Violet Jacob

“ Then the Sorcerer began to sing; and his voice was like liquid gold. It made one think of all the most beautiful things in the world: of the dawn in the sky, of great birds with white wings, of rushing waters, of prancing horses and waving plumes, of the deep velvet sky with its armies of stars.
“Oh, how lovely! How wonderful!” cried the Princesses. “Oh, sir! where did you learn those songs?”
The Sorcerer smiled. “It is this little guitar,” he said, holding it up. “It is bewitched. One has only to strike the strings and the song comes out of it. ”

“ The world, this crystalline morning, was so beautiful to Archie that he ached with the uncomprehended longing to identify himself with perfection; to cast his body down upon the light-pervaded earth and to be one with it, to fling his soul into the heights and depths of the limitless encompassing ether, to be drawn into the heart of God’s material manifestation on earth—the sun. ”

“ Any peasant girl, having leisure to weave such a crown, might wear it without pride and without remark.
And as she sprang up, her eyes met those of her rejected suitor, who had drawn the curtains of the antechamber a little aside in his suspense.
When the old man raised the cushion, she seized the wreath and tore it in pieces, scattering the petals, like snowflakes, on the floor.
The King went from the palace in despair and returned to his lodging. He had hoped so fiercely and so long that life seemed almost to have come to an end. ”

“ The monotony of the motion and the balm of the day began to intoxicate Gilbert. It is not easy to feel that fate is against one when the sun shines, the sky smiles, and the air is quivering with light and dancing shadow; harder still in the face of the blue, endless sea-spaces of the horizon; hard indeed when the horse before you conveys subtly to your hand that he is prepared to transport you, behind the beating pulse of his trot, to Eldorado—to the Isles of the Blessed—anywhere. ”

“ Both men had business in Crishowell, and as Rhys Walters was now well enough to be left alone for a few hours, Williams had no scruple in turning the key on his charge and starting with his patron for the valley.
The hoar-frost hung on everything. Around them, the heavy air enwrapped the landscape, making an opaque background to the branches and twigs which stood as though cut out in white coral against grey-painted canvas. Bumpett felt the cold a good deal and pressed forward almost at a trot, looking all the more grotesque for the company of the big, quiet man beside him. ”

“ The Nix looked round and round about her. Below lay the sea, moaning and washing the shore, and not far off was the outline of the little graveyard in the faint starlight. She ran on along the cliffs, for far away a few lights of the town by the river’s mouth could be seen twinkling in a row, and she knew that up that river lay the mill. As morning dawned she found herself in a thick wood. She was glad, for what she had seen of people made her wish to get as far from them as possible, and she determined to hide all day in the wood, and travel on all night. ”

“ The glow of the tulips and the strange house by the winding water, the slim vision of Diane de Montdelys, the gallant background of the Scots Brigade, the grave at Bergen-op-Zoom—these things were like a mirage behind the figure of James. The power of seeing things picturesquely is a gift that can turn into a curse, and that power worked on his emotional and imaginative side now. ”

“ One evening the Ugly Prince and the Princess were walking on the terrace of the palace garden. The sunset glowed along the western sky, the birds were twittering in the deepening silence, and the heavy scent of masses of roses which climbed over balconies and pillars steeped the air. A minstrel was singing softly inside one of the open windows, and his song reached them as they stood looking out over the balustrade on to the country lying spread before them. ”

“ The sharpest things in earth or heaven were the angles of Cassiopeia’s Chair, high among the constellations, which seemed not to look down on the sleep-bound world but to be turning from it, consciously aloof in their unwavering detachment; a sight to affect some not at all; to oppress some by the comparison of infinitude with their own individualities; to raise others, by that very comparison, to the height of ecstasy—the dim foreknowledge of what that true sense of proportion must be which swallows the individual into the immutable and divine. ”

“ As he stood looking down on the Queen of the Cadgers the light from the evening sun was full upon her marked features and the gold ear-rings in her ears.
‘Ye needna fear, Whanland,’ she said simply.
‘I will tell you why,’ burst out Gilbert, a sudden impulse to confidence rushing to his heart like a wave; ‘it is true, Granny—that is the reason. If I cannot marry her I shall never be happy again.’
Sitting alone that night, he asked himself why he should have spoken.
What power, good or evil, is answerable for the sudden gusts of change that shake us? ”

