The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eve's Ransom, by George Gissing

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Title: Eve's Ransom

Author: George Gissing

Posting Date: July 7, 2009 [EBook #4297]
Release Date: July, 2003
First Posted: January 1, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.

EVE'S RANSOM

by

George Gissing

CHAPTER I

On the station platform at Dudley Port, in the dusk of a February
afternoon, half-a-dozen people waited for the train to Birmingham. A
south-west wind had loaded the air with moisture, which dripped at
moments, thinly and sluggishly, from a featureless sky. The lamps, just
lighted, cast upon wet wood and metal a pale yellow shimmer; voices
sounded with peculiar clearness; so did the rumble of a porter's barrow
laden with luggage. From a foundry hard by came the muffled, rhythmic
thunder of mighty blows; this and the long note of an engine-whistle
wailing far off seemed to intensify the stillness of the air as gloomy
day passed into gloomier night.

In clear daylight the high, uncovered platform would have offered an
outlook over the surrounding country, but at this hour no horizon was
discernible. Buildings near at hand, rude masses of grimy brick, stood
out against a grey confused background; among them rose a turret which
vomited crimson flame. This fierce, infernal glare seemed to lack the
irradiating quality of earthly fires; with hard, though fluctuating
outline, it leapt towards the kindred night, and diffused a blotchy
darkness. In the opposite direction, over towards Dudley Town, appeared
spots of lurid glow. But on the scarred and barren plain which extends
to Birmingham there had settled so thick an obscurity, vapours from
above blending with earthly reek, that all tile beacons of fiery toil
were wrapped and hidden.

Of the waiting travellers, two kept apart from the rest, pacing this
way and that, but independently of each other. They were men of
dissimilar appearance; the one comfortably and expensively dressed, his
age about fifty, his visage bearing the stamp of commerce; the other,
younger