"Arthur Conan Doyle - The Land of Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

reacted to the extent of a libel action, an abortive appeal for suppression, a riot in Sloane Street, two
personal assaults, and the loss of his position as lecturer upon Physiology at the London School of Sub-
Tropical Hygiene. Otherwise, the matter passed more peaceably than might have been expected.

But he was losing something of his fire. Those huge shoulders were a little bowed. The spade-shaped
Assyrian beard showed tangles of grey amid the black, his eyes were a trifle less aggressive, his smile less
self-complacent, his voice as monstrous as ever but less ready to roar down all opposition. Yet he was
dangerous, as all around him were painfully aware. The volcano was not extinct, and constant rumblings
threatened some new explosion. Life had much yet to teach him, but he was a little less intolerant in
learning.

There was a definite date for the change which had been wrought in him. It was the death of his wife.
That little bird of a woman had made her nest in the big man's heart. He had all the tenderness and
chivalry which the strong can have for the weak. By yielding everything she had won everything, as a
sweet-natured, tactful woman can. And when she died suddenly from virulent pneumonia following
influenza, the man staggered and went down. He came up again, smiling ruefully like the stricken boxer,
and ready to carry on for many a round with Fate. But he was not the same man, and if it had not been for
the help and comradeship of his daughter Enid, he might have never rallied from the blow. She it was
who, with clever craft, lured him into every subject which would excite his combative nature and infuriate
his mind, until he lived once more in the present and not the past. It was only when she saw him turbulent
in controversy, violent to pressmen, and generally offensive to those around him, that she felt he was
really in a fair way to recovery.

Enid Challenger was a remarkable girl and should have a paragraph to herself. With the raven-black hair
of her father, and the blue eyes and fresh colour of her mother, she was striking, if not beautiful, in
appearance. She was quiet, but she was very strong. From her infancy she had either to take her own part
against her father, or else to consent to be crushed and to become a mere automaton worked by his strong
fingers. She was strong enough to hold her own in a gentle, elastic fashion, which bent to his moods and
reasserted itself when they were past. Lately she had felt the constant pressure too oppressive and she had
relieved it by feeling out for a career of her own. She did occasional odd jobs for the London press, and
did them in such fashion that her name was beginning to be known in Fleet Street. In finding this opening
she had been greatly helped by an old friend of her father -- and possibly of the reader -- Mr. Edward
Malone of the Daily Gazette

Malone was still the same athletic Irishman who had once won his international cap at Rugby, but life had
toned him down also, and made him a more subdued and thoughtful man. He had put away a good deal
when last his football-boots had been packed away for good. His muscles may have wilted and his joints

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 The Land of Mist

stiffened, but his mind was deeper and more active. The boy was dead and the man was born. In person
he had altered little, but his moustache was heavier, his back a little rounded, and some lines of thought
were tracing themselves upon his brow. Post-war conditions and new world problems had left their mark.
For the rest he had made his name in journalism and even to a small degree in literature. He was still a
bachelor, though there were some who thought that his hold on that condition was precarious and that
Miss Enid Challenger's little white fingers could disengage it. Certainly they were very good chums.

It was a Sunday evening in October, and the lights were just beginning to twinkle out through the fog
which had shrouded London from early morning. Professor Challenger's flat at Victoria West Gardens