Barry Pain

“ One bird called to another; every now and then there was a flutter among the leaves, or the quick rustle of some small live thing in the tall grasses and brushwood below, and a scented wind kept singing of a land of rest where the good winds go when they die. From far away one could hear the low roar of a lion, as he stood by the margin of the distant morass, looking over stretches of sand and spaces of still water to the line of grey hills that seemed to be the end of the world. ”

“ Margaret Fayre knew of no woman who worshipped beauty as she herself worshipped it, no woman with her capacity for love and her longing to be loved, no woman so ugly as she seemed to herself, none so loveless.
"I have the wrong soul," she said, "the soul that should have been given only to a beautiful woman." For twenty years she had been a woman, and she had never yet fallen in love with a man. ”

“ Jane had known Midway in her childhood, and had loved its wide and gentle staircases, its fine Jacobean panelling, its stone roof, and its old garden with the paved walks between yew hedges.
"Well," said Richard, "if you are so keen on the place, why shouldn't we wait for a chance to get it, instead of looking for something more or less like it?"
"Because you can't," said Jane. "We're general public, and general public is never allowed to buy a place like Midway. People live in it till they die, and then leave it to the person they love best, and that person lives in it till he dies. ”

“ The sunrise was beautiful as a fair dream, sprigs of light snapping on the surface of the marshy pools and slow streams, where the cool dawn-wind shook the water’s surface.
“And now I will go to my rest,” said Clio.
“And I,” said the others. “And I too.” Only Erato strove to rise and could not, and fell back, breathing quickly.
“I have grown weak,” she said, and her voice was low, so that it could hardly be heard. “I will stay here, and rest here, in the warm light of the sun: I am cold, strangely cold.”
Euterpe and Cupid stayed with Erato. ”

“ I was a simple country girl, and I was misled at the time by my feelings. When Tom came, he appealed to me far more, but although I have always tried to be kind to him, I can see now that I never loved him. Cecil, on the other hand, does not exactly appeal to me; he masters me, absorbs me. To see him is joy unspeakable; to think of him is the rapture that almost tortures. How utterly I love him!
Something within me seems to tell me that Clara was right. Cecil is so brilliant, so bold, so intensely masculine, that the thought of a rival would add to the ardour of his love ”

“ I hate, really, to go to a wedding. I know it's silly, and such things must be. But it's a burnt sacrifice of all that's holiest—the victim tricked out in a parcel of finery—the ghastly publicity—the man in a frock-coat, with meaning eyes. Weddings are loathsome—disgusting! They ought to be different. But marriage—afterwards—is beautiful, even though it may be so quiet. It is not like death."
"It is very well for you—you and Edmund get on so well together. And your nature is different."
"You know, Bertha, that you and Hubert also get on very well together." ”

“ No Dean—and perhaps no don—who has been in that portentous position as long as I have can fail to become a perennial stream of advice. It is the Nemesis of those who have all their lives been treated with more respect than they have deserved. I am the only exception with which I am acquainted. Child, why do you not make more use of your noble gifts for dancing, amateur theatricals, and general conversation? And yet I’m not grumbling. Only I mean to say, don’t you know? Of course, they all do it—the people in the great world to which you, and occasionally I, belong. ”

“ Many of the rebels had fallen to the revolvers of the white men at bay, and many more to the rifles of the patrol. Two of their leaders had perished before their eyes, and the death of one of them, slave to the fixed eyes and whispered words of the King, had seemed to them miraculous. How could they have been mad enough to contend against such a power? Spiritless and unarmed, thrust on by the patrol with the butt of the rifle, they staggered down the slopes to their huts on the beach. ”

“ I was fairly copped, and my temper got the better of me again. It was foolish of me, but I may have thought that he, being a parson, would not actually strike me. Anyhow, I said that if he wanted to know what he was I could tell him. I did tell him in four words. I omit the words.
Never in my life have I had such a thrashing as I got then. He hit only with the open hand; if he had used his fists he'd have killed me. There was no getting away from him, and no giving him anything back. It was ding-dong all over my face and head until I dropped in a heap, bleeding like a pig, and nearly sick. ”

“ Thinking, "Vera has a natural sympathy with the struggling artistic exile. But she has never loved me. It was madness to postpone the final farewell for a fortnight." Humming, "Tra-la-la-la, tra-la, tra-la." Thinking, "The occasion—the romance of the occasion—seemed to demand it. The night is beautiful. Vera also is beautiful. But a fortnight! It is a long time, and much may happen in it. Vera may get to hear of Veronique; then if Vera ever could have cared for me I am ruined. Veronique may hear of Vera; Veronique would never forgive it, and I should be ruined also. ”

