Sunrise eBook

William Black
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 672 pages of information about Sunrise.

Sunrise eBook

William Black
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 672 pages of information about Sunrise.

“Well, I have been thinking that London is a depressing sort of a place for a man to live in who does not know many people.  It is very big, and very empty.  I don’t think I shall be able to stand it much longer.”

CHAPTER VII.

IN SOLITUDE.

A blustering, cold morning in March; the skies lowering, the wind increasing, and heavy showers being driven up from time to time from the black and threatening south-west.  This was strange weather to make a man think of going to the seaside; and of all places at the seaside to Dover, and of all places in Dover to the Lord Warden Hotel, which was sure to be filled with fear-stricken foreigners, waiting for the sea to calm.  Waters, as he packed the small portmanteau, could not at all understand this freak on the part of his master.

“If Lord Evelyn calls, sir,” he said at the station, “when shall I say you will be back?”

“In a few days, perhaps.  I don’t know.”

He had a compartment to himself; and away the train went through the wet and dismal and foggy country, with the rain pouring down the panes of the carriage.  The dismal prospect outside, however, did not matter much to this solitary traveller.  He turned his back to the window, and read all the way down.

At Dover the outlook was still more dismal.  A dirty, yellow-brown sea was rolling heavily in, springing white along the Admiralty Pier; gusts of rain were sweeping along the thoroughfare between the station and the hotel; in the hotel itself the rooms were occupied by a miscellaneous collection of dissatisfied folk, who aimlessly read the advertisements in Bradshaw, or stared through the dripping windows at the yellow waves outside.  This was the condition of affairs when George Brand took up his residence there.  He was quite alone; but he had a sufficiency of books with him; and so deeply engaged was he with these, that he let the ordinary coffee-room discussions about the weather pass absolutely unheeded.

On the second morning a number of the travellers plucked up heart of grace and embarked, though the weather was still squally.  George Brand was not in the least interested as to the speculations of those who remained about the responsibilities of the passage.  He drew his chair toward the fire, and relapsed into his reading.

This day, however, was varied by his making the acquaintance of a little old French lady, which he did by means of her two granddaughters, Josephine, and Veronique.  Veronique, having been pushed by Josephine, stumbled against Mr. Brand’s knee, and would inevitably have fallen into the fireplace had he not caught her.  Thereupon the little old lady, hurrying across the room, and looking very much inclined to box the ears of both Josephine and Veronique, most profusely apologized, in French, to monsieur.  Monsieur replying in that tongue, said it was of no consequence whatever.  Then madame greatly delighted at finding some one, not a waiter, to whom she could speak in her own language, continued the conversation, and very speedily made monsieur the confident of all her hopes and fears about that terrible business the Channel passage.  No doubt monsieur was also waiting for this dreadful storm to abate?

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Project Gutenberg
Sunrise from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.