Frank Frankfort Moore

“ It’s marvellous what a glint of moonlight can do. It throws a glamour over the essentially commonplace, the same way that—well, that that fancy known as love does upon occasions, otherwise the plain features of a woman would perish from the earth and not be perpetuated. The lumpy daughter of the village who exists simply to show what an artist was Jean François Millet, appears down there to float through the moonlight like the restless spirit of a princess. Is she coming to meet the spirit of her lover at their old trysting-place? ”

“ She was in a passion of indignation.
“Edmund Airey and his tricks were defeated,” said Harold in a low voice. “Yes, we have got the better of him, Beatrice, so much is certain.”
“But the cruelty of it—the cruelty—oh, what does it matter now?” she cried. Then her paleness vanished into a delicate roseate flush, as she gave a laugh, and said, “After all, I believe that my indignation is due only to my wounded vanity. Yes, all girls are alike, Harold. Our vanity is our dominant quality.” ”

“ The moon was at its full. It had arisen some little way up the sky and was showering its red gold down the slopes of the two cone-shaped mountains that guard the pass of Lamdhu; the deep glen was flooded with moonlight—Harold could perceive in its hollows such objects as were scarcely visible on the ordinary gray days of the West of Ireland. Then he walked until he was on the brink of the great cliffs overhanging the lough. From the high point on which he stood he could follow all the curves of the lough out to the headlands at its entrance seven miles away. ”

“ Harold remained on his feet in front of the window, and Edmund remained watching him until the streak of crimson had dwindled to a flaming Rahab thread. The servants entered the room with coffee, and brought out many subtle gleams from the old oak by lighting the candles in the silver sconces.
Every time that the door was opened, the sound of a human voice (female) trying, but with indifferent success, to scale the heights of a song that had been saleable by reason of its suggestions of passion—drawing-room passion—saleable passion—fought its way through the tobacco smoke of the dining-hall. ”

“ Harold lay back on his chair and laughed at first; then he gazed at her in wonder.
“You are cleverer than Edmund Airey and Helen Craven when they combine their wisdom,” said he. “Your woman’s instinct is worth more than their experience.”
“I never knew what the instincts of a woman were before this morning,” said she. “I never felt that I had any need to exercise the instinct of defence. I suppose the young seal, though it has never been in the water, jumps in by instinct should it be attacked. Oh, yes, I dare say I could swim as well as most girls of my age.” ”

“ Oh, my Beatrice, you have taught me what ‘tis to love. There is nothing in the world but love, it is life—it is life!”
“And there are none in the world who love as you and I do.”
His face shut out the moonlight from hers. There was a long silence before she said, “It was only when you had parted from me every day that I knew what you were to me, Harold. Ah, those bitter moments! Those sad Good-byes—sad Good-nights out of the moonlight from hers. There was a long silence before she said, “It was only when you had parted from me every day that I knew what you were to me, Harold. ”

“ But when the headlands at the entrance were reached, the company who sat on the weather side of the cutter Acushla became aware of a commingling of sounds. The organ voice of the lough only filled up the intervals between the tremendous roar of the lion-throated waves that sprang with an appalling force half way up the black faces of the sheer cliffs, and broke in mid-air. All day long and all night long those inexhaustible billows come rushing upon that coast; and watching them and listening to them one feels how mean are contemporary politics as well as other things. ”

“ The cries of the poor girl were heard on both sides of the Lough—the blessed Lough where we’re now floating—but no one was brave enough to put out to the rescue of the Princess—no one, did I say? Who is it that makes a quick leap off the cliffs into the rolling waters beneath? He fights his way, strong swimmer that he is! through the surge, and, unseen by any eye by reason of the fog, he reaches the Princess’s boat. Her cries cease. And a keen arises along the cliffs of Carrigorm, for her friends think that she has been swallowed up in the cruel waves. ”

“ Was it possible that Harold intended spending the day aboard the cutter, Edmund asked himself.
Harold’s mood of the previous evening had been quite intelligible to him—he had confessed to Miss Craven that he understood and even sympathized with him. He was the man who was putting off the plunge as long as possible, he felt.
But he knew that that attitude, if prolonged, not only becomes ridiculous, but positively verges on the indecent. It is one thing to pause for a minute on the brink of the deep water, and quite another to remain shivering on the rock for half a day. ”

“ The sea and sky were equally gray, but now and again a sudden gleam of sunshine would come from some unsuspected rift in the motionless clouds, and fly along the crests of the waves, revealing a green transparency for an instant, and then, flashing upon the sails, make apparent every patch in their expanse, just as a flash of lightning on a dark night reveals for a second every feature of a broad landscape. ”

