✕ about read complete download ePub

✕
about read complete download ePub Kindle
The Shadows on the Wall

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

This web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide.

Last updated Wednesday, December 17, 2014 at 13:39.

To the best of our knowledge, the text of this
work is in the “Public Domain” in Australia.
HOWEVER, copyright law varies in other countries, and the work may still be under copyright in the country from which you are accessing this website. It is your responsibility to check the applicable copyright laws in your country before downloading this work.

eBooks@Adelaide
The University of Adelaide Library
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005

The Shadows on the Wall

“Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward died,” said Caroline Glynn.
She was elderly, tall, and harshly thin, with a hard colourlessness of face. She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca Ann Glynn, younger, stouter and rosy of face between her crinkling puffs of gray hair, gasped, by way of assent. She sat in a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she filled a great rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently back and forth, her black silks whispering and her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her brother Edward lay dead in the house,) could not disturb her outward serenity of demeanour. She was grieved over the loss of her brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him, but never had Emma Brigham lost sight of her own importance amidst the waters of tribulation. She was always awake to the consciousness of her own stability in the midst of vicissitudes and the splendour of her permanent bearing.
But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her sister Caroline’s announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann’s gasp of terror and distress in response.
“I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward was so near his end,” said she with an asperity which disturbed slightly the roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.
“Of course he did not KNOW,” murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone strangely out of keeping with her appearance.
One involuntarily looked again to be sure that such a feeble pipe came from that full-swelling chest.
“Of course he did not know it,” said Caroline quickly. She turned on her sister with a strange sharp look of suspicion. “How could he have known it?” said she. Then she shrank as if from the other’s possible answer. “Of course you and I both know he could not,” said she conclusively, but her pale face was paler than it had been before.
Rebecca gasped again. The married sister, Mrs. Emma Brigham, was now sitting up straight in her chair; she had ceased rocking, and was eyeing them both intently with a sudden accentuation of family likeness in her face. Given one common intensity of emotion and similar lines showed forth, and the three sisters of one race were evident.
“What do you mean?” said she impartially to them both. Then she, too, seemed to shrink before a possible answer. She even laughed an evasive sort of laugh. “I guess you don’t mean anything,” said she, but her face wore still the expression of shrinking horror.
“Nobody means anything,” said Caroline firmly. She rose and crossed the room toward the door with grim decisiveness.
“Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Brigham.
“I have something to see to,” replied Caroline, and the others at once knew by her tone that she had some solemn and sad duty to perform in the chamber of death.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Brigham.
After the door had closed behind Caroline, she turned to Rebecca.
“Did Henry have many words with him?” she asked.
“They were talking very loud,” replied Rebecca evasively, yet with an answering gleam of ready response to the other’s curiosity in the quick lift of her soft blue eyes.
Mrs. Brigham looked at her. She had not resumed rocking. She still sat up straight with a slight knitting of intensity on her fair forehead, between the pretty rippling curves of her auburn hair.
“Did you — hear anything?” she asked in a low voice with a glance toward the door.
“I was just across the hall in the south parlour, and that door was open and this door ajar,” replied Rebecca with a slight flush.
“Then you must have —”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“Everything?”
“Most of it.”
“What was it?”
“The old story.”
“I suppose Henry was mad, as he always was, because Edward was living on here for nothing, when he had wasted all the money father left him.”
Rebecca nodded with a fearful glance at the door.
When Emma spoke again her voice was still more hushed. “I know how he felt,” said she. “He had always been so prudent himself, and worked hard at his profession, and there Edward had never done anything but spend, and it must have looked to him as if Edward was living at his expense, but he wasn’t.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“It was the way father left the property — that all the children should have a home here — and he left money enough to buy the food and all if we had all come home.”
“Yes.”
“And Edward had a right here according to the terms of father’s will, and Henry ought to have remembered it.”
“Yes, he ought.”
“Did he say hard things?”
“Pretty hard from what I heard.”
“What?”
“I heard him tell Edward that he had no business here at all, and he thought he had better go away.”
“What did Edward say?”
“That he would stay here as long as he lived and afterward, too, if he was a mind to, and he would like to see Henry get him out; and then —”
“What?”
“Then he laughed.”
“What did Henry say.”
“I didn’t hear him say anything, but —”
“But what?”
“I saw him when he came out of this room.”
“He looked mad?”
“You’ve seen him when he looked so.”
Emma nodded; the expression of horror on her face had deepened.
“Do you remember that time he killed the cat because she had scratched him?”
“Yes. Don’t!”
Then Caroline reentered the room. She went up to the stove in which a wood fire was burning — it was a cold, gloomy day of fall — and she warmed her hands, which were reddened from recent washing in cold water.
Mrs. Brigham looked at her and hesitated. She glanced at the door, which was still ajar, as it did not easily shut, being still swollen with the damp weather of the summer. She rose and pushed it together with a sharp thud which jarred the house. Rebecca started painfully with a half exclamation. Caroline looked at her disapprovingly.
“It is time you controlled your nerves, Rebecca,” said she.
“I can’t help it,” replied Rebecca with almost a wail. “I am nervous. There’s enough to make me so, the Lord knows.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Caroline with her old air of sharp suspicion, and something between challenge and dread of its being met.
Rebecca shrank.
“Nothing,” said she.
“Then I wouldn’t keep speaking in such a fashion.”
Emma, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.
“It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days,” replied Caroline. “If anything is done to it it will be too small; there will be a crack at the sill.”
“I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to Edward,” said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice.
“Hush!” said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed door.
“Nobody can hear with the door shut.”
“He must have heard it shut, and —”
“Well, I can say what I want to before he comes down, and I am not afraid of him.”
“I don’t know who is afraid of him! What reason is there for anybody to be afraid of Henry?” demanded Caroline.
Mrs. Brigham trembled before her sister’s look. Rebecca gasped again. “There isn’t any reason, of course. Why should there be?”
“I wouldn’t speak so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think it was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlour sewing, you know.”
“I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine.”
“She did, but she has come down again.”
“Well, she can’t hear.”
“I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself. I shouldn’t think he’d ever get over it, having words with poor Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough sight better disposition than Henry, with all his faults. I always thought a great deal of poor Edward, myself.”
Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes; Rebecca sobbed outright.
“Rebecca,” said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and swallowing determinately.
“I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry that last night. I don’t know, but he did from what Rebecca overheard,” said Emma.
“Not so much cross as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,” sniffled Rebecca.
“He never raised his voice,” said Caroline; “but he had his way.”
“He had a right to in this case.”
“Yes, he did.”
“He had as much of a right here as Henry,” sobbed Rebecca, “and now he’s gone, and he will never be in this home that poor father left him and the rest of us again.”
“What do you really think ailed Edward?” asked Emma in hardly more than a whisper. She did not look at her sister.
Caroline sat down in a nearby armchair, and clutched the arms convulsively until her thin knuckles whitened.
“I told you,” said she.
Rebecca held her handkerchief over her mouth, and looked at them above it with terrified, streaming eyes.
“I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had spasms, but what do you think made him have them?”
“Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had dyspepsia.”
Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. “Was there any talk of an — examination?” said she.
Then Caroline tu

