Arthur Colton

“ After all, the mortal millions have their severance from each other ruled with not so great a difference in point of isolation, and with the same "salt, estranging sea." Each is for himself the centre of things; the currents of the deep swing round him; he is alone with his main issues.
Gard saw a place and repute slowly forming for him, and had almost come to see himself a citizen of Hamilton, the straight road of a quiet life stretching before him under a cool gray sky. Moselle, whom he went down into the greater city to see now and then, doubted that outcome. ”

“ Mavering spoke in a low voice. "If you ask me, I don't think human life is better than music. I think music is the better of the two." Gard seemed mutely to understand her, and was silent a moment as if to let the shadow pass, then said:
"Music is a little like the nautilus-shell, isn't it?—the venturous bark that flings its purple wings in gulfs enchanted, and all that. ”

“ Out of the best of intentions there has come to us so far only the conviction that Helen did not resemble the blue violets growing behind the church in Hagar. As for Simon's epitaph, it outlasts the story and is still to be read. One may lean over the wall of the cemetery, say, at twilight, when the shadow of Windless Mountain is wide over Hagar, and read it to-day, note its stiff insistence, and suit one's self with reflections on man and nature and the purport of things. An issue will be observed to lie between Simon's epitaph and the solemn, fading mountain, an issue distinct and inclusive. ”

“ It was a ceremony of indefinite length, for the Superior sometimes fell into a monologue, fervid as St. Augustine's, while walking to and fro; and Gard used to imagine the room full of spirits and misty angels, listening—all of them—breathless, astonished, and a little frightened; for there could not be any one who was not afraid of the Superior, unless it were the bonus Deus, and even He must be astonished. At length the great, swarthy man would lay his hand on Gard's head—a large hand, lean and strong, and vibrating with the throb and blast of the furnace that was in him. ”

“ Of course, one could not become beautiful like Mrs. Mavering—not in a hundred years. One's nose would not become straight, one's hair black and heapy, nor eyes change from gray to amber and brown; and in order to become as difficult it would be necessary to be married and have one's husband become unapparent without becoming dead. Mrs. Mavering was an arduous ideal. Helen doubted that she would ever achieve it. ”

“ Morgan still headed the march of Helen's dreams. The same moon, a little fuller than the night before, laying a thicker wash of silver, hung over the apse of Saint Mary's. She looked from her window at the roofs where the organ player's spectre had seemed to be dancing then, mistily, wildly, to the storm of sound below. The friendly window was dim, which the lady had walked past and past, restless, tall, thick-haired.
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How strong and wonderful was Morgan! What more could there be under the moon and stars than the will to dare and the power to do? Helen had no name for the spell. ”

“ On stagnant pools the water-lilies float, no doubt, white and passionate in fragrance, and cardinal flowers are along their shores; but law and divinity seem to be with the rivers—such rivers as the Shenandoah, which Gard met at different points, and often enough during October, until it had become a familiar sight—until the leaves of the oaks had turned a burnished red-and-bronze, and the Confederate army had moved far up the valley. ”

“ He sat by Helen's bed half a day, and talked to her as to a grown lady, and was gracious and fluent. He brought the best flowers of his worldliness, and jingled all his silver bells to please her.
"Not a finer pair of eyes in Hamilton!" he said to the widow. "Positively she must not have a crick in her back. On my word, impossible."
"We are taught to submit," said the widow, perhaps placidly, at any rate patiently. Thaddeus mounted the stairs with a wrinkled smile.
"Sheep! That woman is a sheep! Helen, my dear, your back will be as straight as my cane, I give you my word." ”

“ A plain table became luxurious by virtue of something thrown across it. A tall jar was placed on the painted mantel-piece, and the mantel-piece itself became reminiscent.
After supper, where the scallops did not fail, the four gathered before the grate. A fire crackled, and the slender jar stood above, in reminder of realms where form and color were the only deities. Gard thought Mrs. Mavering had changed. Helen's pallor and thinness did not touch her imperative identity. Mrs. Mavering had changed less in looks than in tone. ”

“ It surprised Gard, in watching her, that he remembered so much, so many little shining points of detail about her—as she had looked in the house, under the apse of Saint Mary's, sitting so, in a white dress, a blue ribbon at her throat, and the firelight shining on her yellow hair. And Mrs. Mavering used to wear dark-red dresses always, and suggest tragedy without being aware of it. They both wore black now, and starched, white aprons. Mrs. Mavering, in some inward way, seemed more cheerful, more like one gifted with health and humorous philosophy. ”

“ Of Spring in Hamilton—Of Thaddeus's Opportunity to be Candid
In the open country the seasons are free, and work their will with spacious confidence. There is room between heaven and earth. Spring runs down the back of the mountain forest, and races the river; the heat of summer has reason, leisure, and is motherly of green things; autumn has its cornfields, leagues of yellow landscape, and the progress in cool order of harvest and death ”

