Thomas A. Janvier

“ Yet here, truly, was stored wealth the like of which the richest monarch in the world could not match for greatness; and as Young beheld before him such enormous riches his face grew ruddy, an eager light came into his eyes, the muscles of his throat worked convulsively, and his breathing was labored and short—until I demolished all his fine fancies at a blow by saying: "Much good this treasure is to us, when there isn't a ghost of a chance that either of us ever will get out of this valley alive!" ”

“ As far as my sight would carry through the soft golden haze I saw only weed-covered water, broken here and there by a bit of wreckage or by a little open space on which the pale sunshine gleamed. A very gentle swell was running, giving to the ocean the look of some strange sort of meadow with tall grass swaying evenly in an easy wind. The broken boat had moved a good deal and already was well to the south of me; showing me that there was motion in that apparent stillness, and compelling me to believe that my hulk—though less rapidly than the boat—was moving southward too. ”

“ And so, Señor—all the community standing round about, and the candle of Nuestro Amo being lighted—the Mother Superior said in a grave voice slowly: "Daughter, as in life thou gavest us always an example of humility and obedience, now I order and command thee, by thy vow of obedience, to retire decorously within thy coffin: that so we may bury thee, and that thou mayest rest in peace!"
And then, Señor, before the eyes of all of them, Sor Teresa slowly began to shrink shorter—to the very letter of the Mother Superior's order and command! ”

“ In truth, Andreas was more deeply moved than even Ludwig, for all his affectionate sympathy, had divined. His love for Roschen was a double love. With the love of a father he had watched over her these many years; yet even stronger had come to be his love for her as her mother born again. Sometimes, for whole days together, confusing the past with the present, he would call her Christine; and in his heart he ever gave greater room to the fancy that the life which he had hoped for was realized, and that the life which he was living was a dream. ”

“ Gottlieb's strong purpose was to make the best lebkuchen that baker ever baked. After a fashion his sorrow healed, as the flesh heals about a bullet that has gone too deep to be extracted by the surgeon's craft, and while it was with him always, and not seldom sent through all his being thrills of pain, he bore it hidden from the world, and went about his work again. Working comforted him. The baking of bread is an employment that is at once soothing and sustaining. As a man kneads the spongy dough he has good exercise and wholesome time for thought. ”

“ In our hands we would carry, as we had been bidden, our presents: fougasso for the Kings, figs for the pages, sweet hay for the tired camels who had come so far.
On we would go through the cold of dying day, the sun, over beyond the Rhône, dipping toward the Cévennes; leafless trees, red in low sun-rays; black lines of cypress; in the fields an old woman with a fagot on her head; beside the road an old man scratching under the hedge for snails. ”

“ For a long distance our way went onward beside the bare, deep valley that had been the basin of the lake, and so the thought of the horror which had been wrought so devilishly with its innocent waters lingered gloomily in our minds. Involuntarily we associated the unknown people of a long past time who had perpetrated this hideous wholesale murder with the people for whom we now were searching, and an uncertain dread filled our souls as to what might be our own fate should we end by finding what we sought. ”

“ Yet that which most keenly thrilled me with a cold dread was my strong conviction that I could see living men moving hither and thither over those pale-lit decks, where my reason told me that only ancient death could be; for the play of the flickering light made such a commotion of fleeting flames and dancing shadows, going and coming in all manner of fantastic shapes, that every shattered hulk around me seemed to have her old crew alive and on board of her again—all hurrying in bustling crowds fore and aft, and up and down the heights of her, as though under orderly command. ”

“ Being a lady, Señor, Doña María let some days go by before she hung on the railing of her balcony any cross at all—and during those days Don Alvaro was within no more than a hair's breadth of going mad. And then—when madness was so close to him that with one single moment more of waiting his wits would have left him—on a day of days, when the spring-time sun was shining and all the birds were singing love-songs together, Don Alvaro saw hanging on the railing of Doña María's balcony a beautiful bright green cross! ”

