Molly Elliot Seawell

“ Archy, watching Admiral Rodney's ship, saw by the dull and clouded light a change of signals, and above him, on the bridge, it was greeted by something like a shout of joy from Admiral Digby.
"We can carry all hard sail now, captain; there is the signal for chasing!" cried the Admiral to his captain; and, as if by magic, the sailors sprang into the rigging, and, with a rousing cheer, everything that would draw was shaken out, and the Royal George, like a horse under the spur, dashed forward, ahead of every ship in the fleet. ”

“ Germains, Roger Egremont thought her absolutely beautiful.
Roger spoke a few incoherent words, and Michelle replied, she knew not what. Such a meeting as theirs, with the recollections of seven years behind them, with those weeks of rapture, mixed with anguish, at la Rivière, standing out, glowing with delight, and, alas! red with shame,—does not bring the soft, unthinking joy which comes to those who have not suffered greatly. Each read the heart of the other, and read there shame and sorrow for that one lapse from integrity; but with that remorse was a deep, deep thankfulness. ”

“ He knew the resolute character, the stubborn pride, that lay beneath all of Betty’s frivolities. She could do things as foolish as any girl of her age, but she could suffer more than most. The Colonel sighed as he looked at her pale, unsmiling face, her eyes full of angry light. He understood the sharp pain of those who have not learned the awful lesson of life, the haughty attitude of the young who have never known defeat, the sufferings of mortified pride and wounded vanity, and, above all, he had an inward conviction that Betty in her heart loved Fortescue. ”

“ Here was a man she might have loved—a man infinitely worthy of love—this much she acknowledged to herself; and yet Fate had married her to a man she never could have loved. For at that moment she saw as by a flash of lightning the falseness of her marriage and her widowhood. She dared not think any longer; she could only throw herself on her bed, and try and stifle among the pillows her sobs and cries. And, remembering Beverley and Throckmorton and Freke, and his words to her that night, this gentle and soft-hearted creature sounded all the depths of grief, love, shame, hatred. ”

“ Few situations are more agreeable than driving in a victoria with a charming woman on a sunny spring afternoon through a secluded park. Something like it may be experienced by sitting in a darkened theatre-box a little behind, and within touch of a dainty ear, inhaling the odour of the flowers she wears upon her breast, and watching, with her, the development of the old love-story on the stage. But all pleasures have their seasons—and in the spring, the victoria is more enticing than the theatre-box. And Constance was so very, very kind to him that afternoon! ”

“ I watch it daily from the Italian garden. It is a comedy, with some tragic aspects—for Nature has her tragic moods. The comedy is in the birds and the laughing river, and the leaves and blossoms. These last are defying their cruel old father, Winter, as they come out in spite of him, at first shyly, and then boldly, to be kissed by their lover, the sun. The lake remains always tragic; it never laughs nor even smiles, but is always sadly beautiful, like Niobe, poor, childless one. This is all for Captain Babache. ”

“ It was so quiet and so deserted by the nursemaids and the children, because of the damp and the fog, that Diane could think uninterruptedly of the Marquis. The great clumps of evergreen shrubbery loomed large in the dimness of the fog, and the bare trees were lost in the mist. Diane entered a little heart-shaped maze of cedars, cut flat, and towering high over her head on each side. Here indeed was solitude; not a sound from the near-by town broke the silence, and the darkness, which was not the darkness of night, was like that of another world. ”

“ Decatur turned, and, going a little distance off, watched while the frigate slowly swung round and headed for the open bay, stealing off like a ghostly ship in the darkness. He felt the strongest and strangest sense of loss he had ever known in his life. He had many friends. James, his brother, who had entered the navy, was near his own age, but Somers was his other self. Unlike as they were in temperament, no two souls ever were more alike in the objects aimed at. Each had a passion for glory, and each set before himself the hope of some great achievement, and ordered his life accordingly. ”

“ This natural abandon, which would have offended many sovereigns, touched and also amused the Empress Queen; and when Gavin recovered himself, and stood, blushing and appalled at his breach of etiquette, both Maria Theresa and the Emperor Francis were laughing heartily. The sight of Gavin’s face, flushed and sparkling, his mouth quivering, yet full of smiles, the boyish dimples in his cheek showing, and his lithe, strong body trembling with happiness, appealed to the exquisitely human heart of Maria Theresa. She saw in him a soul capable of the greatest devotion to her. ”

