Francis William Lauderdale Adams

“ Indeed I felt more like drowning myself than making any further fight for existence.
When I reached Maitland Street, I scarcely knew what I had said or done down at the agent's. Everything was a muddle, and a jumble, from beginning to end. I cast myself down on my bed, and the long-suppressed tears came. O why had I not died in that strange, sweet, terrible dream after the reading of the letter? I lay sighing to myself till I dozed.
From this half-sleep of despondency the Rosebud roused me in the early evening, and took me out for a short walk. I don't know what we talked about. ”

“ I can hear his voice now.
"Where-ever any man shall take his place, either because he has thought it better that he should be there, or because his captain has put him there—there, as it seems to me, should he remain to face the danger, and take no account of death or of anything else in comparison with disgrace!"—And my captain is God,' he said. And with that he bent forward a little with a faint light in his face and round his lips as of a bright smile that seemed to grow deeper and deeper in a dim dream that lacked not sweetness. ”

“ But in the morning I lay in a half-dreamy, half-exhausted state of heat, from which I had not will enough for long to rouse myself. This grew into a dull, languorous lethargy, not unsweet, and in my very bones, making me altogether indifferent to everything save a sort of aching hunger, which at last drove me out of bed to the table for the half-pound of dates and the loaf I had bought last afternoon. I got them: went back into bed again, and, I suppose, ate them. When I awoke it was evening, the gas-lamp lighting up a part of the far end of the room. ”

“ There is only one standard by which we can attempt to judge any serious writer, and that is by the highest and best which we know of. The judgment we may hold of Lord Tennyson now may be hopelessly irreconcilable with that which we held once, if judgment it could be called, and not the blind acceptance of the enthusiasm of the generation that immediately preceded us. But so is our judgment of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Byron and Shelley and Keats. ”

“ And I thought in this wise: that the dreams of boyhood are for boyhood and are sweet, while the sights of manhood are for manhood and are bitter: and, that it is given to many to desire the well-fought fight and the well-done duty and the tender progress to the quiet of the Eternal Fields, but that few, the dwindling sacred few, achieve to it: and that it is very hard to learn this simple lesson, that I, this me, this only real existence that I know in Space and Time and Life, is one of the many. ”

“ I took a cab to the Rue Blanche.
When I entered the hall there was a certain tremulousness in me, chiefly the result of an imperfect sense of wrong-doing, and a little, perhaps, of the music and the bright scene. I stalked round the rink, not quite daring to openly regard anyone: in fact, very self-conscious. At last I sat down at a table, and, having ordered a bock, began to argue with myself for a perfect fool. Here was I, who had pondered on Life and Death and Time and Space and God, and God knows what not, absolutely nervous in a hall filled with harlots and harlot-mongers! ”

“ Oh, Rayne, Rayne! ...'
Glastonbury seemed very dull to me when I first came back from Seabay. I roamed about the fields in search of consolation for something I had lost, but could find little or none. It was a relief when the term began.
I had determined to work hard. I did work hard, and this term I got my remove into the sixth, and was under Craven, but it seemed that the moments of tastelessness, as Mr. Cholmeley had once said, were more frequent as the autumn grew more damp and decaying and the moments of hopeful delight more rare: and all the while no letter from Rayne. ”

“ Rosy! I hope you never would, whatever comes or goes. You would always let me be your friend.'
'While some other woman had you? That's likely! Oh, you don't know what love is!'
'I don't,' I said, 'but you know quite well that I never would leave you, however much I loved any one else.'
'But I would leave you, if I thought you loved any one else.'
'But I wouldn't let you know.'
'But you couldn't help it.'
'But I never shall love any one.'
'How do you know that? I thought I never should love any one; but, you see, I do. ”

“ All at once not only the general poorness, but also the general, and also the particular purposelessness of all life and of my own life came over me. I did not care to go to bed, I did not care to do anything. My eyes fell on my easy-chair: I went and lay back in it, in a state that kept, every now and then, rising to a level, over the edge of which lay disgust, and even despair. ”

“ Then I stood looking in the Hampstead pool at in-numerous small up-leaping crescents of moonlight, as from a rain of moonlight only turning to colour as it struck. Sadness came to and grew of me, sadness almost of tears, thoughts of that past that was no more. I turned and set off homewards. The walking invigorated me.
By the time I had got to Dunraven Place, I was almost happy. I let myself in, and entered the library with an elastic step. The lamp was turned low, casting a tender rose-tinted shadow into the air. My supper was laid out, fruits and bread. ”

