Atonement -- Fiction; Clergy -- England -- Fiction; Illegitimate children -- Fiction
The stacking of the stones was finished early on the Friday afternoon,
and Carlton determined to take the rest of that day easily. So he set
himself to retrieve the lectern from the ruins, and did finally wheel it
to the rectory, on two barrows; the first broke under its weight.
Moreover, this had consumed the entire afternoon, as another would have
foreseen at a glance, and Carlton emerged as from a pool of ink. Since
he had made himself rather hot and black, however, he thought it a pity
not to clear a little more of the interior while the light lasted. It
must be done some day; but again the task was more formidable than it
appeared to dauntless eyes still aflame with vast endeavour. The firemen
had not spared the water when all was over, so the big bones of the roof
were not burnt through. Tie-beams and principal rafters, in particular,
lay whole and heavy, and immovable less from their weight than from the
inextricable tangle in which they had fallen. There was nothing but the
saw for these, and Carlton had already sawn the lectern from its grave.
He learnt to saw with his left hand that evening; and after all had very
little but his own personal condition to show for his labour: only the
nucleus of a wood-heap near the stack of stones, and a crooked,
blackened, brass thing in the dining-room. But then he had not intended
to do much that afternoon; he went indoors, and drew the water for his
bath with that consolation.
Meat for the second time that day! Carlton began to feel a man. He paced
his study with the old rapid step; and he determined to order and
arrange his day's work so that the muscles should relieve each other in
gangs: varied exertions; that was the principle of all continuous
labour. You cannot sit down to rest when you are working hard; but you
can do something else. Carlton never rested till he went to bed. But
this evening he sat down at his desk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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