Morley Roberts

“ Old Bill Higginson had the reputation of being very sudden, and there isn't the least doubt that he was sudden. He would be as sweet and mild as a southerly breeze in spring when the prairie begins to show what it can do in the way of flowers, and before any man could find out the shadow of a reason he was as bitter as a March norther with all his kindness curdled. In such cases he was apt to pull a gun on anyone, and it was only the fact that he was old, and as white-headed as young cotton, that he was not killed once a day at least. ”

“ Yet she asked him, “Why did you not come before?”
“I could not,” said Drury. But that she knew.
And though the wind was now big, and roared triumphantly among: the rocks of the Scillies, there was the great sea of life before them. She looked round her sorrowfully. “It may be I shall never see my Islands again,” said Judith.
“There’s a big world before us,” said her lover. “I’ll show you the world, Judith, and the great seas, and the bright lands of the south.”
They heard the sound of the gale and the roar of the sea, and rejoiced in it, for both their hearts were strong. ”

“ It is a kind of beauty which demands a certain training in perceiving the beautiful. There are some folks in this world who cannot perceive the beauty of a sunset reflected in the mud of a tidal river at the ebb. They have so keen a sense of the ugliness of mud that they fail to see the reflections of gold and pink shining on the wet surface. It is so with sand, and Las Palmas has some of the greatest and most living sand-dunes in the world. And not only does it owe its one great beauty to the sand, it owes its prosperity to it as well. ”

“ And lying far out upon the jutting boom over the hollow sea, he turned to the White Prince, who gleamed bright against the dark bows, and he saw his magic working. For the Prince was wan, and his cheeks thin and pale. Looking still, he saw the blood drip down into the sea; it rotted in his veins; he grew limp and withered, and at last hung to the ship's bows like a dried robber crucified. But Tarvin laughed and crowed like an elfin child well pleased at dark tricks that mocked some human vain endeavour. ”

“ Night, indeed, seemed but an eclipse: the sun was hidden behind something that stopped its light but not its heat. Dust in a rut was like ashes from a fire; the leaves of trees, children of that soil, were withered untimely.
But, on the fifth of the month, three days after the buggy and wagon went down to Echuca, clouds rose and were dissipated; there seemed at least a possibility of a storm. They had no barometer at Ivett's, and the thermometer stayed at a hundred and ten in the shade. If it shifted it was to rise. ”

“ Hadn't Hale taken him as if he were a child and rolled him, as it were, upon a table and flattened and molded and modeled, aye! and made him? What could a woman do with such a man, if he set himself the task of conquering her? Even as Hector stared at the mere portrait he recognized the underlying force that was there, and in his own soul wished he had it, too. Was it not power, after all? And it was only one sign of power in Hale. It seemed possible that in some unknown society this might be the very ideal man. ”

“ I was yet alive. "Come, Elsie! come, if you are not dead—come and save me—come!" I thought I cried out loudly, but not even her ear, that heard a sharper sound afar, could have caught that. Once more and once again the cartridges fired, and I heard a crash, saw a horse burst like a flame through the black brush, and there was a white thing before my eyes. I looked up and saw Elsie, my own true love after all, and then I fainted dead away, and did not recover until long, long after. ”

“ For though Confital is but a few steps across the long sand spit to leeward of which the commercial port lies, it might be a thousand miles away as it faces the wind and has its own quiet and its own glory of colour. The sea tumbles in upon a beach of shingle and sand and is for ever in foam, and the colour of it is tropical. Away to the left the hills above Bañodero and Guia are for the most part shadowy with clouds. Often they are hidden, swathed in mist to the breakers at their feet. ”

“ And she screamed again, and Ruddle heard it and swore vigorously.
"What's a woman doin' on deck in such weather?" he cried, as he clawed at the sail and held it with his stomach, and yelled in unison with the second mate, who now began to see the joke of it.
"Where does he think he is?" he said; and at that moment the last great fold of the topsail rose in the air like a breaking wave, and with one yell of triumph the whole of the crowd threw themselves on it and smothered its life out. ”

