Appleby's End Read Online Free PDF

say?” asked the melancholy man.
    â€œAppleby?” said the girl. Her accent was wholly incredulous – as if it were self-evident that Appleby ought to be called Dobbin or Fido.
    â€œAppleby?” said the simian man. “Well, that’s very odd.”
    â€œAppleby!” exclaimed the yellow-haired youth, and gave a laugh harsher and shorter than before.
    The door of the compartment was thrown open and there came a whip and howl of wind. Suddenly from the trampled floor and from beneath the seats arson and rape, thin-lipped women and blurry-faced judges, furtive amorists and Edwardian homicides spiralled upward in a crazy resurrection, flapping at the faces and curling round the limbs of the Ravens. The flurry of papers sank again; the Ravens were knee-deep in crime, were free of it, were tumbling on the platform with Appleby following.
    It had been a moment of strangeness and obscure alarm. Now there was the dark, and driving snow and the rattle of the departing train.
    â€œBy the way,” said Appleby, “what is the name of this sta–”
    He stopped, his question already answered. Straight before him, sufficiently lit by the yellow rays of a hanging lantern, was a boldly lettered board. He read the inscription: APPLEBY’S END

 
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    The inky cloak of Luke Raven flapped in the gale like a backcloth to chaos; snowflakes in epicycle and nutation, in precession and varying ellipse, played a mad astronomy about him; he grabbed his hat, raised his melancholy face and yelled to the welkin. “Heyhoe!” yelled Luke Raven.
    â€œHeyhoe! Heyhoe!” Mark Raven, his yellow hair streaming like a bright exhalation in the night, joined in the call. “Hey-hoe-oh!”
    â€œHeyhoe, Hey -hoe, HEY -hoe, Hey- HOE -OH!” Robert Raven, who was rotating warily on his heel much as if he expected the whirling snowflakes to stab him in the back, joined with a positively Bacchic frenzy in the chorus. And even Everard Raven, that mild-mannered and learnedly preoccupied man, was calling “Heyhoe!” into the darkness with surprising vigour. Only the girl Judith remained silent; after a minute’s pause she plodded some paces down the platform, up-ended a suitcase, sat on it, and contemplated her family and their chance companion in a gloomy repose. Appleby, who found himself watching this young person with a good deal of attention, stamped his feet – or rather attempted to, with a soft crunch of snow as the only result. Was it the proper thing for all passengers to join in this queer ululation upon reaching Appleby’s End – or was it a rite peculiar to Ravens? And what about an Appleby – was he not in something of a special case? These reflections were interrupted by the arrival on the platform of a creature having much the appearance of a giant, weather-bound tortoise. Judith was the first of the Ravens to see the new arrival. “Heyhoe,” she said, “where the deuce have you been?”
    Heyhoe came to a halt – a process involving so slight a loss of momentum as hardly to be perceptible to the naked eye. It was to be hoped, Appleby felt, that Spot – the quadruped upon whom all now depended – had notions of locomotion somewhat more vigorous than his driver.
    â€œBeen?” said Heyhoe. “I mun eat my dinner.”
    Heyhoe was so strikingly reminiscent of Caliban that this was an altogether appropriate opening line. The forehead was low and receding; the eyes were small, feral and deep-set beneath beetling brows; the mouth hung open in a species of rictus or fixed grimace. Heyhoe, in fact, was remarkably like Robert Raven – without the nose. He was further distinguished by being to an incredible degree stooped and bowed to earth; it was this, together with a long, scrawny neck emerging from a multiple series of cloaks like Mr Tony Weller’s in the old prints, that gave the tortoise-like effect. “I mun eat my