Robert Williams Buchanan

“ His creed was beautiful as a rainbow, as many-coloured, as capable of stretching from heaven to earth and earth to heaven, but it faded, rainbow-like, when the sun sank and the darkness came. So must it be with all creeds which are not solid as the ground we walk on, strength-giving as the air we breath, simple as the thoughts of childhood, and inexorable as the solemn verity of death.
Such has been, throughout all success or failure, and such is, practical Christianity. Blessed is he who, in days of backsliding and unbelief, can become as a little child and lean all his hope upon it. ”

“ Oh, William Jones! William Jones! And all this was yours, at least by right of plunder, upon the Queen’s sea-way; all this which, turned into cash, would have made a man rich beyond the dreams of avarice, was the possession of one who lived like a miserly beggar, grudged himself and his flesh and blood the common necessaries of life, and had never been known, from boyhood upward, to give a starving fellow-creature so much as a crust of bread, or to drop a penny into the poor-box. Oh, William Jones! William Jones! ”

“ The keystone of the Church is Jesus Christ. Not the Jesus of the miracles, not Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, but Jesus Christ, the Divine Ideal, the dream and glory of the human race. Not God who made himself a man, but man who, by God’s inspiration, has been fashioned unto the likeness of a God.
And what, as we behold him now, is this Divine Ideal—this man made God?
He is simply, as I conceive, the accumulated testimony of human experience—of history, poetry, philosophy, science, and art—in favour of a rational religion, the religion of earthly peace and heavenly love. ”

“ Dismissing the carriage that had brought him, he walked back to his hotel.
It was night; the cool breeze from the Alps was delightfully refreshing after the sultry heat of the day; the moon was full and the fair old city was looking its fairest, but these things Bradley heeded not. Outward beauty he could not see, for all his mind and soul was dark—the ancient palaces, the glorious Cathedral, the splendid Carrara marble statue of Leonardo, and the bronze one of Cavour, were passed unnoticed and uncared for. One thing only was in his mind—to get to Rome to find Alma. ”

“ Through the windy darkness I made my way back to the Manor. By that time I had thought it all over. Conquered by the utter desolation within and without me, I had said to myself, “Life like this is worse than death. I will try one way more; I will go to her, I will take her to my heart, I will beg her to love and trust me, and to accept my tender forgiveness. Perhaps I have been too hard, too taciturn and sullen. She has mistaken my sorrow for coldness, my pride for cruelty and pertinacity. There shall be an end to this. She shall understand the full tenderness of my love, once and for ever.” ”

“ Unconsciously the vicar was realizing in his own nature Swedenborg’s doctrine of celestial affinities. This love restored to him the innocence and ardour of the days of Eden; he had found at once his Eve and his Paradise, and he felt that, as of old, God still walked in the garden in the cool of the day. Some such glamour surrounds the first developments of every sincere attachment. It is the first rosy tingling flush of dawn, dim and sweet and dreamy, and, like the dawn, it glows and brightens into the fierce clear heat of broad day, burning the dew from the petal and withering the blossom. ”

“ Peebles started at the sound:
‘Tho’ I lave thee for ever, my darling, and go,
Thine image shall haunt me in sunshine and
snow;
Like the light of a star shining over the foam,
Thy face shall go with me wherever I roam.’
‘Lord save us!’ cried Peebles. ‘’Tis himself.’
‘Who?’ cried Moya wildly. ‘Desmond? My son?’
‘Ay! your son Desmond. Wheest, woman! He’s coming this way.’
‘Though waves roll between us, sweet star of my
love,
Thy voice calls unto me——’
Desmond’s voice rose again as he spoke, nearer and more distinct. ”

“ Very pretty it was, as well as pitiful, to see Madeline (whom we shall call by her assumed name no longer) lead the little man to the garden seat, sit by his side, hold his hand, and look fondly in his eyes, as she questioned him, lifting his rough hand to kiss it from time to time. The weight of years, the burden of sorrow, had rolled away from her in a moment, and she was a child again, while the heaven that ‘bends above us in our infancy’ was opening over her—bright, tranquil, peaceful, and divine. ”

“ There are moments in a man’s life when all the forces of life and society seem to conspire for his destruction; when, look which way he will, he sees no loophole for escape; when every step he takes forward seems a step downward towards some pitiless Inferno, and when to make even one step backward is impossible, because the precipice down which he has been thrust seems steep as a wall. Yet there is still hope for such a man, if his own conscience is not in revolt against him; for that conscience, like a very angel, may uplift him by the hair and hold him miraculously from despair and death. ”

