Stacy Aumonier

“ We discovered that he was the local wheelwright and the Celminster captain. He showed us our room in the pavilion and called Bunty "sir." Of course Bunty lost the toss. He always did during that week, and this led to considerably more "chipping," and we turned out to field.
No one who has never experienced it can ever appreciate the tense joy of a cricketer when he comes out to begin a match. The gaiety of the morning, when the light is at its best and all one's senses are alert; the sense of being among splendid deeds that are yet unborn; and then the jolly red ball! ”

“ TO look at old Sam Gates you would never suspect him of having nerves, His sixty-nine years of close application to the needs of the soil had given him a certain earthy stolidity. To observe him hoeing, or thinning out a broad field of turnips, hardly attracted one's attention, he seemed so much part and parcel of the whole scheme. He blended into the soil like a glorified swede. Nevertheless, the half-dozen people who claimed his acquaintance knew him to be a man who suffered from little moods of irritability. ”

“ The sense of power, or, rather, the sense of being within the power focus, the person who understood, who knew what power meant, and yet was great enough to live outside it. Strange why to-day he should be so introspective, why things should appear so abstract! He had a curious feeling as though everything were slipping away, or as though he were seeing himself and his setting from a distance.
He gazed at Dilgerson, with his square chin and his neat mustache, deftly stowing papers into a file while he spoke. He momentarily envied Dilgerson, with his singular grip on life. ”

“ If there is wind all the pleasant memories and dreams are blown away, but if there is no wind the sun becomes a kind, confidential old fellow. He is very, very mature. And Monsieur Roget was mature. He was fifty-nine years old, given to corpulence, rather moist and hot, but eminently comfortable leaning against the pile of ferns. A glorious view across the woods of Fontainebleau lay stretched before him, the bees droned in the young gorse, his senses tingled with a pleasurable excitement, and, as a man will in such moments, he enjoyed a sudden crystallized epitome of his whole life. ”

“ And then began one of those curious telepathic experiences that play so great a part in the lives of all of us. I have complained that none of my brothers or sisters showed any leaning toward education or mental advancement of any sort, but I have not perhaps insisted that despite this it was one of our boasts that we were an honest family. Even Will, despite his recklessness and certain vicious traits, had always played the game. Albert and Richard and Christopher had been perilously poor, but I do not believe that they would have ever acted in a deliberately dishonest or mean fashion. ”

“ One wicket for no runs! We flung the scarlet symbol backward and forward in a great state of excitement, with visions of a freak match, the whole side of our opponents being out for ten runs, and so on. I remember the glum face of their umpire, a genial corn merchant, dressed in a white coat and a bowler hat, with a bewildering number of sweaters tied round his neck, glancing apprehensively at the pavilion. ”

“ I’ve hired a frock from Roco’s.’ ‘Child,’ I said, ‘your Aunt Sophie has been working out her life’s blood for you. Here is the frock.’ She grabbed it and examined it. ‘Frock!’ she said. ‘It looks more like a nightdress. I don’t want the beastly old thing’; and she threw it across the room. I believe at that moment I could have struck the child. I was blind with fury. Fortunately, I remembered in time that she was my old friend Terry O’Bane’s daughter. I picked up the frock. ‘Ungrateful child!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re murdering an ideal. ”

“ And when the terrible business of killing the mouse has got to be done, it will be done quickly, relentlessly, thoroughly, and though one may weep for the sheer horror of it, the day will come when the tears will be wiped away, and one may smile again in the recognition of the fact that there was no alternative. ”

“ A messenger enters and kneels in low obeisance.
"Excellency, the Western World is at war. Already ten million men have fallen by the sword."
"Ai-e-e!" He draws the wind through his teeth with a whistling inflection. "What Western World is this?" he asked at length.
"They who enunciate the doctrine of progress, civilization, culture, O Excellency!" ”

“ But the memory of that laugh unnerved him. He could not concentrate. He longed once more for Dilgerson, or for some power that would give him a grip upon his concrete existence. He rose from the table, and led his guests back into the Japanese room. He lighted a cigar and, contrary to his custom, he indulged in a liqueur. His guests formed themselves into little groups, and he hovered between them, afraid to remain with either long in case they should discover his horror, that in that hour, all through a boy's laugh, he had lost the power to concentrate. ”

“ To a successful sugar broker or a popular comedian I must appear in the light of a pauper. To my own family I have always appeared to be something of a plutocrat. For you must know that I owe my education and whatever advancement I may have made to my own efforts at a national school, and the privileges of continuation classes. My father was a small greengrocer, and his family, which was a very large one and peculiarly prolific, has in no instance except my own risen above the social standard that he set for us. ”

“ The dim recesses of the room, heavy with memories. My wife cozily curled up in the high arm-chair, the firelight playing on her fresh, almost childlike, face, a simple ring sparkling on her finger, and on the pearly glint of her diaphanous gown. On the other side of the table where the little glasses stood, the clear-cut features and long snow-white hair of the old actor, silhouetted against a dark cabinet. And then, like some fragile ghost recalled to bear witness to its tragic past, the dim outline of the child’s white frock. ”

“ He had seen youth and ambition ground to powder in the parliamentary machine. He had seen careers cut short by death or violent social scandal. Some men were very foolish—foolish and lacking in moral fiber. That must be it. Moral fiber, the strength not to overstep the bounds, to keep passion and prejudice in restraint, like hounds upon a leash, until their veins became dried and atrophied, and they lacked the desire to race before the wind. ”

