John Trevena

“ It wobbled down the natural terraces, weather-hewn from granite, and with it came a voice suggesting more violence, harsh and angry, not a voice of the clouds, but of the street-corner, where faces are thin and fierce, and the paving-stones seem cruel. Sibley was searching for her husband, not because she loved him, nor requiring his company for any reason except the selfish one that the loneliness above frightened her, and her small spirit quailed before the heaving moorland. Any sort of a brute was better than the God of the mountains. ”

“ Love is stronger than mind, greater than Nature, for it conquers both, and binds them down in chains. It must live and burn, nor may it be quenched at desire. Child, fair child, by such love—the only gift an old man can give—I pray you, be guided by my counsel. Come back to your people, and forget the past. All will stretch forth arms of love, to clasp you close. There will be joy in the encampment, with a song at every heart. For the tribe will not lose the sunshine, its morning and evening light. ”

“ As she stood watching the firelight and the grove, dim ghosts arose and began her punishment. She seemed to hear a sound of scuffling, and to see young Richard and his great hound, Blood, wrestling together, as they had been wont to do among the pine barrens, to the roar of the wind and the lost waters. Again she heard the boyish voice, gasping and triumphant, "I have beaten him again. I am stronger than he." And as she shivered, there came an echo of her own former words from the line of tossing trees, "He is brave and strong. He shall make a man before he has grown." ”

“ Boodles had been to the gate of Castle Dolorous, had looked inside, and thought she had seen the skulls and bones of the young men and maidens, who had wandered in the woods to hear nightingales and pick the tender grapes of passion, but had been caught instead by the ogre, that he might trim his mantle with their hearts. She began at last to wonder whether it could be a sin to have no recognised parents and no name. Even the mongrel can be faithful, and the hybrid flower beautiful; and in their way they are natural, and for themselves they are loved. ”

“ But when the tiny voice was first lifted in unconscious appeal for nurture, resentment perished beneath the sudden passion of early motherhood. What if the father was villain and traitor? Here was at least a portion of her own body, flesh of her flesh. The child should learn the name of mother, but never that of father. It should love the one parent and hate the other. Often she dimly reflected as the infant lay, breathing softly in healthy sleep, upon her knees, knowing not that he was the child of misery and the son of a broken heart. ”

“ A perfect evening is often the prelude to a stormy night. It was such an evening in spring again, when the wind-flowers were out, and an old man riding off the moor paused beside Searell's boundary-wall to prophesy a tempest. This was a white old man with queer blue eyes, and he too was a mystic under the spell of solitude; but, unlike Searell, he had his ties, without which no man can be happy. ”

“ Our souls will live in the same life and the same love. Together while the old world crumbles, and the sun becomes cold, and the moon fades. There is no death. We shall close our eyes one day and change our home. Life will run on for us, the same magnificent life of love."
"There is no death," he repeated, as though the idea had not occurred to him before.
"How many thousand years has this wind rushed upon this hill? How many thousand shall it beat after we have changed our home? We are made to live, Geoffrey. It is not we who are sick, not we who are oppressed. ”

“ There is not a person living who has not done an act of cruelty. It is impossible to refrain from it. However kindly the soul may be Nature will whisper bloody messages; and some day there is sure to be a temporary breakdown. In a town the wretched business is not much seen. It lurks in the dark corners, like the Mygale spider, and comes out perhaps at moonlight to cast its shadow upon the bed. On the sparsely inhabited moor it is visible, for it cannot hide away so easily, and it tries less because it is fiercer. It is like the wolf-spider which dashes out in a mad fury. ”

“ Yet it was not so, since the pain would die down, while the wound would leave no scar. Then many moons grew round and faded in their light as the young Menotah passed from childhood to youth. Her beauty opened like the flower bud moistened by the softness of light, and painted with the coloured breath of morning. For those the gods love are beautiful, and the seasons bring them gifts. So was it with Menotah. To her, spring came with heart of joy, and summer with a smile; fair blush, gift of autumn, and winter last with health. ”

