Ethel Turner

Name: In the Silence of the Sleep-Time
Author: Ethel Turner

Summary

“In the Silence of the Sleep-Time”, published in 1896, is a work by Ethel Turner. It explores elements such as revolver, Charlton and Wilkins.

Quotes from In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (Ethel Turner)

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ She was on her knees now, clinging to the rails like a maniac drowning at sea. Jim was dead. A gang of men—they had all shot together. Jim was dead!
She forced her body down the staircase; her legs utterly refused to support her, but by clinging to the rails she huddled herself along that she might go to him.
Then the yellow light of the hall gas flashed in her eyes. Jim had lighted it himself, and was standing under it—right under the orange-coloured glass shade. Jim, in his tennis flannels, unhurt, with the revolver that he had transferred to his left hand still smoking. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ He had not quite freed his arms from her warm little body—Laura had just grasped her, was lifting her over—when the servants, watching on the upstairs landing, shrieked hideously in sudden chorus. He pushed the child over and sprang round.
With a sudden drop all the blood went out of his heart—the capacity of movement deserted him. His man had struggled up to his feet and was standing in the middle of the hall, his arm held out, his revolver pointed directly at the blue figure that was grasping in utter unconsciousness the little white one. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ And better hit the woman for that would be a harder hit for the man. He fell he could lie there and laugh himself sardonically to death if he could thus rake the decks of the "class."
His finger trembled on the trigger.
But even as it trembled, a child burst out from a doorway some distance down the hall—a child in a nightgown—a very indignant, small child, for her nurse was going on in a most ridiculous fashion, it seemed to her, who had no experience of hysterics subdued from terror into stifled sobs and laughter. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ Jim turned his eyes away from the sight and fretted himself at the time that must elapse before the doctor could arrive.
The man continued to writhe. He worked one hand under him until it had grasped the revolver in his pocket. He worked the revolver free of his coat, but kept it hidden in the long hair of the rug.
He moved his finger along till it touched the trigger, and he had the muzzle pointing straight at the breast of the woman in the blue gown. It would do the "class" good to feel what it was like to lie and welter in one's own blood. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ Laura took several hasty steps down the stairs to go to the child and save her baby eyes the horror of the sight on the rug. But Charlton waved her resolutely back, and called out that he would get the child. He could not bear his wife to step across the rug.
He strode hastily down the hall to the nursery door, and the child made a glad dart to him; but he pushed her off a moment. How dare he lift her while he had his revolver still at full cock in one hand? He pushed her aside with one hand and laid the deadly thing down for a moment on a lamp-bracket a few feet still further away. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ Her children! The little boys had just developed whooping-cough, and were sleeping in a room opening out of her own, where she could hear their slightest movement. But the one little girl who was delicate had been put to bed temporarily in the downstairs day-nursery, until she could be sent away from the infection; and in the servants' sitting-room, which opened into it, a nurse was sleeping on a sofa, to be near if she needed anything.
What if the man should pass the nursery—if a shot should be fired there! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Ethel Turner, In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (1896)

“ Charlton had taken him on a mouth ago to help him with some work in the garden, on his representing that he had been out of work for mouths and was next door to starvation. He had paid him good wages and received a fair meed of work, and there was an end to the matter for him.
For his part, Wilkins had found out all be wanted, and departed not ill-pleased with his fortnight, for he had been comfortably housed and fed in the empty coach-house, and gardening was one of the few things in the way of honest work that he was not actually averse from. ”

Ethel Turner

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Quotes from In the Silence of the Sleep-Time (Ethel Turner)

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