George MacDonald

Mary Marston George MacDonald

It was an evening early in May. The sun was low, and the street was mottled with the shadowsof its paving-stones-smooth enough, but far from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for afew clouds in the west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among them likea liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the fragments. The street was almostempty, and the air was chill. The spring was busy, and the summer was at hand; but the wind wasblowing from the north. The street was not a common one; there was interest, that is feature, in the shadowy front ofalmost each of its old houses. Not a few of them wore, indeed, something like a humanexpression, the look of having both known and suffered. From many a porch, and many a latticedoriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in a wind unfelt of thebody-or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and flit away, and add one more to the mound ofblackness gathering on the horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and exercising a charmnone of them would ever gain. Some of the oldest of its houses, most of them with more than one projecting story, stood aboutthe middle of the street. The central and oldest of these was a draper's shop. The windows of theground-floor encroached a little on the pavement, to which they descended very close, for thefloor of the shop was lower than the street. But, although they had glass on three oriel sides, theywere little used for the advertising of the stores within. A few ribbons and gay handkerchiefs, mostly of cotton, for the eyes of the country people on market-days, formed the chief part oftheir humble show. The door was wide and very low, the upper half of it of glass-old, andbottle-colored; and its threshold was a deep step down into the shop. As a place for purchases itmight not to some eyes look promising, but both the ladies and the housekeepers of Testbridgeknew that rarely could they do better in London itself than at the shop of Turnbull and Marston, whether variety, quality, or price, was the point in consideration. And, whatever the firstimpression concerning it, the moment the eyes of a stranger began to grow accustomed to itsgloom, the evident size and plenitude of the shop might well suggest a large hope. It was low, indeed, and the walls could therefore accommodate few shelves; but the ceiling was therefore sonear as to be itself available for stowage by means of well-contrived slides and shelves attachedto the great beams crossing it in several directi