Edgar Saltus

“ At this, before her, in abrupt enchantment, the abyss disappeared. Where its depths had been were parterres of gems, slopes of asphodel, the gleam and brilliance of the gates of paradise.
"Your wife!" The wonder of it was in her voice and marveling eyes.
"Come." Taking her hand, Loftus led her to their former seat.
"But——"
"But what?"
"How can I be your wife? I am nobody."
"You are perfect. There is only one thing I fear—" Loftus hesitated. Nervously the girl looked at him.
"Only one," he continued. "I am not and never shall be half good enough for you." ”

“ Domitian returned to the palace and hunted morosely for flies. The excesses of the festival in which Rome was swooning then had no delights for him. Presently the moon would rise, and then on the deserted terrace perhaps he would bathe a little in her light, and dream again of Pallas and of the possibilities of an emperor's sway, but meanwhile those blue troubled eyes that Psyche was amorous of were filled with envy and with hate. It was not that he begrudged Titus the triumph. The man who had disposed of a million Jews deserved not one triumph, but ten. It was the purple that haunted him. ”

“ Distrust a woman who speaks of her virtue.
In love, there is nothing so persuasive as courageous stupidity.
Weak natures are reassured as easily as they are alarmed.
The most incurable wounds are those which are made by the tongue or the eye, by mockery or by disdain.
To two lovers the rest of the world is but landscape.
Expiation is not obliteration.
A virtuous woman has a fibre more or a fibre less than other women. She is stupid or sublime.
Language in the magnificence of its phases has nothing as varied and as eloquent as the correspondence of the eyes and the harmony of smiles. ”

“ The Elysian Fields were vague, wearisome to contemplate; even metempsychosis had no adherents. "After death," said Caesar, "there is nothing," and all the world agreed with him. The hour, too, in which three thousand gods had not a single atheist, had gone, never to return. Old faiths had crumbled. None the less was Rome the abridgment of every superstition. The gods of the conquered had always been part of her spoils. The Pantheon had become a lupanar of divinities that presided over birth, and whose rites were obscene; an abattoir of gods that presided over death, and whose worship was gore. ”

“ Then came a form so luminous that Mary hid her face and listened merely.
“I,” said a voice—“I am Desire. In Greece I am revered, and there I am Aphrodite. In Italy I am Venus; in Egypt, Hathor; in Armenia, Anaitis; in Persia, Anâhita; Tanit in Carthage; Baaltis in Byblus; Derceto in Ascalon; Atargatis in Hierapolis; Bilet in Babylon; Ashtaroth to the Sidonians; and Aschera in the glades of Judæa. And everywhere I am worshipped, and everywhere I am Love. I bring joy and torture, delight and pain. I appease and appal. It is I that create and undo. It is I that make heaven and people hell. ”

“ But memory is a magician that declines to be coerced. Now and then it will pull its victim by the sleeve, as it had pulled at Eden, yet turn to interrogate and a dream is not more evanescent. But still she struggled with it. A silence, an attitude, a combination purely atmospheric had evoked a charm, and though memory declined to return and undo the spell, still she labored until at last, conscious of the futility of the effort, or else wearied by the endeavor, she consoled herself as in similar circumstances we all of us have done with the mirage of anterior life. ”

“ To Leilah it was horrible. Moreover the atmosphere of blood and hate, the enigma of Verplank’s words, the menaces of Barouffski’s eyes, these things frightened her, inducing a dread which seemed to brood not in the mind but in the body. She could have put a hand to her girdle and have said: “It is here.” In addition she felt—as in every spiritual crisis we all do—alone. Of this she could not tell Violet. She felt that she lacked the power to express it and that Violet lacked the ability to understand. Pain has accents which only its graduates know. ”

“ It will be difficult. No one can be to me what you have been. You have been my youth, Lenox; my girlhood has been yours. I have nothing left. Nothing except regrets—regrets that youth should pass so quickly and that girlhood comes but once.”
Her lips were tremulous, but she was trying to be brave.
“But surely, Maida, it cannot be that we are to part forever. Afterwards—” the word was vague, but they both understood—“afterwards I may see you. Such things often are. Because you feel yourself compelled to this step, there is no reason why I, of all others, should be shut out of your life.” ”

