Bernard Capes

“ She was like a ghost, holding up her white hands to him piteously. Cartouche saw what perfect things they were, frail and slender, yet of a beauty to cradle all love. Her face, in its milky pallour, grey-eyed and scarlet-lipped, was like the face of some spirit tragedy flowering from the mists.
“Ask me nothing,” she whispered. “Tell me what to do.”
“I tell you?” he said, releasing and stepping back from her. He forced his trembling lips to resolution. “What does your heart say, Yolande? your stainless womanhood? your duty to yourself?” ”

“ Then upon this drouth and this uproar Ned saw the steel glaive of winter smite with a clang that brought ironic echoes from the hollow granaries. It fell swift and sudden; and the clamour, under the lashing of the blade, took a new tone of terror, the wail of despairing souls defrauded of their right atmosphere of hope. For who could look beyond the present with the thermometer below zero; with the prospect blotted out by freezing mists; with the thin shadows of pining women and children always coming between one and the light; with one’s own brain clouded with the fumes of dearth? ”

“ LADY SKENE KNEELS TO ME His that is just written passes as an entr’acte, the fooling of a clown before the curtain, the merry jigging of the fiddles. It ends; and the lights are down once more, the dark curtains heave and lift, waste glooms and sorrows repossess the stage—and only now, always in their deep midmost, travels a little bloody star, the soul of a murdered child.
Winter has gripped the land in earnest, and, screaming upon the heavy dawns, come winds and ashy flights of snow. They are like tempests of defiance, hissing down and heaping at my feet to dispute my way. ”

“ A chilly twilight reigned in the ravine, and the noise that came up from the ruin of the torrent seemed doubly accented by reason of it. The sound of water moving in darkness has always conveyed to me an impression of something horrible and deadly, be it nothing of more moment than the drip and hollow tinkle of a gutter pipe. But the crash in this echoing gorge was appalling indeed.
For some moments I stood on the brink of the slope, looking across at the great knife of the fall, with a little shiver of fear. ”

“ Or if we die, we die for England’s sake, and take possession with our fruitful bodies. All lands where English blood is shed and England’s sons lie buried are in part fiefs to England; for there each grave becomes a plat of English mould, rich breeding-ground of truth and chivalry, fair play, honour to the better man, forbearance in strength—all qualities summed up in this, the heart to conquer and the hate to pain. O, it is good to live for England, but sweeter still to die and be her prolific dust! ”

“ Oppressive dusk was drooping as Mr. Tuke came in sight of the lonely tavern on the downs. The inconsistent moodiness of autumn had fallen into another humour as the day declined. The steely thrust of wind at night—a morning cold and fair and pure, such as ever seems an earnest of weeks of serene tranquillity—and then, as noon ticked into evening, a dull fall in the barometer, and gathering battalions of clouds rolling to the front, with a noise of rumbling in them like the labouring wheels of gun-carriages—such was the record of twenty-four hours. ”

“ It shot out over the lip of the fall, twenty feet above us, in a curve like a scimitar, passed in one sheet the spot where we stood, and dived into a sunless pool thirty feet below with a thunderous boom. What it may have been in full phases of the stream, I know not; yet even now it was sufficiently magnificent to give pause to a dying soul eager to shake off the restless horror of the world. The flat of its broad blade divided the lofty black walls of a deep and savage ravine, on whose jagged shelves some starved clumps of rhododendron shook in the wind of the torrent. ”

“ It was a fine, still afternoon, with the tide at quiet ebb, and a touch of frost in the air. The sun, low down, burned like a winter fire, and gleamed with a light of sadness on the ribs of the gaunt wreck lying far away on the Weary Sands. She was visible only at low water; at high being completely submerged. No one, so far as I knew, had yet had the curiosity or venturesomeness to row out and investigate the poor castaway. It was just plain to see, by the aid of glasses, that she had broken her back on the drift, and that only her stern half remained, wedged into the sand. ”

“ He had no vision for his surroundings; he knew only that he was following her up a dusky stairway, that thick pulse still hammering in his heart and brain, and that suddenly they were in a little white bedroom—her own. There were soft curtains there and flowers and fragrance. The sweet atmosphere stole into his senses and intoxicated them; his blood raced in his veins and half blinded his sight. He saw her dimly—she was down on her knees by an opened drawer—and the madness in him was moving to leap and claim her thus, when she rose to her feet. ”

“ I had become a thing apart from mankind—a faun—a reversion to the near soulless type, but with the germ of spirit budding in me.
It was a desire to avoid a certain horror dangling over a track that had at first driven me into the thickets, and so lost me my way. The memory of a blot of shadow, on the sunny grass underneath that same horror, that swayed sluggishly, like the disc of a pendulum, as the body swayed above, got into my waking thoughts and haunted them. I wished to put a world-wide interval between myself and the blot—though I had seen monstrosities enough of late, God knows. ”

