The Image Breakers

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1900. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI FATE had prepared for Redgold on that blackest of black Mondays a cold, uncomfortable journey northward in the blankest misery of disillusion, disappointment. But, as the fog and slush of London were left a hundred miles behind him, there was a shifting of the scenes: the stage grew lighter; lugubrious strains which should have been his wedding music changed from a minor to a major key. The weather itself seemed to enter into a mild conspiracy to exalt his spirits. Driving from the station, he found himself in a clear winter atmosphere, r1lled with the shouts of the children skating on Lupton's ornamental water. The house was full of lively people, bent on the enjoyment of their Christmas holidays. Under the influence of a good dinner, of charming feminine society, his mood had brightened. Afterwards, on reflection, it seemed to him that he had been perhaps almost too desperately ready to abandon himself to the influences of the place and moment, to forget his various worries and anxieties in a house full of lively people bent on the enjoyment of the Christmas festival. Lupton alone had worn the clouded brow of the great man for whom holidays are a dead-letter. His mind was filled with prophetic visions for the near future. Though Home Rule was not dead, yet labour questions would come more and more to the front. He wished to take Time by the forelock. There was crying need for a book he had had in his mind some time, on the Eight Hours question. He had found his notes on the subject--they were in very feminine handwriting--and it had occurred to him that Redgold was the one man most fitted to put them in presentable form. In all this the man commissioned for the task was astute enough to see the hand of a feminine diplomatist for whom my uncle w...