H. B. Marriott Watson

“ There is none other whom her dainty gaieties so become. She has in truth sedater moments as in this picture; but I am assured that her eyes go no further than the eyes of her happy sisters, her lips whisper nothing more. This visage of shy solemnity is not most notable of her, and yet I love its mute expression even as I love her speaking face. Her winsome smile in life possesses all my idle hours; her sober gaze from out the mellow canvas moves me to draw a little nearer to her through my daily work. Her gaiety is sweet to me, yet somehow I prefer her picture to be grave and quiet. ”

“ He was afraid of the wolves, Perdita, because they were strange things to him. This child was not afraid of the darkness. He knew it could not hurt him. Night is benignant, and in its kindly shadows all the hurts and ills of the day are healed. There is no terror in the darkness to those who are wise. The child was wise. For one thing he knew that light and darkness are but figments of a finite mind, differing infinitesimally; and that all light comes from within, and that the soul may be like a paradise of fairy lights, when all is night without. Give me your hand, Perdita. ”

“ For a second he looked into Derracott's eyes. Each had a confession of suicide in his pocket, and it needed but an instantaneous turn of the wrist, and this smiling devil had exchanged fates with him. Harland wavered for a breath of time; and then, clapping the barrel to his heart, pulled the trigger.
The body sank in a heap at Derracott's feet. He watched it huddle limply among the damp and yellow leaves; noted its open eyes and its pallid moonlit face. A stain of blood rested on the lips. He bent over the dead man: his pulse throbbed riotously. ”

“ To rob her of those doubts and tremors seemed for that moment to reduce her to the horrid prose of life; she stood now on heights romantical, with strange and mystic regions about her feet. But this fancy passed like a shadow over my determination, and when, startled at the long silence, she turned and glanced wistfully at my face, I made a movement forward and took her hand.
'Dearest,' said I, 'I love you.'
She shrank from me against the window; her eyes were beggars for my mercy; but heedless in the full course of my passion I discovered to her my hopes in a flood of language. ”

“ I stepped out upon the deck. The sky was as grey as the sea, and the silhouette of the spars and funnel was ghost-like. The Sea Queen thundered on her course, heeling to the broad wash of the water. As I stood watching, my ears alert for any sound that would give me information, I saw a figure detach itself from the bulwarks and move uncertainly about, and as it drew near I discovered it was Pye's. His face was of a colour with the gray steel of his revolver, which he held loosely, as if he was not aware he held it. ”

“ It seemed as if I watched her pale, pitiful face and slight body from a great distance. Her soft tones ran murmurously on; but now the trees buzzed in my ears, and the air, thick with flitting Things, shut out the sight of her. The narrow way fled reeling from my vision into the deep valley below.
'I ask no pardon,' I heard her cry, 'but one thing only.'
She lifted her head, and her white face fronted mine with a wild entreaty.
'I have dishonoured you and yours,' she said. 'I have no hope or future in this world. There is one thing only left me. ”

“ Woman or Devil I know not, but only that the accursed marsh has crept into her soul and she herself is become its Evil Spirit; she herself, that lives and grows young and beautiful by it, has its full power to blight and chill and slay. I, who was once as you are, have this knowledge. What bones lie deep in this black swamp who can say but she? She has drained of health, she has drained of mind and of soul; what is between her and her desire that she should not drain also of life? ”

“ Frank! Frank!" cried his wife in distress.
"Leave me alone," he said sharply, shaking off her hand.
"Do not touch it! Dare to touch it!" cried Marion, gasping.
He turned with the blackened paper in his hand, and his face was torn with emotion. She appeared to him like a brutal wanton, a devil that had tempted him to a cruel act. Ah, the pain of that sad, desolate heart beneath the grass!
"I will never forgive you all my life," he broke forth angrily. "You—you are a devil."
"Why—why——" she stammered, her mind tossing in the drift of her emotions. ”

