So far as his life was affected by the outside world at
all, except as a place where auctions took place, and dealers' shops
abounded, it was through this consciousness of impending social disaster,
this terror as of a rapidly approaching darkness bearing the doom of the
modern world in its bosom, which intermittently oppressed him, as it has
oppressed and still overshadows innumerable better men of our day.
At this moment, in the month of May, 190--, Edmund Melrose had just
passed his seventieth birthday. But the extraordinary energy and vivacity
of his good looks had scarcely abated since the time when, twenty-three
years before this date, Netta Smeath had first seen him in Florence;
although his hair had whitened, and the bronzed skin of the face had
developed a multitude of fine wrinkles that did but add to its character.
His aspect, even on the threshold of old age, had still something of the
magnificence of an Italian captain of the Renaissance, something also of
the pouncing, peering air that belongs to the type. He seemed indeed to
be always on the point of seizing or appropriating some booty or other.
His wandering eyes, his long acquisitive fingers, his rapid movements
showed him still the hunter on the trail, to whom everything else was in
truth indifferent but the satisfaction of an instinct which had grown and
flourished on the ruins of a man.
As they drove along, through various portions of the Tower estates, the
eyes of the taciturn driver beside him took note of the dilapidated farm
buildings and the broken gates which a miserly landlord could not be
induced to repair, until an exasperated tenant actually gave notice.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93