Format: Single
He ushered them into an enormously enlarged Terminus Hotel with passages and suites of public rooms, giving on to a further confusion of corridors and saloons. Through this maze men and women wandered and whispered, opening doors into hushed halls whence polite attendants reconducted them to continue their cycle of hopeless search elsewhere. Others, at little writing-tables in the suites of overheated rooms, made notes for honeymoons, as Satan had said, from the Bradshaws and steamer-folders, or wrote long letters which they posted furtively. |
This is from “Uncovenanted Mercies” in Limits and Renewals, the last story in Kipling’s last collection. Satan has created an ingenious contrivances for testing humanity, a replica of a railway terminus where people wait endlessly for trains which may or may not bring them their loved ones. The final message is one of hope, since a long-parted couple, despite many trials and sufferings, are redeemed by being brought together. |
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