“ Wilmay became the old Wilmay again, saw life with her blue eyes as bright as before, rode her pony, learned to swim and to fence, and chattered the prettiest French without ever learning it at all.
"She is at the awkward age," said Bertha some time afterwards to me, "but with the awkwardness left out. In a few years' time I shall have to begin to think——" Bertha paused. "A beauty, four thousand a year, and the sweetest nature in the world. She ought to do very well." ”

“ She never seemed sanguine when she went to the station, or disappointed when she came back. She smiled pleasantly if she met any one she knew; the worst weather could not damp her spirits. If she had time to chat for a minute with a friend without being late for her train, she always appeared bright, cheerful, rational. In the village all knew the story.
When Miss Emmeline Folker was thirty-one years old, and it had seemed likely that the proud beauty (as she was then—Alice had always been plain) would never become engaged, she met a certain Wilfrid Gunton and falsified expectations. ”

“ IV.—The Real One OTHER people's tragedies have so often been comedies to me, that I do not much want to write about my own tragedy. Perhaps, after all, my tragedy was only a comedy. I did not—needless to say—kill myself; I did not break my heart. Well, one cannot do that without giving one's self away; and women are not over eager to give themselves away. It seems as if everything in the world must stop, but as a matter of fact nothing does stop; you come down next morning; you eat breakfast and luncheon and dinner. ”

“ The old life was done; the new life was beginning. Yet one night as he stood in a darkened room with Adela Constantia in his arms the door opened with a little quick click some few inches. She stepped back from him, thinking it was a servant, and he turned white, thinking, in a moment of madness, that it was someone else; then he went to the door and opened it wider. No one was there.
The position of the widower who marries again is irritating to him if he be, as Edward Morris was, a man of nice feeling. He has to say, and to believe, that he loves as he never loved in his life before. ”

“ A good fool, wishing to be otherwise and failing—the end of the century makes such things.
And Margaret—well might Mrs. Holly have noticed that Margaret Fayre had moods. It had come—she had fallen in love, and she knew it. But it had not come as she had expected—not as a torment, not as a thirst for the unattainable. If she entered a drawing-room where Stanley Welborough was, almost immediately he was by her side. The attitude was respectful, reverential—with Kitty it was all chuckling frivolity. Margaret never expressed the least preference that Stanley did not remember. ”

“ No; you jog along and leave what you can to Hewetson. You are lazy and as self-indulgent as a decent man can be nowadays. How could we marry? Why do I care—and I do care immensely—for my beauty? Because it is a means towards power? Why must I marry a strong man? For power. Power, power! There's nothing else in this world worth living for; if I did not think that I should get it, I would die to-night!"
She stood up, excited, her eyes bright, breathing quickly, wonderfully beautiful. She was quite obviously sincere, and she was only nineteen.
Hove also rose. ”

“ From the garden and the country beyond came the shrill concert of innumerable birds. A heavy cart jolted and bumped to early work on some distant road. No, there was no need of the candle; he would go to bed by daylight, with that delightful sense of well-being, that firm conviction that there was no good in worry or argument, still comforting him.
Ah! how often at this hour he had trod the stairs, with a fantastic curiosity to see what he looked like in the tall mirror. ”

“ He sat at a big organ, which was hidden from my sight by dark curtains of cloud; and as he played the music of all things came out into a song which was better than all things: for Art and Music are not only imitative, but creative. At present they are allowed to create only shadows, by the rules of the game. But I have been told that the old quarrel between them—I have no conception what the quarrel was about—will be made up one day, and they will love one another again. Their younger child, who will then be born, will take unto himself the strength and beauty of Art and Music and Poetry. ”

“ We can distinguish between the dog lover and the dog fancier. In the same way we may distinguish between the garden lover and the gardener. It is an important distinction.
The garden in London makes you love it, and it also breaks your heart. It has therefore all the charm of woman. I am not going to believe that any garden in the heart of the country, where everything is green and easy, can give the same pleasure as my half-acre reclaimed among the chimney-pots. It has its limitations, of course, but so have I. So have all human beings. One does not ask a beautiful woman to be clever. ”

“ You have your own idea of a brilliant marriage, and I do not think your idea is Wilmay's, and I'm absolutely certain that it's not mine. Remind yourself that there are such things as unhappy duchesses."
"My dear Edward, I'm not a snob. I only say that one can't give up common sense altogether."
"At any rate, I am not going to have Wilmay forced into any marriage. She must be left free. For goodness' sake don't make plots and schemes for her."
"You're really rather crude, Edward. One does not force people nowadays. ”

