Hannah Lynch

“ It is already much not to cry. But I shed all my tears in childhood, and left my sadness behind me. When the bigger troubles and tragedies came, as they speedily did, I found sustainment and wisdom in arming myself with courage and gaiety, and so I faced the road. I had then, as ever since, plenty of pleasure to temper unhappiness, plenty of bright rays to guide me through the obscurities of sentiment and suffering. An unfailing beam of humour then and now shed its smile athwart the dim bleak forest of emotions through which destiny bade me cut my way. ”

“ That his daughter, his treasure, whom he had believed few men worthy to possess, should have been publicly insulted by a wretch like Oïdas to avenge an ignoble vanity which conceived itself affronted—that so horrible a stroke should have been dealt him by fate, and the heavens remained unmoved and the blood of life still flow in his veins, vision not have been struck from his appalled eyes! Pride lay dead at a stroke, and the unhappy man felt that he could never again lift a front of dignity to the light of day. ”

“ I had a foreboding of rashness, of perilous explosion on the morrow, unless I had the wisdom to steal out alone into the empty world. If they loved one another, it was plainly my duty. But, oh! to be able to look into her eyes, and cry: ‘I love you, yet I leave you. For me death were easier, but my death would stain your bliss with regret’s shadow.’
I questioned the stars in my blind anguish to learn if there were no resources in nature to wall in this terrible blank of being that stretched so miserably, so limitlessly before me as a future without Brases or Trueberry. ”

“ Sombre the book is throughout, and we regard it as almost impertinent to yield to the occasional pricks of humour that tickle us into quiet laughter. How can we bear to laugh at the oddities of mankind, even at the bidding of such a master, when we see a sweet and pure girl’s life going to ruin, and understand that the very nature of her is such that there is no return from the wreck, no after-sunshine to restore the ravages of storm? Here is no picturesque mingling of lights and shadows, no lyrical romance, no melodies of the upper spheres, to imperil the dark remembrance of the dénouement. ”

“ The train leaves you at the foot of the town before the quaint fortressed bridge of Alcántara. In these days of unpretentious exits and entrances, when we scarcely detect the outskirts of a city from the open way, or the suburbs from the heart of urban movement, these two castellated bridges, by which you enter and leave Toledo, have a strange and insistent air of feudality that at once captures fancy, and resembles the flourish of trumpets in martial dramas. Civilisation instantly waves backward, and leaves imagination thrilled upon the shores of legend. ”

“ As well dream of a city of London without its trousered armies, rushing on the wings of time in pursuit of gold, as try to imagine a Paris with woman dethroned. She holds all the strong places; she vivifies the town from the old Place of the Bastille to the heights of Montmartre, where the texture and trimming of her garments is the topic of the hour; and men gather on the boulevards at the hour of absinthe, in devout expectation of seeing her pass by. Whether they discuss politics or art, be certain she is at the bottom of all their talk. ”

“ Had she been playing for a lover, she could not have done better. But she was scarcely conscious of love for Rudolph. Her thirty-five years of wretched hilarity and miserable sadness had left her heart untouched until now, but she was too proud to acknowledge even to herself the steadily growing interest and yearning awakened in her by the innocent eyes of a lad, and while she played she resolutely kept her face averted from Rudolph’s. So she saw nothing of the varying emotions that swept across it as the notes at her magic touch rose and fell. ”

“ In youth, sorrow fells us to-day, and joy awakes us [Pg 270] to-morrow. It is always—Land may be in sight to-morrow! The night is dark, but hope dances blithely through our veins with the delicious assurance that to-morrow brings the sun. The world is empty, but vague dreams tell us that to-morrow love will cross our path and fill the universe. Hope is the magician that waved us forward and carried us recklessly through briar and bramble, with undaunted confidence in life, in ourselves, and in all things around us. Each fall was ever the last, each pang the precursor of eternal happiness. ”

“ Already the landscape was drenched and blotted out of view. An affrighted peasant, in sabots large enough to shelter the woman and her family of nursery rhyme, darted down the road, holding a coloured umbrella as big as a tent. The roar of thunder came from afar, and a flash of lightning broke through the vapoury veil, making Hervé blink like a distracted owl caught by the dawn. Oh, if he were only back safely at Saint-Laurent, or could hold the hand of his dear countess! No, he would not explore any more until he was a grown-up man. ”