“ For a century or two, no doubt, the humbler class of Barrow folk very comfortably has nooked itself of such bitter nights on those old settles before that old great fireplace; and has listened relishingly to the gusty outside wind a-blowing, and to the gusty roar of the big chimney, while smoking its pipes in warm ease there, and while pulling in warm contentment at its pots of poker-heated spiced ale. ”

“ Later in the day, as they returned from the Casino, she declared:
“Your angel has had a lovely afternoon, Uncle Hutchinson, and she is sure that you have had a lovely afternoon too. And now that you’ve found what fun there is in looking at tennis, we’ll go every day, won’t we, dear? Sometimes, you know, you are just a little, just a very little prejudiced about things; but you are so good and sweet-tempered that your prejudices never last long, and so your angel cannot help loving you a great deal.” ”

“ The footlights alone remained burning: flooding with a golden splendour the stage and the great yellow wall, and from the wall reflected upward and outward upon the auditorium; casting over the faces in the orchestra a soft golden twilight, and a still fainter golden light over the more remote hill-side of faces on the tiers—which rose through the golden dusk, and vanished at last in a darkness that still seemed to be a little softened by the faint suggestion of a golden haze. ”

“ Whatever may be said for or against the probability of broken hearts, there can be no question as to the verity of broken lives. That day, assuredly, the life of Andreas Stoffel was broken, and it never wholly mended again. For a while even the song of his birds lost all its sweetness, and seemed to him but a discordant sound.
Yet even a broken life, until it be snuffed out entirely, must battle in the world for standing-room. Luckily for Andreas, there was no need for him to question how his own particular battle should be made. ”

“ But the faintness that I felt coming over me as the day waned gave me warning that the rope by which I held my life was a short one; and as the sun dropped down into the mist—at once thinning it, so that I could see farther, and giving it a ruddy tone which sent red streams of brightness gleaming over the tangle of wreckage far down into the west—I felt that the rope must come to an end altogether, and that I must stop still and let death overtake me, by the sunset of one day more. ”

“ But Herr Sohnstein's face grew grave and his voice grew reverent as he answered: "It is not so, my Hedwig. We owe our happiness to the good God who has taken away the evil that was in our dear Gottlieb's heart." ”

“ At the moment that the bow of the boat showed outside the opening he raised his hand, as though signalling to Young and Tizoc behind him; and in that same instant we heard the shrieking of the windlass and the quick clanking of the unwinding chains, and saw the metal grating rushing down the face of the wall. With all the force generated by the fall from so great height of so ponderous a body, the grating came crashing into the boat just amidships, fairly dividing its heavy timbers and forcing the fragments of it, together with all the men that it carried, down into the water's depths. ”

“ LEGEND OF LA LLORONA [9]
As is generally known, Señor, many bad things are met with by night in the streets of the City; but this Wailing Woman, La Llorona, is the very worst of them all. She is worse by far than the vaca de lumbre—that at midnight comes forth from the potrero of San Pablo and goes galloping through the streets like a blazing whirlwind, breathing forth from her nostrils smoke and sparks and flames: because the Fiery Cow, Señor, while a dangerous animal to look at, really does no harm whatever—and La Llorona is as harmful as she can be! ”

“ In look, in speech, in motions of the body, in turns of the head, and in gestures of the hands she was Christine over again. Sometimes Andreas would forget his fifty years and all the sorrows of hope destroyed and irrevocable death-parting which his fifty years had brought him, and would fancy for a moment that he was young again, and that the dearest wish of his life was here fulfilled. And then she would call him "Father!" and his moment's dream of happiness would die coldly in his heart. ”

“ XVII HOW I WALKED MYSELF INTO A MAZE Sitting there with the splotches of fresh blood on the deck all around me was more than I could stomach for very long. The sight of them brought back to me with a horrid distinctness everything that I had seen since I came aboard the hulk: the dead man lying on the deck, the other man with his frightful wounds and his wild talk and his death in the midst of his passionate ravings, and the disgusting work that I had been forced to do before I could hide their two bodies from my sight in the sea-depths beneath the tangled weed. ”