“ THE GREEN LIGHT
The man looked down at the figure of the woman on the couch. The little silver clock on the mantelpiece began to chime; he could not bear the sound of it. He flew at the clock like a madman, and dashed it on the ground, and stamped on it. Then he drew down the blind, and opened the door and listened; there was no one on the staircase. Silence seemed now as intolerable to him as sound had been a moment before. He tried to whistle, but his lips were too dry and made only a ridiculous hissing sound. Closing the door behind him, he ran down the staircase and out into the street. ”

“ You think that you exist; that everything is real. How do you know that it is so? When you dream, you imagine that the dream is quite real; but you wake up and find that you are wrong. Now suppose the something one day had a thought, that went through a million optical delusions, a billion ghosts, and a trillion dreams——”
“It’s not a bit of good,” interpolated Mary. “I can’t imagine numbers like that.”
“That thought might ultimately take the form of this world, of which I, Thomas, the beetle, am a considerable part. There is nothing impossible about that. ”

“ My garden, they tell me, was once the garden of an old priory. Under one corner of the lawn is the well that provided the religious with water. It has been covered in with stone, and just over the stone the grass refuses to grow. It is like a tonsure. But though I have been in my garden I think at every hour of the night and of the early morning, I have met no shadowy figures counting their beads or reading their little illuminated books. These good people sleep long and quietly. ”

“ It never occurred to Margaret Fayre that Stanley Welborough would only wish to marry her for her money. She hardly ever thought about money at all; and that was as well, for whenever she did think about money she made gross and unbusinesslike mistakes. Nor did it ever occur to her that Stanley was, according to his lights, in love with Kitty Carton-Wright. Whenever she found Stanley talking to Kitty, in a very few minutes Stanley deserted Kitty to talk to Margaret. Kitty did not mind in the least—she knew that she was very pretty, and that Margaret could not be her rival. ”

“ The dinner was amusing enough. Bertha was always, more or less, a bright woman. Wilmay laughed more quietly, it seemed to me, than usual, and talked less. Some of the things she said were serious to the verge of sentimentality, and, of course, we laughed at her for them mercilessly. She had been reading stories and seeing plays, and she said that it seemed as if life were very sad, but that the sadness was in some ways rather nice. ”

“ I cannot think where I saw the eyes like those of the goddess, but perhaps it was in that part of my life which is forgotten and ruled off with a line. It gave one the greatest and most majestic feelings to stand there with the gods, and to know that one was a god one's self, and that lightning did not hurt one, and that one would live for ever. ”

“ Not far away the useful deadly motor-bus would be busy for hours yet. Theatres would be full, and Fleet Street would be strenuous, and (in houses which the chicken-pox had not yet reached) people would be dining out. Perhaps, without being too artistic and diseased, one who has sometimes liked crowds may sometimes like to escape them. Dusk and sweet scents, silence and solitude—the London garden has pleasant gifts for folks who are temporarily tired of things.
Across the lighted squares or mirrored windows on the lawn, slow yet alert, crept a cat with a heart full of sinful purposes. ”

“ I've been through ten London seasons without seeing anything like her."
"Ten London seasons, or even more—we're getting very old, Bertha, very, very old."
"You can be old, if you like," replied Bertha. "Age is no crime in a man. But I'm not old, and I won't be. Ah," she sighed, "if I could only be Wilmay for one season! ”

“ He seemed to say to her, "I have been with you too long, and ill-natured people will chatter. But I know that nobody could be jealous of Margaret Fayre. To spare you anxiety, I talk to her." Poor Margaret Fayre, for the first time in her life counting victories! She was like a mere beginner who sits down with the real chess-player, and wins and wins, and never notices the inscrutable smile of his great opponent. Yet, for the time being, it worked well enough—Kitty was happy, and Margaret was happy.
But Stanley Welborough was not happy. ”

“ I am afraid that dead beetle lied.”
“Maurice,” said Marjorie suddenly, “sometimes a thought flashes across my mind that in a minute I may be dead. I don’t know even what life and death mean; yet I have to live and die. There are stars above me, but I do not know why they are there. There are beasts, and birds, and insects everywhere, and I do not know how important they are. ”