“ One shadow, so dark and angular as to attract the Dutchman's eyes, lurked under a crag, as a patch of sheltered ice might linger in the midst of a land steaming with sunshine; but when Van Vuren approached, this shadow moved and took upon itself a semblance of humanity, and with the dispelling of the illusion the Dutchman beheld the evil face of Gaudriole.
"Adversity finds hard resting-places, my captain," said the dwarf, as he crawled forth. "Your rock makes a bed rougher than a paving-stone, but methinks a safer. Here a rogue may snore in his sleep without bringing the king's men upon him. ”

“ Peter entered with a huge lantern, the time being winter, and the evening dark—the night rather, for the Dartmoor day in winter is well over by five o'clock—flapped up the aisle with goose-like steps, tumbled into a seat breathing heavily, and making as much noise with his boots as a horse upon cobblestones, banged the lantern down, and gazed about the building with an air of proprietorship. ”

“ And she is mine."
"She'm mine, master," murmured Sibley.
"I found her among my flowers, the reward of my searching. She is the answer," he said. "Let her be to you the daughter of love, and to me the daughter of violence. Oliver," he cried, turning, "bring up water from the pixy-stream. As the sun rises I will baptise—my child."
"Yew'm fond o' she, master?"
"She is mine," he said, with the old impatience.
"And we, master?"
"I am old and you are young," said Searell. "But we are all beginning life, we know nothing. We will try to find another and a better pathway." ”

“ The Chief watched him from beneath shaggy grey eyebrows. 'So, Muskwah,' he muttered slowly, as though in thought, 'the passion flame has burnt your heart also. A man may not so speak, when the cause moving him is but some idle fancy of the mind. What, Muskwah, is there more to tell? Has she cast the glance of favour towards you? Has she ever smiled upon you as she came across your way? Has she dwelt upon her pleasure, when you have done the service of her wish?'
The young warrior sought in vain for words with which to fashion reply. ”

“ It became so dark that the walls disappeared. Clouds hung low, dark as the under-world; the stars were blotted out; not a gleam of phosphorus nor a smoky ray shot upward from the north. The land whirled blackly into space.
Madeleine moved her forehead from the cold stone and sighed softly. She crept to her bed and sat shivering gently, holding fast her treasured blooms. The night damp had revived the flowers and drawn out their odour, so that the girl pleased herself with the fancy that she was sitting in a rose-bower. ”

“ They have left me here to decay and not to die, to fall limb from limb, while breath remains in the body, and the heart within stirs feebly. They are all gone, those with whom I lived. The men who sprang up with me have passed through the fire. Those who were born when I was already old have gone to the shadow land, white-headed and full of years. But I live. The god passes me as one not worth the taking.
'What happiness is there in life? Memory has gone from me, and I have none to call friend. Nor do I love any, be it man or god. She for whom I lived is traitor. ”

“ Madeleine, sweet wife, before we met I followed the promptings of the body; but through your eyes I have seen the soul. It is not the soldier who wins life with his sword. He does but strive in a vain shadow, until that happy day—ill for him if it comes not—when there dawns upon his heart the light of love, and his mind is inspired, and his ears hear the stirring of wings, and his eyes are opened. ”

“ The magic mist of bluebells has given way to the blue steel of the railroad, and wooden battleships, their task over, float upon its waters instead of fern-fronds. Not a fairy-tale is to be told, nor any pretty fancy to be weaved there. The pictures go into galleries, and win fame, perhaps; but the river of Tavy chuckles over his rocks, and knows he is not there.
It is a river of atmosphere. Only a dream can produce the Tavy; not the written word, nor the painted picture. Unpleasant dreams some of them, like nightmares, but human thought produces them ”

“ Then he stood by her side and narrated a tale of black treachery, of darkest cowardice. A man had committed the crime, which might not be forgiven. He had fled from deserved retribution, knowing there was one man who held the damnatory secret. Then he had encountered that man, and determined to silence him for ever.
But when he again became silent and wiped the cold frost dews from his face, the girl bent like a crushed flower, knowing that the joy of life was gone—that the dark shadow of grief had settled eternally across her path. ”

