Alfred Ollivant

“ Th' Owd Un, indeed, seems to spend the evening of his life going thus between Kenmuir and the Grange. The black muzzle is almost white now; the gait, formerly so smooth and strong, is stiff and slow; venerable, indeed, is he of whom men still talk as the best sheep-dog in the North.
As he passes, he pauses to scan you. The noble head is high, and one foot raised; and you look into two big gray eyes such as you have never seen before—soft, a little dim, and infinitely sad.
That is Owd Bob o' Kenmuir, of whom the tales are many as the flowers on the May. ”

“ Patience Woodburn never forgot her father's words and never had cause to regret that she had followed them.
The girl, wayward though she might be at times, never gave her mother a moment's real anxiety. She was straight as a dart, strong as a young hawk, fearless as a lion, and free as the wind. Her simplicity, her purity and strength made people afraid of her. In a crowd they always made way for her: for she was resolute with the almost ruthless resolution of one whose purpose is sure and conscience clean. ”

“ Her natural habit, Ernie saw, was that of a great and mysteriously growing tree, its roots deep in the red earth; its massive foliage drinking of the goodness of sunshine and wind and rain; but now there was about her a note of restraint, even of stress. The easy flow of her nature was being dammed. She seemed out of place and dumbly aware of it, like a creature of the wilderness in a strange environment. The profound and quiet joyousness of woman, maturing to ripe perfection, which should have been hers to an unusual degree, was not. ”

“ To little M 'Adam, standing with his back to the crowd, that storm of cheering came as the first announcement of defeat.
A wintry smile, like the sun over a March sea, crept across his face.
“We might a kent it, Wullie,” he muttered, soft and low. The tension loosed, the battle lost, the little man almost broke down. There were red dabs of color in his face; his eyes were big; his lips pitifully quivering; he was near to sobbing.
An old man—utterly alone he had staked his all on a throw—and lost. ”

“ Ruth and her mother-in-law frequently met in the steep and curling streets of Old Town as they went about their business. They knew and tacitly ignored each other. But Ernie's children were not to be ignored. They knocked eternally at their granny's heart. When of summer evenings their mother took her little brood to Saffrons Croft and sat with them beneath the elms, her latest baby in her arms, the others clouding her feet like giant daisies, Anne Caspar, limping by on flat feet with her string bag, would be wrung to the soul. ”

“ A path of stepping-stones led across the green towards the house; each stepping-stone a dead man sprawling face down in a swirl of green.
Kit saw it all as he had seen it then: the tail of Grenadiers, the pursuing Parson, the hounding Gentleman.
Then it had possessed him; now he only wanted to get away. Home, mother, Gwen, and an apple in the loft; soft cheeks, kind eyes, the voices of women loving him, chaffing him—these he longed for. He was tired of being a man for the time being: he wanted to be a little boy again, to be cuddled, to be loved. ”

“ And he was Chukkers!—the greaser!
They rose up in wrath like a vast, avenging cloud, and went raving over the barrier on to the course in tumultuous black flood. The ruck of beaten horses, bobbing home one by one, crashed into them. The mob, without regard for its shattered atoms, moved on like one. A roaring sea of humanity swung on its blind way. Above the dark waters jockeys in silken jackets and on sweating thoroughbreds drifted to and fro like helpless butterflies. ”

“ The old folks grew to love the constant visitor, nor did he disguise the errand on which he was bent; while little Alice, with her father's eyes peeping from beneath her mother's curls, greeted her new friend with screams of joy, bangings on her drum, and the loveliest and most intimate of smiles.
Ernie made the child a cradle-swing of willow-withes, hung it from the bough of an apple-tree, in the garden, and passed many a happy hour alone with her. ”

“ The Parson went towards him.
"I never thought to see you alive again, Knapp."
"I'm a little alive," said the man wearily. "They done me—all but."
The Cockney snap was out of his voice. His words came like a drunkard's: he was slurring them, running them together, skipping hard consonants.
"I'll never be a man no more, I won't," he added with a dry sob.
The Parson gripped his hand.
A look of beastly rage darted into the other's eyes.
"Blast ye!" he screamed, and struck at the Parson's face with his elbow. ”