“ Then Warrington's breathing ceased, and there was no sound at all. And then once more the silence seemed to gather round me slowly and heavily, and whisper to me. I had a vague sense of being prevailed upon, of being enticed and lured by something in the surrounding air; a sort of horror circumscribed me, and I broke from the invisible ring and rushed from the room. The door clanged behind me, and as I hastened along the hall, once more there seemed to ring in my ears the faint and melancholy cry. ”

“ While I was deep in these awkward meditations, uppermost in which lay the necessity of an immediate departure, a low and quiet footfall sounded in the garden. Zoraka with her head upon my bosom heard nothing, but I, looking up, saw to my horror the burly form of Hassan approaching in the dim light. We stood in thick shadow, and he did not remark us, nor, indeed, do I think he was in any condition to do so. For he walked solemnly and slowly, as a man bent with sorrow, and mounted upon the little wall overlooking the bay without a glance upon either side. ”

“ The flesh wherewith you are clothed will exult in them, if you will permit; the mind will passively absorb them. They are in your delicate senses, in your gentle meditations, in your books, in the air, everywhere. Is the wind soft, it is a charm; be it chill, how brightly bums the fire; does it snow, you may admire a white world! You must snatch these delights from the hour, neither remembering evil nor forecasting; you must train your mind to the habit; your senses must be alert; you must laugh; you must be content; you must forget. There is always magic in the air if you will forget. ”

“ Time has not seen this craven in our midst since man issued his primeval challenge. Whatever changes pass before us we have ever the trick of laughter. Without, though the street roar with noises or be silent with dread, silence nor uproar may trouble us here: our merriment is secure, our joy is immutable, we measure out delights with the measure of our lives. There be none here but have grinned through the feast since Time first set them at the board; grief is a breath that fleets ere the features take note of it, a cough, an itch, a blink that hath no place in time. Despair has no home here ”

“ But Nature takes long a-dying; in a hundred parts she still disputes the end with all her old virulence, and it is a summons to the closing struggle I hear in yonder star. In a little the voices will have ceased and dreamful ease be our only portion: that is why the call rings so clearly to-night, mingling with all the sounds of time departed. But has, then, Nature really no further hope? Has she no surprises for us? Having slain and coffined her, shall we have taken the measure of the universe? ”

“ The church rose in a mutter of fear. I made a step to her. But at the chancel rails, and where the great Brazen Cross uplifts itself below the oriel windows, she fell suddenly to her knees. I watched her face. The devils jigged in her hair; it stirred gently, and then flowed soft and rich about her neck; a shudder rushed through her; she hid her face in her hands. And when she raised it again, and her eyes sought mine, they were filled with a quiet smile of love, dewy with tears, and desolate with a sad and hopeless pain. ”

“ Of a truth you are a weary soul fighting for you know not whether good or evil. In your accustomed chair your thoughts flow inwards, and you see the tissue of desires and aims you call yourself. If you can find in this moment one worthy aspiration, one feeling other than of clay, then shall you find the night a little clearer, the year a little younger. But your poignant introspection will perceive the weariness and the folly and the vanity of being. Your soul is cold and clammy; you think it on the brink of death, and cry out upon the horror of your creation. ”

“ Her soul creeps up the sky to the meridian, and in the light and warmth of her being the roses bud and blow in her possession. To-day the morning rings with gaiety. If you would see Aurora newly lighted upon the earth with her sweet dimples, here is the vision at your doors, ye modern men of London! There are no softer smiles than hers, there is no shyer ecstasy. Each step makes music in her ears; each glance espies battalions of delight; with each breath she has thrills of the world and its mystery. ”

“ The awful moaning of the waters again filled the caverns. I fixed my thoughts on Perdita—Perdita in the light, Perdita with the sunshine playing on her bronze-gold hair, Perdita with her vivid rose face. I shut my eyes, as if to pretend that the darkness was only within me, and that the day was broad without, and the curtains of my vision parted and I saw Perdita. She was always in the light. ”