“ The sky was as blue as the eyes of a girl beloved. The air was warm, and had the street been less noisy, less garish, and a trifle cleaner it might have been an agreeable promenade. But to Tristrem the noise, the dirt, the glare, the sky itself were part and parcel of the non-existent. He neither saw nor heeded, and, though the air was warm, now and then he shivered.
It seemed to him impossible that he should do this thing. And yet, since that night at Riva, his mind had been as a stage in which it was in uninterrupted rehearsal. If it were unsuccessful, then come what sorrow could. ”

“ Metuchen was laughing immoderately. But his eyes were in Justine's as were hers in his.
"You will ride, will you not? I see you have your habit on." And with that, Justine assenting, he led her down the steps and aided her to the saddle.
There are numberless tentative things in life, and among them an amble through green, deserted lanes, where only birds and flowers are, has witcheries of its own. However perturbed the spirit may have been, there is that in the glow of the morning and the gait of a horse that can make it wholly serene. ”

“ Austen, for all her horrible shrewdness, could not have prevented that. But pride, that gives so many of us a fall, was more potent than she. Margaret, insulted, could but turn away. Lennox, dismissed, could but let her go.
Any emotion is unbecoming. Pride is merely ridiculous. It resides in the youthful-minded, however old. In residing in these young people, it resisted the touch that would have combined them and, through its opposition, made one of them ill and the other grey. To be proud! How splendid it seems and how stupid it is. Hell is paved with just such imbecilities. ”

“ Michel Angelo, named after the angel of justice, as Raphael was after the angel of grace, separated himself from all that was not papal and marmorean. Only Leonardo da Vinci who had gone and Ludwig of Bavaria who had not come, the one a painter, the other a king, but both poets were as isolating as he. He was disfigured. Because of that he made a solitude and peopled it grandiosely with the grandeur of the genius that was his, displaying in whatever he created that of which art had hitherto been unconscious, the sovereignty not of beauty only but of right. ”

“ Tancred's window did not give on the road, but on the coppice and the pavilion, yet when again he caught the creak of wheels it demanded little imagination on his part to picture the general sitting bolt upright in a gharry, driving to the sun-smitten town beyond. And as the clatter of hoofs fainted in the distance, Tancred took up the pen again. The letter which he then succeeded in producing was one similar to what we have all of us written and all of us received—a clear call of love, in which the words are less jotted than shaken from the end of the pen. ”

“ Eliminate Caligula, and Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla and Heliogabalus would never have been. It was he who gave them both raison d'etre and incentive. The lives of all of them are horrible, yet analyze the horrible and you find the sublime.
Fancy a peak piercing the heavens, shadowing the earth. It was on a peak such as that the young emperors of old Rome balanced themselves, a precipice on either side. Did they look below, a vertigo rose to meet them; from above delirium came, while the horizon, though it hemmed the limits of vision, could not mark the frontiers of their dream. ”

“ Indeed, there are few who, save to an intimate, have the courage to acknowledge that they are miserable; there is at work within them the same instinct that compels the wounded animal to seek the depths of the bushes in which to die. People generally are ashamed of grief, and turn to hide a tear as the sensitive turn from an accident in the street, and veil their eyes from deformity. Moreover, it is largely customary to mock at the melancholy; and in good society it is an unwritten law that every one shall bring a certain quota of contentment and gayety, or else remain in chambered solitude. ”

“ She was pale, and her eyes closed languorously. “I am Indolence,” she said. “Sleep is not softer than my couch. My lightest wish is law to kings. I live on perfumes; my days are as shadows on glass. Mary, come with me, and I will teach you to forget.”
She vanished, and where the litter had been stood a eunuch. “I am Envy,” he said, and his eyes drooped sullenly. [pg 83] “I separate those that love; I dismantle altars and dismember nations. I corrode and corrupt; I destroy, and I never rebuild. My joy is malice, and my creed false-witnessing. Mary, come with me, and you will learn to hate.” ”

“ Tristrem caught the finger, and kissed her hand with old-fashioned grace.
"Viola," he said, at last, "I thank you. I do not know what I can do to show how I appreciate this gift of gifts. But yet, if it is anything, if it can bring any happiness to a girl to know that she fills a heart to fulfilment itself, that she dwells in thought as the substance of thought, that she animates each fibre of another's being, that she enriches a life with living springs, and feels that it will be never otherwise, then you will be happy, for so you will always be to me." ”