“ At eve came the King, with a little brilliant retinue.
But Alse did not receive him. Instead there advanced and knelt at his feet one of the most radiant young beauties his eyes had ever encountered. The violet Saxon hood fell back from her face as she raised it, revealing a sun of little curls bound by a golden fillet. The slender lifted hands, the bright parted lips, most of all the eyes, blue as lazulite and wide with innocence, seemed all as if posed for a picture of Love’s ecstasy. The King, young, and lustful, and handsome, with his strong, clean-cut face, stood the speechless one. ”

“ And I cried “Jason!” in a nightmare voice, and had hardly strength to turn my head away from the sight that I knew was coming. Yet through all my sick panic the shadow of a thought flashed—blame me for it who will—“Let me bear it and not give way, for he is taking the sure way to end his terror.”
The thunder of the monster death came with the thought—shook the air of the hills—broke into a piercing scream of triumph as it rushed down on its victim—passed and clanged away among the hollows, as if the crushed mass in its jaws were choking it to silence. ”

“ For I saw, at the upper curve of the meadow, where the well lay in gloom, that a man had sprung out of the earth, as it seemed, and was started reaping; and the face of this man was all in shadow, from which his beard ran out and down like a stream of gall.
He reaped swiftly and steadily, swinging like a pendulum; but, though the sheaves fell to him right and left, no swish of the scythe came to us, nor any sound but the beating of our own hearts. ”

“ Through the chiming stars, the romp of wind in woods, the gush of spring freshets, the cheery drone of bees; through all happy gales—of innocent frolic, of children's laughter, of sighing, unharmful passion, of joy and gaiety ungrudging; through the associations of his gentle spirit with these, the things it had loved, whereby, by those who had listened and could not altogether forget, came gradually to be vindicated the truth of his kind religion, Bernardo's voice, though grown a phantom voice, spoke on and echoed down the ages. ”

“ The growing scream and thunder of the town drove towards us as we advanced; but few people in that bitter night; until, skirting the massed buildings of the arsenal and palace, we emerged suddenly through a little lane into the Strada di St. Lucia, and paused a moment undecided and amazed.
It was as if the devil had taken his glowing pencil and ruled off this quarter of the city for his own. A noisome ravine of houses it was, with life like a fiery torrent brawling along its bed. Song and tumult and mad licence; fingers quick to stab, or to snap like castanets to a dancing child ”

“ As she went on, a spirit of exhilaration rose to possess her, quite alone and at liberty as she was. State and observance seemed unreal things; there was not a soul abroad to remind her of them; she and nature were in one confidence together, as if, like old companions long mistily estranged, they were as mistily reunited.
Involuntarily, it seemed, her steps took her towards the spot associated with an incident of yesterday. There was a woven arbour near by the lily-pond, and her thoughts settled there, as in a hermitage sweet for meditation. ”

“ A throng of armed ruffians, one a little forward of the rest, was clustered about a couple more of their kidney, who, right under the lantern, held the goatherd Anita on her knees in a nailing grip. To one side, very phantoms of desolation, stood Cangrejo and another. The faces of all, densely shadowed in part by the rims of their sombreros, looked as if masked; their mouths, corpse-like, showed a splint of teeth; their ink-black whiskers hummocked upon their shoulders.
So, as Ducos stared down, was the group postured, silent, motionless, as if poised on the turn of some full tide of passion. ”

“ From les Baux we walked over the Alpines, six miles or so, to St. Remy, passing by the way those two famous fragments, tomb and triumphal arch, which are all that remains of a once prosperous Roman town. Standing solitary under the hills, they would seem to have been spared, in their chance juxtaposition, as a symbol and epitome to all future generations of the glory and vanity of the human story: Life’s victory, Death’s victory over Life, and Time, the last and mightiest, the conquerer of both. ”

“ But all the time while we wrought at to enlarge it, the sweet light was stretched to us to comfort and inspire, and the smell of liberty came down more and more in draughts like wine, as if Harry with his strenuous hammer were tapping the very reservoir of day. The only fear was that, striking carelessly, he might loosen some poised mass, and bury us under an avalanche of stone. But luckily, both sunk vault and tumbled ruin had so well adjusted between them the balance of collapse that our puny grubbing was all insufficient to disturb it. ”

“ Going down the garden on the morning after the encounter, Brion felt his every pore expanding with delight. Balm was in the air; an incense rose from the earth; the winter aconites had blinked the frost from their golden eyes, and, with their ruffs starched and smart, were smiling in holiday rows under the wall. Even a surviving snowdrop or two—those sweet little acolytes of Candlemas, as Clerivault called them—opened their hearts to the sun, and betrayed to it the tender green thoughts they were used to guard so shyly. ”