“ Rising, I fronted her swiftly, with a glowing heart, as she stood confused and flushing at the accident.
'Without you,' said I, murmuring low, 'I have no honour, Phyllis. I am desperate for lack of you; my brain is become an ingenious cheat for you; I am a rogue, a rascal, in your presence. I know no deed I would not dare for you. I would give my soul as I have given my heart and life for you.'
My fervid eyes, drooping before her, beheld but her dazzling gown swaying in the breath of the valley. ”

“ This edifice of dust and passion, whereof you too are in the bonds, should plead with you for mercy; a voice in it should cry out upon your clamant indignation, asking a little pity by reason of its own malignant composition. Here stands the body humbled before the magnificent soul, itself the plea for its own pardon. To the one falls the burden of the long day; to the other is meeter that divine communion to which you would exhort us. If, indeed, we stand between God and the brute, pardon us a little that we divide our interests unevenly. ”

“ I bear about with me the marks of my passion, so that to my friends I am become as a fool. I am grown so inseparable from her in my thoughts that I am become her shadow; to recall her image is to see my own stark face. I am fallen into a byword to myself because of her: she stands between me and the immediate concerns of life. Time has laid me under heavy bonds, who was from the first a captive. I have no thought or feeling through the day that does not turn to her. ”

“ Old Irons was fair set in wine, and must needs come at last to bragging at the pitch of his voice; swearing his was a smarter blade, and calling upon me in loud oaths to try his mettle; and then, as if this were too little, falling upon me and beslobbering me with affection, styling me his brother-in-arms, and vowing in the next breath that all upon the High Toby save himself were dirty devils, and fit for nothing but to pimp about a boiling-house. ”

“ Dead is all here to the jargon of distressing passions; voiceless and vain they cry to us for fellowship, thin jaded wraiths of another sphere gibbering across the waste of waters—unheard, unheeded, dimly seen through misty veils. Eyes open gently and look forth their content, lips sigh their pleasure to the zephyrs. There is neither death nor life within this place of seclusion; there is but peace that leadeth kindly to the end. Mortality hath here its final home, a lodging against the darkness. What soul can travail in this resting-place, what poor spirit falter at its imminent extinction? ”

“ The habit of manliness, like the pleasant vices, had faded inconceivably; the ghost of a strong will, bloodless and frail, stared wofully through its prison-bars. The spirit lay a-dying with the flesh, leaving vivid only the sense of horror and the faculty of tears. Thrills of a soft affection stirred along his nerves, and gentle voices were calling in his ears. It was strange how he could resume those preterite feelings, upon which his memory had made no call for years which he had long since flung off as attachments unworthy of the larger mind. ”

“ Miranda gazed round the valley.
"Will that suffice?" she asked softly.
"Ah, no!" he cried; "a thousand noes. There is nothing will suffice save death. But life is laid upon us. What may we do? We take our pains and our pleasures; there is no rest. To rest were death in life. I could not sink into the moral worm that withdraws its blind head and wriggles into cover on the passage of a pain. Nay, I take life with my eyes open, though my back be bowed and my body bent, and though the ice encrust my soul. ”

“ The privet hedges rose high, so that he disappeared from my view immediately; but, keeping the central ash in my eye, I ran on. The maze twisted marvellously, ran in astounding little circuits, and dodged hither and thither in an utterly preposterous fashion. I had no judgment by which to go, save my own vague discretion; and though at first I took my resolutions on the run, and with the easy confidence of novelty, soon—finding myself no nearer to the arbour, but somewhat hot and breathless with my speed—I began to choose more leisurely, and with an air of observation. ”

“ THE DEVIL OF THE MARSH IT was nigh upon dusk when I drew close to the Great Marsh, and already the white vapours were about, riding across the sunken levels like ghosts in a churchyard. Though I had set forth in a mood of wild delight, I had sobered in the lonely ride across the moor and was now uneasily alert. As my horse jerked down the grassy slope that fell away to the jaws of the swamp I could see thin streams of mist rise slowly, hover like wraiths above the long rushes, and then, turning gradually more material, go blowing heavily away across the flat. ”