“ In a moment the whole pit of the amphitheatre was awash, knee-deep, and before those who were standing there could flounder to the steps leading upward they were buried to their waists—and this although the water was pouring out through the vent provided for it with such violence that we could hear the rush and gurgle of it above the dashing and roaring of the falling rain. And all the dark mass of cloud above us was aflame continuously with blinding flashes of red lightning, while a continuous crash of splitting peals of thunder rang through the shattered air. ”

“ Gottlieb smoked on in sullen anger; his heart torn and tortured, and his mind filled with a confusion of bitter evil thoughts. And presently—for the devil is at every man's elbow, ready to take advantage of any sudden weakness, or turn to his own purposes any too great strength—these thoughts grew more evil and more clear: until they fairly resolved themselves into the determination to steal from Hans the recipe for making lebkuchen, and so to crush completely his rival and at the same time to make certain his own fortune and fame. ”

“ Roschen's first conscious memory was of laughing and splashing in her little tub in the sunshine, while all around her was a carolling of song.
In the course of the years which had drifted by since Andreas came with his birds to New York that May morning he had not made for himself many friends. To be a friend of birds a man must have a quiet habit of body, and great gentleness of nature, and a true tenderness of heart; which qualities tend also to solitariness, being for the most part harmed rather than fostered by association with mankind. ”

“ The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright red blood that in places shone a brilliant vermilion where it was touched by the glintings of the sun. Among the dead I did not see Tizoc's body, and for this I was glad. Half a dozen of the enemy stood by us as a guard ”

“ By this ebbing and flowing light—which seemed to me, for all that I knew the natural cause of it, so outside of nature that I thrilled with a creeping fear as I looked at it—I could see clearly the shapes of the strange ancient ships around me: their great poops and fore-castles rising high above their shallow waists, and here and there among them the remnant of a mast making a line of light rising higher still—like a huge corpse-candle shining against the blackness beyond. ”

“ LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LA MACHINCUEPA
Naturally, Señor, this matter which gave its name to the Calle de la Machincuepa created a scandal that set all the tongues in the City to buzzing about it: every one, of course, blaming the young lady—even though she did it to win such vast riches—for committing so publicly so great an impropriety; but some holding that a greater blame attached to the Marqués, her uncle, for punishing her—no matter how much she deserved punishment—by making her inheritance depend upon so strange and so outrageous a condition ”

“ Life had not given so much of happiness to Christine—though, possibly, her happiness was equal to her deserts—that her hold upon life was a very firm one; and although she tried, for the little Roschen's sake, to put fresh strength into her grasp, the pressure of poverty and care and sorrow all combined to make her loosen it. Gently, a little at a time, her hold gave way. She knew what was coming, and so did Andreas. Once or twice they spoke about it; and spoke also of the old days on the Andreasberg, when began the love that in one of their hearts at least never had grown cold. ”

“ But upon this violent hubbub there fell a hush of awe and wonder as those who had thus tumultuously entered the oratory saw the Priest Captain lying dead amid the fragments of the shattered idol, and perceived that the prisoners who had been shut within these seemingly solid walls had vanished utterly away; and then a sobbing murmur, that presently swelled into moans and cries of terror, arose from the throng; and in a moment more, seized by a common impulse, the whole company bowed downward, in suppliant dread of the gods by whom such direful wonders had been wrought. ”

“ What Don Juan did in that matter, Señor, was done as though in the insides of him were tempests and volcanoes! From the Tierra Caliente he brought up as by magic myriads of negro workmen to do the digging and the heavy carrying; all the quarries around the City he crammed full of stone-cutters; every mason was set to work at wall-laying; every carpenter to making the doors and the windows; every brick-yard to making the tiles for the roof and the floors; every blacksmith to making the locks and the hinges and the window-gratings and the balcony rails. ”