“ It is less a town, a noisy affair yielding to the commodities of life, than a significant spot for the soul. Beneath a crude illumination, which gives to each line of its ruins a vigour, a clearness by which the least energetic characters acquire backbone, at the same time it is mysterious, with its cathedral springing towards the sky, its alcázars and palaces that only take sight from their invisible patios. Thus secret and inflexible, in this harsh overheated land, Toledo appears like an image of exaltation in solitude, a cry in the desert. ”

“ Jeanne, I admit, was the pearl of her set, speaking with polished diction, of manners gentle and urbane, only a nurse, and yet a perfect lady in everything. Her bedroom denoted her own charming refinement, with its blue and white curtains, its spotless prettiness, the flower vases, and little bookcase not ignobly filled. She spoke continuously of herself, of her wishes and dreams. Well, never once did I get a suspicion of a flirtation in her life. She spoke of men with dignity and simplicity, without simper or giggle, and made no effort to lead me to believe that she was pursued by lovers. ”

“ But it is hardly, as a whole, so great as ‘The Egoist,’ ‘Rhoda Fleming,’ or ‘Diana of the Crossways.’ In it the quality of tenderness, noticeably absent in the rest, abounds, and also a lovely freshness and a visible delight in youth and in youthful joys. It is a work pre-eminently human, with all the defects and qualities of humanity strongly marked. Had it been written in blood, it could not be redder with life. Vitality is its captivating charm and melody its voice. ”

“ Ten days back in Athens, and not one glimpse of Andromache! Very unlike a lover restored to the arms of his mistress does he look, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets and an expression of miserable perplexity on his face. An airy, wide-awake individual, with an anemone in his button-hole, and a glass in his eye, accosts him noisily, and quickly scanning him, remarks aloud upon the utter dejection of his air.
“Ah, Tonton, je suis épris—cette fois pour de bon,” cried Rudolph, desirous of horrifying somebody else as well as himself. ”

“ Add to these eyes and teeth hair as dark as shadow, as thick as the blackness of night, a scarlet and white face, round and dimpled, of the divinest shape, the rarest and ripest combination of fruit and flower, with deep peach-like bloom upon the soft cheek, and the hue of a crimson cherry upon the curved full lips, and there you have a woman equipped for her own destruction, if she have a heart to lose, no brains to speak of, and only as much knowledge of man, of the world, as a fresh-born kitten or a toddling babe. ”

“ Imagination leaps at sight of a cheering bit of verdure, not for the beauty of it, though beauty is not altogether absent, but for the old familiar eloquence of trees and grassy spaces, the twinkling brightness of rills and flashing water and wooded fringes, with a hint of shadow along the horizon. Between the poplared banks of the river, yellow and waveless as befits a river of dead romance, the eye lingers on glimpses of emerald islets, with reedy edges against the fuller foliage of elm. Above, exposed on a rocky throne, belted by the sombre Tagus, sits Toledo. ”

“ And in and out of the twilit gray of the olives, the darkening glance and sparkle of the sea that is never out of sight,—now laughing through a network of fig branches, then through the stiff spikes of the cactus, or the graceful foliage of the plane, and white villages studding the orchards and gardens like jewels. Over all hangs a strange note of happy indifference, a rude naturalness that seeks no concealment and cares not for shadow, hymns the smiles of blue water and the glory of the sky ”

“ To be poor in London is to be the poorest of poor devils upon the globe, for there life offers you no compensation. You live in such a slum as the Parisian eye has never gazed upon; the faces around you are sour or bloated, according to temperament and habits. There is no lightness of air, no brilliance of perspective, to distract the eye from the inward contemplation of daily misery, unless you put on your hat and trudge endless miles to get a glimpse of the long, bright boulevard of Piccadilly, or the sophisticated wonders of the Strand. ”