“ Gregory shuddered. He had been hurried into such rude and abrupt emotions. As he considered her, Marion appeared to him at this moment vulgar, clamant, almost as a shrieking shrew with hands to her hips. And he had been roused from a meditation of sorrowful sweetness to confront this. He had been moving freely among the tender memories of Dorothea, and the music had assisted his mood. This strident outbreak irritated him, and he frowned.
"You—you drive me beyond endurance," he cried, in a lower voice and with a gesture of despair. ”

“ Swift flies the newest humour round and round; the hot blood clamours in the veins; the spirit mounting from the fiery heart breaks out upon the tongue; the rafters echo—we are met at a feast, and old Death himself may not stay us. One leans to another and whispers; the jest flits lightly; Disdain is our only mother. There is no moment of awe at our board; there is never a hush, never an hour but has wings. Is any mute? Let Death take him for the next; he knows not the way of life. Quit, quit, an you have not the fashion of merriment ”

“ Without, the long drive ran upwards through the ragged woods towards the hills, and by that avenue must come the aid I looked for against this Death that shrieked about the house and wandered whining through the empty rooms. My glances strayed between that silent couch and the bare, shining road, my heart beating with fear as though it were I, not she, that drew nearer to the end. ”

“ Her eyes dwelt languorously upon me, and with a gentle movement of her arms she reached for my neck.
"It is Paradise, then," she whispered, and lay upon the sward, contemplating the dwindling stars of heaven with vague wistfulness. Kneeling I regarded her. Now that the circumstances had been rescued from tragedy a reaction rose in my mind. Something in Zoraka repelled me, something, it may be, derived from the association with that immutable smiling corpse. I could not wholly conceive her as a living woman; she seemed tainted and defiled of death, and by the embrace of that detestable body. ”

“ She was uncertain of a strange course if she had not his opinion on it, and at the moment when she seemed to be yielding to the rarest emotions of her nature, his shadow had sufficed to frighten her from the trembling surrender.
It was impossible to remain in this distressing uncertainty. I loved her in a tumultuous fashion and the tide of my passion might not be unduly retarded. I must put her to the test, I found, and dare my dismissal. All fortunes must come to the touch at last, I thought, and I had a lively faith in my own success. ”

“ Harland made no answer, but took his station in the open; Derracott put his back against a leafless ash and waited. The moon struck full upon his face; his eyes moved restlessly; his lips whispered inaudibly. The faint sound of a remote clock rose from a distance and vibrated on the stillness. Harland steadied his arm before him, but Derracott stirred not. A moment intervened of dreadful silence—to Harland a space of hours; and then a heavy bell boomed from the clock tower of the church. A pistol cracked, and a withered branch snapped on the ash by Derracott's head. ”

“ To-day I have put by the prodigious achievements of human art, and am living in the supreme hour of the rose. The town is ablaze with roses; the very streets and houses breathe them to my nostrils. For I have risen with the whimsey in my head, and all Nature is one blushing rose. The air is scented with the summer rain; the squares are joyous. There comes my mistress with a red rose at her bosom this merry morning. Drops sparkle between the petals; she wears the first white garment of the year; everywhere is a rose—a rose. ”

“ It is this forgetfulness which is, after all, the foundation of our pleasures, for in memory is the weightier part of our misfortunes. Of a truth in the course of our journey many pains befall, and there are times of gross evil, when sorrow, as a toad, squats in our doorway, when the scales kick the balance with a rush. In such an hour we come to look upon life as the dreary passage of our commonplaces; there is neither present gain nor future hope. But how soon this mood passes! From our base ancestry we have the divine gift of forgetfulness. ”

“ The splendour has faded from the fabric of our dream, from the world is gone the charm that once held us intent upon the nearest pleasure. It is not only that your body carries the marks of another year, but one might say a certain elasticity of the mind dies year by year with Nature. You will not resume your occupations comfortably to-night. Do you think there is not a tinge of sadness in your laughter over your favourite humourist? Has not your study an air of melancholy? Your pictures speak of the vanity of this passing life. ”