“ But in the harvest time it is most gracious and love-compelling. There is something ineffably gay in harvest, and the negroes, those children of the sun, sang as merrily and as naturally as the grasshoppers that chirped in the green heart of the woods.
The long row of black reapers swung their scythes in rhythm, their voices rising and falling in cadence with the cutting of the wheat. The head man led the singing as he led the reapers. After them came a crowd of negro women, gathering up the wheat and tying it into bundles—it was as primitive as the harvesting in the days of Ruth and Boaz. ”

“ At sunrise next morning Berwick was wakened by Roger moving softly about the room, dressing himself as quietly as possible. Ever since daylight they had heard at intervals the deep-toned music of the great cathedral bells. The chimes were exquisitely attuned, and their soft, deep, rich, melodious thunder was like a vast sea of aerial music, which rose and fell like the waves of some mighty ocean. The glorious sound would arise, filling the heavens and the earth with its majestic harmonies, swelling grandly and more grandly until it seemed to reach the great arch of the sky ”

“ Isabey smiled. After all, in many ways she was only a poetic and fanciful child. Her imagination, stimulated by the reading of many books, was vigorous, but she had in her the spirit of daring and adventure, and her eyes and cheeks quickly kindled into flame at the mere mention of action. He wondered what was to be the path her delicate feet were to tread through life. If only he might walk beside her forever!
The snow was all gone from the garden and the lane, but lingered in patches in the woods, and in the old graveyard in the field there were still white drifts upon the graves. ”

“ When they fiddled together in the evenings, the music was faint; their bow arms were feeble, and their fingering weak. Kettle, now almost recovered, was able to do much of Uncle Cesar’s work, and would have done it all if he had been allowed. Even old Whitey suddenly seemed to falter under the burden of years, and had to be coddled as old creatures should be. As for Betty, it was as if in the midst of a spring morning the soft and purple twilight had descended, as if all sounds of life were stilled and the silence of the night were at hand. ”

“ And to be thrown with her daily—to spend the bright summer mornings in the cool, old drawing-room with Constance, listening to the pleasant, languid talk of people in a country house, the shady afternoons in driving over the rich, green, placid country, sometimes with Constance by his side—the deep, blue nights, sitting on the great stone porch, watching the silver moon rise over the distant pine-crowned mountain-peaks, and looking at Constance, in a thin white gown, seeming as young by night as in those sweet Italian nights long past—it would have been bliss but for two things. ”

“ He inherited the piercing blue eyes of the Genoese navigator—those commanding eyes, once seen, were unforgettable. His fair skin was freckled by living much in the open, and his wide, frank mouth expressed resolution as well as a charming gaiety of heart. Diego, however, could be serious enough when occasion required. He had known more in his short life of the rubs of fortune, of hope deferred, of splendid dreams and heartbreaking disappointments, of courts, of camps, of penury, of luxury, than many men know in the course of a long span of years. ”

“ Soon, all below the summit of the Rock became as black as midnight with the smoke, and it was lighted by the red flames from the guns and the explosion of magazines on land and sea. But high above all, serene in the light of morning, floated the proud standard of England. As Archy Baskerville, from the Alceste's deck, watched the terrible and imposing sight of war in all its majesty, he felt a thrill of pride that those six thousand indomitable men were of the same blood as himself. ”

“ With this the old countess stalked off, and Trimousette fell into a rapturous dream, her head resting upon her hand. So motionless was she that a pair of bluebirds, still in their honeymoon, cooed and chirped almost at her feet. The world held but one object for Trimousette at that moment—the Duke of Belgarde. She knew his first name—Fernand—and her lips involuntarily moved as if speaking it. A heavenly glow seemed to envelop the old garden, the sundial with its melancholy motto, the dark yew walk, bathing them in a golden glory. ”

“ She was on that day the most popular music-hall artist in Paris. Like Jean, she was Diane and yet not Diane. Her beautiful, mysterious dark eyes were unchanged, her frank, sweet smile was the same, but she was Mademoiselle Dorian, not merely Diane, or worse still, Skinny; that expressed it all. She had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; she knew the great, ugly, beautiful, laughing, weeping, snarling, generous, wicked, pious world; she was able to take care of herself; she could stand upon her feet and look the ferocious human race in the eye as Una faced the lion. ”

