Mary Johnston

“ As for this place of gloom and stillness, it fell in with my mood. More welcome than the mocking sunshine were this cold and solemn light, this deathlike silence, these ranged pines. It was a place in which to think of life as a slight thing and scarcely worth the while, given without the asking, spent in turmoil, strife, suffering, and longings all in vain. Easily laid down, too,—so easily laid down that the wonder was——
I looked at the ghostly wood, and at the dull stream, and at my hand upon the hilt of the sword that I had drawn halfway from the scabbard. ”

“ Around and over the wide-flung fortress the battle smoke rolled and eddied. Drums were distantly heard, now rallying, now muffled. A red flag with a blue cross rose and fell and rose again; grey names emerged, floated, wraith-like, over the sea, not to be stopped by blue men-of-war, names and picturesque nicknames, loved of soldiers. It grew to be allowed that there must be courage in the fortress, and a gift of leadership. All was seen confusedly, but with a mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the far-borne clang and smoke and roar. ”

“ The earth, rising sheer in darkness on either hand, shut in the bed of the stream. In the warm, scented dusk the locusts shrilled in the trees, and far up the gorge the whippoorwill called and called. The air was filled with the gold of fireflies, a maze of spangles, now darkening, now brightening, restless and bewildering. The small, round pools caught the light from the yet faintly colored sky, and gleamed among the rocks; a star shone out, and a hot wind, heavy with the smell of the forest, moved the hemlock boughs and rustled in the laurels. ”

“ But Glenfernie walked in a great simplicity of faeryland or heaven. She did not love Robin Greenlaw; she was not so young a lass, with a rose in her cheek for every one; she was come so far without mating because she had snow in her heart! The palace gleamed, the palace shone. All the music of earth—of the world—poured through. The sun had drunk up the mist, time had eaten the thorn-wood, the spider at the gate had vanished into chaos and old night. ”

“ Broad between its blackening shores stretched the James, mirroring the bloom in the west, the silver star, the lights upon the Esperance that lay between us and the town. Aboard her the mariners were singing, and their song of the sea floated over the water to us, sweetly and like a love song. We passed the ship unhailed, and glided on to the haven where we would be. The singing behind us died away, but the song in our hearts kept on. All things die not: while the soul lives, love lives: the song may be now gay, now plaintive, but it is deathless. ”

“ Landless too sat in silence, with his head thrown back against the rock and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag, struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came the tide of forest sounds—the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of wings, the cries of night birds—all the low and stealthy notes of the earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the lullabies of his childhood. ”

“ To Garin, standing between table and door, the whole fair, large room, the figured hangings, the beamed [273] ceiling, the deep-set windows, the floor where were strewn autumn buds and shoots from the garden, seemed a rich casket filled with a playing light. The light had a source. Garin felt a madness, a desire to sink wholly into the light, a wish to unclasp once and forever the hold of the past, accompanied by a dizzying sense that in no wise might it be done. The inner man put steadying hands upon himself, forced himself to look into the eye of the day and of duty. ”

“ It was coming back to them—it had come back to them—health and glow and colour and spring. Joan was fairer than she had been in Heron’s cottage. First youth, youth of the senses, youth controlled and well-guided, but youth, revived like the phœnix in Aderhold the scholar. He had seemed graver and older than he truly was. In him strength, activity, adventure, interest, will, and daring had early risen into the realm of the mind. There they had bourgeoned, pressed on, been light of step and high of heart. But the outward man had not been able to keep pace. ”

“ There were villages, and those dusk, naked folk to whom by now we were well used, running to beach or cliff brow, making signs, seeming to cry, “Heaven come down, heaven, heaven and the gods!” The notion of a sail had never come to them, though with their cotton they might have made them. They were slow to learn that the wind pushed us, acting like a thousand tireless rowers. We were thrillingly new to them and altogether magical. To any seeing eye a ship under full sail is a beautiful, stately, thrilling thing! To these red men there was a perilous joy in the vision. ”

“ An islet, shaped like the crescent moon, rose from out the sea before us. We needed water, and so we felt our way between the horns of the crescent into the blue crystal of a fairy harbour. One low hill, rose-coloured from base to summit, with scarce a hint of the green world below that canopy of giant bloom, a little silver beach with wonderful shells upon it, the sound of a waterfall and a lazy surf,—we smelt the fruits and the flowers, and a longing for the land came upon us. Six men were left on the ship, and all besides went ashore. ”

“ Haward shook off the lethargy that had kept him lying there for the better part of an afternoon, rose to his feet, and left the green dell for the road, all shadow now, winding back to the toy metropolis, to Marot's ordinary, to the ball at the Palace that night.
The ball at the Palace!—he had forgotten it. Flare of lights, wail of violins, a painted, silken crowd, laughter, whispers, magpie chattering, wine, and the weariness of the dance, when his soul would long to be with the night outside, with the rising wind and the shining stars. ”

