Eden Phillpotts

“ There the amateurs will do great things on a fiery stage; and the misguided people who have encouraged them during this life must make up their minds to sit solidly in red-hot stalls, without backs, through an eternity of indifferent acting. It is a source of satisfaction to me that I only helped to perform one charade in my life—which I ruined. And yet it seems rough to be jubilant about it, because that particular entertainment did two really great things for me—one in the little affair of Millicent Warne, the other touching Greensmith. ”

“ Upon a general appreciation of the dead man’s worth and virtue there burst the biography of Thomas Gridd, than which anything more sensational, outrageous and unexpected could not well be imagined. After a great parade of the necessity for Truth, of his own high motives in this matter, and of the abundant grief that his task had brought upon him, the unutterable Gridd set out upon his ruffianly way and exhibited before the amazed and incredulous vision of England the spectacle of a great reputation torn to ribbons. ”

“ Porthos and D’Artagnan waited in breathless suspense for the answer of Aramis.
“Heaven forbid!” cried the musketeer. “’Twill be time for that when we are back again on the shores of Styx. Duty first, pleasure afterwards.”
Athos bowed, and all four friends caressed each other warmly.
Porthos ordered more wine.
“To your plan,” cried D’Artagnan. “The night wanes and the playhouse opens its doors ere long.”
“We must be there at the rise of the curtain. We will disguise ourselves.”
“Nay, no disguise. There is nothing to fear.” ”

“ I would rouse Miss Ethel Smithson [114] herself, and show her the man she loved in his true colours.
Even then my natural kindness of disposition caused me to hesitate. But if you see, as I did then, love’s young dream drifting into a nightmare, you are justified in shattering it. No burglar could bring true and lasting happiness into a gentlewoman’s life. That, at least, is my view.
“Why, ghost,” said Ethel, rubbing her eyes after I had waked her, “I don’t think it was kind of you to spoil a beautiful dream I was having about—but never mind, it won’t interest you.” ”

“ Well, you’re a good husband and father; what better could any trilobite be? And as to beauty, I shouldn’t have married you if you had not been about the handsomest gentleman trilobite that ever sat and curled his whiskers. Nature never made anything better than a trilobite. Why? Because she can’t. Can you picture anything different? Can you imagine any creature with more convenient limbs, more exquisite joints, more perfect claws, better eyesight, better senses, better manners, or more self-respecting? ”

“ Vagrants, policemen, and rioting boys mainly composed it; but in the place of chief dishonour walked Norton Bellamy. He, too, it would seem, had violated the laws of his country. He too, by devious and probably painful ways, had drifted into Seven Dials, and there lost his freedom. An even-handed Nemesis, whose operations yet remained hidden from me, had clearly punished Bellamy for rejecting the advice of his fellow-man, even as she had chastened me for accepting it. And from cursory appearances it looked as though Bellamy had endured even more varied torments than my own. ”

“ The time of these events being Christmas, I will not say what I think of Greensmith here, but merely hint that he is the smallest man and the biggest hound that ever cast a black spell on a pleasant party. His conceit is gigantic, his manners are loathsome, his ancestry runs into a Jew pedlar in the second generation and stops there. He has more opinions and less information than a Board School teacher. He is, moreover, a worm, and also a bounder. He lies, and he would break all the ten commandments every week of his life had he the pluck to do so. ”

“ Even so it was now; and as the merman and his maid approached along the dim-lit floor of the ocean to where the coral island swelled like a mountain through it, they saw, beside the great achievement of a million generations of coral insects, a lesser object lying unsightly, black and alone.
“It is a new monster. Let us go speak with it,” said “Star o’ Boston,” who feared nothing but “Lord Aberdeen.”
“Nay, golden-tail, ’tis a human wreck! Of such are the ships that sail the face of the sea. This is Fate, and we are the first to find it, save the fishes. ”

“ In time of sleep it is that Phantasie can so break the meshes that hold her when the reason is waking; in time of a man’s sleep she wings whither she will, “producing many monstrous and prodigious things, especially if she be stirred up by some terrible object, presented to her by Common Sense or Memory.”
And in my experience the scenes of her most active effort lie not in the depths of sleep, but about the portal of it. Then, and chiefly at the dawn, shall Phantasie be found to wing her wildest flight. ”

