Albert Kinross

“ I've said to Eve, 'as a friend or a lover'; we're pretty frank with one another. But as a husband you'd find you were caught up in a net—trapped and bound—you'd lose the very things that make you valuable. Most men can stand it; but you never could—the years going from you, and nothing to show for them but money. Neither knowledge nor wisdom nor truth nor beauty; but only money. And the wife you'd married would be the symbol of it all, and you'd get to hate her pride and her finery, for which you'd given your best years. ”

“ Do I not love you, Harvey; and does not love know and feel and see everything? Did you think you could hide anything from me? Oh, Harvey, I knew all you have told me to-night, knew it all long ago—almost from the first! I knew that you were not made for this kind of life—have I not said as much to you time and time again? But you were too happy to understand then. And, Harvey dear, what if you do work! Do you think that I could love an idle man, a man of no ambitions? I knew that you were a common labourer, an ordinary workman—perhaps that is why I loved you. ”

“ Afterwards, the busy streets that led to the great Opera House, where some of the world's sweetest singers had thrilled him with some of the world's sweetest melody; not him alone—for he had been but an atom, an infinitesimal part of that vast audience. A part of what? Of the very cream, of the topmost blossoming, of all that London boasted! He had formed a part of that magic coronal, pre-eminent, privileged, by right of its beauty, its health, its brilliance, and fastidious appetites. He had been part of this world; he would stay with it now, always—its life was the one Art! ”

“ I could understand the Carey-Holts. Young and old, they were greedy, and, being of the same blood with him, quite inevitably they must look upon Vignolles as their natural prey. I could even understand the older Tyrrells, whose pride and whose prejudices were these years very much on edge and to whom my friend most appear as a final portent of disorder. To them he must have come as the proverbial last straw; for even a Jew money-lender will do no more than produce his bond and ready cash and you are spared the horrors of his table. ”

“ It is a dishonest book from beginning to end; yet viewed solely as romance, as what might have been, but never was, I take it to be the sincerest thing that I have done. It springs right out of the heart of youth. It is a bath of youth, if I may quote old fogies whose praises fell about me like a shower. How could it have been otherwise, given the conditions? Yet the story of its writing is a better story still, and certainly more honest.
During those winter mornings I had gone down-stairs to the library with monsignor's ill-fated manuscript, which I was learning to know by heart. ”

“ She had written to Victor Molineux, inviting him for tea. She had not met him at the cemetery. So far she had not been out there.
He found her altered and strangely beautiful, the sun still upon her face; and she was no longer in black, nor with any sign of mourning. It was one of those first radiant days of spring when one could wear soft colors. He looked round the room for his ever-watchful enemy; but the portraits were gone. Only one remained, inconspicuous on a side-table. He need not look at it. The man with the thin hair and eye-glasses could follow him no longer. ”

“ It laughed at them—radiant, as though conscious of bright coverings, its phoenix gift, its April renewal—and they laughed back; heartwhole, asking nothing from the gods but life!
It was Capel's last day in Greece; and yet, the first: the first he had known with spring, and joy, and his forsaken youth, all plucking at his heartstrings—the very first! . . . And then he recalled how, long ago, in far-off dreams, this land had always seemed like that; filled with forgetfulness, and beauty, and dim monuments of the first race that vanquished barbarism, and made their life a ritual and an art. ”

“ There was the depots naked in the sunlight, with its couple of wooden huts for offices, its long rows of tents, and its longer rows of camel lines, all beautifully laid out in the marshy land on the African side of the canal. Brown and baked it was, very much like Vignolles, before it joined the reed beds and the water. It was endurable by day; a hard and healthy life we led, spent mostly on our Arab ponies; but after sundown, to the flies were added the mosquitoes, and to the mosquitoes, the sand-flies. The mosquitoes were the fiercest and the most voracious I have ever known. ”

“ The interval was filled by Merceron's cry:
"I have it—that man, Carter-Page—he knows—of course he knows!"
Merceron ran off to get a cab.
"I must find the little beast," he muttered on the way. "Of course he knows. Why was he so affable?—he's cut me for three years, and now—thank the merciful God that created snobs! Somebody must have told him that I was at that house last night, or else he saw me there, and she's—'An earl's coronet, a yellow domino, and Knightsbridge!'" cried Merceron joyfully, as he hailed the cab that drove him back to his club. ”