“ Just at sunset one evening I sighted a vessel of some sort far ahead of me—a black mass looming uncertainly against the rich glow of crimson that filled the west—and for some reason or another I took into my head the fancy that I was nearing open water and that this was not a wreck but a living ship on board of which I would find living men: and at the thought of meeting with live men again I fairly cried with joy. ”

“ Throughout my whole life I have been saddened, as each well-defined section of it has come to an end, by the thought that during the period that has then slipped away from me forever I have wasted more opportunities than I have improved. As I write these final lines, therefore, I feel a sorrowful regret, which, in a way, is akin to the regret that weighed upon me when Young and I, having carried into the cave the contents of the treasure-chamber, removed the prop wherewith was upheld the swinging statue, and so suffered to fall into place again that ponderous mass of stone. ”

“ Masts and spars and planks were in sight in all directions, sometimes floating singly and sometimes tangled together in little heaps; half a mile away was what seemed to be a large ship lying bottom upward; near me was a perfectly sound boat, having in its stern-sheets a bit of sail that fell in such folds as to make me think that a human form lay under it; and off toward the horizon was a large raft, with a sort of mast fitted to it, and at the foot of the mast I fancied that I saw a woman in a white robe of some sort stretched out as though asleep. ”

“ With a most desperate energy and a fierce strength that seemed out of all nature in a creature so lean and old and shrivelled, the Priest Captain writhed and struggled in his efforts to throw Young off, and sought also to grasp Young's throat with his long bony hands—while foam gathered on his thin lips, and his withered brown face grew black with congested blood, and his black eyes protruded until the half of the eyeballs, bloody with bursting reins, showed around the black, dilated pupils. ”

“ All around the horizon steel-gray clouds were rising, and a soft sort of a haze hung about us and took the life out of the sunshine, and the wind fell away until there was almost nothing of it, and that little fitful—while with the dying out of it the sea began to stir slowly with a long oily swell. Far down to the southeast a line of smoke hung along the horizon, coming from the funnel of some steamer out of sight over the ocean's curve, and the heaviness of the atmosphere was shown by the way that this smoke held close to the surface of the sea. ”

“ Very different were our feelings as we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and settled ourselves to sleep on that open mountain-top—with the path clear before us, and with the cheering hope in our hearts that among the mountains we should find a plenty of wild creatures suitable for food—from the dull despairing languor that had possessed us as we sank to sleep the night before. ”

“ This craft was an old-fashioned sloop-of-war, carrying eighteen guns; and that she had perished in action was as evident as that her death-battle had been fought a long while back in the past. The mauling that she had received had made an utter wreck of her—her masts being shot away and hanging by the board, most of her bulwarks being splintered, and her whole stern torn open as though a crashing broad-side had been poured into her at short range. ”

“ Over against us, on the far side of the lake, slantingwise from where we stood, rose a mass of buildings of such vastness and such majestic design that at the first glance we took it to be one of the square-topped mountains which are found not uncommonly in this portion of the world, and around the bases of which are sloping heaps of the fragments of rock which have broken away through countless ages from their weather-worn sides. ”

“ One face among the many clustered there, and a mighty friendly one, was familiar to me; but I could not place it until a jolly voice hailed me that I recognized with a warm thrill—and the sound of it filled me with joy as I thought of my bag of jewels in the cabin locker, and of how at last my doctor's bill would be paid.
"And so it's yourself, my fine big young man, and at your old tricks again. But it's this time that you have the good luck of a black cat for company in your cruising all alone by yourself over the open sea!" ”

“ Sometimes in my dreams the wild commotion of that most desperate combat comes back to me. I see again before me the crowd of half-naked men, curving in a semicircle measured by the length of my sword, their faces distorted by the passionate anger that stirred their souls; and I see one fierce face after another lose out of it the look of life, yet not the look of hate, as my sword crunches into the vitals of the body to which it belongs ”