E. Temple Thurston

“ People use it in little art circles in London. 'Remember' is the word. Listen to that gull—that's calling to you; listen to the sea—every time a wave breaks, it's the world drawing in its breath. Pavements and houses aren't alive like that. I try in London sometimes to think that the houses talk to each other—but how can they talk if they never draw a breath! Look at the sky! Look at the sea! You're absolutely right—it's impossible to forget here. I'd give all I know to live in that little cottage there in the hollow and remember the whole day long, the whole year round. ”

“ For this is life as it seems to me—a crowd of undignified little creatures, pathetically, humorously, in all loveableness, trying to assume a dignity which they do not possess; only in great moments proving the nobility of their creation, when, by the sudden force of circumstance, they are, willy-nilly, driven to be themselves.
I little imagined as I amused myself by these thoughts with Moxon standing by, staring down with me at the timid blossom of that little snowdrop, that I for one was upon the eve of such an event as would force me by its circumstance to some definite course of action. ”

“ They went out to the theatres and to music-halls, to dinners and to suppers, working like slaves, making the bricks of forgetfulness without the last straws of hope. Then, last of all, with spirit utterly broken, they accepted the ugliness of the world, took their pleasure in remembering it; bought their newspapers and devoured them with their breakfast, mingling horror and crime and misery with the very food they put into their mouths. Those are the people in London to-day who will point out to you the ugliness of life and call it beautiful because it is real. ”

“ At which, both knowing it to be a most excellent lie, we smiled each to the other and set off through the garden.
Up a narrow boreen, banked on each side by low walls of grass-sod and stone where grew violets and primroses in the company of moss and ladder fern, we made our way to Cruikshank's little cottage on the high land above Ballysheen. Here there are fields of young wheat, breaking in brilliant green through the stony, unpromising ground. There are fields of pasture, too, that stretch away to the sheer cliff's edge where the sheep browse and the gulls go circling all day long. ”

“ There may be a certain beauty in sympathy which makes any abasement worth while, but so far as I am concerned it is a quality in human beings I have done without for so long, that a childish sense of dignity has double its value to me.
Now it would have been most undignified to tell any one of the folly of my adventure, or to seek to gain their sympathy because it had failed. The real tragedy of failure is not its want of success; it is the knowledge that you may not tell it to a soul. ”

“ Kent is full of them; and when the apple blossom is out and lambs are in the orchard, I can tell you you want to live then. You want to be up with the sun lest you should miss an hour of it. I've been all round the world, but I've never seen anything to touch an apple orchard in Kent, or any English meadow in the heat of summer. I know nothing like it—I know nothing equal to it, unless it is those cliffs at Ballysheen when the gorse and the heather are out and the whole place throbs with the humming of bees. ”

“ You have it there in that nursery maid's eyes. I am an ugly devil, not even with that ugliness which pleads a charm to many a woman's heart. I am an ugly devil, and that is all there is about it. The only creatures who have ever gazed at me as though I were the image of God were my mother and my dog. The one is dead. ”

“ He waited just a moment, thinking, doubtless, to hide from me the fact that he had seen me; then, leaning across the table, he whispered something into Clarissa's ear. With that same startled expression of the frightened bird, she looked across the room and her eyes met mine.
In that one sudden moment, I felt she was recalling every word I had said to her that morning on the cliffs at Ballysheen. For her eyes had no hatred in them now; only fear, the fear as when one is discovered and is ashamed. ”

“ It is personal bias that stands in my way. I think of their cruelty to Clarissa, and I can judge them from no other standpoint. It is as well then to leave it alone. Only the far-reaching and all-comprehensive eye can judge. I was prejudiced before I met them.
It was as I listened to Miss Mary, whose words hurry from her lips and remind me, in their simple anxiety to get out of her mouth, of children tumbling out of school, it was as I listened to her that I heard Bellwattle say to Miss Teresa—
"How is your invalid to-day?" ”

“ They'll scream to you from the house-tops that the world is an ugly place. You will go to the theatres you speak of and there they'll tell you that men and women are unfaithful. They'll keep driving into your ears that truth and beauty are at opposite poles of the earth. Never, never for one moment, if they can help it, will they let you forget. You will find those who have even passed the desire of forgetfulness, and that is the last and the worst stage of all. For there are people in London now who only want to remember that the world is ugly. ”

“ All the precise expression of the hall-porter had suddenly slipped from him. I could detect in his eyes a similar look to that which I see always in the eyes of Cruikshank when he is at work in his garden. Can this be the effect of just one word—roses? Will it in one moment convert a man from a machine into a human being with just that light of Nature in his eyes as plucks him there and then from the confusion of the crowd? ”

“ I shall never forget this my first meeting with Clarissa on that wild headland of those cliffs in Ireland. There will never die out of my ears the long, lonesome cries of the sea birds, the sound of the waters rolling to the rocks three hundred feet below, or those vivid stillnesses which fall upon you between the sound of the waves and the child-cries of the gulls away at sea. ”