“ But the liar of the Ullswater, who had saved more crews in worse circumstances than he could count, actually whistled as he sat in the stern-sheets with a steering oar in his hands. To handle a boat in a heavy sea, with the wind blowing a real gale, is a thing that mighty few deepwater seamen are good at. But the skipper of the Ullswater knew his business even then as if he had been a Deal puntman, a North Sea trawler, or a Grand Bank fisherman all his life. ”

“ Beyond it was a low range of hills. But their progress was slow. They avoided every sand hollow, and wound in and out across the little ridges. If some sand went sliding from under him, the Baker whimpered like a dreaming hound. And then they stopped again.
"A pit, a pit!" cried Mandeville, with staring eyes, and they saw an open, black hole before them, crater-shaped and crumbling.
"God help us!" said Smith. "Shall we get off this before the night? Be a man, Baker. Do you want to spend the night here, and be sucked down like sand in an hour-glass?" ”

“ This was the kind of life that Henry Maitland, perhaps a great man of letters, lived for years. Comfortable people talk of his pessimism, and his greyness of outlook, and never understand. The man really was a hedonist, he loved things beautiful—beautiful and orderly. He rejoiced in every form of Art, in books and music, and in all the finer inheritance of the past. But this was the life he lived, and the life he seemed to be doomed to live from the very first.
When a weak man has a powerful sense of duty he is hard to handle by those who have some wisdom. ”

“ He met Bertie on the main deck, and they passed as if they were strangers in the Strand.
'Oh, go to bed,' said Forder to himself. But he knew he had done a good deed.
'Haw, bumptious ass, haw,' said Bertie, who had no notion how grateful he ought to be to the man who knew Texas and Arizona, and the pride of those who grow upon the high plateaus of the South-West. He didn't know for several days, and the reason for his remaining ignorant was the comic spirit that endures in man in all the strange places of the world and sea, and makes laughter flourish on the barrenest soil. ”

“ And Felicia, looking at her while the other seemed unconscious of any one, saw that she might be braver yet.
Anne said to herself: “Whether he finds them or not, I will tell him.”
She meant it, knowing, of course, that he must know something, must suspect. If he had known nothing at all would she have told him?
There are the judgments of the world on the lapses of the world's men and women. It may be there are also the judgments of the heavens. Those are the judgments of nature, after all. Nearest to these are the judgments of the hearts of those who know their own bitterness and sweetness. ”

“ It was an odd picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the elevated bodies of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for ease. ”

“ Ever since Anne had come in Hector had known how Lady Hale's ceaseless chatter had jarred upon her. The whole atmosphere of the library, now almost dark save for the corner in which they sat, had been tragic in some inexplicable way. He knew well that Felicia hated Anne. He felt that the doctor had been curious about her. For his own part his nerves were on a great strain. He wished to find out how he stood with her after all these years, and could get no chance to do so. Now Anne looked very white; her hand trembled. He wondered why she did not get up and go. ”

“ I came at last to the little wind-swept divide between Table Mountain and the Lion's Head. Here Capetown was lost to me, and I stood among sandy wastes where thin pines and whin-like bushes grow. And further still was the cold grey sea with the waves breaking on a rocky point and a little island all awash with white water.
Though beyond this divide the air was cold as death, the slopes of Table Mountain sweeping to the sea were full of colour; deep, strong, stern colour. When the sun shines and full summer rules upon the Cape Peninsula the place must be glorious. ”

“ Yet Tarvin was the elder, and had sailed his own ship trading in Eastern islands. But some devilish vice of a precious drug had dragged him down and held him. He imagined strange and powerful knowledge, he repeated peculiar incantations in malignant envy that esteemed himself scorned. The little blood he shed, according to a dreadful ritual, should drain Saltwood's red heart: the man should be as white wax in the flame of hate, and the old carver should repent his love for the vulnerable creature that Tarvin stained with blood and gnashed his teeth at. ”

“ There is a power of strange madness in the Indian blood, diluted though it be. Under the maddening influence of liquor the nature of the Indian flowers in dreadful passions, forgetful of new circumstances, oblivious of punishment and of law. None knew this better than Ned Quin, and yet he stood there foolishly, with a doubtful smile upon his face, a smile almost of greeting. He was even ready to forgive Pete for what he had done. He felt his heart was changed, and without a touch of religion or creed this was a natural and sweet conversion. But Mary tugged at his arm, for she knew. ”