“ The height at which one sits, the rush of the air on one’s face, the ring of the sixteen hoofs in front, the rocking-horse canter of the off-leader ere he makes up his lordly mind to put his heart into the job and settle to a steady trot, the purr of the wheels on the road, the smell of the moist country as the houses are left behind, and the brisk pace now that the first half-mile has been done and the team is working well together—surely the man whose blood does not rise at all these, must have the heart of a mollusc and the imagination of a barn-door fowl. ”

“ Archie, the traitor, was gone, and only the red-bearded man remained. He could see him in the group that was watching James Logie as he captured the struggling dog.
Callandar ground his teeth; then he dropped on one knee and contemplated the sight from behind the great circle of roots and earth that a fallen tree had torn from the sod. Of all men living he was one of the last who might be called a coward, but neither was he one of those hot-heads who will plunge, to their own undoing and to that of other people, into needless disaster. ”

“ The Bat-King, who was now on his feet, rushed at him with his spear, but the Enchantress threw herself between them.
“No, no!” she cried, “you shall not kill him! He is mine! No one shall harm him. I love him and he loves me!”
At this the King, beside himself with rage, turned upon her.
“I would sooner die than be near you another day,” he cried. “I hate you as I hate sin itself! There is only one person in the world I love, and that is this Princess.”
The Enchantress’s face grew white; all her beauty seemed to have faded. ”

“ Now, one day, as the white pigeon sat among the elm-boughs, her eyes wandered over the slope of golden grain to where the fir-trees stood on the top of the hill; for she knew that from that place could be seen a far wider view, and one that stretched away to the coast and the ocean. What would she not give to have but one glance at the distant leagues of water, one possible chance of seeing some sign of hope on the horizon! She thought of how Maddy Norey, the witch, had commanded her to go no further than the three elms ”

“ The evenings had been damp and chilly of late, with not a breath of wind stirring to lift the fog which hung over the Black Mountain and pressed like a heavy, dead hand right into Crishowell village.
On the green track which led along the plateau at the foot of the Twmpa the air to-night lay still and thick. Noises made by the animal world were carried a long distance by the moist atmosphere, and sounds were audible to people who had learned to keep their ears open for which they might have listened in vain at ordinary times. ”

“ The tempest of her feelings stifled all justice and all reason.
‘Why did you not take Crauford Fordyce, if your heart was set on leaving me?’ she cried.
The thrust pierced Cecilia like a knife, but she knew that it was not the real Lady Eliza who had dealt it.
‘I did not care for him,’ she replied, ‘and I love Gilbert Speid.’
‘He is not Gilbert Speid!’ burst out her companion; ‘he is no more Speid than you are! He is nothing of the sort; he is an impostor—a man of no name!’
‘An impostor, ma’am?’
‘His mother was a bad woman. I would rather see you dead than married to him! ”

“ Where the gean-trees glowed carmine and orange, touches of quickening fire shot through the interstices of their branches, and coloured like a tress of trailing forget-me-not, the South Esk wound into the Basin of Montrose, where the tide, ebbing beyond the town, was leaving its wet sands as a feasting-ground for all sorts of roving birds whose crying voices came faintly to Archie, mellowed by distance. ”

“ The one great good which he got out of his profitless childhood was an intense familiarity with outdoor life. The sky was his ceiling, the earth his carpet, and he wandered about the pastures around, the mountain above, and the valley below, with the same assurance that other little boys of his age felt in wandering about their nurseries. He knew the habits of every living creature and every nesting-place for miles; he could climb like a mountain-sheep or run like a hare, and his observation of Nature became so highly developed as to make him, in some respects, very like an animal. ”

“ They did not know that the witch, Maddy Norey, was alive still, and living hardly out of the sound of their voices in the Dovecote.
But in spite of the lonely quiet of the old place, and the peace which seemed to brood over the standing corn, there was war and strife in the land. The young King, with his Queen, had been forced to fly from his palace, a fugitive and wanderer, not knowing where to seek shelter for his head; his step-brother, a wicked and unscrupulous man, having, with his plots and cunning and his smooth, lying tongue, stirred up the people in revolt against their sovereign. ”