ผลลัพธ์ (ไทย) 1:

✕ เกี่ยวกับการดาวน์โหลดอ่านสมบูรณ์ ePub จุด เงาบนผนังแมรีเอเลเนอร์ Wilkins ฟรีแมนรุ่นเว็บนี้เผยแพร่ โดย eBooks@Adelaideล่าวันพุธ 17 ธันวาคม 2014 ที่ 13:39กับความรู้ของเรา ข้อนี้ทำงานเป็น "สาธารณสมบัติ" ในออสเตรเลียอย่างไรก็ตาม กฎหมายลิขสิทธิ์แตกต่างกันไปในประเทศอื่น ๆ และยังอาจทำงานภายใต้ลิขสิทธิ์ในประเทศที่คุณเข้าถึงเว็บไซต์นี้ ความรับผิดชอบของคุณเพื่อตรวจสอบกฎหมายลิขสิทธิ์ในประเทศของคุณก่อนที่จะดาวน์โหลดนี้ทำงานได้eBooks@Adelaideห้องสมุดมหาวิทยาลัยแอดิเลดมหาวิทยาลัยแอดิเลดออสเตรเลียใต้ 5005เงาบนผนัง"เฮนรีมีคำกับเอ็ดเวิร์ดในคืนก่อนเอ็ดเวิร์ดเสียชีวิต การศึกษา" กล่าวว่า เจ้าหญิงแคโรไลน์ Glynnเธอเป็นผู้สูงอายุ สูง และ บางอย่างหนัก มี colourlessness หนักของใบหน้า เธอพูดไม่ มี acrimony แต่ มีความรุนแรงจน Glynn แอนรีเบคก้า อายุ stouter และโรซี่ของใบหน้าระหว่าง puffs crinkling เธอผมสีเทา gasped ใช้ assent เธอนั่งอยู่ใน flounce ความกว้างของผ้าไหมสีดำที่มุมโซฟา และสะสมตาคนกลัวจากแคโรไลน์น้องสาวของเธอกับน้องนาง Stephen Brigham ที่มีเอ็มมา Glynn ความงดงามหนึ่งของครอบครัว เธอสวยงามยังคง ที่ มีขนาดใหญ่ สวยงาม full-blown ความสวยงาม เธอมีดีโยกเก้าอี้ ด้วยจำนวนมากของเธอยอดเยี่ยมของผู้หญิง และ swayed เบา ๆ ไปมา ผ้าไหมสีดำของเธอที่วิสเปอริงและโอกาสของเธอสีดำ fluttering แม้จะช็อกตาย (สำหรับพี่ชายของเธอเอ็ดเวิร์ดนอนตายในบ้าน,) อาจไม่รบกวนความสงบของเธอภายนอกของหน่วยก้าน เธอได้ grieved สูญเสียพี่ชายของเธอ: ได้ลูก และเธอเคยชอบเขา แต่ไม่มีเอ็มม่า Brigham หายไปเห็นความสำคัญของตนเองท่ามกลางน้ำทะเลทุกข์ เธอมักจะตื่นจิตสำนึกความมั่นคงของตนเองท่ามกลาง vicissitudes และไฟของเธอเรืองถาวรแต่เธอนิพจน์ placidity ชำนาญแม้เปลี่ยนก่อนประกาศของเธอน้องสาวแคโรไลน์และน้องแอนรีเบคก้าของกระหืดน่าสะพรึงกลัวและความทุกข์ในการตอบสนอง"ผมคิดว่า เฮนรี่อาจมีควบคุมอารมณ์ของเขา เมื่อเอ็ดเวิร์ดดีนั้นใกล้สิ้นสุดของเขา ว่า เธอ asperity ซึ่งรบกวนเล็กน้อยเส้นโค้ง roseate ปากสวยของเธอ“Of course he did not KNOW,” murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone strangely out of keeping with her appearance.One involuntarily looked again to be sure that such a feeble pipe came from that full-swelling chest.“Of course he did not know it,” said Caroline quickly. She turned on her sister with a strange sharp look of suspicion. “How could he have known it?” said she. Then she shrank as if from the other’s possible answer. “Of course you and I both know he could not,” said she conclusively, but her pale face was paler than it had been before.Rebecca gasped again. The married sister, Mrs. Emma Brigham, was now sitting up straight in her chair; she had ceased rocking, and was eyeing them both intently with a sudden accentuation of family likeness in her face. Given one common intensity of emotion and similar lines showed forth, and the three sisters of one race were evident.“What do you mean?” said she impartially to them both. Then she, too, seemed to shrink before a possible answer. She even laughed an evasive sort of laugh. “I guess you don’t mean anything,” said she, but her face wore still the expression of shrinking horror.“Nobody means anything,” said Caroline firmly. She rose and crossed the room toward the door with grim decisiveness.“Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Brigham.“I have something to see to,” replied Caroline, and the others at once knew by her tone that she had some solemn and sad duty to perform in the chamber of death.“Oh,” said Mrs. Brigham.After the door had closed behind Caroline, she turned to Rebecca.“Did Henry have many words with him?” she asked.“They were talking very loud,” replied Rebecca evasively, yet with an answering gleam of ready response to the other’s curiosity in the quick lift of her soft blue eyes.Mrs. Brigham looked at her. She had not resumed rocking. She still sat up straight with a slight knitting of intensity on her fair forehead, between the pretty rippling curves of her auburn hair.“Did you — hear anything?” she asked in a low voice with a glance toward the door.“I was just across the hall in the south parlour, and that door was open and this door ajar,” replied Rebecca with a slight flush.“Then you must have —”“I couldn’t help it.”“Everything?”“Most of it.”“What was it?”“The old story.”“I suppose Henry was mad, as he always was, because Edward was living on here for nothing, when he had wasted all the money father left him.”Rebecca nodded with a fearful glance at the door.When Emma spoke again her voice was still more hushed. “I know how he felt,” said she. “He had always been so prudent himself, and worked hard at his profession, and there Edward had never done anything but spend, and it must have looked to him as if Edward was living at his expense, but he wasn’t.”“No, he wasn’t.”