“ As Freke drew the bow across the G-string, he would bring out tones as deep as the ’cello, while suddenly the sharp cry of the treble would cut into the somber depths of the basso like the shriek of a soul in torment. A melody like a wandering spirit appeared out of the deep harmonies, and lost, yet ever found, would make itself heard with a sweet insistence, only to be swallowed up in a tempest of sound, like a bird lost in a storm. And presently there was an abatement, then a calm, and the music died, literally, amid the twilight dusk and gloom. ”

“ Not that Paris is reckoned a dreary town; particularly in the spring and summer, when everything is in full leaf and flower, and the whole population is out of doors all day in the yellow sunshine and half the night under the laughing moon and merry-twinkling stars—for the people of Paris think that the moon was made for their chief torch-bearer, and that the stars were set in the sky that Paris might be supplied with a handsome set of girandoles. But I was not of that mind. For a long time after Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s death, Count Saxe never spoke her name. He longed to be away from Paris. ”

“ As Betty looked out of the window on the wintry scene, she imagined it in the first bloom of the early spring, the leaden skies turned to a sapphire blue, the frozen earth all brown and green and odoriferous, the naked branches of the trees and shrubs were transformed into their first sweet budding, and the silver river seemed dancing in the sun. Betty was a busy little soul, and had not much time for reverie, particularly as she was hard at work on her summer clothes, making dainty little muslin frocks for herself, which she could do very well. ”

“ Her instinctive dignity and good sense made her secret safe from all except Isabey, but he with the prescience of love saw it. He foresaw with calm courage that the time would come when she would learn to love Neville Tremaine—when children would be laid in her arms, and when this dream of her youth would seem only the shadow of a dream. But Isabey felt that it would be among the unforgotten things which sleep but never die in women’s hearts. ”

“ Just as Lewis suddenly seemed to become a man and his face lost its boyish character, so Skelton’s face grew younger and gentler by reason of the upspringing of a host of strange feelings. It seems as if the opening of his heart to Lewis had made a new man of him. He sometimes thought to himself: “What wonderful vitality have these old emotions, after all! It seems impossible either to starve them or strangle them.”
Sylvia Shapleigh appeared to him more and more captivating, and he realised after a while that he was as much in love with her as he could be with any woman. ”

“ Colonel Duquesne was a great stickler for the moralities, and Ravenel’s fall had been to him a terrible shock. He understood what little Lucie, and Paul Verney, and Toni did not understand in the least, the particular thing which had befallen Madame Ravenel. It was the old, sad story of a villainous husband to a sensitive and dependent woman, of a man a thousand times better than the husband loving the wife silently, of hearing her unjustly accused in his presence, and even suffering the indignity of a blow. That blow drove Sophie Delorme into Ravenel’s arms. ”

“ Like all men of feeling heart and deep imagination, Paul Jones, after the inspiration of battle and the glory of victory, always felt a keen distress at the ruin and desolation it wrought. The sight of the gallant men cold in death, that lay in rows upon the reeking deck of the Bon Homme Richard, covered by the flag whose honor they had so gloriously maintained, wrung his heart and filled his eyes with tears. ”

“ All day Jacqueline seemed affected by the weather. Barn Elms, never a cheerful place at any time, was apt to be funereal when winter blasts swept the branches of the melancholy poplars and elms against the sides of the house, and when the wind howled amid the loosely built chimneys. A blackbird had begun building her nest in the tree nearest Jacqueline’s window; and often, during the long days when she had lain in her bed, she had watched the bird flying and fluttering back and forth. The wind, which raged fitfully, came on stronger toward the afternoon. ”

“ A wood fire danced and sang in a white-tiled fireplace, and laughed at its reflection in the quaint mirrors about the room, and glowed upon family portraits and miniatures on the walls. There were many old-fashioned chairs and tables, and a deep, deep sofa drawn up to the fire. By its side was a tea-table gleaming with antique silver.
Like most men, Thorndyke was highly susceptible to the environment of women without being in the least able to analyse the feeling. It takes a woman to dissect an emotion thoroughly. ”