“ In Saint Mary's, that night, the music did not seem to Helen to come down from choir loft as usual, and talk to her familiarly. She could not make it say anything. It stayed up among the organ-pipes; and below, among the pillars and aisles instead, the wind of a coming storm blowing in through the vestibule doors, half open—for the night was heavy and close—took its place, whispered, moaned, and wailed: "You've no idea how black it's growing. Shut the doors and hide." ”

“ Windless lay in the sunlight, genial, wise, sincere, with the girth of high living and the forehead of high thought. One did not have to specify in the presence of Windless. Everything was understood. Yet Mrs. Mavering asked. "I suppose it isn't Morgan Map at all?"
Helen answered "No," promptly enough, and fell into sombre silence. The eastern slope of Windless darkened in the shadow of the lessening afternoon, while the western only seemed to glimmer the more genially; there was that advantage in being large. "You see," she went on, "it suits Morgan, fighting and ordering and doing things. ”

“ As in sleeping Hamilton no one knew another's dream, so almost as little by lamp-light or at dawn did any watcher truly imagine another's thought. Who shall escape the dungeon of himself? The policeman on the corner of Shannon Street and Philip's road, when Morgan rushed by him, sympathized with an apparent hurry to get out of the comfortless rain. Thaddeus, before his sea-coal fire, plotted such happy paths for Helen to walk in as an enlightened egoism showed would be best for Thaddeus. ”

“ Had he not picked out Nellie long ago for her pluck and sense, and a certain tingling challenge in her—a girl fit for his hand to hold? She suited him, fitted one part as a cavalry raid fitted another. Very well. He would take her. Any one that stood in the way would be hurt, very likely; at any rate, taught better. The squire and Thaddeus Bourn might be as futile as they chose, it being no business of his. They had had their day. Let them keep out of the path of men who had still to live. ”

“ Where else should you go?"
"It's queer, but it seems like home, Hagar. I never saw it. Wasn't Hagar the mother of homeless Ishmaelites?"
So Mrs. Mavering was gone. One Sabrina, a fat negro woman, was left, who shook the floor with her tread, who wore extraordinary green kerchiefs on her head, and exploded in a melting gobble of mirth at Gard's every remark, till humor became a burden and he tried depression. "I shall die, Sabrina." Sabrina gobbled with joy. He tried wrath. "You're a galoop, Sabrina, a galoop!"—and Sabrina spilled his coffee over her billows of delight. ”

“ What makes you so solemn, Lady Rachel? You bother and bother about Morgan, and he's not so worth while, not so—around in the dark as Gard Windham, who says things out of the middle of himself without talking at all, and you understand him, you don't know how, and it makes your hair tingle. Lady Rachel, listen! Let's go to the war. ”

“ And there appear to be certain bitter waters, flowing near the roots of existence, in which, if it so happens to a man, he may wash his eyes clear of confusion, and afterwards wonder how it came that he was once weary of living. So it seemed to Gard that he had gone around a circle and begun a new season of expectation. He was that black-robed acolyte again, slim and somewhat pale, who, in breathless eagerness to see and know, had come out of the door of the brotherhood's brick-walled court-yard into the hurrying avenue, hearing the high fluting. ”

“ The postmaster was stout now, with grizzled hair cut Quakerly, ponderously grave, except that his left eyelid drooped and twitched. It was the one place on his wide face where the old spirit of demonry hinted of itself, and spoke of the days of the consulship of Tad and Pete. Without doubt the world was degenerate, and had lost its breed of noble bloods. Alas, Tad and Pete, once sworn and faithful, of one ideal together; now each in the eyes of the other was an exquisite absurdity, and all the young were degenerate, except Nellie. "Pete, she's doing well, poor little ghost, on my word." ”

“ To foresee coming changes, what provision the soul would need in a year or two more when middle life was past and the strong pull of the ebbing tide beginning to be felt, to disguise from it the consequences of sixty years, and so to persuade it gently, without force or argument, to continue to idealize and feel agreeable, were a fine bit of diplomacy. For it was not merely a matter of carrying Helen away to Shannon Street to start there a fresh stream of interest, but Helen must take an interest in him ”

“ There was Lieutenant Map, with straps, visored cap, and sword, which Thaddeus thought should have been a club or javelin. "He'll not be suitably dressed till he's tattooed." Thaddeus even pursued and caught happiness in the situation, the changing pulse of the times. There were advantages to society in this panoply and thrill of war, which filled the eye and ear, entertained the thoughts, stirred the feelings to an interested activity. Society became more united, the units more sympathetic with each other. ”

“ Was it some lingering touch of the monastery? One does not live without result during the formative years, secluded between cool, white walls, among unworldly lives. Mavering called him "the anchorite," and swore the phrase still truthful.
A glimpse of the Potomac between the hills; a troop of Union cavalry breaking camp in a meadow; clank and rattle of side-arms; men gathering and packing kit; men sitting listlessly in their saddles; a mounted officer in the middle of the road, looking down towards the Potomac—large, square-shouldered, and massive. He turned in his saddle. ”