“ That's why you live in London on your fifteen hundred a year. You like the country well enough in the summer—I can see you do. You love it even more than you think. But in the winter, you believe you'd be miserable. You've grown into the habit of your theatres and your restaurants which really you hate. Look what you said about the cormorant. You can't do without your crowds of people, and you tell yourself that human nature is the most interesting and most lovable thing in the world. But do you think that you ever see so much of human nature in a crowd as you do in one single individual? ”

“ For if you are a woman, I believe, and reach the age which poor Miss Teresa has attained, there comes into your eyes, whether you will it or not, the look of watching for some phantom thing which never rides the seas upon your actual horizon. You know it is there, because you hope it is there. Maybe it is the disappointed spirit of maternity which has waited so long upon the road that its eyes are tired of watching. ”

“ It was soon after lunch then that I found myself with Bellwattle and Dandy making our way once more up that old boreen where they tell me the white hemlocks grow so high in summer and the wild geraniums break, in patches of color, the ever freshening wonder of the glorious green.
Heavens! What a rush of memory it brought, carrying me back to that first morning when Bellwattle had brought me up to see the cottage in the hollow. ”

“ So high are you there, that only a mere ribbon strip of the far sea is visible, but the muted sound of it as it swells upon the rocks, comes to your ears in a sonorous sibilant note, which grows and grows into the very music of the place. So swiftly do your ears become attuned to it, that soon you hear no sound of it at all; it is all one motive of the great, still symphony of Silence which Nature is forever playing on her thousand instruments of string and reed. ”

“ It was almost safe to suppose that she knew I had been to meet Clarissa. But how could she possibly realize all that had happened? So I stood there silent for a moment, waiting while I considered how far I could decoy her from the truth. I did not know then, so well as I know now, that the truth itself is the only thing with which to mislead a woman's intuition. All that lies behind deception she can so easily detect. It is the truth behind the truth which confuses her. ”

“ In that little acre which, with such simple vanity, he calls his own, his garden, a man will plant his tiny slips of wood to mark the spot where life is hidden for a while; hidden, only to come forth and blossom for his happiness. When, then, I had thought so far as that, there came with a rush into my mind the words in Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird," "There are no dead," and suddenly I saw it all.
The body of a man holds a seed. Through life it ripens, as all seeds do. ”

“ I know a man who every evening of his life partakes of a glass of milk for his health's sake. One night his dog fell foul of it and consumed it all. But it was not for punishment alone that he stole two of the dog's biscuits in return. What can be more undignified than having your evening's milk stolen by your dog! What, then, can more perfectly regain your dignity than stealing two of his biscuits and calling it the adjustment of punishment to the crime? If Moxon could not openly admit that he had seen the snowdrop before, I could not entirely agree with him. ”

“ Whereupon she began to train it in such direction as neither Nature nor its own inclination ever intended it to go.
"I don't know why Bellwattle is a good name," said I to myself, "but it is." Then with that I called to Dandy and we set off.
Whenever you may be engaged in any adventure, it comes easily to you to notice how wonderful a place the world can be. If the sky is clear and the sun is shining on that morning when you set forth to make mark in the insignificant history of your life, then, indeed, it seems as though the heavens were never so blue or the sun so bright. ”

“ By the very movement of her body, the very temper of her step, as I watched her walking back to Ballysheen, I knew that I had awakened in her a living despot of determination.
Women are like that. Nothing will alter them. It proves to me conclusively how little I know of their nature when I brought reason and a spirit of logic along with me to urge Clarissa to the sacrifice of her romance. For it is not with women that they are unreasonable. To be reasonable, one must know what reason is. ”

“ Here the whole summer, the whole autumn and winter had passed with every varied color and design. The spring was back again, and the whole world about us was the same once more as it had been the previous year. The gulls were beating up against the thrusting wind; the songs of larks rose like glittering bells, trilling and tinkling in the bright air above us. Now the gorse was in its full blazonry of yellow, and all the heather buds shook out their music to each little breeze. ”

“ It is just the thing I always marvel at myself.
"But don't call it dirty mould," said I. "There's hardly a thing I know so clean as a ploughed field in spring, when the earth has just been turned after a long winter."
No doubt it was I who was considering my dignity now. No matter how right a schoolboy may be in his answer, the master always corrects him, sets him right in a phrase or some insignificant fact. I was doing much the same with Moxon. All these little tricks are the efforts of the superior human being for the maintenance of dignity. ”

“ It could not have been so pregnant a moment with Bellwattle. For if indeed she guesses—as well I know she must—there is bound to be many a mistake in her speculations. Doubtless, she thinks I have met Clarissa before; that, like some Knights of the Round Table, I am pursuing the lady to whom my heart is captive. Whatever she thinks, there will be romance to it. There is not that in a woman capable to conceive so prosaic a mission as mine. Thank God for it too. A woman will stitch the thread of love into the heel of an old sock while a man is impatiently waiting to put it on. ”