“ If Edmund Airey, who, at first, had merely been attracted to Beatrice with a view of furthering what Helen Craven believed to be her interests, had come to regard her differently—as he, Harold, assumed that he had—might it not be possible, he asked himself, that Beatrice, who had just admitted that she had always had some sort of admiration for Edmund Airey, would———-
“Never, never, never!” he cried. “She is all that is good and true and faithful. She is mine—altogether mine!” ”

“ There is nothing indefinite in love.”
“My Beatrice, you cannot think that I would ask you for your love without hoping to marry you?”
“Then let us be married to-morrow.”
She did not laugh, speaking the words. He could see that she would not hesitate to marry him at any moment.
“Would to heaven that we could be, my dearest! But could there be anything more cruel than for a penniless man, such as I am, to ask a girl, such as you are, to marry him?” ”

“ Her hands were clasped over her heart—the lamplight gleamed upon the blood-red circle of rubies on the one ring that she wore—it had never left her finger.
He came into the room. She only retreated one step.
“For God’s sake, Beatrice, do not call me husband! I am not your husband!”
She came toward him; and now the look of fear that she had worn, became one of sympathy. Her eyes were full of tears as she said, “My poor Harold, you have all the sympathy—the compassion—the love of my heart. You know it.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know it. I know what is in your heart. ”

“ He could not love with that blind, unreasoning, uncalculating love—that love which knows only heaven and hell, not earth. That perfect love, which casteth out distrust, was not the love of his world.
And thus it was that he walked to his rooms, thinking by what means he could bind that girl to him, so that she should be bound beyond the possibility of chance, or craft, or worldliness coming between them. ”

“ Durdan, who seemed to think that the remark was in logical sequence with Harold’s story.
Beatrice looked wonderingly at the speaker; it was some moments before she found an echo in the expression on Harold’s face to what she felt.
The man who could think of such things as the breaking up of a government, when floating in thirty fathoms of green sea, beneath the shadow of such cliffs as the boat was approaching, was a mystery to the girl, though she was the daughter of one of the nineteenth century historians, to whom nothing is a mystery. ”

“ It was the constant attempt to answer this question that gave the stag his chance of life when, on the afternoon of the third day, Harold was commanded by his masters the gillies to fire into that thickening in the mist which he was given to understand by an unmistakable pantomime, was the stag.
While the gillies were exchanging their remarks in Gaelic, flavouring them with very smoky whiskey, he was thinking, not of the escape of the stag, but of what possible end there could be to the love that existed between Beatrice and himself. ”

“ He felt quite equal to the act of looking beneath the glory and the glamour of the moonlight and of seeing there only the commonplace. He was, he believed, in a mood to revel in the disillusion of a man.
And yet he watched the progress of the boat through the glittering waters, without removing his eyes from it.
The white figure in the boat was so white as to seem the centre of the light that flashed along the ripples and silvered the faces of the cliffs—so much was apparent to him in spite of his mood. ”

“ He was not, however, much worse than the general run of people. Like them he knew only enough of Shakespeare to be able to misquote him now and again; and, like them, he believed that. Darwinism meant nothing more than that men had once been monkeys.
Harold looked at Archie, and felt that Mrs. Mowbray was a fortunate woman in having met with him. The monument was being raised, Harold felt; and he was right. The management of the Legitimate-Theatre was a memorial to Vanity working heart, and soul with Ignorance to the praise and glory of Shakespeare. ”

“ Yes, he would go to her and tell her that the conclusion to which he had come was that they must forget one another—that only unhappiness could result from the relationship that existed between them. He knew that there is no more unsatisfactory relationship between a man and a woman than that which has love for a basis, but with no prospect of marriage; and he knew that so long as his father lived and continued selfish—and only death could divide him from his selfishness—marriage with Beatrice was out of the question. ”

“ Yes, some poet or other had written something or other on the subject of the great charm of a life of domesticity, and Lord Fotheringay assured Lady Innisfail in confidence that that poet was right.
Lady Innisfail sighed and said that the Home—the English Home—with its simple pleasures and innocent mirth, was where the Heart—the English Heart—was born. What happiness was within the reach of all if they would only be content with the Home! Society might be all very well in its way. There were duties to be discharged—every rank in life carried its duties with it ”

“ Never mind Edmund Airey. You, yourself, can see, Beatrice, how impossible it would be for any man with the least sense of honour, situated as I am, to ask you to wait—to wait for something indefinite. ”