Henry Harland

“ For my grandmother always kept a dark-blue bottle of orange-flower water in her closet, and the air of her room was always faintly sweet with the perfume of it.
Suddenly, suddenly, a sort of ghost of my grandmother’s room rose before me; and as I peered into it and about it, a ghost of the old emotion her room used to stir in me rose too, an echo of the old wonder, the old feeling of strangeness and mystery. It was a big room—or, at least, it seemed big to a child—a corner room, on the first floor, with windows on two sides. ”

“ Such is her infinite variety. Her infinite variety, her infinite abundance, the fragrance and the sweetness of her,—oh, I could fall upon my face and worship her, like a Pagan of Eld. The earth and all that grows and lives upon her, the blossoming tree, the singing bird,—I could build temples to her."
"And the crawling snake?" put in Maria Dolores, a gleam at the bottom of her eyes.
"The crawling snake," quickly retorted John, "serves a most useful purpose. He establishes the raison d'être of man. Man and his heel are here to crush the serpent's head." ”

“ Arthur’s voice: “No, Ruth. Shall I let the happiness of this hour be marred for you and me, by your thinking and speaking of what would pain you? Besides, I prefer that you should keep this—this thing—this secret—as an evidence of my unwavering confidence in you. Why should we trouble ourselves about the past at all, when the present is at hand, and the future is waiting for us? You and I—we have only just been born. The past is dead. Our life dates from this moment. Oh, it is to the future that we must look!” ”

“ From the turf under their feet rose the keen odour of wet earth, and the mingled scents of clover and wild thyme. All round them sand-martins wheeled and swerved, in a flight that was like aerial skating. Far below, and beyond the dark-green of Rowland Marshes, which followed the winding of the cliffs like a shadow, stretched the grey sea, with its legions of white horses.
"What a sense one gets, from here, of the sea's immensity," Susanna said. "I think the horizon is a million miles away."
"It is," affirmed Anthony, with conclusiveness, as one possessing exact knowledge. ”

“ So!—Now, then, suppose an accident of that sort should befall you? Everything you can hope for from death would come to pass, and yet you would live. What better could you desire?
“And yet I would live? Hardly. My body would live, true. But I, my personality, my identity, would have vanished. For is not the very pith and marrow of one's identity, remembrance? Is not memory the birthmark, so to speak, by which one recognises one's-self? Is it not the cord upon which one's experiences are strung, which holds them together, and establishes their unity? My body would live, true enough. ”

“ And for the first time in my life I'm seriously in love."
"You're incapable of being seriously in love," said Hilary.
"I had always thought so myself," admitted Ferdinand Augustus. "The most I had ever felt for any woman was a sort of mere lukewarm desire, a sort of mere meaningless titillation. But this woman is different. She’s as different to other women as wine is different to toast-and-water. She has the feu-sacrè, She’s done something to the very inmost soul of me ; she’s laid it bare, and set it quivering and yearning. She’s made herself indispensable to me; I can’t live without her. ”

“ Veronika abode with me morning, noon, and night. My memory of her and my unutterable sorrow for her engrossed me to the exclusion of all else.
My violin I did not unlock from year’s end to year’s end. I could not get over my hatred for the bare idea of music. Music recalled the past too vividly. I had not the fortitude to endure it. The sound of a hand-organ in the street was enough to cause me a twinge like that of a nerve touched by steel.
As the winter leaped into spring, and days came which were the duplicates of those I had spent with her, of course my pain grew more acute. ”

“ Zizi—dead? Zizi and Death!—the notions are too awfully incongruous. I look at the door that separates our rooms,—the door athwart which, in former times, I have heard so many bursts of laughter, snatches of song, when Zizi would be entertaining her——she called them “friends;” and, latterly, that hacking, unyielding cough of hers,—I look at the door, and a sort of cold and blackness seems to creep in from its edges; and then I fancy the darkened chamber beyond it, with the open window, and Zizi’s little form stretched on the bed, stark and dead,—poor little chirping, chattering, ribald Zizi! ”

“ A carriage had met her at the railway station in Bayonne, and set her down at the doors of her Château, where her aunt, old Mademoiselle Henriette, awaited her. What manner of life she led there, nobody had the poorest means of discovering. Her own servants (tongue-tied by fear or love) could not be got to speak; and from the eyes of all outsiders she was sedulously screened. Paul could imagine her, in her great humiliation, solitary among the ruins of her high destiny, hiding her wounds; too sensitive to face the curiosity, too proud to brook the pity, of the world. ”

“ The garden smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, the blackcaps sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the sun; but their beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had retired with her into the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed pavilion. He was conscious of a sudden change in things, and of a sudden acute and bitter depression within himself.
"These are great larks," he said; "great larks while they last,—but what's the good of them in the end? What do they lead to? What's the good of coquetting with blisses that can't be yours?" ”