“ In the gray dawn, from a thousand farms and hamlets, crowed the cocks. Over all the earth clucked the hen, peeped the downy chick. The swallows crossed a saffron sky and the whippoorwill cried in the night, and in the morning the quails said "Bob White!" Migrating hordes, like scuds of clouds, drove before favorable winds, north, south! She was plunged in the life of birds, where they waded between deep water and solid shore, where they lived in a world of green, where they flew aloft and afar, over land, over sea—all their plumage, shapes, and magnitudes. ”

“ Most of these men in the darkness thought, perhaps, of beings far away from these labyrinthine ridges and hollows. Many a soldier warmed his heart by the fires of home, dreamed as he marched of lover, wife, or child. But the thoughts were shot with pain and the dreams were bitter sweet. No man in a Southern army could take comfort in the thought that whatever of want and strain and boding might obtain where he moved, ragged, through the darkness, all was well at home—comfort there, warmth and food there, ease of heart there! ”

“ Before the dying fire he found Jacqueline in her white gown, the amethysts about her throat, and her scarf of silver gauze fallen from her hand upon the floor. In her young face and form there should have been no hint, no fleeting breath of tragedy, but to-night there was that hint and that breath. The fire over which she bent and brooded seemed to leave her cold. The room was no longer brightly lighted, and she appeared mournfully a part of the hovering shadows. Her spirit had power to step forth and clothe the flesh. Almost always she looked the thing she felt. ”

“ Fegs! it's a pity that a man who can fight as you fought last night should have to die a dog's death after all! But you've only yourself to thank for it."
The red glow died from the river like the scarlet from cooling iron, and it lay dark and silent, dimly reflecting a myriad of stars. The sloping bank, the maize fields, tobacco patch and mulberry grove, the plateau upon which were ranged the wigwams of the Indians, the dark and endless forest—all the wide, sombre earth—had their stars also—myriads on myriads of fireflies, restlessly sparkling lanterns swung by legions of fairies. ”

“ The four ships in the river's mouth!--silently he cursed their every mast and spar, the holds agape for Spanish treasure, the decks whereon he saw men moving, the flags and streaming pennants flaunting interrogation of Spain's boasted power. A cold fury mounted from Don Luiz's heart to his brain. Of late he had slept not at all, eaten little, drunken no great amount of wine. Like a shaken carpet the plain rose and fell; a mirage lifted the coasts of distant islands, piling them above the horizon into castles and fortifications baseless as a dream. ”

“ In the cold glory of the dawn there faced each other one hundred and eighty thousand men bent on mutual destruction.
A body of grey troops, marching toward Cold Harbour, was brought to a halt within a taller, deeper belt than usual. Oak and sycamore, pine and elm, beech, ash, birch and walnut, all towered toward the violet meads. A light mist garlanded their tops, and a graceful, close-set underbrush pressed against their immemorial trunks. It was dank and still, dim and solemn within such a forest cavern. Minutes passed. The men sat down on the wet, black earth. ”

“ As for Joan—her mind trod differing roads, though with many a point of contact, many an inn where she met him who travelled too. As of Heron’s cottage her hands and head had wrought a bright pastoral, an unfrayed and well-woven garment of life—as in the peopled island she had with a larger and a freer play, with a more creative and a nobler touch, made life not an idyll only, but an idyll and something more, so here she lived a nobler poem. Her child’s death brought into it deeper tones, as of an organ, as of violins. And as she had lit torches for Aderhold, so had he lit torches for her. ”

“ The laird of Glenfernie lay in the flowering grass, beneath a pine-tree, rising lonely from the Roman Campagna. The grass flowed for miles, a multitudinous green speculating upon other colors, here and there clearly donning a gold, an amethyst, a blue. The pine-tree looked afar to other pine-trees. Each seemed solitary. Yet all had the oneness of the great stage, and if it could comprehend the stage might swim with its little solitariness into a wider uniqueness. In the distance lay Rome. He could see St. Peter's dome. But around streamed the ocean of grass and the ocean of air. ”

“ There was no haze over the forest; brown and bare it struck the cloudless blue. The marsh was emerald, the green of the pines deep and rich, the budding maples redder than coral. The church, with the low green graves around it, appeared not a stone’s-throw away, and the voices of the children up and down the street sounded clearly, as though they played in the brown square below me. When the drum beat for the nooning, the roll was close in my ears. The world looked so bright and keen that it seemed new made, and the brilliant sunshine and the cold wind stirred the blood like wine. ”

“ With the greyish-amber of his yet plentiful hair, his mustache and imperial, the racer set of his head, his well-shaped jaw and long nervous hands, his fine, long, spare figure and his eye in which a certain bladelike keenness and cynicism warred with native sensuousness, he stayed in the memory like such a canvas. His mood always showed through him, though somewhat cloudily like light through a Venetian glass. That it was a mixed and curious mood to-night, Hagar felt the moment she was in the room. She did not always like her grandfather, but she usually understood him. ”

“ They came like a storm of the desert, two colours, one driving, one giving back, but in so great a cloud of road dust and carbine smoke, and in so rapid motion that which was which and whose were the shouts of triumph was not easy to tell. The horses’ hoofs made a thunder; all grew large, enveloped the earth, brought din and suffocation, roared by and were gone. There was a sense that the victorious colour was grey—but all was gone like a blast of the genii. The wagon had been nearly overturned. ”

