No one's rated or reviewed this product yet. Skip to main content. Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition of Violet Forster's Lover. It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, after many years, back in print. This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work by Richard Marsh, which is now, at last, again available to you. Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside Violet Forster's Lover: Look inside the book: Tickell's last raise had been a hundred pounds; Beaton had covered the bet with an I.
At times, as she glanced at the man beside her, her face was lit by a smile which made it even more than pretty, then the smile went, and was succeeded by an expression which had in it something hard and cruel and even sinister; but even then, after some uncomfortable fashion, it was a handsome face, though scarcely one which one would have chosen for a friend.
Violet Forster's Lover by Richard Marsh - Free Ebook
She was observing him closely enough; one felt that nothing about him escaped her scrutiny--that she noted the well-cut clothes as well as the state that they were in; the hand which dangled helplessly by his side, that it was not that of a man who had done much manual labour; the face, which, unshaven and unwashed though it was, was not only a handsome one, but also the face of a man of breeding. About Richard Marsh, the Author: You won't touch me, but I shan't hesitate to touch you. I am that kind. You understand, you are not to leave my house without my permission; and in order that we may know exactly where we are I'm going to lock the door and put the key in my pocket.
Why, for years of my life I as good as starved; but there have been times when I've gone without food for days together, and known what it is to feel as you are feeling now. He was persuaded, he knew not how; he never meant to be. The something which was in him, the craving for food which was life, was on her side; he did have tea with her, a gargantuan tea.
He ate of everything there was to eat, while she showed that the necessity that she should have something to eat of which she had spoken was a fiction, by trifling with odds and ends, while she watched that his plate was kept well supplied, and kept on talking.
She was even autobiographical. I used to think that there wasn't such a thing in the world as laughter for me, that it was just as improbable that I should have a good time as that I should jump over the moon. Yet, I've learnt to laugh at times, nearly all the time; and as for a good time, I've acquired the knack even of getting that.
Violet Forster's Lover by Richard Marsh, The Perfect Library - Paperback
It will be the same with you, and more. When you left me I don't remember; when I remembered anything again I was in the workhouse infirmary. I'd been found senseless and practically stripped in an alley off the Gray's Inn Road. I'd been in the infirmary more than a week before I came to my senses, after a fashion; then they wanted me to account for myself. I couldn't, or I wouldn't, they were not sure which, so they put me out again into the street. I'm not certain, but I fancy that they gave me the choice of that or of being an able-bodied pauper.
It was snowing on the day they turned me out; you should have seen the clothes I was wearing, and the boots!
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You know what kind of weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have, men, women, and children; I've herded with them. And for what I've suffered I have to thank you.
I'm eating your food-I can't help eating it, I've got to that-but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I will. I came on the scene in the very nick of time.
In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched you to the station. I don't remember how it was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me to enable you to bring off some swindle-what it was I've never understood-and that then you left me in the street, as if I were carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get into your house I have never been able to make out.
There's his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner-I know all about him-and you'll be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than anything you've had to bear because of me. I know all about you.
I know your name, your record, the whole dirty story; you were as deep in the gutter when I first met you as you are now, and perhaps deeper-certainly you had no more chance of getting out of it; men with your record never do, I know. I didn't know what 'balmy' meant before they told me; it seems that it means a man who's not right in his head-not quite mad, but very nearly. I don't think I'm mad, or even nearly, but, looking back, I can't get beyond a certain point-beyond you. What did you do to me that caused it? Can't you undo it? I suppose he was your tool, and what he did to me was done by your orders.
You say they tell you that you're not in your right mind; you were not when I first met you. I should say that you were practically starving and had been living the life of a London gutter man; that bolt from the police finished you; we had to do something to get life back into you. You certainly had your senses no more about you than you say you had in the workhouse infirmary. I declare to you that when I left you you were in a much better condition than when I met you. You had your senses more about you; you had been well fed, I believe the food I gave you saved your life; you were well dressed, you had money in your pocket.