“ There was a time when Craford used to seem to me the tritest spot in Europe, and the thought of Italy was luminous of everything romantic, of everything to be desired. There was a time when nothing gave me such joy as to wake and remember, 'I am in Italy—in Italy—in Italy!'—in Rome or Florence or Venice, as the case might be. But the times have changed, have changed. You were in Italy in those days, and now you are at Craford. Italy is dust and ashes. I hunger for Craford as the only place in the world where life is life. ”

“ Pontycroft's indolent glance encompassed Florence,—that fair spectacle she presents, in the aura of twilight,—the exquisite hour, l'heure exquise. Her amphitheatre of hills,—her white villas, even now charged with rose by the evening glow,—aglow her churches, her gardens and black cypresses. “Yet this is all too like,” he commented, “the enchanter's dream,—at a puff!... No! Fact, Fact, solid Fact is the desideratum! Fact's your miracle in a nutshell. What you and Lucilla call Truth alters with every fresh discovery of man, his climate, education, point of view. ”

“ So is it hard for me to believe that Nature has allowed Veronika to die. And yet it is the truth, the unmistakable, irrevocable, relentless truth.
I suppose all lovers are happy: but it does not seem possible that other lovers can ever have had such unmitigated happiness as ours was—happiness so keen as almost to be a pain. The light of love that burst suddenly into our lives, and filled each cranny full to overflowing, was so pure and bright as almost to blind us. The happiness was all the keener, the light all the brighter, because of the hardship and the monotony of our daily tasks. ”

“ Felix Wildmay will be, as it were, a sort of Manx cat?” was her smiling deduction.
“Yes, if you like, in that particular, a sort of Manx cat,” acquiesced Peter, with a laugh.
The Duchessa laughed too; and then there was a little pause.
Overhead, never so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. ”

“ I am perched on a chair, in the dim light of Constantinople, at Saint-Graal; my nostrils are full of a musty, ancient smell; I can hear the rain pat-pattering on the roof, the wind whistling at the window, and, faintly, in a distant quarter of the house, my cousin Elodie playing her exercises monotonously on the piano. I am balancing myself on tip-toe, craning my neck, with only one care, one preoccupation, in the world—to get a survey of the top shelf of the closet in the Colonel’s room. The next to the top, and the next below that, I already command; they are vacant of everything save dust. ”

“ From generation to generation, a blight shall pursue those that bear his name. For the blood of Israel mixed with the blood of a strange people, is like a sweet wine mixed with aloes. His sons shall be weak of mind and body. His daughters shall be ugly to look upon. To him and to his the Lord our God will show no mercy, even unto the brink of the grave. They shall be as if touched with the leprosy, shunned and despised of all men. To the Goy they will continue to be Jews; but to the Jew they will have become Goym. The Lord our God is a jealous God. ”

“ He would sit down opposite her at eight o clock; they would converse for a few moments; she would sing a song or two; and then, to his unutterable stupefaction, the clock would strike eleven! On the other hand, when he was away from her, time lagged in an equally perplexing manner. He and Hetzel, to illustrate, would finish their dinner at half past seven—only a half hour before he would be at liberty to cross the street. But that half hour! It stretched out like an eternity, beyond the reach of Arthur’s imagination. Life had changed to a dream or to a delirium—it would be hard to say which. ”

“ Has it ever struck you that this earth of ours is, after all, only a huge grave-yard, a colossal burying-ground; and that we living persons are simply waiting about—standing in a long queue, so to speak—till our turn comes to be interred? That seems to me a very pleasing fancy, and one which, considered as an hypothesis, clarifies many obscure things. Accepting it, we cease to wonder at the phenomenon of death, and regard it as the chief end, aim, object, and purpose of all human life—the consummation devoutly to be wished, which we are all attending with greater or less impatience. ”

“ I know that I love you — oh, yes, unutterably. If you could see yourself! You are absolutely unique among women. I would never have believed it possible for any woman to make me feel what you have made me feel. I have never spoken like this to any woman in all my life. Oh, you may laugh. It is the truth, upon my word of honour. If you could look into your eyes, yes, even when you are laughing at me! I can see your wonderful burning spirit shining deep, deep in your eyes. You do not dream how different you are to other women. ”

“ In my time," she sighed, "it would have been a woman."
"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.
"You're very good—but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence—is it a woman?"
"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly. The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to make it so."
"Is it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain. ”

“ Marietta pointed towards the castle. “She owns all, all this country, all these houses—all, all.” Marietta joined her brown old hands together, and separated them, like a swimmer, in a gesture that swept the horizon. Her eyes snapped.
“All Lombardy?” said Peter, without emotion.
Marietta stared again.
“All Lombardy? Mache!” was her scornful remonstrance. “Nobody owns all Lombardy. All these lands, these houses.”
“Who is she?” Peter asked.
Marietta's eyes blinked, in stupefaction before such stupidity.
“But I have just told you,” she cried “She is the Duchessa di Santangiolo.” ”