“ I was saturated with the sadness of it, and my glance was still wedded to its dead charm, when a bloused peasant came out of the under shadows and luminous red upper sphere, like a cheerful commonplace note in the picturesque mystery of the imagination. Very real he looked, and not in the least like a ghost from other centuries. Prosperous, too, as befits a peasant who has earned his right to nod to his betters, and mayhap clink free and fraternal glasses with them through an ocean of blood. ”

“ I can now imagine what a quaint picture this motherly young lady, with the softly folding arms and the humid dusky glance, that was in itself the sweetest of caresses, may have made afterwards of our friendship, the tenderness with which she would sketch my portrait and repeat my childish confidences, the pity and indignation with which my forlornness must have filled her. A child with a home, a mother, a family, cast adrift on a grey winter's sea! Travelling from one land to another, like a valueless packet given in charge to a stranger! ”

“ Toledo’s finest hour is at sunset, especially in the month of October. Nowhere have I seen the setting sun cast such a rich and lovely flush over the earth. The brown visage of the town for one intense moment is made radiant by the deep crimson flames, and the red light sheds a glorious beauty upon empty hill-sides and river-washed plains. Magic enfolds city and land, and space is so abridged by the matchless purity of the atmosphere that the eye is tricked into the belief that distant objects are quite close. ”

“ Inarime, are you not shamed? Leave that man’s embrace. What! do you not see in him the long years of servitude and degradation under which your country groaned? Are you less proud, less worthy of your glorious ancestors than the Greek woman who flung herself and her babes from a rock into the engulfing sea rather than yield to Turkish embraces? Does Hellenic blood run so sluggishly in your veins that revolt does not cry for shame? ”

“ That a sharp-witted man of the world, an intelligent French writer of some fame, should be driven to inane stuttering at the greatest moment of his existence, was surely a grotesque fatality. I saw with a shock the contraction of the delicate brows, and the surprised interrogation of the proud glance she levelled at me. Then pride and surprise ebbed back to their still depths, and the brows smoothed by sheer effort of will, I divined, and she smiled coldly, a little austere smile, remote and frosted like a ray on ice. ”

“ Mount the steps beside this marble tomb, and you will look on such a picture of death in all its restful sublimity as the hand, the imagination of man have rarely seized. Nothing like that old man’s head under the mitre has Berruguete himself ever done. It is the supreme attainment of genius on the eve of eternal night, the culmination of a magnificent art, when the great strong hand is about to lay down the chisel forever, and gathers in a supreme moment all that is best in a life’s work, to give it a noble ending. ”

“ To have cried in childhood as I cried then, incessantly and for months, sometimes for the greater part of the day under a bed, that none of these mocking young creatures might see me and laugh at me; to have stood so intolerably alone among so many, without a hand to dry my eyes, a kiss to comfort me, a soft breast against which I could rest my tired little head and sob out my tale of sorrow,—this is to start permanently maimed for the battle of life. ”

“ Should a river roll in view, or a little street slope down to a busy quay, where the washerwomen kneel and lend mirth and colour to the scene, while above, an old historic castle, high against the sky, on a dusty square, or the grey of Gothic stone and delicate spire add a hieratic note to the quaint picture you forget the unfriendly reserve of those barred and blinded houses, you forget the somewhat aggressive coldness and inhospitality of their front, in recognition of the tempered brilliance, the graceful and distinguished effects around you. ”

“ Like a roseate jewel in a circle of sapphire, with opal and mauve and purple lights struck from it by the sun’s rays, lies Tenos upon the deep and variable bosom of the Ægean waters. The Greek islands seen from the sea are untiringly, unspeakably beautiful. Shadow and shine, delicate hues and strong ones melt into an inextricable haze, as do the sensations of the spectator, incapable of analysis as he watches them. Energy oozes out through the finger-tips, the pulses quiet in lazy delight, and the eye is filled for once with seeing. ”

“ The best proof of moral worth lay in the excess of suffering endured. Virtue was measured by the degree of pain, and laughter dwelt with the ignoble jesters and clowns. Sorrow was a diadem upon that golden head, I murmured, and looked for confirmation in the cold radiance of the stars above, darting their shuttles of lambent flame in and out the purple depths of sky.
I peered down through the darkness, searching for the grey manor among the massive shadows. But no lighted window revealed it to my yearning gaze, and somehow I felt glad that Brases had suffered. ”