“ Here the Journal has a single entry:
'O Claire, Claire, that we should have met here in the time of eternity, and so parted! Claire, Claire! Oh, it is a vile devil's earth, and good is only in the slave. To have held thee in my arms, and, with my eyes in thine, to have kissed thee once, and died. Death were sweet so.—But it is useless to think. This city is a market where souls are pledged for bodies, and bodies for souls, and wealth buys all. I will go out from it. Useless to think, useless to think!'
It was a few days after this that Rosy and I went our second evening walk together. ”

“ A woman is up in one of the berths, soothing and giving suck to a baby fractious with sleep and misery. In the far corner is a huddled tartan-petticoated lump-round, with two protruding bare knees—a child unkempt, dirty, miserable, afraid of some heavy coming footstep. I know in some way that I am the child.
And then comes yet another vision, but lighter, and in a broader scene. A red-cheeked woman rolls a perambulator and a quiet little boy down a cindery path in the shine of a moist sunset. They stop by a grey, sweating, barred gate. ”

“ Some of us are made by the sun; and some by the winds; and some by the waters; and some by them all. And that is how, is it not? we have so much in common with one another.'
'And you think,' said Rayne to me, with something of a smile, 'that the children of the sun recognise one another accordingly?'
'I suppose I do,' I said, now a little off the direct scent, 'that is, I think that any given passion, as a rule, expresses itself in the same way in different people; and so one is constantly being struck by resemblances between people, and wondering wherein these resemblances lie. ”

“ At least all the intelligent portion of the community will grow to see the injustice and attempt to abolish it. But when will the great mass of unintelligent people who have won a large enough share of the plunder of their fellows to minister to their own comforts—when will these, also, awake and see? England will realize the desperation of her social problem when its desperation is shown her by fire and blood—then, and not till then! ”

“ If we turn from the merely technical aspects of his work, the same timid artificiality still meets us at all points. He juggles away everything which he cannot transmute into the frail and gracious loveliness which feeds his senses. When he erects a Palace of Art and hangs up some paintings of the poets, Shakespeare figures under the semblance of one 'bland and mild.' Tennyson likes him bland and mild: it is so much nicer, you know, than strenuous and heart-sick, and this is his criticism of literature. ”

“ I went along down the Edgware Road, eating my brown bread and dates with some cheerfulness. Then I had a refreshing glass of milk. And, by the time I was half way across the Park by the path that leads from the Marble Arch up to the Gates at Hyde Park Corner, I seemed to have regained something of my former self: something of my Glastonbury character of will and self-reliance. The last three weeks seemed a dream; almost a bad dream, a nightmare, for a little: then only a dream, save for something of the Rosebud that seemed to reach out half-weakly into the present light. ”

“ After a few minutes of Tears, Silence betook itself out of the bedroom and the house for a long ramble about the streets, and at last joining itself to Thought in preference to Irritation, with which it had set out, I began to draw a sort of picture of what life would have been with a woman—like Rayne, a strong woman! Rayne had, I felt, been for some time an elevation to me, and now it seemed that she was growing into an ideal. ”

“ It was the first time I had recognised the fact. She answered nothing: made no motion. A sudden feeling of the cruelty of my experiment seemed to bite me. I had not thought of it in that way: cruelty. I at once began to undo my sewing:
'Well, Rosebud,' said I, taking her two little still hands in mine, 'You little duffer, what are you thinking about?'
At last she looked at me; looked in my eyes long, till I laughed.
'You are a bad man!' she said.
'You do not mean it?' I said saucily. You are a good wom ...' She had in a moment smitten me smartly on the cheek with the palm of her hand! ”

“ Cholmeley in the arm-chair in the middle of the out-flung bay window, Rayne on a stool at his feet, touching him with her dear beautiful hand from time to time, and I half lying on and over the edge of the terrace—not even then, with the certain quiet and sadness with us that was of a last evening together, could I realise that I was going away from the beauty and the life here with them, not to see either again for long, perhaps ever. ”

“ He, Starkie, should like to know what the devil was Clarkson going to do in that galère? Get fever or dysentery and manure a patch of sand? He could not possibly say when they might be back; perhaps not at all. He had a faint hope that it might possibly be before next year was out. But he couldn't write any more of this stuff. He was out of sorts—in the blues. Clarkson seemed determined to give his name to a new species of beast, or bird, or die in the attempt. They'd do no good this time. Only another instance of wasted time, and wasted treasure, and perhaps wasted—life. ”