“ And Anne turned her eyes to the great portrait in its pride. Felicia's eyes followed hers, and Anne stepped closer to her.
“Girl, you know!”
They faced each other in silence, and Felicia knew that the other woman understood.
“Oh, no, that's not true,” she said, stammering.
“It is, it is,” said Anne, insisting.
Felicia flared out with; “What is true?”
And in a low voice Anne answered: “I saved you, Felicia.”
“Saved me from what?”
“You know,” said Anne, “you are a woman. You know what I saved you from. This night you are proud and strong because I saved you. ”

“ Hale dominated his surroundings utterly. Nothing lost its savor to him, he remained a boy till his death. Here and now, thinking of his dealings with women, Hector felt that even they were not a sign of disease as they would have been with most men; they were only a part of his intense life, the necessary outcome of it. In their inmost hearts, putting aside the moral law as men do in their dreams at any rate, to be like Hale, always youthful, always gay, magnificently well, intellectually sound and balanced, was the very ideal they would desire. ”

“ Till sundown they saw them swaying in long clouds under the trees, but when the sun went down some horrible ancient instinct in them cried out for blood, though in that desert these creatures of a day could not have tasted it for unnumbered generations, and they swept down upon them singing.
Yet their instincts were still true; they knew their work, and made the long, hot night an unutterable torture, and a ceaseless, bitter combat, in which victory was theirs. The two starving men fought against them till early dawn, and as they fell asleep, the mosquitoes had them at their will. ”

“ But the two men believed what she said, for neither of them knew Judith. Nevertheless, Simon cried out, “It cannot be! How could such a maid die?—or have the strength to die?” For he felt his own strength still in him, and life seemed very desirable—or had seemed so until now.
But again Deborah answered him bitterly, and, answering him, spoke as bitterly to John: “When an old man, or a man as old as you, Simon, is after a young maid, what should she do if she loves another man?—and he not here to strike you down, you murderer!”
“Peace, woman!” cried John Trenear. ”

“ I beheld myself clasping Elsie to my bosom, having won from her at last an avowal of her love, and then stabbed or shot in her arms. Ah! it was dreadful the number of fashions my mind went to work, in a quick fever of black apprehension, to foretell or foresee my own possible doom. I had never thought myself cowardly, but then I seemed to see what death meant better than I had ever done; and often the coward is what he is, as I think now, from a vivid imagination, which so many of us lack. ”

“ But there was no Cormorant in sight.
'By Jove,' said Wood, 'she's missed it after all. I'm not surprised. Balaam's no navigator. Called me a dog, did he? Well, I've smelt my way here and he's out of it.'
The crew were joyful and excited. This was something new, something a little out of the way in the dull, dead monotony of sea-life, which as a rule is about as interesting as running a water-cart up and down a suburban road. The august and awful sea is only august and awful for those who have august minds. Seamen as a rule haven't; they have only awful language. ”

“ It is no wonder that Spink and Ward quarrelled; there was hardly a soul on board who was not in a bad temper. Nothing disturbs seamen as much as fog, and the fact that Spink refused to be disturbed by it made it all the worse for the others. Ward was distinctly nervous, and let the fog play on his nerves. He saw steamers ahead that had no existence, and heard fog-horns that were nothing but the sound of his own blood in his ears. ”

“ He spat down into the little white sea-flower of jutting water that grows for ever at the flat edge of a vessel's stem as she goes.
"Hiss, hiss, little serpent of the sea's green fields! Hiss under him, and when he sleeps in the moon leap up and strike till he swells and bursts like a dead beast in the sun. And I will go softly and sweet in white robes and be chosen king of an Eastern island where the coral grows and the calm reef holds strange fish in its green waters, and outside the big blue sea tumbles for ever. Hark! hark! I hear strange music." ”

“ Good old Schmidt is mentioned later. But the thing is a curious blend, of course, of truth and fiction. Why, it's just because the world is 'inexplicable' that I feel my interest in it and its future grows less and less. I am a little oppressed by 'the burden of the mystery'; not seldom I think with deep content of the time when speculation will be at an end. But my delight in the beauty of the visible world, and my enjoyment of the great things of literature, grow stronger. My one desire now is to utter this passion—yet the result of one's attempt is rather a poor culmination for Life. ”