“ Now the first dusky châlets of the hamlet of Bel-Oiseau straggled towards me, and it was music in my ears to hear the cattle blow and rattle in their stalls under the sleeping lofts as I passed outside in the moonlight. Five minutes more, and the great zinc onion on the spire of the church glistened towards me, and I was in the heart of the silent village.
From the deep green shadow cast by the graveyard wall, heavily buttressed against avalanches, a form wriggled out into the moonlight and fell with a dusty thud at my feet, mowing and chopping at the air with its aimless claws. ”

“ He walked towards the door, and put his hand kindly on Darda’s shoulder; for Darda it was that had come, softly and unbidden, into the room, and who stood silently awaiting the upshot of the explosion her entrance had evoked.
Her slim white figure, her immobile face and glowing hair, made of her against the fire-lit wall such a presentment of the spiritual as one sees in old cathedral frescoes; but, at her master’s touch, a rose grew to her cheek, announcing her all one at heart with pitiful humanity. ”

“ But the tall, narrow streets, the cool churches, the blazing markets—these had no longer the glamour of the past. His thoughts were always in shadowy English lanes, in fragrant English rooms. A girl’s laugh in the street would make him lift his head as he paced; a jingle of bells on the harness of some sleepy Belgian horse would recall to him with a thrill the tinkle of a triangle. And, for the rest, the sweet pungency of geranium flowers he carried always in his breast, like a very garden of pleasant memories.
And, in the meantime, Pamela and Mr Sheridan! ”

“ His poniard stood buried to the hilt in the soft flesh of the shoulder-blade.
“Pietro’s tooth!” he shrieked; “Pietro’s tooth!” His laugh reeled and babbled among the galleries as if scores of invisible feet were suddenly running down to the scene of the crime.
He paused, he listened; with an awful look he suddenly cast himself on his knees by the murdered child, and, raising his bloody hands, besought, in a shaking voice and with tears streaming down his cheeks, Heaven’s pardon for his crime, vowing, in expiation of it, never to marry again. ”

“ True genius has no self-consciousness. It was his soul that played, his fingers obeying; and what conceit can there be in immortality? Seated, he touched the strings, and his soul spoke—spoke all the pity and soft sympathy which were its burden. It was tender music, sighing, sweetly subdued to the occasion. And as he proceeded he lost himself in it, lost all but the sense of that divine compassion which was moving and inspiring him. Still, the sure instinct of the artist came presently to decree a period; and ending, short of surfeit, on a dying note, he came to earth. ”

“ But then, was not their rapture beyond all precedent? None had ever before loved as they loved—and that was true, because there is no such thing as a stereotype in Nature.
The whistle of a marmot straight ahead on a boulder startled them suddenly as into a self-consciousness of guilt. They saw an atom of mist cleave and close to the red flick of him as he vanished, and then the phantoms of mountains looking in upon them above the place where he had sat. It was like a priestly summons to love’s shrift. ”

“ Patty uttered a tiny cry—
“O, Diana! It’s the portrait!”
In a moment, all excitement, we stole in a-tiptoe. The place was very still and ghostly. Only on the dusty canvas itself lay a melancholy grid of light. Palpitating in our sense of guilt, we turned the frame round, let it drop softly back again; and there, before our eyes, bloomed a smiling, wistful face. The light, which had saddened it in reverse, was quickened now to an illuminating glory. It greeted and dimpled to us—the face of a dead woman risen. ”

“ Life—the life that he understood and could rejoice in—away from the flint road and spurring on to the downs; the life of heath and water and wood, of the blown blue sky and the whirled pollen of flowers; of light and gloom, risk and effort and reward; of the great breath of change and freedom, and—ah! yes: of the sympathizing soft heart to be always waiting him at the blossoming corner; the spirit to often share with him the wanderings and the marvels, and to pull him down into the sweet-smelling brake at shut of eve, and so for both to make a common cause of dreams. ”

“ My helplessness affected me like a personal humiliation. We would catch up tempests, and tunnel a mad course through them, and leave them battling and booming in our rear. In ragged spaces of the clouds the moon would shine out, tossing like a lightship on tumultuous waters, and disappear, and be another beacon on another shoal when seen again. The shadow of a world rushed by our windows, phantom fabrics caught in starry glimpses, and always seeming stranger as we fled. ”

“ The accident of darkness had revealed it to us so soon as our pupils had forgotten the false glare of the candles.
“O, Harry!” I cried, half hysterical. “O, Harry! what was that noise?”
And he laughed out—“Light up again, you old funk! It was the best friend in the world to us.”
Amazed, without understanding, I tremblingly rekindled the candle; and there, right before us, was a flight of stone steps going up—the ancient entrance to the crypts; and, risen bristling from his bed of straw and sticks at the foot of it, was our ally, our preserver, our most noble and honoured the badger. ”

