’s that?’ she said, looking over her shoulder.
‘One who brings you news, was the answer, in a woman’s voice.
‘News? Where from?’
‘From abroad.’
‘From beyond seas?’ cried the old woman, starting up.
‘Ay, from beyond seas.’
The old woman raked the fire together, hurriedly, and going close to her visitor who had entered, and shut the door, and who now stood in the middle of the room, put her hand upon the drenched cloak, and turned the unresisting figure, so as to have it in the full light of the fire. She did not find what she had expected, whatever that might be; for she let the cloak go again, and uttered a querulous cry of disappointment and misery.
‘What is the matter?’ asked her visitor.
‘Oho! Oho!’ cried the old woman, turning her face upward, with a terrible howl.
‘What is the matter?’ asked the visitor again.
‘It’s not my gal!’ cried the old woman, tossing up her arms, and clasping her hands above her head. ‘Where’s my Alice? Where’s my handsome daughter? They’ve been the death of her!’
‘They’ve not been the death of her yet, if your name’s Marwood,’ said the visitor.
‘Have you seen my gal, then?’ cried the old woman. ‘Has she wrote to me?’
‘She said you couldn’t read,’ returned the other.
‘No more I can!’ exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands.
‘Have you no light here?’ said the other, looking round the room.
The old woman, mumbling and shaking her head, and muttering to herself about her handsome daughter, brought a candle from a cupboard in the corner, and thrusting it into the fire with a trembling hand, lighted it with some difficulty and set it on the table. Its dirty wick burnt dimly at first, being choked in its own grease; and when the bleared eyes and failing sight of the old woman could distinguish anything by its light, her visitor was sitting with her arms folded, her eyes turned downwards, and a handkerchief she had worn upon her head lying on the table by her side.
‘She sent to me by
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