“ It is now the turn of our opponents to take the field, while we eagerly scan the score-sheet to see the order of going in, and restlessly move about the pavilion, trying on pads and making efforts not to appear nervous.
And with what a tense emotion we watch our first two men open the innings! It is with a gasp of relief we see Jimmy Guilsworth cut a fast ball for two, and know, at any rate, we have made a more fortunate start than our opponents did. ”

“ Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions rooted like oak-trees in the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that Society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it.
Emerson may say "the old statesman," but he is essentially the old statesman of the Western World ”

“ They stumbled on, sometimes falling, sometimes dodging moving masses, and occasionally crawling over the dead bodies of men. At last they reached a deserted-looking trench, and one of the soldiers pushed him into the corner of it and growled something, and then disappeared round the angle. Old Sam was exhausted. He leaned panting against the mud wall, expecting every minute to be blown to pieces by one of those infernal things that seemed to be getting more and more insistent. The din went on for nearly twenty minutes, and he was alone in the trench. ”

“ He gasped and, stretching out his arm, poured out another glass of the Chartreuse.
“She refused me, or if she did not actually refuse me—indeed, she did not; she was sympathetic, almost loving, but so—indeterminate that I was almost driven to a frenzy of despair. When one is young, one is like that. One must have all, and at once, or go crazy with despair. For a week I courted her day and night, and I could not make her decide. She liked me, but she did not love me. At the end of that time, I went to O’Bane, and I said, ‘Old man, it is your call. ”

“ In these days the gardens of the Tuileries themselves seem shut to me forever, and the world is peopled with querulous old men. Old dynasties tremble and crumble up. Political intrigues reap the fruit of their own sowing. Everything becomes more involved and more difficult. Secret treaties are forged by the few, and quite reasonably repudiated by the many. The old make the laws, and the young pay the price. ”

“ He looked round at us, and carefully flicking the end of his cheroot, he obliged us with this epigram:
"No money is clean. It passes through too many hands."
We waited for more, but nothing came. Then Albert bore down on him with a tempestuous movement.
"Look here," he said. "I don't know anything about you. But you knew Uncle 'Erbert for twenty-five years. For God's sake, tell us how he made his money."
The stranger looked at him, and blew smoke between his teeth; then he said slowly:
"Made his money? Your uncle never made more than two or three hundred a year in his life." ”

“ After a while these noises ceased, and he felt the machine gliding downward. They were really right above solid land—trees, fields, streams, and white villages. Down, down, down they glided. This was a foreign country. There were straight avenues of poplars and canals. This was not Halvesham. He felt the thing glide gently and bump into a field. Some men ran forward and approached them, and the mad aviator called out to them. They were mostly fat men in gray uniforms, and they all spoke this foreign gibberish. ”

“ I controlled the work and the lives of millions of men, and you come here and talk to me of Naycher. Look at these damned trees! They go green in the summer, yellow in the autumn, and bare in the winter. Year after year, exactly the same thing, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sick of the sight of them. But look at men! Think of their lives, the change and variety! What they can do! Their clothes, their furniture, their houses, their cities! Think of their power! The power of making and marring! ”

“ It was good to see the grinning, friendly faces of the villagers and then to descend from the brake, to nod in that curiously self-conscious way we have as a race to our opponents and then to survey the field. And is there in the whole of England a more beautiful place than the Celminster cricket-ground? ”

“ The Old World is rocking in a death-grip. Everything is thrown into the crucible of hate. The horror of these days is borne only because there lurks in the heart of man a subconscious belief that the horror is to prove a solution ”

“ And the war becomes to me epitomized in two women. One in this dim doorway in our obscure suburb of Dalston, scraping out a pan, and the other perhaps in some dark high house near a canal on the outskirts of Bremen. Them others! These two women silently enduring. And the trains rushing by, and all the dark, mysterious forces of the night operating on them equivocally.
Poor Mrs. Frow Stelling! Perhaps those boys of hers are “missing, believed killed.” Perhaps they are killed for certain. She is as much outside “the things going on” as Mrs. Ward. Perhaps she is equally as patient, as brave. ”

“ Life was simply a tremendous business to you. You used to arrive encumbered by two brothers, a bull-dog, a nurse with a real baby, a toy pram with two unreal babies, one plain, the other colored, a large kite, some colored picture-books, and occasionally a father. Once in the gardens you would shake off these encumbrances, or, if you did not entirely shake them off, you dominated them. ”

“ And when the batsman is bowled or caught, he should say, "Hard luck, sir!"
At the same time it is his business to mother the bowlers on his own side. He must be continually encouraging them and sympathizing with them, but in a subdued voice, so that the batsman does not hear. And, moreover, he must be prepared to act as chief of staff to the captain. He must advise him on the change of bowlers and on the disposition of the field. All of this requires great tact, understanding, and perspicacity.
All these qualities Jimmy Guilsworth had in a marked degree. ”

“ He returned to Wodehurst that evening shivering and in a mood of melancholy dejection. He was an outcast among his fellows, a being with a great instinct towards expression, but without the power to back it up. The whole thing appeared so utterly unheroic, almost sordid. He wondered about Giles. If presenting oneself at a recruiting office was such a terrifying ordeal, what must the actual life of a soldier be? Of course Giles was different, but—the monotony, the cheerlessness of barrack life! ”

“ And the Old World is waiting for you, for it will not believe, and it knows that you will believe, for you alone have the masterful genius of youth, unaware of perils and difficulties, but with eyes set upon the clear horizon you have set out to reach. ”