“ The burning liquid swished against the huge bull-head. Blinding, bubbling, scalding, it did its fell work well; nothing escaped that merciless torrent. With a cry of agony, half bellow, half howl, Red Wull checked in his charge. From without the door was banged to; and again the duel was postponed. While within the tap-room a huddle of men and dogs were left alone with a mad man and a madder brute.
Blind, demented, agonized, the Tailless Tyke thundered about the little room gnashing, snapping, oversetting; men, tables, chairs swirled off their legs as though they had been dolls. ”

“ Joe knocked.
Ruth slipped to her knees. She did not pray consciously. Kneeling on the stone-slabs, her face uplifted in the darkness, her hands pale on the Windsor chair before her, she opened wide the portals of her heart to the voice of the Spirit, if such voice there were.
And there was. It came to her from above in the silence and the dusk. Ruth knew it so well, that still small voice with the gurgle in it. ”

“ There had been a week of summer; the tide would be high, and only a day or two back a coastguard at the Gap had told her that the water was warming fast.
She went to the window and looked out over the vast green sweep of the Paddock Close running away up the gorse-crowned hillside that rose like a rampart at the back.
It was early. The sun had risen, but the mist lay white as yet in the hollows and hung about the dripping trees. Earth and sky and sea called her. ”

“ Out of the West, along the back of the Downs, dipping and dancing to the curve of the land like the wake of a ship over a billowy sea, a rough road swept up to the head, passing a dew-pond, the old race-course still fenced in, and a farm amid stacks at the head of a long valley that curled away towards a lighthouse pricking up white against the blue on the summit of the cliff in the eye of the misty morning sun. ”

“ II Kit slid down the companion ladder.
The lower deck was half awash, and foul with smoke. There was a stink of dead men, bilge, and powder.
But what a change from when he was last here!
Then sights so ghastly that he dared not recall them: screams of torn men, rending of torn planks; howling terrors on every side, shattering his head, bursting his heart, dissipating his mind.
Now silence everywhere, beautiful silence, the silence of Death. ”

“ Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull, face to face; dead, not divided; each, save for the other, alone. The dog, his saturnine expression glazed and ghastly in the fixedness of death, propped up against that humpbacked boulder beneath which, a while before, the Black Killer had dreed his weird; and, close by, his master lying on his back, his dim dead eyes staring up at the heaven, one hand still clasping a crumpled photograph; the weary body at rest at last, the mocking face—mocking no longer—alight with a whole-souled, transfiguring happiness. ”

“ They entered Saffrons Croft, which lay black or silver-blanched before them, peopled now only with tall trees. The groups of elms, thickening with blossoms, gathered the stars to their bosoms, and laid their shadows like patterns along the smooth sward. Beyond the threadbare tapestry of trees rose the solid earth-work of the Downs, upholding the brilliant night, encircling them as in a cup, and keeping off the hostile world. Ernie felt their strength, their friendship, the immense and unfailing comfort of them. ”

“ And certainly if to be a poet is to love the familiar objects of the road, a poet Ernie was: for he loved them all—Lewes with its narrow streets, its steep hill to which you cling like a fly on a pane and look across to Mount Caburn for help; the old Pelham Arms, its walnut-tree at the back, the Fox, the Barley Mow, the Newmarket on the Brighton road; the hills running down in glorious nakedness to the highway, the tanned harvesters sitting among their sheaves; peeps of the blue Weald islanded with woods ”

“ Artists and poets: they were all alike—dirty beggars, all manners and no morals, who could talk the hind-leg off a she-ass.
And Silver, being dumb himself and very human, hated men who were articulate.
He watched the pair walking away from him down the hillside. An ill-matched couple they seemed to him: the slight, strenuous girl, her plait of hair like a spear of gold between her shoulders, her slim black legs, and air of a cold flame; and that loose, fat thing who gave the young man the impression of a suet pudding that had taken to drink. ”

“ She took his arm and they strolled across the lawn past the hostel towards the solid darkness of the Downs which enfolded them.
The long white house stood still and solitary in the great coombe that brimmed with darkness and was crowned with multitudinous stars. Washed by the moon, and warm with a suggestion of human busyness, the hostel seemed to be stirring in a happy sleep, as though conscious of the good work it was doing. ”