“ The form of Verse was at one period held to be the noblest possible kind of human utterance; but that form, remaining as it does in the swaddling-clothes of infant speech, will possibly be more or less abandoned as time rolls on by the thinkers and dreamers of the world. The word poetry may one day be identical with absurdity; and no one will jingle the cap and bells of rhyme but a fool. Is there no hope? Yes, a gleam. All the blundering and all the time-wasting in our literature have been caused by eternal posturing before the mirror. ”

“ Bradley was turned thirty years of age, but he was as capable of a grande passion as a boy of twenty—as romantic, as high-flown, as full of the fervour of youth and the brightness of dream. With him, to love a woman was to love her with all his faith and all his life; he was far too earnest to trifle for a moment with the most sacred of all human sentiments. ”

“ Half mad with excitement, Bradley threw one arm around the figure he felt to be near him, sprang to his feet while it struggled to disengage itself, turned up the light, and gazed full into the eyes of—Eustasia Mapleleafe.
Never till his dying day did Bradley forget the expression of the face which the sibyl now turned towards his own, while, half crouching, half struggling, she tried to free herself from the grip of his powerful arms; for though the cheeks were pale as death, the eyes wildly dilated, they expressed no terror—rather a mad and reckless desperation. ”

“ The vicar’s face brightened, and his heart beat with a strange, impulsive ardour as he listened to her. Why had this woman, whose enthusiasm and sympathy might have enabled him to realize his own high ideal of the spiritual, been denied him? What evil destiny had bound her for ever to a man whose paralyzing creed must make a perpetual division between them—a man who could look into her sweet face and yet think of her as merely a beautiful animal; who could fold her in his arms, and yet tranquilly accept the teaching that at death that pure, radiant soul of hers would be for ever extinguished? ”

“ Madeline assents. She sits in the window allowing the widow to stroke her feverishly burning hand; but as that strange drowsiness oppresses her more and more, she goes to bed and falls into a heavy slumber.
When she awakens it is broad day; a figure dressed in black is bending above her, holding a tray. Madeline rubs her eyes—then, looking through a mist which seems to obscure her sight, she recognises the pale, bloodless features of Madame de Fontenay; she looks round the room, everything is misted; she rises in bed, and finds she can scarcely sit up. ”

“ XXXI.
“Love is not love when disallied
From the white amulet of pride,—
’Tis proud in its degree;
In pity to my lowly birth,
Thou wouldst have honoured thine own worth
Hadst thou but honoured me;
And thus, thou lovest me not.” “O stay!”
But pale Maid Avoraine fled away.
XXXII.
Gnawing his ragged beard in wrath,
Sir Gawain took the summer path
Back to the haunts of men;
With stubborn heart and fretful spleen,
Thro’ yellow meadows of wheat and bean,
He journeyed back again—
Sick with the world, for in his brain
Sharp conscience jangled like a chain. ”

“ Alma, that work has been wholly evil, my creed a rotten reed. A materialist at heart, I thought that I could reject all certitude of faith, all fixity of form. My God became a shadow, my Christ a figment, my morality a platitude and a lie. Believing and accepting everything in the sphere of ideas, I believed nothing, accepted nothing, in the sphere of living facts. Descending by slow degrees to a creed of shallow materialism, I justified falseness to myself, and treachery to you. I walked in my blind self-idolatry, till the solid ground was rent open beneath me, as you have seen. ”

“ Desmond shook his head.
‘He can’t give me the one thing I want,’ said Desmond proudly and sadly. ‘He can’t take the blot off my name, the stain off my mother’s. He can’t turn back the years and bring her from the grave.’
‘He can make amends,’ said Dulcie. ‘He will.’
‘It’s too late for that, too,’ answered Desmond. ‘Ah, spare me, Dulcie! Don’t speak of it! Don’t remind me of my disgrace!’
‘Your disgrace?’ repeated Dulcie. ‘Where is the disgrace to you? Where there is no sin there can be no shame; and you are innocent. Desmond, there are others who care for you. ”

“ Again he felt the touch of a clammy hand, and again he heard the mysterious voice.
‘Death is nothing; it is only a mystery—a change. The body is nothing; the spirit is all-present and all-powerful. Keep quiet; and I will try to materialise myself even more.’
He sat still in shivering expectation; then he felt a touch like breath upon his forehead, and two lips, warm with life, were pressed close to his, while at the same moment he felt what seemed a human bosom heaving against his own. ”

“ He takes her hand, bends over it, and kisses it—and leaves the girl alone.
For a time Madeline stands quite still, stupefied by the very intensity of her relief. She rests her elbow on the mantelpiece, drops her cheeks upon her hands, and fixes her eyes upon the windows, as if to watch the slowly gathering gloom. She feels no self-pity; on the events which will probably transpire on the morrow her imagination refuses to dwell; she can think only of M’sieur Belleisle—of his goodness, his self-sacrifice, his devotion. ”

