Explore "Cheap" by Marjorie Pickthall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ransome said that you might pick up specimens of all the unprettiest afflictions of body and soul in Herares ten years ago. He also said that when he saw any particularly miserable bit of human wreckage, white or brown, adrift on the languid tides of life about the jetty, he always said without further inquiry, "It's Henkel's house you're looking for. Turn to the left, and keep on turning to the left. And if God knew what went on under these trees, He'd have mercy on you. ."
The house was the last house on the last road of the town. You won't find it now, for no one would live in it after Henkel, and in a season or two the forest swamped it as the sea swamps a child's boat on the beach. It was a white house in a garden, and after rain the scent of vanilla and stephanotis rose round it like a fog. The fever rose round it like a fog, too, and that's why Henkel got it so cheap. No fever touched him. He lived there alone with a lot of servants-Indians. And they were all wrecks, Ransome said, broken down from accident or disease-wrecks that no one else would employ. He got them very cheap. When they died he got more.