[One of Life’s Slaves by Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie]@TWC D-Link bookOne of Life’s Slaves CHAPTER V 8/14
They were beginning to shut the shops here and there, and if she was to get anything bought this evening, it would be impossible to wait any longer. She must really go up and see whether her father were sitting there still--whether he had not perhaps gone when she was down at the bridge: he never mistook the time. She had gone up the street as far as the place where the stone pavement began, when she saw the green door open and slam quickly to again, as a bare-headed, half-dressed servant-girl ran out.
Immediately after, a man came out in similar haste, and through the door which he left standing open behind him, a number of people, with and without hats, streamed out on to the steps. Something was the matter! Now a window was also opened, or rather hammered open, so that the pane clashed down on to the pavement. Probably some drunken man or other, who could not stand any longer--it was Saturday evening, you know--and who was making a row, and must be taken by the police. She had often seen such sights before, and was quite accustomed to them. She was not anxious about her father either: he never interfered in such matters. But why did he not come out? Every one else had come out. A faint, slanting gleam of evening light had fallen in through the empty square of window.
Her father generally sat at the table just inside; he always kept the same place.
And she went up and peered in between the flower-pots,--some half-stifled, dirty geraniums and hydrangeas, saturated with public-house effluvia. Who was that--that man who was lying on the dirty counter, with his necktie and shirt unfastened and one arm hanging down--was it her father? "If only some one had a lancet!--he moved just now--a lancet!" What more they said on the steps she did not notice, except that some wanted to deny her entrance, and others again said that she was Holman's daughter. She awoke, as if after a fall from a great height during which she had lost consciousness, to find herself sitting by the counter supporting her father's head.
She thought she remembered clinging to his neck and begging him to answer her: but there was no rattling in his throat now. They had placed an old, worn sofa-pillow and the seat of a chair under his head.
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