“ There is no shadow of sin upon us to darken our loving dream: we have nothing to undo, nothing to regret; and surely our spiritual union is blest by God. For myself, I want only one thing yet to complete my happiness—to see you raised as he was raised to a crown of honour and glory in the world. What I think of you, all mankind must think of you, when they know you as I know you, my apostle of all that is great and good. Ah, dearest, I would gladly die, if by so doing I could win you the honour you deserve. ”

“ She arose shivering; and at that very instant there came to her a warning, an omen, full of nameless terror. It seemed to her as if faces were flashing before her eyes, voices shrieking in her ears; her heart leapt, her head went round, and at the same moment she felt her whole being miraculously thrilled by the quickening of a new life within her own.
With a loud moan, she fainted away upon the floor.
When she returned to consciousness, she was lying, nearly naked, by the bedside, and the moonlight was flooding the little room. She arose, dazed, stupefied, and appalled. ”

“ The vicar strode rapidly along the road until he reached the summit of a rising ground, from which he could see two counties spread out before him in fruitful undulations of field and meadow and woodland. The sunset was burning down in front of him. Far away in the distant landscape were soft mists of blue smoke rising from half-hidden villages, and here and there flashed points of brightness where the sun struck on the windows of a farmstead. On either hand were great expanses of yellowing corn swaying in the cool breeze and reddening in the low crimson light. ”

“ Yes, I forbid you! Even if things are as you say—and I will never believe it till I receive the assurance from his own lips, never!—even if things are as you say, the wrong is mine, not yours, and I need no one to come between me and the man I love.’
‘The man you love!’ echoed Sir George in amazement. ‘Alma, this is infatuation!’
‘I love him, uncle, and love such as mine is not a light thing to be destroyed by the first breath of calumny or misfortune. ”

“ It was many weeks after these sad events that Forster came one day to St. John’s Wood, and found Madeline still sitting in the shadow of her great grief; but she had found one sweet comfort in looking over her guardian’s papers and placing them in order with her loving hand, for she remembered one lifelong dream of the poor Bohemian—to see his beloved plays arranged together and published in book form; and she thought to herself that the world should know what a beautiful genius it had lost, when it saw the creatures of his imagination gathered together for the first time. ”

“ Ambrose Bradley to Alma Craik.
Dearest Alma,—How good you are! How tenderly do you touch the core of my own secret thought, making my whole spirit vibrate to the old ambition, and my memory tremble with the enthusiasm of my first youth. Oh, to be a modern Apostle, as you say! to sway the multitude with words of power, to overthrow at once the tables of the money-changers of materialism, and the dollish idols of the Old Church. ”

“ I am trying to survey Ellen Haldane philosophically, to assume a calmness, though I have it not—though all the time my spirit is in arms against her. I am jealous, damnably jealous, that is all.
To talk about the crystal purity of a woman who has a moral cancer, which must kill her if it is not killed! To describe her folly as mere sentiment, when I know, more than most men, that such sentiment as that is simple conscience-poisoning! ”

“ No sooner did he find himself in total darkness than his heart began to beat with great muffled throbs, and nervous thrills ran through his frame. Before there was the slightest intimation of any supernatural presence, he seemed to see before him the dead face of his wife, white and awful as he had beheld it in that darkened chamber at Boulogne. Then the usual manifestations began; bells were rung, faint lights flashed hither and thither, the table round which they were seated rose in the air, mysterious hands were passed over Bradley’s face. ”

“ When at last Moya broke the long silence, it was with a voice curiously calm, despite the deep underlying tremor which told by what an heroic effort she was able to speak at all.
‘Desmond! My son!’
‘Mother!’ was all Desmond could sob in return.
‘Ye know me? Ye know who I am?’
‘Yes; Peebles has told me,’ returned Desmond.
‘Ye don’t shrink from me? Ye don’t despise the poor woman that loves ye?’
‘Shrink from you! Despise you!’ cried the boy, straining her to his heart, and speaking between the kisses with which he covered her face, her hands, her dress. ”

“ My feverish exaltation has passed from me, leaving me weak and at the mercy of my senses. Art thou, too, but a poetic myth of a later superstition—an idealization more beautiful, more divine than the frail goddesses of Greece and Rome? The art and poetry of the world have turned to thee for inspiration, the ascetic has filled the cold cell with the shining vision of thee, altars have been raised to thee over half the globe, the prayers of nations ascend to thee, and art thou but a beautiful conception of the heart, powerless to aid or to hear thy suppliants? ”