“It was the way father left the property — that all the children should have a home here — and he left money enough to buy the food and all if we had all come home.”“Yes.”“And Edward had a right here according to the terms of father’s will, and Henry ought to have remembered it.”“Yes, he ought.”“Did he say hard things?”“Pretty hard from what I heard.”“What?”“I heard him tell Edward that he had no business here at all, and he thought he had better go away.”“What did Edward say?”“That he would stay here as long as he lived and afterward, too, if he was a mind to, and he would like to see Henry get him out; and then —”“What?”“Then he laughed.”“What did Henry say.”“I didn’t hear him say anything, but —”“But what?”“I saw him when he came out of this room.”“He looked mad?”“You’ve seen him when he looked so.”Emma nodded; the expression of horror on her face had deepened.“Do you remember that time he killed the cat because she had scratched him?”“Yes. Don’t!”Then Caroline reentered the room. She went up to the stove in which a wood fire was burning — it was a cold, gloomy day of fall — and she warmed her hands, which were reddened from recent washing in cold water.Mrs. Brigham looked at her and hesitated. She glanced at the door, which was still ajar, as it did not easily shut, being still swollen with the damp weather of the summer. She rose and pushed it together with a sharp thud which jarred the house. Rebecca started painfully with a half exclamation. Caroline looked at her disapprovingly.“It is time you controlled your nerves, Rebecca,” said she.“I can’t help it,” replied Rebecca with almost a wail. “I am nervous. There’s enough to make me so, the Lord knows.”“What do you mean by that?” asked Caroline with her old air of sharp suspicion, and something between challenge and dread of its being met.Rebecca shrank.“Nothing,” said she.“Then I wouldn’t keep speaking in such a fashion.”Emma, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.“It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days,” replied Caroline. “If anything is done to it it will be too small; there will be a crack at the sill.”“I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to Edward,” said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice.“Hush!” said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed door.“Nobody can hear with the door shut.”“He must have heard it shut, and —”“Well, I can say what I want to before he comes down, and I am not afraid of him.”“I don’t know who is afraid of him! What reason is there for anybody to be afraid of Henry?” demanded Caroline.Mrs. Brigham trembled before her sister’s look. Rebecca gasped again. “There isn’t any reason, of course. Why should there be?”“I wouldn’t speak so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think it was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlour sewing, you know.”“I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine.”“She did, but she has come down again.”“Well, she can’t hear.”“I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself. I shouldn’t think he’d ever get over it, having words with poor Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough sight better disposition than Henry, with all his faults. I always thought a great deal of poor Edward, myself.”Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes; Rebecca sobbed outright.“Rebecca,” said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and swallowing determinately.“I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry that last night. I don’t know, but he did from what Rebecca overheard,” said Emma.“Not so much cross as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,” sniffled Rebecca.“He never raised his voice,” said Caroline; “but he had his way.”“He had a right to in this case.”“Yes, he did.”“He had as much of a right here as Henry,” sobbed Rebecca, “and now he’s gone, and he will never be in this home that poor father left him and the rest of us again.”“What do you really think ailed Edward?” asked Emma in hardly more than a whisper. She did not look at her sister.Caroline sat down in a nearby armchair, and clutched the arms convulsively until her thin knuckles whitened.“I told you,” said she.Rebecca held her handkerchief over her mouth, and looked at them above it with terrified, streaming eyes.“I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had spasms, but what do you think made him have them?”“Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had dyspepsia.”Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. “Was there any talk of an — examination?” said she.Then Caroline tu

