The Project Gutenberg EBook of Demos, by George Gissing

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Title: Demos

Author: George Gissing

Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext #4309]
Posting Date: December 9, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEMOS ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo

DEMOS

By George Gissing

[Editor's Note: There are two chapters in this book with the
same number: XXVI.; on looking up other print copies, I find
the same numbering error also present.]

CHAPTER I

Stanbury Hill, remote but two hours' walk from a region blasted with
mine and factory and furnace, shelters with its western slope a fair
green valley, a land of meadows and orchard, untouched by poisonous
breath. At its foot lies the village of Wanley. The opposite side of the
hollow is clad with native wood, skirting for more than a mile the bank
of a shallow stream, a tributary of the Severn. Wanley consists in the
main of one long street; the houses are stone-built, with mullioned
windows, here and there showing a picturesque gable or a quaint old
chimney. The oldest buildings are four cottages which stand at the end
of the street; once upon a time they formed the country residence of the
abbots of Belwick. The abbey of that name still claims for its ruined
self a portion of earth's surface; but, as it had the misfortune to be
erected above the thickest coal-seam in England, its walls are blackened
with the fume of collieries and shaken by the strain of mighty engines.
Climb Stanbury Hill at nightfall, and, looking eastward, you behold far
off a dusky ruddiness in the sky, like the last of an angry sunset; with
a glass you can catch glimpses of little tongues of flame, leaping and
quivering on the horizon. That is Belwick. The good abbots, who were
wont to come out in the summer time to Wanley, would be at a loss to
recognise their consecrated home in those sooty relics. Belwick, with
its hundred and fifty fire-vomiting blast-furnaces, would to their eyes
more nearly resemble a certain igneous realm of which they thought much
in their sojourn upon earth, and which, we may assure ourselves, they
dream not of in the q