{"product_id":"2940013704251","title":"The Pale Ape","description":"\"A big thing of a pig.\"--Aristophanes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYesterday again I stood and looked at Hargen Hall from the lake; and\u003cbr\u003eit is this that has brought me to write of my life in it. Wintry winds\u003cbr\u003ewere whistling through the withered bracken and the branches, whirling\u003cbr\u003ewithered birch-leaves about the south quadrangle; and no birds sang.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I first entered it I was a girl, one might say--gay enough; but\u003cbr\u003enow I have known what one never forgets; and the days and the hairs\u003cbr\u003egrow grey together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFive titled names among my friends gained me an entrance to Hargen in\u003cbr\u003ethe fall of the year '08. I arrived on the evening of 10 th November;\u003cbr\u003eand shall never forget the strangeness of the impression made on my\u003cbr\u003emind that night: for even ere I rounded into sight of the house, the\u003cbr\u003esound of the waters far off filled me with a feeling of the eerily\u003cbr\u003edreary--the house being almost surrounded with mountain and cliff,\u003cbr\u003edown which a series of cascades shower; and that night I had some\u003cbr\u003edifficulty in catching quite everything that was said to me, though in\u003cbr\u003etwo or three days, maybe, my ear became used to the tumult.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was four days before I met Sir Philip Lister himself--Davenport,\u003cbr\u003ethe old butler, told me that his master was \"indisposed\"--but Sir\u003cbr\u003ePhilip sent me a polite missive inviting me to take things carelessly\u003cbr\u003ea little: so I spent the first days in learning my pupil's moods, and\u003cbr\u003ein roaming over the place, from \"Queen Elizabeth's Room\"--behind the\u003cbr\u003ebed still hung a velvet shield broidered with the royal arms in white\u003cbr\u003ewire--to the apes and the cascades. A sense of forlornness pervaded it\u003cbr\u003eall, for scarcely ten of us were in all the desert of that place, with\u003cbr\u003ean occasional glimpse of two or three gardeners, or a groom. The\u003cbr\u003ekitchen was now a panelled hall like a chapel, with windows of painted\u003cbr\u003eglass containing the six coats-of-arms of the Lister Lynns, a hall in\u003cbr\u003ewhose vastness the cook and her assistant looked awfully forlorn and\u003cbr\u003esmall; and hardly even a housemaid ever now entered all that part of\u003cbr\u003ethe east wing which had been singed by a fire fifty-five years since.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was on the fourth forenoon, a day of \"the Indian summer,\" that my\u003cbr\u003epupil took me to see the apes. There were three of them--two\u003cbr\u003echimpanzees, one gibbon--in three rooms of wire-netting close to the\u003cbr\u003eeast line of cliffs, i.e., about six hundred yards from the house.\u003cbr\u003eThere, chuckling and chattering in the shadow of chestnuts, they lived\u003cbr\u003etheir lives, anon speculating like philosophers upon their knots, or\u003cbr\u003ehearkening to the waters which chanted near in their ears. And there\u003cbr\u003ewas a fourth room of netting in the row, but empty; as to which my\u003cbr\u003epupil said to me:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The one that used to be in this fourth room was huge, Miss Newnes,\u003cbr\u003eand had a pale face. He died some time before I came to Hargen: but\u003cbr\u003ehis ghost walks when the moon is at the full.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Now Esmé,\" I muttered. (Her name was Esmé Martagon, daughter of the\u003cbr\u003eMarquis de Martagon and of Margaret Lister, Sir Philip's sister; the\u003cbr\u003echild being at this time twelve years of age, and an orphan--a rather\u003cbr\u003epretty elf with ebon curls, but as changeable as the shapes of\u003cbr\u003emercury, now bursting with alacrity, and now cursed with black turns\u003cbr\u003eof sadness.)","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47121184096496,"sku":"2940013704251","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013704251_p0.jpg?v=1763597505","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013704251","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}