J. C. Snaith

“ Below these were a thousand formulas which had proved disconcerting to man. Still, however, as in the sodden and shadow-fraught chimera beyond the shutters, even here darkness did not reign inviolate. There were tiny lamps on this shelf and that: like those in the street without the power to offer more than a flicker of light, yet able to suggest that the blackest night is susceptible of challenge. A candle shone here and there in the gloom, faint yet invincible, like a will-o’-the-wisp that hops about the mounds in a cemetery.
Opening out of the shop was a little inner room. ”

“ Bitter thoughts accompanied Mame through the nobly proportioned rooms, up the majestic staircase and then down again to the noblest room of all. It seemed vast, that particular room; the sense of its magnitude came out and hit you as you entered. The view from its great windows was unforgettable, but it was the room itself and the things it contained that made it so memorable. Tapestries, sofas, cabinets, chairs, tables, lovely bric-a-brac and candelabra, all were perfect in their kind and united in ministry to the higher perfection of which they formed a part. ”

“ A sky gloriously burnished with the presence of God alone could have winged it; and as he looked up, came the words: “And, lo, the heavens opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.”
Thrilled by a joy which was half fear, the vicar leaned against the stone. And as he did so a rush of wild thoughts swept his mind like a tide. His eyes grew dark as he saw again a summer twilight and a frail figure of fantasy kneeling upon the spot to which he was now rooted. ”

“ The mists of evening began to steal down the river. As the fugitives sat on a green bank by the side of the water, their faces aglow with the sunset, nature spoke to them with a new, a fuller, an intenser meaning. Bird and beast, herb and tree were thrilling with life. And yet as Gervase and Anne sat close together they felt a sense of their tragic destiny overtaking them. The life of one, perhaps of both, was forfeit. The dark shadow was ever in their minds. All thought of the morrow must be put away. ”

“ Candor bred the thought that it was not to be wondered at, her way of listening was so delightful. The beautiful head—it hurt them to admit the fact yet there it was—bent towards him in a kind of loving reverence, changing each phrase of his into something rare and memorable by a receptivity whose only wish was to give pleasure to a poor old man struggling with a basin of arrowroot—that sight and the sense of a presence alive in every nerve, a voice of pure music, and a face incapable of evil: was it surprising that a spell was cast upon their sire? ”

“ With another of his mighty roars, the English giant seized her by the nape with his right hand, and held her up in the air by the scruff, so curiously as if she had been a fierce little cat that had flown at him.
“Why, thou small spitfire,” he said, “thou art even too slight to be cracked under mine heel. Thou pretty devil, I will buss thee.”
“I will bite off the end of your nose, you bloody-minded villain,” cried the little wench, struggling frantically in his gripe.
“Nay, why this enmity, pretty titmouse,” said the giant, “seeing that I have a mind to fondle thee for thy valour?” ”

“ With flaming eyes and cheeks of death the boy dragged his faint limbs to the kerb. As he came near the great animal, and he beheld its scarlet nostrils and huge and wicked eyes, he knew it for a monster of fable that could turn him to stone with its glance. A chill stole through his veins. He extended his hands towards the great horse. His eyes were filled with a dreadful rushing darkness. He felt himself swaying with a kind of sick impotence; it was as though the hand of fate had maimed him.
“Lay ’old of his head, can’t yer?” the brutal voice of the man on the dray percolated to his ears. ”

“ He was a young man; life was before him; there was the magic talisman in his spirit that could bend the whole world to his purposes. He gnashed his teeth with impotent fury, and rose biting at his nails.
“This is a dreadful tragedy,” he muttered. “This is a dreadful tragedy. Think of such a one as myself being lost to mankind.”
His own grotesque words caused him to laugh. That surprising genie, that had been destined to conquer a stupidly material world, enabled him to present himself to himself in his amazing predicament. He could hardly preserve his gravity before a spectacle so astonishing. ”

“ As Cheriton bore his candle up the ghostly stone-flagged staircase, with suits of armor grinning at him and mediæval weapons menacing him from the walls, and the young moon peering at him through the oriel windows, he knew that his old adversary would make a last final and consummate effort to entangle George Betterton. And if she succeeded, the United Kingdom would not contain a happier old woman than she. ”

“ The Cussedness of Cricket HAD I been in less of a tottering funk, I might have taken the admirably timed arrival of the Authentics as an omen of good luck. But I was in that suicidal frame of mind when a man wishes that he is anything but what he is, anywhere but where he is, and that he has to do aught but what he has to do. It is a frame of mind that can give for deep-seated torture a long start to nightmares, weddings, sea-sickness, and public speaking. If I were only going in first wicket, I shouldn’t care! If I’d only an inkling of what the bowling was like! ”

“ There was a void, it seemed, gaping in the ground behind the bushes but a few yards off. But Gervase could scarce drag his body towards it as they crept close by the wall to see what it might be. For now he felt with a dull sense of terror that the great moment was past. His insurgent nerves told him that not again in cold blood would he climb to the parapet of the wall.
From this new errand he looked for no deliverance. But as soon as they came near they saw that the void, barely visible in the gray light, was a hole in the ground. ”

“ Here she was, however, framed in cloud, with a star or two about her, and a very tell-tale eye. The roof of the woods freezing across the park was a mass of dusky silver that her beams had thrown, and so bold and sharp her glow was on every twig that slept that individual things stood forth and stared at me, and seemed endowed with the hue of noon in the middle of the night. And I am sure the hour was laid for an adventure, and crying for a deed. The light of the moon was made of pale romance, and bade the princess bare her casement, and the minstrel on the sward to sing. ”

“ By what cruel turn of Fate’s shuttle had she, the conqueror of half the world, been conquered by antichrist himself?
This secret power behind the great movements of the time, this framer of policies, foreign and domestic, this boss of all bosses, this big serpent who swallowed the little serpents, what a commentary he was on the world that he governed! Was it possible, that in the act of recoil from the highest moment in her history, Civilization should now be in bondage to a mere beast!
Still looking at the hooded eyes of the man opposite, a strange light came into those of John Endor. ”

“ Like most of those who have the unlucky leaven of imagination in their clay, my instinctive optimism is often on its trial. While I marched up and down in the darkness, trying vainly to keep warm, waiting for that tardy dawn in which death lurked for us all, I would have laid long odds that the doom of the Princess was sealed already and that my comrades in arms would share it.
A man should strive in some sort to figure as a hero when he comes to the purple patches in his own history. ”

“ She is a woman, dear Don Miguel, and remark me, she will do something whimsical. You and I, my dear, are men of the first ton, as they say at Paris, but this barbarous giant, this ruffling English swaggerer, is already the apple of that fine bright eye. Mark me, dear Don Miguel, he is the hero. Did she ask you to choose a piece for her head at the armoury and a sword for her hand; did she ask me? Not so, my dear friend. She asks this gigantic island Goth, this swaggerer. And there you have the whole of the female woman. Her mind resembles nothing so much as a game of dice. ”