“ The absurdity of his compliance had struck him all at once acutely. That his destiny, through all these long years, could have hung at the mercy of so ridiculous a trifle! He was great because he was great, a conqueror by force of inherent genius. Away for once and for ever with the imposture!
One moment he held the packet up to the light, and saw a hundred tiny stars shine through the punctures he had made in it on successive feasts; the next he broke the seals, unfolded the vellum, stared, dropped the whole on the floor, and staggered back as if stricken to the heart. ”

“ It was the passage of the eternal night—frozen, self-contained; awful as any fancied darkness that is without one tradition of a star. Yet, struggling hereafter to, in some shadowy sense, renew my feelings of the moment, it seemed to me that I had not fallen through darkness at all; but rather that the friction of descent had kindled an inner radiance in me that was independent of the vision of the eyes, and full of promise of a sudden illumination of the soul. ”

“ Hanging there, like a lost and fated fiend, a bubble of wild, ugly merriment rose in me and burst in a clap of laughter. I writhed and shrieked in the convulsion of it; the dead vault rung with my hysterical cries.
It ceased suddenly, as it had begun, and, grinding my teeth in a frenzy of rage over the thought of how I had been trapped and snared, I swung myself violently against the door, and, letting go my hold at the same instant, burst it open with the force of my onset and rolled bleeding and struggling on the floor of the room beyond. ”

“ But beauty, save as it might contribute to the motif of a picture, was no fire to raise this young man’s temperature, and in Théroigne’s presence he seemed only to breathe an opulent atmosphere of commonplace. She was glowing passion interpreted through colour—siennas and leafy browns, and golds like the reflection of sunsets; a dryad, a pagan, a liberal-limbed tetonnière. If she were ever to find herself a soul, he could imagine her standing out richly as a Rembrandt portrait against torn dark backgrounds. ”

“ It came upon her like a stroke, electric, instant, agonising out of numbness. She did not want to die; she had only been tricking herself in the trappings of tragedy; like the spoiled beauty she was, she had believed herself irresistible though playing with devils; and each day’s grace had but confirmed her in her wilful self-delusion. And now at last she was awake and mad with fear—confessed now to herself for the unheroic creature of selfishness and vanity which her deeds had already proclaimed her to the world.
Passion, indeed, often speaks big until it finds itself trapped. ”

“ Tuke felt little but the instinct to prick his snorting beast onwards with bloodless heels. Yet through all he was conscious of a spark that glowed and wavered in him like a pulse—a little fierce flame of triumph and of ecstasy—a suffusion of audacity, or repudiation of the formal conduct to which he had vainly struggled to subscribe. He had no deliberate plan of evil in his soul; neither had he the courage or the inclination to face the situation of his own contriving. ”

“ One might meet him begging on a city bridge, and look wondering down for the song of the water in the rushes that were not; one might read his hairy breast into dreams of red dead bracken, and see his eyes, under their matted brows, like little forest pools reflecting glimpses of the sky, and not guess who he was, for he would never whine of better days. He always took fortune like a fallen god, did Gogo. He always smelt sweet, did my monster. ”

“ Suddenly I felt the sweat cold under the knapsack that swung upon my back; stopped, faced about and became human again. Ridge over ridge to my right the mountain summits fell away against a fathomless sky; and topping the furthermost was a little paring of silver light, the coronet of the rising moon. But the glory of the full orb was in the retrospect; for, closing the savage vista of the ravine, stood up far away a cluster of jagged pinnacles—opal, translucent, lustrous as the peaks of icebergs that are the frozen music of the sea. ”

“ It was all wild, elfin; ineffably strange and unearthly. I felt as if the dead past were revealed to me, and that here I might lay down my burden and yield the poor residue of life to one last ecstasy.
Dipping, swaying; now here, now there, about the dusky plat of lawn; sometimes motionless for an instant, so that its drooping skirts and long, loosened hair made but one tree-like figure of it; again whirling into motion, with its dark tresses flung abroad—the figure circled round to within a yard of where I was standing.
Then in a loud, tremulous tone I cried “Zyp!” ”

“ Life seems never so desirable as in typical days of autumn, when the year rallies of its disease and makes a brave effort to renew its thoughtless morning with a few withering leaves. Of all the motley months, none is so pathetic as October in its likeness to an aging lady, striving to salve by gentleness the unhealed wounds inflicted of her earlier pugnacity.
Mr. Tuke’s spirits rose as he advanced. He seemed already in touch with the world again—a butterfly of the second brood emerged from a buried larva. ”