ผลลัพธ์ (ไทย) 3:

✕
เกี่ยวกับการอ่านสมบูรณ์ดาวน์โหลด ePub จุด
เงาบนผนัง

แมรี่เอลวิลกินส์ ฟรีแมน

เว็บนี้ฉบับตีพิมพ์โดยหนังสือ @ แอเดแลด์

อัพเดทล่าสุด วันพุธ ที่ 17 ธันวาคม 2010 เวลา 13 : 39 .

เพื่อที่ดีที่สุดของความรู้ของเรา ข้อความของงานนี้
ในสาธารณะ โดเมน " ในออสเตรเลีย .
แต่กฎหมายลิขสิทธิ์แตกต่างกันไปในประเทศอื่น ๆและงานอาจจะยังอยู่ภายใต้ลิขสิทธิ์ในประเทศที่คุณมีการเข้าถึงเว็บไซต์นี้ มันเป็นความรับผิดชอบของคุณเพื่อตรวจสอบกฎหมายคุ้มครองลิขสิทธิ์ในประเทศของคุณก่อนที่จะดาวน์โหลดงานนี้

อี - บุ๊ค @ ห้องสมุดมหาวิทยาลัยแอดิเลด Adelaide

มหาวิทยาลัยแอดิเลดออสเตรเลีย 5005


ใต้เงาบนผนัง