“ Single out from all humanity one man alone, and that yourself, surround him with a monstrous observance, sacrifice before him every living thing that shall cross his path, crown him with gold, and banish from his court every idea that will not play the sycophant! Seat him, a chained king, high in some red star!—and still, like a wandering wind, large and candid thought, straying some day past your gloomy windows, shall look within and say, 'See this slave to himself chained upon his burning throne!' When at last you hear the voice, try to break away. ”

“ They had outstripped their comrades, they had gone before: what bustling highways or what lonely paths they were treading, what fare they were tasting, for what mark they were making, and upon what long, long adventure bound--these were hidden things to the travellers left behind in this murky segment of life. But to the strained senses of the men upon whom, as yet, had hardly fallen the upas languor of accepted defeat, before whose eyes, whether shut or open, yet passed insistent visions of last night's events, like an echo, like a shade, old presences made themselves felt. ”

“ They darken the air when they come and go. There in the forest stand the deer, waiting for your bullet; badgers and foxes, bears, wolves, and catamounts are more plentiful than are hares in England. You taste pleasure indeed when you ride full tilt through the frosty moonlight, down the ringing glades of the forest, and hear the hounds in full cry, and see before you, black against the silver snow, a pack of yelling wolves. ”

“ Oh, death had been easy pain, for it had left memory, hope! But you never were! you never were!"
"I am!" cried Haward ardently. "I am your lover! I am he who says to you, Forget the past, forget and forgive, and come with me out of your dreaming. Come, Audrey, come, come, from the dim woods into the sunshine,—into the sunshine of the garden! The night you went away I was there, Audrey, under the stars. The paths were deep in leaves, the flowers dead and blackening; but the trees will be green again, and the flowers bloom! ”

“ To the westward was Dowdall's Tavern. Around all swept the pine and the scrub oak, just varied by other trees and blossoming shrubs. The ground was level, or only slightly rolling. Look where one might there was tree and bush, tree and bush, a sense of illimitable woodland, of far horizons, of a not unhappy sameness, of stillness, of beauty far removed from picturesqueness, of vague, diffused charm, of silence, of sadness not too sad, of mystery not too baffling, of sunshine very still and golden. A man knew he was in the Wilderness. ”

“ Upon its banks grew trees of extraordinary height and girth; cypress and oak and walnut, they towered into the air, their topmost branches stark and black against the roseate heavens. Below that iron tracery glowed the firebrands of the maples, and here and there a willow leaned a pale green cloud above the stream. Mist closed the distances; we could hear, but not see, the deer where they stood to drink in the shallow places, or couched in the gray and dreamlike recesses of the forest.
Spectral, unreal, and hollow seems the world at dawn. ”

“ Rand's dark eyes made a journey through the room, from the flowered curtains to the mandarin on the screen, from the screen to the willowed china and the easy chair, from the chair to the picture of General Washington on the wall, the vases on the mantel-shelf, and the green hemlock branches masking for the summer the fireplace below. Over all the blue room and the landscape without was a sense of home, of order and familiar sweetness. It struck to the soul of a too lonely and too self-reliant man. ”

“ The speaker broke off with an oath and sat with fixed gaze, his hand beating upon the table a noiseless tattoo.
"To die," said Mortimer Ferne slowly. "To die cleanly, having lived nobly--it is a good wish, Master Hudson! To die greatly--as did your cousin, sir,--a good knight and true, defending faith and loyalty, what more consummate flower for crown of life? What loftier victory, supremer triumph? Pain of body, what is it? Let the body cry out, so that it betray not the mind, cheat not the soul into a remediless prison of perdition and shame!" ”

“ The sun was high in the heavens when we bade the Pamunkeys farewell. The cleared ground, the mulberry trees, and the grass beneath, the few rude lodges with the curling smoke above them, the warriors and women and brown naked children,—all vanished, and the forest closed around us. A high wind was blowing, and the branches far above beat at one another furiously, while the pendent, leafless vines swayed against us, and the dead leaves went past in the whirlwind. A monstrous flight of pigeons crossed the heavens, flying from west to east, and darkening the land beneath like a transient cloud. ”

“ Men and beasts slumbered through the autumn night, waked at dawn, and, breakfast eaten, took again the road. Revolving cask, horses, dogs, and men, they crossed the wet sedge and entered the pine wood, left that behind and traversed a waste of scrub and vine, low hills, and rain-washed gullies. Chinquapin bushes edged the road, the polished nut dark in the centre of each open burr; the persimmon trees showed their fruit, red-gold from the first frosts; the black haw and cedar overhung the ravines; there was much sassafras, and along the plashy streams the mint grew thick and pungent-sweet. ”

“ The wind took the multitudinous sounds,—the cries of frightened birds, the creaking trees, the snap of breaking boughs, the crash of falling giants, the rush of the rain, the drumming of the hail,—enwound them with itself, and made the forest like a great shell held close to the ear.
There was no house to flee to; so long as we could face the hail we staggered on, heads down, buffeting the wind; but at last, the fury of the storm increasing, we were fain to throw ourselves upon the earth, in a little brake, where an overhanging bank somewhat broke the wind. ”