“ I have put about to describe her, but there are no terms for her; her loveliness is new to the world with herself. Her face is so delicately beautiful that I cannot separate its characters; in itself it is an ultimate thought. Yet from each one of her features I should know her face, they are so rare to me. When I look at her I am conscious mainly of her eyes, though should I meet them not the rest fills me so divinely that when at last she glances to me my delight flows over in esteem. ”

“ My soul sings at the approach of peril; my heart is the heart of the universe—at one with it. I am afire to sail the world around, and fall upon the most golden adventures.
These are sounds and visions of the romance of the earth, the madness of yonder falling star, in the eye of which is no peace. Yet is the potency of its invitation paling. Generation by generation does Nature swagger less and her vaunted prospect dwindle. When the earth was young and gallant her legions were indomitable, our will was a poor reed to hers. ”

“ It was Perdita, recognizable in every line of her body, recognizable in the poise of her head and neck, in the upward curve of her arms. For one instant she stood thus above the level of my fascinated gaze, a spirit of the storm, as it seemed, a wild sea-maiden out of the tempestuous waters. And the next the boat plunged, rode down upon the caverns, lurched and cracked like brittle china on the outlying rocks of the cliff. ”

“ The sun rises and I see it not; the air grows warm and I feel it not; the stars blink down upon me and I regard them not. Day passes after day, and night succeeds to night; yet is my long pain still with me, and I heed not the rolling years."
"'Tis but three months," she suggested.
"Three months are many years," he sighed.
Miranda looked at his misty blue eyes, and a thrill of pity pierced her soul.
"But you will be strong," she said; "you will pluck out the thorns from your heart, and it shall yet blossom again as the rose. You will not bow your head to trouble. ”

“ It was her eyes I watched in the blue waves; her frown clouded the skies; her smile danced in the ripples. To love her was no shame, I thought, though to proclaim that love had been dishonour. The touch of that land that contained her gracious body thrilled me as no fervour for my country had been able; to stand upon English soil was to be within the precincts of her worship. ”

“ Sleep shakes his wings free of us as the day-star quivers overhead, and the quiet visions of the night pass from the kindly darkness and look out upon the new day through our lustrous eyes. There is no waking to the sombre laws that once set us limits in the world; there is no border 'twixt our dreams and our life: on flows the level tide through waking and through sleeping, through light and shadow, day by day and night by night. ”

“ The appeal of those lines allured him; he smarted and stung to reflect upon that oblivion in which so long she had been buried. Dorothea's eyes solicited him with their soft radiance; they seemed to intercede with him for an interval of silent communion. That ghostly visitant in his mind tremulously pleaded her cause. Was it so much, she seemed to urge, to snatch a little space, a fragmentary hour, from out a life dedicated to another, a meagre alms to that poor soul he once had loved? ”

“ You have whole seas of sentiment within your eyes. Lord! how you would weep! You would drown out this valley in a week, and flood my garden for a fallen sparrow. Tears! Tears are your finery. You bedeck yourself with them, and strut among your acquaintances the proudest wight of all. You cull posies of sentiment by every wayside. Not a day but you will have a fresh desire, own a fresh sorrow, and crown a fresh conquest. Victor and victim! I salute your immortal youth. Other men have died for love, but to you alone has it been vouchsafed to live for it. ”

“ If I remember aright, I had just one wild animal desire to throw myself on Hassan and tear him in shreds, and then a numb apathy succeeded, and I was conscious only of waiting for Zoraka's cry. I heard dimly the scimitar hissing in the air, and simultaneously it seemed felt the wind and an edge across my neck; and then the scream of agony which I had anticipated. Next instant my guards pulled me back, and I was face to face with Zoraka, looking into my eyes with a genuine expression of terror. ”

“ I was on the point of throwing myself upon the black, knife in hand. But this impulse passed, and the next second, at a loud signal from him, a fourth man entered, bearing a large sheet of sacking. With a gathering sense of dread I stared from him to Zoraka's body, and as my eyes lit upon her, I noticed her bosom slowly rising, as if with a resumption of life. It was a relief to find that she was not dead, as I had imagined, though I could not but conjecture that some outrage was intended. ”