I don't see how I can fairly be held responsible for what happened to you afterwards; if you were in your right mind now, you'd see I can't. What do you want with me now? Why have you brought me here, do you want to use me as a catspaw again? Do you mind if I have a cigarette?
I can always talk better when I am smoking. And won't you have a cigar? Have another now that we meet again. You'll find that there's nothing the matter with those cigars, they're good tobacco. She placed a box of cigars in front of him.
Violet Forster's Lover
He glared at them as if he would rather they had not been there, but the craving that was in him got the upper hand again. He took and lighted one, puffing at it while she talked. My only relative, an uncle, found me a situation in a draper's shop, where I got no pay because I was so young, but where they worked me from the first thing in the morning till the last thing at night, and gave me in return my food and lodging-such lodging and such food.
When I had been there three years they turned me out because I objected to the attentions of the master's son. I knew my uncle wouldn't have me; I'd known that all along. I should have been without a penny, absolutely, if it hadn't been for one of the assistants who lent me a sovereign. With that I came to town-I had ever an adventurous spirit.
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I went to a big shop, a famous shop; they took me on at once. A sale was coming on, they were in want of extra hands; with people of that sort they didn't want references; the assistants there never had a chance of being dishonest, they were too well looked after. They wanted no character when you came, and they gave you none when you left; you were liable to be discharged at a moment's notice, without any cause being given, and assistants were being discharged like that continually, and they gave you no character though you had been there ten years; they never do give characters, it's a rule of the house.
I was there rather more than two years. I was in the mantles when I left. One afternoon just as I was going down for tea, they called me into the office, gave me my wages, and told me I could go; trade was slack, the season was over; they gave me no reason, but that was the only one I could guess that they had for sacking me. It was in a shop which did a cutting trade, a low-class shop, an open-to-all-hours-of-the-night sort of shop, in a low-class neighbourhood in which people did not start buying till an hour when the shops ought to be closed. What a life I had there! You talk about what you've been doing, and you're a man.
You talk of the swine with whom you've herded; you've never had to associate with the likes of her, and be under her thumb-and that's why I left. Restlessness seemed all at once to seize her. She rose from her seat and stood in front of the fire. They said my accounts were wrong-they couldn't prove it, and I don't believe they were, but they sent me packing that very day.
You've no notion for how little, for nothing at all, a draper's assistant, who may have given months and years good service, is thrown into the ditch, no reason vouchsafed, no remedy obtainable, no character to be had. Oh, I saw the drapery in all its phases; to this hour I can't enter a draper's shop without feeling a chill at the bottom of my spinal column; my skin goes all goose-fleshy; I think of what drapers' shops once meant to me. But there came a time when I had done with them-I'll take care that it's for ever; that was when I reached the very lowest circle in the pit.
How many circles were there in Dante's hell? I'm convinced I reached the bottom one.
How I lived I can't tell you; you know, I had to live, and-well, you talk of the things you've endured, you have no conception how much worse that sort of thing is for a woman than for a man. At last I came down to selling flowers-yes I that was a nice profession, wasn't it?
She put her hands up to her brow, pressing back her hair; she presented a sufficiently dainty picture then, with her well-fitting gown and her look of perfect health. How it all came back to me! My flowers had not been in very good condition in the morning, they had not grown fresher as the day went on. I offered them to a man who came sauntering along; he stopped to look at them, he soon spotted the state that they were in. I had just seen that he was well dressed and looked as though he had money, and, in the dim light, that was all. She paused for so considerable a space of time that one wondered if she proposed to carry the story any farther.
When she did go on it was in an altered tone of voice; she spoke very quietly, very coldly, as if she wished to make a mere statement of facts. We had been on quite decent terms, which was not the case with most of the gentlemen of his sort that I had come across. Rather than that he should have seen me, in my rags, hawking faded flowers in the streets, I would-I would have done anything.
When I tried to get away from him he wouldn't hear of it.