“ Only the urban cat stalked here and there, rejoicing, as it seemed, in prolonged night. My chronic cough began at the first gulp of this atrocious atmosphere, and changing my mind about walking to the District Railway Station, I turned, sought my cab-whistle, and summoned a hansom. It came presently, clinking and tinkling out of nothingness—a chariot with watery eyes of flame; a goblin coach to carry me away through the mask of the fog, [16] from home, from wife and children, into the vast unknown of man’s advice. ”

“ We don’t take enough advice, in my opinion—just as we don’t take enough exercise or wholesome food. It is too much the fashion to ask advice and not take it. But if we modelled our lives on the disinterested opinion of other people, and availed ourselves of the combined judgment of our fellows, the world would be both happier and wiser in many directions. ”

“ THE NINE MUSKETEERS TWO draped figures stood at the entrance of the Criterion Restaurant, and the electric light played upon the huge feathers in their hats, glittered on their trappings, and touched their gilt spurs. One was an enormous man, nearly a foot taller than those about him; the other, though of medium height, appeared to be made of Damascus steel.
“’Tis the hour, D’Artagnan,” said Porthos, as a church clock struck six.
“And the men!” answered D’Artagnan; whereupon two other romantic figures leapt from a hansom-cab.
“Athos!”
“Aramis!” ”

“ The Recording Angels suffered me to glance over some score-sheets, and I found them very interesting and astonishing reading; for in the Game of Life, unlike most games, it is not the spectator who can best judge of a man’s innings. It needs a recorder possessed of power more than human to score correctly. I found, for instance, that not a few batsmen who had played a very showy innings and kept up their wickets well, and afforded the crowd plenty of entertainment, had in reality added little or nothing to the Score of the World. Of course, in the Game of Life every ball counts ”

“ Often a batsman profited not a little when thus let off, and many an innings was a treat to watch in its patience and skill, while others, on the contrary—most of them, in fact—wearied the spectator by their feebleness. Sometimes a ghostly roar greeted the fall of a wicket; usually great indifference marked the event; not seldom the onlookers manifested absolute relief.
Full of monstrous surprises is this game. The weakling defies Death for over after over, and gets the ball past all the claws and long arms to the boundary ”

“ He was twenty inches in length and carried himself with conscious dignity, albeit mud knocks the dignity out of almost anything but a trilobite. But this trilobite, for such he was, surveyed that Cambrian noon pensively, curled his whiskers with thought, and wriggled his shining joints in the sun. Presently a hen trilobite appeared and squatted beside him placidly.
“When I survey this spectacle,” said the trilobite, “when I reflect that the world is empty but for us, I am often tempted to wonder.” ”

“ It has for hundreds of years been a great speculation as to what was the appearance of a human being when he loses his temper. We might inoculate——”
“Oh no, you don’t!” I roared. “D’you think I’m going to have my character tinkered with at my age by a lot of perfect, passionless puppets?”
But here my emotions first choked me, then woke me, and I opened my eyes, not without thanksgivings, on a pleasant morning still very nigh the romantic dawn of the Twentieth Century. ”

“ Permit my spectre one week with this ungenerous and unjust steward of my reputation. I ask no more.”
“Only a mind conscious of right would contemplate such a painful design,” declared Doctor Johnson; “and yet it is a question whether the awful demonstration of a professorial apparition to one still in life be not too terrible a punishment for his crime.”
“Not so,” interrupted Mr. Carlyle. “Parkinson is in the right. This vile Gridd has earned the worst that can overtake him. Fury and chaos! let justice be done and an example made. Must dead lions suffer for ever from these live asses? ”

“ But a man cannot forget the training of his youth, the practice of his adult years, and the support of his middle age in one demonian hour. As I passed wildly through dim, bilious abysses of filth-laden atmosphere, though my body was soon lost, and hopelessly lost, in the fog, my mind became a trifle clearer and the steadfast principles of a lifetime reasserted themselves. ”

“ Many amongst us lack that congeries of flexible characteristics—the mental amalgam of humour and common-sense, weight, scholarship and piety that may be said to afford just material for a biographer. For my part, indeed, I cannot think that in life such a man as Boswell would have been edified or inspired to any great work by a close and personal intercourse with yourself, for instance. ”