“ To overwrought nerves as were hers, the announcement was rapider in its effect than a microbe. A fever came that was obliterating as the morrow of steps on the sand. For a week she was delirious, and when at last she left her room the expression of her face had altered. She felt no anger, only an immense distrust of the validity of her intuitions. Had Dugald Maule been in trouble, she would have, if need were, forsaken life for his sake; but the Dugald Maule for whom she would have been brave had existed only in her own imagination. ”

“ Honor, which was the Roman ideal, the matron achieved.
To the matrons reverently Rome bowed. The purple border on their mantle compelled respect. The modesty of their eyes and ears was protected by grave laws. In days of danger the senate asked their aid. The gods could have no purer incense than their prayers. There was no homage greater than their esteem. Such a word as dignity was too colorless to be employed regarding them, it was the term majesty that was used. The vestal was but a more perfect type of these women on whose tomb univiræ—the wife of one man—was alone inscribed. ”

“ Maida had heard, and with the hearing there had come to her an enveloping dread. She felt that, did she see him, the love which she had tried to banish would return unfettered from its exile. Strength was not yet hers; with time, she knew, she could have sworn it would come; but, for the moment, she was helpless, and into the dread a longing mingled. At once, as though in search of a protection that should guard her against herself, she turned to her husband. To him, the Russians, Brazilians, and other gentry had been part of the landscape. ”

“ In any of the defeats of life, the simple blame others; the wise blame themselves; the evolved blame nobody. Lennox had not reached that high plane then but in directing his anger at himself he showed the advantages of civilisation which the war has put in such admirable relief.
Now, on that cot, in that cell, ragingly he retraced his steps. He saw himself loving Margaret Austen as though he were to love her forever. A hero can do no more. He saw her loving him with a love so light that a breath had blown it away. A nymph in the brake could do no worse. ”

“ Justine ended, not by a full understanding of the fact that man is naturally polygamous; but little by little, through channels undiscerned even by herself, the idea came to her that, if the man she loved could find pleasure in the society of other women, it was because she was less attractive than they. It was this that brought her patience, the more readily even in that, at her first paroxysm, Mistrial, a trifle alarmed lest she might leave him, had caught her in his arms, and sworn in a whisper breathed in her ear, that of all the world he loved her best. ”

“ Beneath, in the underbrush, fire-flies glittered, avoiding each other in abrupt ziz-zags and sudden loops of flame. The moon had not yet risen, but the sky still was visibly blue.
And as Tancred dropped on a seat he loosened his neck-cloth with a thrust of the thumb. "That claret was heady," he told himself, and with a bit of cambric he mopped his brow. But was it the claret? For a little space he sat gazing at the invitations of the equator. In his ears the hum of insects still sounded, and to his unheeding eyes the stars danced their saraband. The sea seemed to beckon and the night to wait. ”

“ It were interesting to have watched that young man killing flies by the hour, while he meditated on the atrocities he was to commit—atrocities so numberless and needless that in the red halls of the Caesars he has left a portrait which is unique. Slender, graceful, handsome, as were all the young emperors of old Rome, his blue, troubled eyes took pleasure, if at all, only in the sight of blood.
In accordance with the fashion which Caligula and Nero had set, Domitian's earliest manners were those of an urbane and gentle prince. ”

“ It was Eleazer calling to his sister from the turn of the road. In a moment he was at her side, dust-covered, his sandals torn, his pathetic eyes dilated. He was breathless too, and, in default of words, with a gesture that swept the Mount of Olives, he pointed to where the holy city lay.
To Mary the morrow succeeding her swoon was a pall. Love, it may be, is a forgetfulness of all things else, but despair is very actual. It takes a hold on memory, inhabits it, and makes it its own. And during the day that followed, Mary lay preyed upon by the acutest agony that ever tortured woman yet. ”

“ Man may not, then, as Schopenhauer recommended, assist as a passive spectator of life; on the contrary, he must ceaselessly act, work, and produce, and associate himself without regret in the economic and intellectual development of society; or, in other words, he must lend his aid to the attainment of the supreme goal of the evolution of the universe, for that there is a goal it is as impossible to doubt as it is unreasonable to suppose that the world's one end and aim is to turn on its orbit and enjoy the varied spectacle of pain. ”

“ To them honor and ignominy must be alike unmeaning. No, decidedly, ambition does not tempt me. And what is there else that tempts? Love seems to me now like hunger, an unnecessary affliction, productive far more of pain than of pleasure; the most natural, the most alluring thing of all, see in what plight it has brought me. Yet it is, I have heard, the ultimate hope of those who have none. If I relinquish it, what have I left? The satisfaction of my curiosity as to what the years may hold? But I am indifferent. To revenge myself on Incoul. ”

