The Dark Clue Read Online Free PDF Page A

who are left (assuming
they
will see
mel)
should take only a matter of days. After that, I shall have to seek out diaries, letters and so on to help me – particularly for the early years, for which there are presumably no living witnesses at all; but then I should be able to return to Limmeridge with my booty, and do most of the work there. Although I may have to come back once or twice in the interim, just for a few days, I’msure I shall then be safe in Cumberland until we all return to London together next season.
    So please, my dearest – don’t worry! And let me end with a worry of my own: I was delighted to hear that you have been visiting our favourite haunts on the moor, but do you think, in your present condition, it is wise to walk so far, particularly when you have no companion to help you, should need arise? Please – be careful.
    Your devoted husband,
    Walter
    V
    Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,
1st August, 185–
    Brompton Grove,
Tuesday
    My dearest love,
    Your letter reached me this morning. Thank you! I confess I was hoping it might arrive in company, for over the last few days I have felt powerless to do more on the
Life
until I have heard from Jones and Ruskin (with the result that, to Davidson’s evident annoyance, I have taken to anticipating the post by pacing about the house like a caged wolf awaiting the full moon).
    But your words galvanized me into action; and as soon as I had finished reading them I at once resolved to go on the offensive, and try to find my own way into Turner’s world. I confess I had no very clear idea of how, or where, I should begin (I think at the back of my mind was the notion that if all else failed I could end up at the Athenaeum, where I might happen upon someone who recollected him): my aim was merely to set out, and see where the day took me. And – although it may seem fanciful – I think my faith was rewarded.
    Hyde Park was even more thronged than usual, but by avoiding the carriage-ways, and following the narrowest paths through clumps of bushes and over grassy rises, I was sometimes able,for a moment, to imagine myself not in the centre of the greatest city on earth but in some pleasant rural Eden. My way brought me at length through a fringe of trees and out by the Serpentine, which – as if pressed flat by the heavy sky – lay as still as a newly poured bath, glowing with the surly sheen of pewter. Around the shore, as their nurses looked on, children played with hoops and sticks, or put dolls to sleep in their own perambulators, or chased after a silly dog (a bundle of white curls, with no discernible face) which had made off with a ball and chewed it half to pieces. One little boy was wailing inconsolably, and I stopped to ask him the matter.
    â€˜I’ve lost my duck,’ he sobbed, pointing to a little wooden pintail, which had bobbed out of reach and seemed to be trying to join the real ducks in the middle of the lake.
    It was here that fate first took a hand; for I went back to the trees, broke off a small branch, and (after a good deal of getting it, and losing it, and getting it again) managed to retrieve the toy, and return it to its owner. And had it not been for this small delay, I should not still have been there five minutes later, when a voice suddenly called out:
    â€˜Hartright!’
    I turned, and could not for a moment identify the fashionably dressed young man who had broken from the crowd and was advancing smiling towards me. It was only when he pointed to the stick that still hung dripping from my hand, and said, laughing, ‘What? Trying to catch dinner?’ that I knew him by his voice.
    â€˜Travis!’ I said.
    It was no wonder that I had not recognized him, for he had grown a beard, and, instead of his usual get-up, was sporting a check waistcoat and a new soft felt hat. He carried a large portfolio, which he pinioned under his arm while he removed a flawless