DOI article:
Dixon, Marion Hepworth: The runaway
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25499#0117
By Marion Hepworth-Dixon 113
a shrinking movement and clasped the back of the chair she had
been sitting on. Was it to be eternally and indefinitely the same
story ? Was hers to be that weary round of endeavour which
meets only with disappointment and failure ? It was impossible
to forget that the boy had already run away from the electric
light works, where he had earnt his eighteen shillings a week, or
that he had been turned away for non-attendance at the musical
instrument makers’, she had got him into with her brother’s
influence, at Hounslow. And now that she had actually staked
her last farthing at Messrs. Knowler Brothers, her efforts seemed
as fruitless as heretofore.
Without, in the cheerless northern suburb in which she found
herself in a few moments’ time, there was little outward presage
of the coming spring. Everywhere were the stain and soil of
winter. April was already at hand, but soot hung on the
skeleton tracery of the rare trees which overtopped the garden
walls ; only a bud, on some early flowering shrub, told of a world
of green to come. Yet a wind blowing from out the west,
and flapping its damp fingers in her tired face, seemed to speak of
other and less sordid surroundings. The wind blew from out the
west bringing its message from the sea, and with it the ever-
recurring memory of the sailor husband who had been so loyal a
companion to her in the brief years of their married life. Though
a Swede, the elder Reinhart had suffered from exposure to the cold,
a severe winter on the Atlantic helping to aggravate the chest
complaint to which he succumbed at Greenwich Hospital. The
end had been sudden, and it was hardly an hour before the final
spasm that Mrs. Reinhart promised the dying man that their son
should be spared like hardships.
Hardships 1 . . . . the wet sea wind lifted the pale hair from
the anaemic face and the dull eyes lighted as she thought of the
wide
a shrinking movement and clasped the back of the chair she had
been sitting on. Was it to be eternally and indefinitely the same
story ? Was hers to be that weary round of endeavour which
meets only with disappointment and failure ? It was impossible
to forget that the boy had already run away from the electric
light works, where he had earnt his eighteen shillings a week, or
that he had been turned away for non-attendance at the musical
instrument makers’, she had got him into with her brother’s
influence, at Hounslow. And now that she had actually staked
her last farthing at Messrs. Knowler Brothers, her efforts seemed
as fruitless as heretofore.
Without, in the cheerless northern suburb in which she found
herself in a few moments’ time, there was little outward presage
of the coming spring. Everywhere were the stain and soil of
winter. April was already at hand, but soot hung on the
skeleton tracery of the rare trees which overtopped the garden
walls ; only a bud, on some early flowering shrub, told of a world
of green to come. Yet a wind blowing from out the west,
and flapping its damp fingers in her tired face, seemed to speak of
other and less sordid surroundings. The wind blew from out the
west bringing its message from the sea, and with it the ever-
recurring memory of the sailor husband who had been so loyal a
companion to her in the brief years of their married life. Though
a Swede, the elder Reinhart had suffered from exposure to the cold,
a severe winter on the Atlantic helping to aggravate the chest
complaint to which he succumbed at Greenwich Hospital. The
end had been sudden, and it was hardly an hour before the final
spasm that Mrs. Reinhart promised the dying man that their son
should be spared like hardships.
Hardships 1 . . . . the wet sea wind lifted the pale hair from
the anaemic face and the dull eyes lighted as she thought of the
wide