“ Great tears stood in her eyes as she thought of the mill and the trees by the dam.
In time she came to a huge crag standing out into the waves and joined to the land by only a neck of rock no wider than the top of a wall. She had no fear of growing giddy, for she knew nothing of the uncomfortable things that happen to human beings, so she crossed it. The place looked so lonely that she was sure there could be nobody there. When she was over she turned the corner of a rock and found herself at the foot of a high wall, pierced by little shot windows and broken by a heavy iron door. ”

“ He had never dreamed of the silent band which had been yielded up by the misty stretches of the Basin.
James leaned over the vessel’s side towards the Venture, and thought of Captain Hall. He had seen him in a tavern of the town, and had been as little impressed by his looks as was Flemington. He had noticed the uncertain eye, the restless fingers, the trotting gait, and had held him lightly as a force; for he knew as well as most men know who have knocked about this world that character—none other—is the hammer that drives home every nail into the framework of achievement. ”

“ Life, since the death of her parents, who had gone down together in the wreck of an East Indiaman, had been a succession of changes, and she had been bandied about from one relation to another, at home nowhere, and weary of learning new ways; the learning had been rough as well as smooth, and she did not know what might await her at Morphie. Lady Eliza had come out to receive her in a shabby riding-habit, much like the plum-coloured one she wore now and in much the same state of repair, and she had looked with misgiving at the determined face under the red wig. ”

“ Not that it was pity or concern that moved him—he cared little enough for anything that affected the man before him—but even he, coarse, sordid, callous as he was, could feel that Rhys Walters had gone beyond the reach of fear or hope, joy or malice, and that the grey waters of despair divided him from the power of aught else but some one influence which was working within him. Nothing could help or harm him any more. The soul that looked out of his sunken eyes was one pertaining no longer to the ordinary world of human beings with its hates and loves, its ambitions and griefs ”

“ So the two stood, day after day, looking out over the palace wall, two white and gold figures with their hair done up in little knobs on the tops of their heads, and their fans fluttering like butterflies’ wings. The sun poured down on them, and the blue sky stretched above, and the great, unlimited world, which they knew nothing about, lay all round them.
Now, the Princesses’ father was such a popular man that there was only one person on that side of the world so much talked about, and that was the Sorcerer Badoko. ”

“ Time went, and the leaves of the Tree of Pride lay thick round its foot. Winter’s white veil covered plain and city, and the Princess, in her palace, drew every day farther from humanity; only the King, in his distant kingdom, hoped on, waiting for spring.
But in the old man, his prisoner, a mighty change was being wrought, and his malignant spirit was beginning to go from him. He had never before been brought so close to a noble human being. ”

“ She must think of herself, not as a woman with a soul and a body, but as a dead thing that can neither feel nor hope. What mattered it what became of her now? She had lost all, absolutely all. It only remained for her to secure a quiet end to the one creature left her for a pitiful few hours.
She went back and stood by the pillow. The dumb question that met her touched her to the heart.
‘I will promise what you wish,’ she said, steadily. ‘In a year I will marry him if he asks me. But if, if’—she faltered for a moment and turned away—‘not if Gilbert Speid comes back. ”

“ The passion for beauty lay deep below the tossing, driving impulses of Flemington’s nature, and it rose up now as he stood on the yew-edged terraces of Balnillo and gazed before him. For the moment everything in his mind was swallowed up but the abstract, fundamental desire for perfection, which is, when all is said and done, humanity’s mainspring, its incessant though often erring guide, whose perverted behests we call sin, whose legitimate ones we call virtue; whose very existence is a guarantee of immortality. ”

“ Time, he was certain, and a closer experience of Isoline’s society, would convince him that he had been mistaken, and he knew Llewellyn well enough to be sure that, when such a change should come to pass, his acknowledgment of his error would be complete. It would all come right, and, meanwhile, life was bathed in an untold glory.
Like all young, open natures who love truly, Harry was humble. His own inferiority to the girl at his side was manifest to him as he looked up at her through the grasses. ”

“ Yet they had never felt the touch of a man’s lips, never clung round a lover’s neck, never held a child. Everything that made a woman’s life worth living had passed her by. The remembrance of a short time when she had thought she held the Golden Rose for ever made her heart ache. It was Gilbert’s mother who had snatched it from her.
And friendship had been a poor substitute for what she had never possessed. The touch of love in the friendship of a man and a woman which makes it so charming, and may make it so dangerous, had been left out between herself and Robert. ”