“ He found a splendid spruce and stood on it in triumph.
"I make heem bad," grinned Pete. He took a spike and set it into the log with a light tap of the sledge held close to the heft. Then he stood up and swung the sledge double-handed. He had driven spikes on a railroad once, though he hated railroading, being by nature a millman or a ranche hand. The sledge fell on the spike clean and plumb. The dim forests echoed and he stood up as if the sound startled him. But after all no one could be near and the City was far off. He drove the deadly spike home into the beautiful log and smiled. ”

“ If Smith could have prayed at any time, he would have prayed as his one friend turned hesitatingly from the open door of death, and not even his bitterness against the world and the heaven of brass above could prevent him from breaking down with joy, and sobbing like a child as the Baker opened his weary eyes. ”

“ When his name is mentioned I no longer think of any of his works, but of a sweet-eyed, thin, brown ghost of a man whom I first saw upon horseback in a grove of cocoanut palms by the sounding surges of a tropic sea. There are writers, and not a few of them, whose work it is a pleasure to read, while it is a pain to know them, a disappointment, almost an unhappiness, to be in their disillusioning company. ”

“ I thanked him and rode off, happy in one thing at least—I was near Elsie. I felt as if Harmer's suspicions about Mat were a mere chimera, and that the lad in some excitement had mistaken the dark face of some harmless Indian for that of the revengeful Malay. And as to Siwash Jim, why, I shrugged my shoulders; I did not suppose he was so murderously inclined as Nettlebury imagined. It would be hard lines on me to have two men so ill disposed toward me, through no fault of my own, as to wish to kill me. ”

“ The vision passed and he saw the burning Mill. He heard Mac speak, heard the roar of the flames, and the murmur of the crowd. Then he came to the surface and knew where he was, knew that he was alive but at handgrips with Death himself. He sucked in air, filled his lungs and rolled over, and went under once again.
When consciousness is past there is a long space of organized, of purposed, instinctive struggle for life left in a man. So it was with Quin. He knew not that he slipped both hands to Pete's right wrist: he was unaware that when they once more rose Pete howled as his wrist snapped. ”

“ It was a fresh education for me to come back to London and sit with Maitland on these marvellous Sunday afternoons and evenings when he wondered if the time would ever come for him to see Italy and Greece in all reality. It was for the little touches of realism, the little pictures in the Odes, that he loved Horace, and loved still more his Virgil; and, even more, Theocritus and Moshos, for Theocritus wrote things which were ancient and yet modern, full of the truth of humanity. ”

“ Next day they said that for certain the Captain could not live, and men went solemnly in the ship. But Black Tarvin hugged himself in dark places and chuckled villainously, for his time was at hand.
And one night when the vessel went plunging in golden fire, and shook ten thousand green stars in flame from the blown crest of a curving wave, he went out and slid down the dipping martingale, and sat to look up at the Dead that was a prophecy against one still living. But in the golden foam-flowers hissed many sea-snakes, and they swam swiftly in and out, weaving a sea-shroud for a sea-prince. ”

“ The work is often sheer murder, but it is the work of men, and though the skin cracks and the nails bleed, as the bulging, slatting, frantic canvas surges like a cast-iron wave, the thin red-shirted line along the jack-stay does heroic work without meaning it, without one touch of consciousness, without praise, and mostly without even that reward of a "tot" of grog so sweet to the simple-minded sailorman. ”

“ Smith, as he looked on the man stretched out upon the bank, could not help thinking that he was as magnificent dead as he had been alive, and far more like an ordinary human being who was not degenerate or an unparalleled reversion. For, in the quiet sleep of death, much of the ferocity natural to a savage had disappeared, and there was a calmness on his face which gave him an air of peculiar and strong serenity. ”

“ For Annie wore a man's shoes, with heavy soles to them. And when a man is helpless and his ribs open even a woman's kicks can do mischief.
"Oh," said Pete, "ah!"
He rolled over and groaned, poor devil. And, just as the secret dawn began to flame, so the red deeds of the night before began to come up to him. He sat up and his jaw fell.
"Ah," said Pete, "I tink I—I kill Jenny!"
There's a crowd of virtuous ones who will imitate Annie and boot him in the ribs, poor devil. He drank and gambled and played hell and beat his wife and drove her into the arms of Quin. ”