“ Not in might but in art and intellect, again the Eternal City ruled supreme.
From the annals of the epoch bravi peer and swarm—soldati di gran diavolo, men more fiendish than animal, artists that contrived to drape the abominable with cloths which, if crimson, were also of gold; poets refined by generations of scrupulous polish but disorganized by a form of corruption that was the more unholy in that it proceeded not from the senses but the mind.
For centuries luxury had been reaccumulating about them. To it, after the fall of Byzance, an unterrified spirit of beauty came. ”

“ My dear, if you want to keep your husband, think of yourself not first, but last, or, if you can't think in that way, act as though you did."
"And be a hypocrite."
"Eden, you are impossible. Be a hypocrite? Why, of course you must be a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is Christianity's most admirable invention. Banish it, and what do you find? Not skeletons in the closet, but catacombs of distasteful things. No, Eden, be a hypocrite. We all are; everyone prefers it. There was a man once who got up in the morning with the idea of telling everybody the truth. ”

“ Where was she? Where was the Riverside? Where, for that matter, was the roar of the glittering precinct in which the Splendor tossed its turrets to the sky? Here were dirty and reeling goblins; budding trees that bowed and fainted; a stretch of empty road that the scudding car devoured. Afar was a house that instantly approached and as suddenly vanished. Dimly beyond was another.
Cassy, leaning forward, poked at the emperor. "I will thank you to tell me where you are going. Don't you know where the Splendor is?"
Back at her he mumbled, but what she could not hear.
"Stop at once," she called. ”

“ An emperor had but to open his veins, and in an hour he was a divinity. But the divinity which Caligula desired was not of that kind. He wished to be a god, not on Olympus alone, but on earth as well. He wished to be a palpable, tangible, living god; one that mortals could see, which was more, he knew, than could be said of the others. The mere wish was sufficient—Rome fell at his feet. The patent of divinity was in the genuflections of a nation. At once he had a temple, priests and flamens. Inexhaustible Greece was sacked again. ”

“ Hitherto the life of Tristrem Varick had been that of a dilettante. There had been no reason why he should work. His education had unfitted him for labor, and his tastes, if artistic, were not sufficiently pronounced to act as incentives. He handled the brush well enough to know that he could never be a painter; he had a natural understanding of music, its value was clear to him, yet its composition was barred. The one talent that he possessed—a talent that grows rarer with the days—was that of appreciation, he could admire the masterpieces of others, but creation was not his. ”

“ The moon that had struck aslant the tomb had gone, but where its beams had fallen the message remained. There is light somewhere, it repeated. Across the heavens a meteor shot like a bee. In the air voices whispered confusedly. It is not in Rome, one seemed to say. It is not on earth, another called.
Mary clutched at her beating breast. The sky now was an opening rose. What the sunset had sown the dawn would reap. In the night that had enveloped, day raised a lattice, and through it came a gust of higher thought. It is not in revenge, a voice whispered. It is not in regret, another called. ”

“ Life is full of pain, and the pangs of the flesh gnaw at the mind and rout its calm. In countless ways fate intercepts and thwarts our hopes. Contentment is not to be relied on, and even wisdom cannot preserve us from the treachery and insecurity of the perceptions. Since happiness, then, is intangible we should cease to pursue it, and take for our goal the absence of pain; this condition," he explained, "is best obtained in making ourselves indifferent to every object of desire and every cause of dislike, and above all to life itself. ”

“ Usselex, conscious of the futility of pursuit, made no further effort. In his face was an anxiety which his fair tormentor did not see. Once he turned to Arnswald, and Arnswald gave him an answering glance, and once his lips moved, but whatever he may have intended to say the words must have stuck in his throat. And Eden, woman-like, seeing that she was no longer pursued, advanced to a spot just beyond his reach, where she hovered tauntingly, yet wary of his slightest movement and prepared at the first suspicion of reprisal to spread her wings in flight. ”