“ Hopperton and she had quarrelled about it at first, and always Miss Bailey had subsided with a sudden start, saying: “Of course, it's your house, and I'm only coming to give lessons—how absurd of me!” Then Hopperton had smiled, remarking: “I believe you're right, Miss Bailey; anyhow, you know more what's proper than I do, being a woman—and besides, I've been out of the old country these twenty years.” That was how Miss Bailey got her way. And now they had the house; and it was just such a house as Miss Bailey had always dreamt of, but never, never hoped to see in real brick and stone. ”

“ When, as usual, Uncle John announced that supper was waiting for them in the parlour, Sherwell produced his bottle of rare old port.
It was an impressive moment, and no one felt its passing with more gravity and awe than Jessie Tolputt. She was a slim little soul, with large black eyes, a pointed chin, and lots of dark, dark hair. It was so dark because her face was almost pale—olive-pale rather than white-pale. She was slender and round in one, strong and yet fragile; she might have been a nymph escaped from Croy Wood or from Sandling Wood inland. ”

“ There was, indeed, no cause for shame in the effort; its public appearance was its one sin, it had no right to thrust itself thus brazenly upon a busy world. The conscientious and scholarly critic in the stalls viewed the thing not altogether unfavourably. Of that whole audience, perhaps he and Harvey alone knew Isabella's proper place, assessed it at its real value. It had taught its author how to write. Matter, direct and sure emotion, the great sanity, might come with the years.
The curtain had fallen amid a stubborn silence that ended in a sigh of relief. ”

“ He sees the little boy that Farmer Arrow took hold of, as he might have taken a stray kitten and given it milk; he sees the interior of Hook's cottage and a young man grown discontented, yet daring no future but the poor and pitiful sameness of to-day; and then he sees that same young man acquiring knowledge, devouring it, eager for it, all the starved years released, and clamouring to have their hunger stilled.... The old apple-tree stands there to-day. George Fuller sees it topping the young fruit he has planted, taking much out of the land and yielding nothing. ”

“ Madge Harewood had turned to Colin. He was looking very well in his regimentals, the usual gunner outfit, blue and red and lots of gold braid, the slip of striped ribbon on his breast lending a finishing touch of the heroic to what otherwise had been but mere barbarous ornament. The girl was on his arm, and, as they moved away, I noticed that again the old look had gone clean out of his eyes, swamped by a light of happiness that I considered excessive—just as when, in the cart that afternoon, he had held forth about Madge Harewood. ”

“ The eyes in the box met with more than common understanding.
"Brave old world!" said Lady Grasmere, "I'd sooner be there than in the Royal box!"
"You are not afraid of dragons?" asked Merceron, smiling into the lovely face.
"Is not the Marchioness below?" she asked; and Mrs. Hodgson laughed reproval.
"I had forgotten," said Harvey. "And yet the present has its moments," he added, bending over her with opera-cloak in hands that testified.
Together they went out into the vestibule where Hutchinson and he had stood the night before. Now he was looking for Lady Grasmere's man. ”

“ The caretaker and all his family looked as though they had been mauled or shaken. Only the young girl seemed to have escaped. "Traitor!" she cried, with flashing eyes, as she caught sight of Hester; and then, to the tough lady: "If Mr. Farmer hadn't been rolling in that faggot-wood, I could have set it alight a dozen times. Why didn't we drag them out of it?"
"Men always spoil things!" shouted the tough lady.
The caretaker shot suddenly across the floor, and Mr. Farmer sat up, looked round the room, congratulated himself, assumed a standing position, and made an announcement. ”

“ To Merceron fate was even kinder. London was brand-new, and their dinner an initiation. The string-band that discoursed behind a bank of flowers from the gallery at the restaurant's further end was as something celestial by mere virtue of its exalted position. The waiters in black and gold with silk stockings were Ganymedes, and the swiftly-served courses nectar and ambrosia. To Hutchinson, unafflicted as he was with a classical training, the service was but a luxury, while Merceron deemed it one of the Arts. ”

“ Sometimes a star shone through the tangle, as a jewel is caught up in a woman's hair; sometimes the moonlight filtered through and made the scene more ghostly, more surprising. Now and again came clearings, and Slavin felt like a diver returned to air. The sky was over them once more, and the beauty of the forest made a magic ring, an amphitheatre, fit for the sports of fairies, of hobgoblins, of spirits joyful or sardonic. For well over an hour they must have driven when the road curved into a clearing larger than them all. ”