“ The mystery of this Arabian genius is forever sealed. Nothing we can strive, nothing we can hope to do, will reveal it to us, will unlock the doors of an enchanted past. Whence it sprung is just as inexplicable to us as how it vanished, but alas! vanished it is like the mysterious city of enchantment and of a civilisation that since has never been equalled—the outlying town of Cordova, built by a mighty Moorish emperor in honour of a loved wife, and but a memory of superlative witchery and delight. ”

“ Winter had lashed the Eastern world with sharp frenzy, and now early spring was raging over the plain of Attica, driving madly in a whirlwind of dust down from the encircling hills, with its breath of ice and its shrewish roar. And soon it would be at its verge, and stand on tiptoe with wistful glance set upon the hurrying summer that so soon would consume its flowers and grasses and chattering rills.
Still Gustav lingered at Athens studying archæology and patiently waiting for Constantine’s message of hope. Exploring expeditions helped him through the long leisure. ”

“ A perceptible start of emotion found expression in an interjectionary arch of brow, a sigh blown on the puff of a cigarette, and an uneasy shifting of attitudes. A baby girl! What a slight thing in the hurry of life, what a simple thing in its crowding perplexities! The tragic end of men and women whom the years have worn and fretted; the sudden death of happy youth in the midst of its bright promises; the peaceful sadness that accompanies the departure of the old, who have honourably lived their lives and accomplished all natural laws:—but the closed eyes of a little baby girl! ”

“ Here to sit awhile and dream, not days but unending months, in the shadow of a mighty cathedral, in what a Spanish writer with Iberian imagery, has called “a case of mediæval jewels.” It is a fitting note of environment that the landscape should be stamped by an ardent and ineffaceable desolation, incessantly exposed to devastating winds, swept by fierce rains and blinding dust and remorseless sunfire. Nature is neither instigated by contrast, nor softened by charm. Unsmiling in its arid austerity, it is grand by the magic of its simplicity. ”

“ Why was it so difficult for him, if he loved her, to understand and appreciate the nature of her repugnance? Are a girl’s objections never to count when others have her welfare in view?
“One would think I were disgraced, and marriage necessary at once as a shield for my reputation,” she retorted, crimsoning hotly, held by a sense of audacity and shame, as the full meaning of her words rushed upon her.
“Those are words it requires all my tenderness to forgive, Inarime,” said Pericles, gravely. “You wonder at my anxiety to marry you. Is it not simply a father’s duty? ”

“ One despairs so quickly in youth, and then the children come, with their sweet faces made up of morning light, soft as flowers, with the smile of paradise in their clear eyes. And youth for me lies so far away,’ she added, with a scarce perceptible change of voice, and a ray lighting up her delicate face, showed a smile so wan and faint as rather to resemble the memory of a smile, reminiscent as the spectre of that youth she greeted as an alien, and I listening, wished I had died before hearing words so sad from her lips. ”

“ It is good to breathe a moment in so exalted an atmosphere, to behold so vast and wonderful a scene, in which all remembrance of human miseries vanishes, and our very joys drop into relative significance. Nature has nowhere else attained a note of beauty harsher, more intense, more indifferently sublime. Elsewhere you feel that an effort has been made to captivate you, a deliberate combination of effects to win your admiration. Not so here. The Moors never succeeded, during their long sovereignty, in stamping the place with their voluptuous charm, as they did in Granada, Cordova, and Valencia. ”

“ It glowed like a lamp, and shed a faint illumination upon the dusk. The faded monotone of her voice murmured prayerfully above the weighted splash upon the stones, and awoke the essential impulse of existence. While such women lived and prayed for men, could the deeps of life be said to have closed? ’Tis an old-fashioned notion, but, like most old-fashioned things, ’tis the simplest and the best. It softened the hard retrospection of Dr. Vermont’s glance, and lent a wavering tenderness to his peculiar smile. ”

“ Could there be anything dreamed of on earth like the beauty of the “Barcarolle” so played? Enthusiasm reached the white-heat of passion. Ladies tore the flowers from their bosoms, men from their button-holes and flung them at her; faces went white and red, and eyes filled with tears. And there stood Agiropoulos smiling blandly and taking half the triumph as his own, while Rudolph had gone back to his recess and was sobbing unrestrainedly in sheer ecstasy. ”

