Читать книгу At the Sign of the Fox. A Romance онлайн

8 страница из 81

“It is ten years—no, eleven—since your child whom I tended died and Helen left you, or you her, whichever way you choose to put it. The why of it all you have never deemed best to tell, and I have never asked, trusting your manhood. She led her own life then for the four years she lived. I have managed to see you every year since, in spite of the drifting life your profession forced upon you. And since the railway’s completion, when you settled here, I’ve spent a week of my holiday each autumn with you, hoping to see a change, believing you would waken and live your life out instead of moping it away. But no! Your work and old comrades need you, and you still refuse. What is it, Rob? Life seems so good to me with the threescore and ten in plain sight that I cannot bear to see it playing through your fingers at fifty.

“Love may be gone, or clouded, let us say, but there is always work, and work is glorious! Get out of your own shadow, man, and let the sun pass. It is with you as The Allegorist says:—