“ She could not forget Fortescue—Betty was honest enough with herself to know that, and honorable enough to respect her own affection. Love is not killed in an hour or even a day. The great stretch of life ahead of her loomed before Betty’s eyes as one stands on the edge of a parched desert and thinks of the weary journey across it. For Betty Beverley, the coquette, was the soul of constancy. ”

“ The bright pink masses of the crape myrtle trees glowed splendidly, and at the foot of the large lawn the broad, bright river ran laughing in the sun. The yellow noonday light fell directly upon Skelton’s face—his olive complexion, his clear-cut features; there was not an uncertain line in his face. His lean, brown, sinewy hand rested on the arm of his chair. Old Tom, facing him, was a complete contrast—a keen-eyed man, for all he was a country squire, his fresh, handsome old face shining above his ruffled shirt-front and nankeen waistcoat. ”

“ The face of nature was newly washed, the trees were putting on their new green liveries for the festal time of spring. The sun shone out with a generous and penetrating ardor that warmed the whole earth and all the people on it. The gray old castle basked in the noonday light. Roger Egremont wandered over it and, standing on the ancient parapet under the deep blue sky, saw all the beauty around him—and could enjoy none of it, because Michelle was not there. ”

“ What a story was this to hatch about the most correct old gentleman in Paris! Papa Bouchard simply glared at Léontine, but that merry young woman was smiling and dimpling, as if debts and duns and trips to Verneuil and diamond necklaces were quite the ordinary ingredients of life. The hen that hatched a cockatrice was no more puzzled and dismayed than was Papa Bouchard at the vagaries of his ward. ”

“ At once the thought of the lake suggested itself to me and I ran out of doors. The way Francezka usually took to the lake was by way of the Italian garden. I knew this, but a strange confusion fell upon me when I found myself out of doors, under the blue-black starlit sky. I could not recall the way to the Italian garden—nor yet the lake. At last, it came to me. I saw, afar, through the bare trees, the white statues gleaming, the black cedars, the yew trees—black, too, in the white moonlight. ”

“ It never occurred to Throckmorton to feel jealous of any woman’s wit. One of his greatest charms to Judith was that he was not in the least afraid of her. Her quick feminine humor, her natural acuteness, her knack of pretty expression in speech and writing, appeared in their true light, as mere accomplishments, contrasted with Throckmorton’s firm and masculine mind. The conviction of his mental grasp, his will-power, all that goes to make a man fitted to command a woman, had in it a subtile attraction for Judith, like the spell that beauty casts over a man. ”

“ Is it forbidden to any one to utter a regret?”
“Very often it is forbidden,” replied Constance, promptly. “Unavailing regrets are among the most undignified things on earth. Is it possible that you have lived past your fortieth birthday without getting rid of that school-boy idea that our environment makes us—that a man is made by his wife, or by any other human agent except himself? So long as self-love is the master passion, so long will we heed our own persuasions more than any one else’s.”
“I hardly think you understand how things are with me,” replied Crane, his eyes again growing sombre. ”

“ Tremaine in their children, for Angela was a child to them, had always seemed to Lyddon one of the most beautiful things in existence. Into this exquisite family life had come in the twinkling of an eye a dissension and division, a separation, the most frightful that could be imagined—as much worse than death as disgrace is worse than death. ”

“ Gaston had advanced to the middle, and held out his arms to Francezka.
“I know all,” he cried, “poor, faithful soul! For you there is an unchanging love. There is nothing to forgive—nothing—nothing!”
Francezka stood as if turned to stone for a moment—one of those moments in which Time seems no more. Then she moved a little back, averting her face from Gaston, with a look, never to be forgotten—love, shame, despair—crying aloud from her eyes. But as Gaston spoke, she turned again, full toward him, and raised both of her white arms. ”

“ He felt as in a dream; and the spell seemed over Michelle too, for when the party separated he found himself walking alone with her in the dusk, along the road, under over-arching trees, that led through the park to the château. They were still singing softly, and Roger, without knowing why or even when he did it, held out his hand, and she laid hers within it, and so, like a shepherd and shepherdess, they passed along together. What sweet and peaceful thoughts, like birds nesting in the trees after the day’s work, were theirs! All the world was left behind and out of sight. ”