“ It’s my ordinary rule of life,” he replied. “I never do take advice. I’m not a congenital idiot. Let us say to-morrow.”
Now, upon the Stock Exchange we have a universal system by which honour stands for security. In our peculiar business relations this principle is absolutely necessary. And it seldom fails. There is a simple, pathetic trust amongst us unknown in other walks of life. ”

“ She struck me as being a trifle vulgar. I could not imagine a man was living in London or the suburbs who would have married her in cold blood.
After I had visited at their little house near Regent’s Park on two or three occasions, Robinson came to smoke a pipe with me at my bachelor diggings. During that evening our friendship advanced by leaps and bounds. We were both communicative and emptied a bottle of whisky and called each other by our Christian names for the first time, and gave each other a great deal of sound advice. By the way, can an esoteric Buddhist have a Christian name? ”

“ He has, despite his frivolous affectation of gloom, the cheerfulness of a caged lark, and may, indeed, be likened to that sprightly songster at many points. There is a riotous joy of life in him, as in the bird, which, exhibited even in a prisoned fowl at all seasons, becomes irritating, but which, displayed in a human creature, must cause first amazement, then annoyance, and finally contempt. ”

“ THE BIOGRAPHY OF PETER PARKINSON WITHIN the confines of that hidden state rather humorously called “the other world”—as if the worlds numbered no more than two—we enjoy a measure of knowledge which you mundane folks are but now attaining through processes both painful and slow. ”

“ However, Robinson understood it and stepped to the bar.
“You do look a fool!” he remarked. Then he explained the fiendish thing he had done.
“You see, a tiger doesn’t run a soul, Tarver, so I’ve just drawn yours out of your wretched carcase and popped it into this creature. Now, for all practical purposes you’re a Bengal tiger, and you’ll have to remain one until you grow reasonable. I rather fancy you’ll be fed at four.”
If I could have got out at that moment, Mahatma or no Mahatma, Robinson would have had a painful experience. I was, honestly, as angry as a man or beast can be. ”

“ He wears an eyeglass with difficulty, waxes the points of an indifferent moustache, sports a red tie by day, diamonds by night, and is, to conclude, within the bounds of charity, the most unutterably deplorable parody of a human being that Nature ever turned out during a moment of weakness. So much for a mere judicial summary of Greensmith. ”

“ You talk of common-sense, and lay down vague, not to say inane rules for other people to follow, and pose as a sort of Book of Wisdom thrown open to the public every afternoon in this smoking-room; but anybody can talk. Now, I’ll bet you a thousand pounds that you’ll not take the advice of your fellow-man for twelve consecutive hours. ”

“ JOHNSON’S BOSWELL LEARNING from a source sufficiently credible that the young Scotchman James Boswell, son and heir to the Laird of Auchinleck, designs some future biography of myself, I have favoured him with a measure of my company and conversation naturally denied to most men of his age. His attainments, without being considerable, are varied, and though the man’s garrulity can command neither respect nor admiration, yet there is about him a charm of rude health, high spirits, and good temper, which to undervalue or overlook would be at once unreasonable and unfair. ”

“ THE FIRST WORD UPON my honour, some married people don’t deserve to have a baby at all. Take my parents. Here am I just about to celebrate the first anniversary of my birthday, and, candidly, at times I feel disposed to give up fighting even here, on the very threshold of a career which many experts have agreed to consider most promising. If it were not for my bottle-holder, I should have thrown up the sponge long ago. My papa and mamma, to be frank, get on my nerves and age me; my nurse alone has power to calm the storm. ”

“ A phantom rarely reaches the age of three hundred without learning to control his temper.
“Physical bravery may be shown to greater advantage than in the hunting-field,” said Mr. Warren, answering the Squire.
“It may, I grant you, but that is a right good school for it; and a man who loses nerve at a critical moment there will, in my judgment, be likely to do so all through his life.”
“Are there no brave men who do not hunt?” asked Ethel. ”

“ The omnibus proceeded without me, for I was now separated from it by a crowd. The fog thickened, lurid lights flashed in it, my head whirled, the man who had whispered congratulations in my ear endeavoured to take my watch, and I was just going to cry for the police, when my recumbent victim, assisted, to my amazement, by the tigerish woman, rose, clothed in mud as with a garment, and advanced upon me.
There are times and seasons when argument and even frank apology is useless. ”