“ She knew that ice is not all that it is cracked up to be: that a finger in the pie is better than two in the fire, and that angels have been observed elsewhere than at Mons—learning which, as you may see, is surprising.
Over the ham and eggs of an earlier evening, the syllables of Paliser's name had awakened echoes of old Academy nights and Mapleson's "grand revivals" of the Trovatore, echoes thin and quavering, yet still repeating hymns in glory of the man's angelic papa. On the way from ham and eggs to Harlem, she had, in consequence, conjured, for Cassy's benefit, with performing fleas. ”

“ With the majesty which Mary Stuart must have shown when she bade farewell to England, to the sceptre, and to life, Viola Raritan turned to him again:
"I loved him," she muttered, yet so faintly that she had left the room before Tristrem, who still crouched by the chair which she had vacated, fully caught the import of her words.
"Viola!" he called. But she had gone. "Viola! No, no; it is impossible. It is impossible," he repeated, as he rose up again; "it is impossible." ”

“ Those that had believed in him grew daily less. In Jerusalem his miracles had ceased, and I thought that, [pg 194] when the levites and the Temple-guard approached, he would speak with Samuel’s thunder, answer with Elijah’s flame. I thought the stars would shake, the moon grow red; that he would produce the lost Urim, the vanished Ark, and so forever silence disbelief. I was wrong, and he was right. Belief is in the heart, not in the senses; the visible contradicts, but faith is not to be confuted. No, Mary, the tombs are not dumb. ”

“ Whoever this woman is, Usselex's relations with her may be irreproachable. Mind you, I don't say they are; I say they may be. I will question him, and he will answer truthfully."
"Truthfully? You expect him to answer truthfully. In him nothing is true, not even his lies."
"Eden, I will question him. If it is as you expect, he will tell me and you will forgive."
"Forgive? yes, it is easy to forgive, but forget, never! Besides, he will not tell the truth; he will deceive you, as he has deceived me."
"No, Eden," Mr. Menemon answered, "you are wrong." ”

“ A tall woman with a quick tongue, a false front, an air of great affability and, when on parade, admirably sent out, she ruled her daughter, or thought she did, which is not quite the same thing.
Margaret Austen was ruled by her conscience and her beautiful beliefs. These were her masters. This human rose was their lovely slave. But latterly a god had enthralled her. It was with wonder and thanksgiving that she recognised the overlordship of that brat of a divinity, whom poets call Eros, and thinkers the Genius of the Species. ”

“ The train reached New London before Tristrem had so much as glanced at a volume which he held in his hand. He had little need of anything to occupy his thoughts. His mind was a scenario in which he followed the changes and convolutions of an entertainment more alluring than any that romancer or playwright could convey. He was in that mood which we all of us have experienced, in which life seems not only worth living, but a fountain of delight as well. Were ever fields more green or sky more fair? ”

“ I am the mistress of the world. Without me time would cease to be. I am the germ of stars, the essence of things. I am all that is, will be, and has been, and my robe no mortal has raised. I breathe, and nations are; in my parturitions are planets; [pg 87] my home is space. My lips are blissfuller than any bloom of bliss; my arms the opening gates of life. The Infinite is mine. Mary, come with me, and you shall measure it.”
When Mary ventured to look again the vision had gone. ”

“ As he passed on Tristrem turned with the obedience of a subject under the influence of a mesmerist; and when the curtain fell again he started as subjects do when they awake from their trance.
The fairest, truest, and best may be stricken in the flush of health; yet after the grave has opened and closed again does not memory still subsist, and to the mourner may not the old dreams return? However acute the grief may be, is it not often better to know that affection is safe in the keeping of the dead than to feel it at the mercy of the living? ”

“ The avalanche of the modulated announcement sent Lennox reeling not merely out of the room, but out of the world, deeply into hell.
It was then, too, that with a sigh, modulated also, Mrs. Austen had added: "Believe me, I am sorry."
Lennox looked at her. "You say that Margaret wants our engagement broken. Why?"
"She has changed her mind."
"So I infer. But why?"
"Because she is a woman."
"But not the ordinary woman. It is the ordinary woman who changes her mind—when she has one to change. Margaret is not of that kind. Margaret is not the kind to promise herself to a man and then throw him over. ”

“ I don't love you. Tristrem, listen to me. I don't love you as you would have me. I wish I did. But I like you. I like you as I can like few other men. Tristrem, except my mother, I have not a friend in the world. Women never care for me, and men—well, save in the case of yourself, when their friendship has been worth the having, it belonged to someone else. Give me yours."
"It will be hard, very hard."
Miss Raritan moved from where she had been standing and glanced at the clock. ”