The Great Shadow
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THE GREAT SHADOW
“I am glad to see that you know all,” said I, for I am a clumsy hand at breaking things. “He said that you were to keep whatever was in the boxes, and that Antoine had the keys.”
“Thank you, Jock, thank you,” said she. “It was like your kindness to bring the message. I heard of it nearly a week ago. I was mad for the time – quite mad. I shall wear mourning all my days, although you can see what a fright it makes me look. Ah! I shall never get over it. I shall take the veil and die in a convent.”
“If you please, madame,” said a maid, looking in, “the Count de Beton wishes to see you.”
“My dear Jock,” said Edie, jumping up, “this is very important. I am sorry to cut our chat short, but I am sure that you will come to see me again, will you not, when I am less desolate? And would you mind going out by the side door instead of the main one? Thank you, you dear old Jock; you were always such a good boy, and did exactly what you were told.”
And that was the last that I was ever to see of Cousin Edie. She stood in the sunlight with the old challenge in her eyes, and flash of her teeth; and so I shall always remember her, shining and unstable, like a drop of quicksilver. As I joined my comrade in the street below, I saw a grand carriage and pair at the door, and I knew that she had asked me to slip out so that her grand new friends might never know what common people she had been associated with in her childhood. She had never asked for Jim, nor for my father and mother who had been so kind to her. Well, it was just her way, and she could no more help it than a rabbit can help wagging its scut, and yet it made me heavy-hearted to think of it. Two months later
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I heard that she had married this same Count de Beton, and she died in child-bed a year or two later.
And as for us, our work was done, for the great shadow had been cleared away from Europe, and should no longer be thrown across the breadth of the lands, over peaceful farms and little villages, darkening the lives which should have been so happy. I came back to Corriemuir after I had bought my discharge, and there, when my father died, I took over the sheepfarm, and married Lucy Deane, of Berwick, and have brought up seven children, who are all taller than their father, and take mighty good care that he shall not forget it. But in the quiet, peaceful days that pass now, each as like the other as so many Scotch tups, I can hardly get the young folks to believe that even here we have had our romance, when Jim and I went a-wooing, and the man with the cat’s whiskers came up from the sea.
Литературно-художественное издание
Arhur Conan Doyle
The Great Shadow
Выпускающий редактор И. Краснова
Редактор П. Воронин
Корректор И. Иванова Компьютерная верстка: Т. Серёгина Художественное оформление: М. Кылосова
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Подписано в печать 10.01.2018 Формат 60х90/16
Усл. печ. л. 9
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