“ It totally lacks the essential quality of reverence, that elusive and unanalysable suggestion of the beyond, the supreme, the intangible, of that inexplicable aspiration that ever stirs the soul of primitive and civilised man, and has taught him to seek its expression in the building of church and temple; in the white splendour of the Parthenon, the very soul of Greek genius in stone, in the grey dimness of Gothic cathedral, in which Christian fervour finds almost an immaterial beauty of definition, the quality of lofty distinction which belongs to the highest poetry and eloquence. ”

“ In such a mood, there is melody in all things, and warmth lies even in frosted starlight. Nothing but the sweetness of life is felt: its turbidness and accidents, its disappointments, pains, and stumbles, lie peacefully forgotten in the well of memory; and we wish somebody could have told us in some past trouble that the future contained for us a moment so good as this.
‘Mademoiselle is in the garden,’ a servant informed him, and led the way through halls and salons, down steps running from the long window into a shaded green paradise. ”

“ Inarime made a step back towards the window, her face still turned to Reineke’s, as a flower’s to the sun.
“Inarime!” cried Gustav, and in an instant she had bounded across the terrace, and was clinging to him as if for sheer life.
“You see, sir,” said Gustav, looking up triumphantly, when their lips were parted. “Love is ever conqueror.”
“I think not. My daughter, say at once, is this our parting—our last parting and our first?”
Inarime lifted her head and removed her arms from her lover’s neck. ”

“ I have never found its wonderful charm diminished by familiarity; on the contrary, the coloured rays of light from above, striking upon the brown shade of stone, seem ever more and more witching; the delicate tones of shadow more and more mysterious, and the unrivalled grandeur of long forested perspectives of aisles and of spacious naves, with the multiplicity of arches and windows, ever a greater testimony of Toledo’s departed glory.
Space forbids anything like a detailed account of the chapels and cloisters of the Cathedral. ”

“ The Benedictine monastery lay in massive gloom below, reaching an aerial coldness of sharp point and spire along its jagged tops. Feudal gashes in the arches let in large slips of green sky and glimmering stars, and its rough stone wall along one side was the division between the convent and the garden of my companion’s mistress. No, not even the cemetery I had left could, in the dreariest hour, look more inexpressibly dark, and lifeless, and forsaken than that old garden. Its beauty was the beauty of death and sadness and neglect. ”

“ Given a young man of average resolution in force against an acknowledged and violently self-disapproved inclination, seated in a pleasant morning-room, with clear broad rays of December sunshine, as it knows how to shine in winter in Greece, pouring in through the lattice-work of the windows, every leaf in the garden singing and proclaiming that out-of-doors there is gladness of sight as well as gladness of sound, to soothe the mind of restless and melancholy youth. ”

“ On the road above, rounding the superb curve of Antiquerela, a boy on mule-back is a slight silhouette of vanishing grace, and the evening bells in the upper air sound thin and ethereal above the sea-like roar of the water breaks below the silent Moorish mills. Not even the modern hint of existence and the squalid little galleries, with linen hanging out to dry over a broken bit of castellated wall, will disturb your feeling of reverie among the forgotten ages. ”

“ Oh, the poignant appeal to the senses of the dusky, sweet-smelling courtyard, rich with its departing spring blooms! It swept Inarime like the breath of childhood and filled her with fervent gratitude. To go away for the first time and come back! A month may hold the meaning of a cycle and awaken in the young heart all the fancies, the miseries and joys of the wanderer. ”

“ You follow the steep Calle de la Barca behind the Cathedral down to the ferry, where a few lazy oar strokes take you across the narrow Tagus. The effect midway is surprising. Looking towards the bridge of Alcántara and San Servando, the waters seem to force their way between the immense brown rocks from the castle ruins, and lie steep and still like a mountain tarn. Little splashes of green and flowery bloom high up among the rocks give a pretty touch to the grim picture, and over the harsh remains of the city walls you will note a common but bright little suggestion of garden life. ”