“ Bellamie saw the little ring of forget-me-nots, and guessed who had given it her; and then she began to wonder whether it was worth while fighting against Nature. Why not let youth and love have their own sweet way, why not ignore the accident of birth, which had made her a Courtenay and Boodles a blank, why let pride straddle across the way to stop the youngsters from getting into the happy land? ”

“ The clouds swept low, grey or indigo masses rushing south with the speed of rapids. The dark, solid wind of the lowlands came in a furious succession of great waves. The lovers might have been upon an island with the ocean roaring round in storm. Out of the gloom the wet rocks glimmered and the trunks of long-fallen trees described weird shapes upon the plain.
"This is life!" cried Madeleine. "Glorious life!"
Geoffrey held her closely, looking down upon her wet and radiant face.
"We can fight together, you and I," she went on. "No wind shall conquer while we hold together. ”

“ In her youthful, ignorant passion she sang to the Spirit for understanding of life, for knowledge of human secrets, for unending joy and eternal love in the years to come, while the wind and the water played her a wonderful accompaniment.
She stopped suddenly, with a musical cry of sheer happiness, then sprang, lithe and supple as a squirrel, from the higher ridge of the rock, in mid-air releasing her grasp of the branch. Upward it darted, with the force of a steel spring, striking down upon the dark tresses a shower of brown fir spines with many small green cones. ”

“ Swaling-time had come, red patches of fire flickered every night on Dartmoor, and the furze-prickles crackled in the flames. The annual war between man and the prickly shrub was being waged, and the atmosphere was always clouded and tainted with bitter smoke. Every one seemed to be infected with the idea of furze destruction, from the granite-cracker who as he went to his labours would push the match with which he had just lighted his pipe into some thick brake, to the small boys who begged or stole boxes of matches and went out after dark to make the moor fiery. ”

“ Arnaud, I love, and am held in prison; but my nights are short, my days warm, and my position is a happiness. Believe you that love, however unrequited, takes away from life? I tell you it adds, it enriches, it beautifies. It is a crown which makes a humble man a king, and the halo which makes the singing-girl a saint. Love gives a man strength to use his power, to defy superstition and false religion, to snap his fingers in the face of a fat priest who believes that a strong will may be bent and broken by holding the body in bondage. Had I my heart to offer I would scorn your cowardly love. ”

“ The heart was dead to feeling of human passion, alive only to its ice-cold determination of duty. Nothing could stir its sluggish pulsations as it lay within the flesh tomb. Not the excitement of her mission, nor the taunts of those who should have been men enough to have protected her from insult, not even the contemplation of again facing him she had so wildly and so foolishly loved, could awake that heavy, torturing burden within to a semblance of its past activity, to a shadow of the former brightness. ”

“ She was a fresh and fragrant child, with no unhealthy fancies; loving everything that was clean and pretty; loathing spiders, and creeping things, and filth in general; and longing ardently already to win for herself a name and a soul a little higher than the beetles. They were presumptuous longings for a child of passion, who did not know her parents, or anything about her origin beyond the fact that she had been thrown out in a bundle of fern, and taken in and cared for by Abel Cain Weevil.
At the tender age of fourteen Boodles received her love-wound. ”

“ The unwieldy vessel fell into the breath of the wind, and, righting herself after a sudden lurch, settled down into the water, ploughing a deep white furrow, every mast bending and every rope straining, every inch of canvas bellying mightily.
The Dutchman came out to avoid the mud flat. She began to make the bend, and her helmsman already saw the wide reach of river beyond, when a terrible shout ascended from the men who were caged between decks. At the same moment a pungent odour tainted the free air, and a thin blue vapour began to leak from the cracks and joinings of the planks. ”

“ Menotah drew near his side, falling a little behind in the deep shadow. Perhaps her beauty had never been so remarkable as at that moment. Her eyes were glowing with unnatural fire, the light intensified by dark lines beneath, and brilliant scarlet of the cheeks. The lips were parted half painfully. She was breathing fast, and fighting for each deep breath. For this was all the last effort of nature. The whole of her remaining life strength was being cast into one supreme endeavour to save the man who had wronged her. That colour was but the hot passion fever of the mind ”