“ As chance would have it she suddenly found herself standing under the tall pines, and looking at the open space that formed the goal of the maze. She was pleased that she had got there. Here the ground was carpeted with sand, fine and, as it seemed, beaten hard. From the summer night sky immediately above, the moonlight, unobstructed here, streamed straight down upon the scene.
Viola began to think about dancing. Over the dry, smooth sand her little satin shoes moved easily, stepping and gliding, circling and stepping, as she hummed the tune to which they moved. ”

“ And now, my dear Bertha, you can curb your feverish imagination. I am not going to marry Wilmay. I am going to Paris to-night, which, as you will see in your calmer moments, is not the same thing."
"Can you take nothing seriously? Of course, I did not seriously suppose that you wanted to marry Wilmay, but her future's a very grave question, and I don't see why I should be laughed at because I am so anxious to do the best I possibly can for her." ”

“ The making of a boat had been prohibited so long by the beings of the first class that now even the recollection of it had passed from the workers. They regarded the sea with terror. It was the grey liquid wall of their prison-house. To touch it was to die. They bathed in the forest pools, and never in the sea. The fish that they ate were fresh-water fish only. Their masters had told them numberless strange lies about the sea.
"Dream," I said, "there is one thing which I cannot understand. You live in daily terror of these people whom you miscall gods. ”

“ Maurice laughed. “Ah, Marjorie, you and I will be one, and you are more beautiful, and clever, and better than any one in the world. That is how I shall have a right to come into my own beautiful house. We will trouble ourselves with no theories about anything. We will not get excited about anything; an excited man always has been, or will be, dull. We will make life one long, gentle enjoyment.” ”

“ From this dance the Princess soon made her escape, quite discontented, and went to the furthest part of the palace gardens, where she could no longer hear the music calling her.
'They are all right,' she said to herself as she thought of the men she had left, 'but they cannot dance. Mechanically they are all right; they have learned it and don't make childish mistakes; but they are only one-two-three machines. They haven't the inspiration of dancing. It is so different when I dance alone.'
She wandered on until she reached an old forsaken maze. ”

“ I do not think there is any man alive who could sell me a yellow calceolaria or persuade me to find room for it in my garden. The fuschia too is rather a self-conscious and ostentatious thing, though I admit the tree-fuschia. To these I prefer musk, and mignonette, and heliotrope. They flourish in a wet summer, and I wish I did. Lilies and carnations of course one must have, and London permits it. London pride is common enough, but I like it and grow it. It is a generous thing that asks little and gives much. ”

“ But with Wilmay it is different. She knows nothing of men or of marriage; she is as innocent as a baby, and she is devoted to you. She might let herself be persuaded—in fact, I should think your advice would be much more dangerous than if you point-blank commanded her to marry the nearest duke. However, when the time comes I shall have something to say, you will remember. And in the mean time I'm not here to quarrel with you, but to say good-bye."
"I never quarrel," said Bertha, with her most charming smile. "Good-bye, Edward. Come to London occasionally, you know. ”

“ Ganymede went pale to the lips, but he lifted the white burden in his arms, and carried her out. “I wish we hadn’t sent her,” he sighed to the Deputy Cloud-controller; “I would have gone myself, if I’d known.”
“I wish you had,” said the Deputy. “Both of us together are not worth her.”
Zeus had forgotten her. He could think only of the things he had known in that horrible hour. “I will never die again,” he said to himself; and for many nights he could not sleep.
“The weather’s rainy,” said the Muse of Astronomy, who had drawn a curtain back and was looking out. ”

“ Zero had crossed over to them, and the young man stooped down and patted him. The dog expressed delight.
"I can send him round to your hotel," said Smith; "or, for that matter, he'd follow you. He's taken a fancy to you, he has."
"Look here," said the young man, "let me buy him. I'm not a millionaire, but I can afford to buy a dog. I'd like to have this one, and there's no reason on earth why you should give him to me."
"You'd like to have him, and I can afford to give him to you, and I want to give him to you. You must let a man indulge his sense of gratitude. It's only fair." ”

“ THE ENTERTAINMENTS OF KAPNIDES. ON quiet days, when no wind blows, my canoe is particularly restful. It has perfect sympathy with the weather. It creeps down slowly to King’s, leans itself against the bank, and thinks. Then, later in the afternoon, it bears the organ humming in the chapel—a faint, sweet sound which produces religious exaltation; and it becomes necessary to wrestle with the canoe, because it desires to fly away and be at rest. It is owing to this rhythmic alternation of laziness and spirituality in the boat that I have given it the name which is blazoned on its bows—Zeitgeist. ”