“ There you are: a fellow who might be as liked as any one in the school, if you only cared.—Instead of that, you're the most disliked in the school, and all on account of your confounded conceit! You think everyone else is a fool but yourself: and you think you think it doesn't matter in the least what they think,—about you or anything else either! Now that's rot!'
'I don't see it,' I said. 'In two years, who will know whether I was liked or disliked at a school called Glastonbury? Of course I don't care about it! Who would?'
'You do care, you care a great deal!'
'Yes, Clayton?'
'I know it. ”

“ Everywhere was dim. It seemed as if all the rigging of my soul's bark had turned to calcined semblances that fell, as calcined semblances fall, making no noise. And then it seemed as if some semblance of myself wandered to and fro, and round about, in this strange dim place, and thought and thought, trying to regain its hue and presence of health, and could not. Snatches of the music of that lifeful past came to me and grew into deeper colour, bringing hope of permanency—only to be lost again in this strange dim place of noiseless falling calcined semblances. ”

“ Then, before I scarcely knew what had happened, except a tightened effort of her body in my arms, she had ceased struggling.
I looked at her face: looked long, and at last, wildly. I shook her gently; lowered my arm to shake her again. Her head fell back with upward, staring eyes. I thought, She is dead, she is dead. What did it mean? No ... No ...
I gathered her close in my arms, kissing her warm, pure throat, talking to myself; and let both of us lie back in the soft pillows, I with my cheek on her warm, pure breast. Ah, better to sleep now without more words; better to sleep! ”

“ I could have sunk down upon the shining pavement there; covered my face with my arms, and sobbed myself like a tired child to sleep, but oh! a sleep that should know no waking, no waking to misery and despair! At that moment a light leaped up and out from the big window on the left of the door. I saw it, but did not move. Then I leant against the nearer hard, cemented gate-post in that dreary rain of half-darkness, and my body seemed all bloodless. ”

“ Sometimes she stood still, turned towards me; but neither of us made any great effort to see the other. 'My father lies dead in the close dark coffin in the ground with a frown on his face. . . . And my thoughts of them,' I said to myself, 'are this much worth: that my mother is dead, "the late Mrs. Leicester," and my father's face probably past all frowning now. Nay, they probably are semi-dissolved bodies together!' On which thought I fell asleep, and had a horrible dream of propping up the body of my father, great, naked, flabby, which would come upon me. ”

“ That is, that you have no soul. No such place as heaven! no such person as God! Longfellow says: Do not tell me that man's soul, which when we die only slumbers and will awake, perhaps soon, perhaps late, perhaps never at all, in a perfected state of beauty in heaven—is dead, finished, ended, over, when a man dies and his body corrupts and turns into dust.... Do you see?'
'Yes,' I said, 'I see.'
There was a pause for a moment. Then:
'Would you like to go to Glastonbury when you are older?' he said.
'Is Glastonbury a big school? How many fellows are there?' I asked. ”

“ I feared so this morning.' What sorrow was in me for her was given in the words here.
'And where have you been all this while?' she said, looking up,—'if I may ask?'
I bowed my head.
'I left Glastonbury last February. I was in London for a little, and then in Paris for a little, and then in London again till now.'
'Perhaps,' he said, 'Mr. Leicester would go with you? You must have a great deal to say to one another after so long and so silent a separation?' I saw, or thought I saw, that she did not desire that I should go with her. Half-hesitation of hers was not enough to entice me. ”

“ Only from a superb rank and file can we hope for a superb army from which we can choose our saviours. We have but one single foe—Nature—the deadliest foe of all, the foe which can be conquered only by intelligence, and enslaved only by comprehension, and which can hold no other place but that of either victor or vanquished, master or servant. Nothing that runs counter to the final settlement of this, the one vital problem of humanity, is to be tolerated. If we cannot read her riddle aright, our Sphinx will surely devour us, just as she has devoured all the others. ”

“ Certainly Miss Cholmondeley knew how to play.
I listened attentively. The soft low notes flowed on, flowed on, flowed on, but into their softness was gradually growing some other sound: more like an invasion of still dim water by rolling slaty-coloured volumes than anything else I could then think of. I was the song's now: my whole soul filled with it. A softer, lower place was heard: softer, far away: lower, closer to the front of the picture that was in me, the place in which I felt was a presence, two presences. They were sleeping ”

“ The sicklier side of the art of Byron, Keats, and Shelley was absolutely to his taste. The audacity and manly scorn of Byron, the high, clear, spiritual note of Keats, the restless, searching lamentation of Shelley, fell unregarded on his ears. Such gifts were either above and beyond him, or they troubled his 'lisping in love's delicious creeds,' whose girlish votaresses sit 'steeped in golden languors,' 'languors of love-deep eyes,' and he would have none of them. His one resolute instinct here is to look nothing in the face. He would make of life a pretty play. ”