“ Gaudriole is now a citizen of the New World. The Cardinal himself is but a shadow here. Even a mountebank of the gutter may turn traitor in the wilderness. Gaudriole is a man this side o' the sea. Were we in Paris I might bow to kiss your garments, and call you Holiness an you desired it. Here the jester is as good as the general. Hunt me into yonder forest at your sword-end, bold captain, and bid me play the will o' the wisp. I should but disappear into a thicket ahead, rise up at your back, and this knife and a moss-swamp would settle all your business. ”

“ If Thou hast the power to conquer the wicked spirit, take away that body and place him in the wide fields of summer, where the devils may not live, and where the souls of the mighty sweep over the flowering grass, like cloud shadows on a bright day. Perchance Thou art not able to hear my prayer, for I am but the child of another god. But if Thou canst hear me, I pray Thee hearken to my words, and grant him happiness for ever in the Land of the Sun.'
McAuliffe scratched his beard nervously; Lamont smiled; Justin commenced to fill in the grave. ”

“ White masses of mountain glowed ahead, peaks and crags all glittering in the sun like a huge cascade streaming down from the clouds; ranges of pure crystal, polished like glass, and edged with rose-pink by the colours of the western sky; snow-white gorges of milky quartz, and silver cataracts flung in foam from the whiteness above to the green below.
"These," he said softly, with a thrill of old-world superstition, "these must surely be the great crystal mountains where the Iroquois believe that the gods dwell." ”

“ Each man or woman in the last despair can live upon the dreary phrase, 'There was a time.' All, whether in poverty, in death, or time of lost honour, may repeat the sad and mocking words for what consolation they contain. There was a time of youth, when sorrow was unknown, when the mind was always a butterfly with its light hope, when the heart was hot and large with love. ”

“ An arrow in the back, an arrow shot by an Indian witch. It passes all. Call you that God's way? God wills a man to die in fair fight, with his death in front. And this! Oh, George! To fall like a beast hunted for the pot."
"Yet 'twas a soldier's end."
"Tell them not at home," cried Penfold. "Let them not know, if ever we see Thames-side again, how George Flower fell. Ay, like a flower he came up, and as a grass has he been mown down. Many are the wiles of Satan. The arrow that flieth by night, the coward arrow of treachery. 'Tis a foul wind that blows out a good man's life. ”

“ She would raise it to her lips, and she would kiss—yes, she would kiss first, then bite, burying her white teeth in the flesh with the mad intensity of the passion hatred, feeling his blood dripping and surging hotly across her mouth, mingling with the poison, which must then commence a deathly revelry along his veins. If the heart strength lasted for so long, all would be well. She might then crawl away to a place of quietness, cast down the aching body, and suffer the final pangs of ebbing life. ”

“ They stood six deep under the cliff, with as many more upon the side of the river; old and young, women in soiled stiff caps, ragged settlers, and soldiers in faded accoutrements side by side. A ring of men, holding spluttering pine torches, or oil lanterns, the flames of which smoked and flickered up and down the horn sides, enclosed an open space where two shadowy figures swayed almost noiselessly, facing one another, each right arm directing a rapier which flashed continually in the confused lights.
"I would the challenger were any other than the Abbé La Salle," muttered Roussilac. ”

“ She was like unfading sunshine as she lavished worship of limb and tongue upon her heart's god, so it may readily be conceived how Lamont fell for the time beneath the glamour of attraction, until he came to feel that he might contentedly live thus for ever, away in the summer forest, with the bright, beautiful girl, laying aside all association, forgetting the call of civilisation. But, to a man of his temperament, this, could be nothing beyond a dream, from which he must awake gradually, yet surely. ”

“ The dawn was scattering rays of light across forest and river. Red and golden bars stretched along the eastern sky, through which peeped a glory of the imprisoned sun. The birds shook the dew from their plumage, and flew from brake and bush in search of food; frogs sank in the slime of the muskegs and ceased their night song; locusts whirred sharply in the long grass; Nature shook off the passionless mantle of sleep, and rose with the smile of opening flowers and balmy odour of earth's incense. ”

