Maradick at Forty: A Transition

Punch was in bed asleep, with the bedclothes drawn up to his ears. It had just struck six, and round the corner of the open window the sun crept, flinging a path of light across...

“It’s the most ripping rag,” said Tony, as he watched people climb into the wagonette. “Things,” he added, “will probably happen.” Lady Gale herself, as she watched them arrange...

That same afternoon Maradick finished “To Paradise.” He read it in the room of the minstrels with the sun beating through the panes in pools of gold on to the floor, the windows...

The two men stood there silently for some minutes; the voice died away and the noise of the fair was softer and less discordant; past them fluttered two white moths, the whirr o...

But Mrs. Lester had not the courage of her convictions. Those convictions were based very largely on an audacious standing up against Providence, although she herself would neve...

They all met at tea on the next afternoon, and for the gods who were watching the whole affair from the sacred heights of Olympus, it must have been a highly amusing sight.

The hall of the “Man at Arms” was ever a place of mystery. The high roof seemed to pass into infinite space, and on every side there appeared passages and dark oaken doors that...

The house was the cleverest in the world. There was nothing in Europe of its kind, and that was because its cleverness lay in the fact that you never thought it clever at all. I...

Maradick awoke very early on the next morning. As he lay in his bed, his mind was still covered with the cobwebs of his dreams, and he saw the room in a fantastic, grotesque sha...

The little hall was lit by a single lamp that glimmered redly in the background. Small though the hall was, its darkness gave it space and depth. It appeared to be hung with man...

Meanwhile the picnic remained, for others besides Maradick, an interpretation. Lady Gale sat on the evening of the following day watching the sun sink behind the silver birch. S...

As he came out of the station and looked at the little road that ran down the hill, at the grey banks of cloud, at the white and grey valley of the sea, he felt curiously, uncan...

Perhaps it was because his fatigue lay upon him like a heavy burden, so that to close his eyes was as though he allowed a great weight to fall upon him and crush him. His fatigu...

He didn’t precisely know what his feelings were; he was too hot, and the whole thing was too much of a surprise for him to think at all; the thing that he did most nearly resemb...

On Monday the 24th the weather broke. Cold winds swept up from the sea, mists twisted and turned about the hotel, the rain beat in torrents against the panes. In all the rooms t...

As the sharp night air met him he realised that his clothes were torn apart and that his chest was bare. He pulled his shirt about him again, stupidly made movements with his ha...

The Maradicks had reserved four seats by the 10.45, and so really there was no reason for arriving at Paddington a few minutes after ten. But, as it happened, it was quite fortu...

Above the knoll the afternoon sun hung in a golden mist. The heat veiled it, and the blue of the surrounding sky faded into golden shadows near its circle and swept in a vast ar...

Two days after the arrival of the Lesters Lady Gale arranged a picnic; a comprehensive, democratic picnic that was to include everybody. Her motives may be put down, if you will...

I’ve been meaning to write all this week, but so many things have accumulated since we’ve been away that there’s simply not been a minute to write a decent letter. No, Treliss w...

The grey twilight gives to the long, pale stretches of sand the sense of something strangely unreal. As far as the eye can reach, it curves out into the mist, the last vanishing...

It is twilight. The cove is sinking with its colours into the evening mists. The sea is creeping very gently over the sand, that shines a little with the wet marks that the retr...