“ So together they fought in the solitude, while the sun revolved up the heavens, and the summer heat grew towards noon. Purple butterflies flashed unconcernedly in the greenish light over their heads; the blood-red kanikanik wands nodded; locusts whirred and hurled themselves strongly against the sweating bodies of the combatants. The beauty of Nature environed the hot human passions. On the extreme summit of a feather-pine, the carrion crows croaked and rocked in the soft breeze.
Muskwah's natural strength, aided by passion, which disregarded life safety, prevailed at length. ”

“ You seek Menotah's love—'
'Surely!' broke in the Indian, with a fury of passion. 'What other woman is there who can so stir the heart within a man? Who would not die for her favour, or fight for her love?'
A sneer crossed Lamont's face, while his eyes grew cold. The keen-sighted Indian marked the change. 'Let not the white chief mock at my poor words. It is the heart that speaks, and the tongue must obey the thought. The white chief knows that my love is for Menotah, that my life joy lies at the utterance of her voice. ”

“ Therefore is He God.'
'I believe it not,' cried Menotah, clasping again the child in her arms. 'Behold! it is now my turn to give you advice. Return to your own gods, who bid you take vengeance and crush the foe. Not willingly would you harm those you love. Why then should you have pity for those you hate? I trust not to such teaching.'
She turned to depart, yet the old man sent after her quavering words, 'Let not anger prevail over the mind, my daughter; for when the blood runs hot, and the heart rages with passion fire, the hand may tremble and the eyes may fail. ”

“ Those dark trees of death, the ever-sighing pines, tossed their solemn heads in unquiet motion; boughs chafed one against the other with moaning sound; the wind passed with dreary murmur through hanging clusters, causing at times the skulls and other grisly trophies of the death tree to scrape with horrid fitfulness one against the other. It was late night, and the moon shone with extraordinary brightness, while frost needles quivered along the silvery air. Even the dead leaves, carpeting thickly the open spaces, glittered radiantly with Nature's diamonds, while the soil became crisp and grey. ”

“ So you shall come to the cities of the plain, and be again among the tents of your own people. Also, you will leave to the Indian the little he may now call his own. Then the peaceful air will lie like a bird in the sail, while the men's muscles will swell with rowing. The boat will leap over laughing waters and flit home, as the muskawk to its lair when the sun dies. In your own tents you may find happiness, and a white bride, whose face shall be as the blush of early morning.
'And I—I also shall know the beauty of life. For I may live beneath the sunshine of Menotah's smiles.' ”

“ The figure came up to her, and turned her pale face to the flashing lights of the north. 'You can't love him yet, girl?'
'I gave him my heart,' she moaned, tearing herself away from him. 'You cannot love against inclination, neither may you hate at will. I would hate him, but I'm too weak—I cannot.' A moment's pause, then she cried at him again, 'Why should I hate him—because he is your enemy? Tell me, how has he wronged me—tell me that?'
It was difficult indeed to convince that innocent trusting heart of a man's treachery and faithlessness. ”

“ A plain, blunt man, and inartistic, he could not know that pure happiness is one of the principal factors of human beauty, that its dissolution should be attended by such startling alteration, both of face and form. Menotah was a different being, of new appearance and manners. The bright light had faded from the lustrous eyes, now forbidding and snake-like. The unrestrained laugh had left the mouth, which was now set in a hard line of purpose. From her sunken cheeks had departed the rich health colour, from her hanging head that haughty pose of conscious perfection. ”

“ Then shall ye hear thrice repeated the cry of a horned owl. When the last echo has died, gather ye yourselves round the sad death tree, where ye shall find me awaiting, and there will I separate ye into two bands. Those who are young and strong upon their feet shall descend the valley along by the way of the river-pool, and these shall wait at the foot of the cliff beneath the fort of the white men. And at the sound of the first report of a gun, ye shall ascend, each man bearing dry branches of the fir. ”