H. Rider Haggard

“ For her and those like her are vain regrets and an empty love and longing, and the wreath of thorns that crowns the brow where sorrow is enthroned.
Yet, Eva, lift that fevered head, and turn those seeking eyes to heaven. See, through the casement, above the tumult of the storm, there gleams a star. For you, too, there shines a star called Hope, but it is set in no earthly sky. Have patience, wayward heart, there is but a space of trouble. As you suffer, so have millions suffered, and are they not at peace? ”

“ Unhappy woman, stretch out those longing arms in supplication to the God of sorrows for strength to bear your load, since here it shall not be lightened. The burdens which Providence binds on our backs, Providence will sometimes lessen, but those which our own folly fastens remain till death deliver us.
So, Eva, dry your tears, for they can avail you naught, and go get you to your daily task—go tend your children, and smile that sweet sad smile on all alike, and wait. As you have sowed so shall you reap, but seed-time is not done; not yet is the crop white to the harvest. ”

“ Florence for a moment was abashed, and turned her face aside.
“And you, Eva—how can you become a party to such a shameful thing? You, a good girl, to sell yourself away from dear Ernest to such a man as that”; and again she pointed contemptuously at Mr. Plowden.
“Oh, don't, Dorothy, don't; it is my duty. You don't understand.”
“Yes, Eva, I do understand. I understand that it is your duty to drown yourself before you do such a thing. I am a woman as well as you, and though I am not beautiful, I have a heart and a conscience, and I understand only too well.” ”

“ Florence turned on him with bitter scorn.
“Gentlemen! Mr. Plowden, why is the word so often on your lips? Surely, after the part you have just played, you do not presume to rank yourself among gentlemen? Listen! it suits my purposes that you should marry Eva, and you shall marry her; but I will not stoop to play the hypocrite with a man like you. You talk of yourself as a gentleman, and do not scruple to force an innocent girl into a wicked marriage, and to crush her spirit with your cunning cruelty. A gentleman, forsooth!—a satyr, a devil in disguise!” ”

“ Ernest, sitting there, wondered whether he would live to see another night, and, if not, what the nights were like in the land whither he was journeying. And as he thought of it the gray damps that hide that unrisen world from our gaze struck into his soul and made him feel afraid. Not afraid of death, but afraid of the empty loneliness beyond it—of the cold air of an infinite space in which nothing human can live. ”

“ Its tall tower, pointing like a great finger up to heaven, looked very solemn on that quiet September evening as the crowd of church-goers passed beneath its shadow into the old doorway, through which most of them had been carried to their christening, and would in due time be carried to their burial. At least so thought Eva and Dorothy, as they stood for a moment by the monument to “five unknown sailors,” washed ashore after a great gale, and buried in a common grave. How many suffering, erring human beings had stood upon the same spot and thought the same thoughts! ”

“ Plowden,” went on Dorothy, “you are right: it would be wicked, but not so wicked as to marry you. God gave us women our lives, but He put a spirit in our hearts which tells us that we should rather throw them away than suffer ourselves to be degraded. Oh, Eva, tell me that you will not do this shameful thing. No, do not whisper to her, Florence.”
“Dorothy, Dorothy,” said Eva, rising and wringing her hands, “it is all useless. Do not break my heart with your cruel words. I must marry him. I have fallen into the power of people who do not know what mercy is.” ”

“ It was not possible to know Ernest Kershaw at any period of his life without taking a fancy to him, he was so eminently and unaffectedly a gentleman, and so completely free from any sort of swagger. Always ready to do a kindness, and never forgetting one done, generous with his possessions to such an extent that he seemed to have a vague idea that they were the common property of his friends and himself, possessing that greatest of gifts, a sympathetic mind, and true as steel, no wonder that he was always popular both with men and women. ”

“ We age so much quicker, you know. I feel about old enough to be your mother,” she said, with a pretty assumption of dignity.
“And I feel quite old enough to be your lover,” he replied, impertinently.
“So it seems. But, Ernest, if three months ago anybody had told me that I should be in love to-day with a boy of twenty-one, I would not have believed them. Dear, I have given you all my heart; you will not betray me, will you? You know very young men are apt to change their minds.” ”

“ A moment still she wavered, fighting against the sweet mastery of his will with all her woman's strength, and then—O Heaven! it was done, and his arms were round about her, her head upon his breast, and her voice was lost in sobs and broken words of love.
O, radiant-winged hour of more than mortal joy; the hearts which you have touched will know when their time comes that they have not been quite in vain! ”

“ The cherubic Jasper had screwed an eyeglass into his round eye, and through it was contemplating Eva with astonished ecstasy; but, like most very beautiful women, she was used to that sort of thing, and it only amused her faintly. Mr. Plowden, too, was used to it, and took it as a personal compliment.
“I am delighted,” she murmured, and held out her hand.
The cherub, suddenly awaking to the fact, dropped his eyeglass, and, plunging at the hand, seized it as a pike does a little fish, and shook it with enthusiasm. ”

“ Before them is the wide sluice; if they are mortal, they will turn or plunge into it. No; the great black horse gathers himself, and springs into the air.
By Heaven, he has cleared it! No horse ever took that leap before, or will again. On at whirlwind speed towards the shuddering quicksand two hundred yards away!
Splash! Horse and man are in it, making the moist mass shake and tremble for twenty yards round. The bright moonlight shows it all. The horse shrieks in fear and agony, as only a horse can; the man on its back waves the spear. ”

“ Still as a statue he stood before them, his plume bending in the breeze; and Dorothy, looking with wondering eyes, marvelled at the broad chest scarred all over with assegai wounds, and the huge sinewy limbs. Suddenly he raised the spear, and saluted in sonorous tones:
“Koos! Baba!”
“Speak,” said Ernest.
“I speak, Mazimba, my father. I come to meet my father as a man meets a man. I come with spear and shield, but not in war. With my father I came from the land of the sun into this cold land, where the sun is as pale as the white faces it shines on. Is it not so, my father?” ”

“ Which is the superior of the two—the woman or the man? In strength we have the advantage, but in intellect she is almost our equal, if only we will give her fair-play. And in purity, in tenderness, in long-suffering, in fidelity, in all the Christian virtues, which is the superior in these things? O man, whoever you are, think of your mother and your sisters; think of her who nursed you in sickness, of her who stood by you in trouble when all others would have none of you, and then answer. Poor Eva! ”

“ I am only your true friend now, Ernest; and it is as a friend that I wish to say a word to you about Eva—a word of warning.”
“Go on.”
“You love Eva, and Eva loves you, Ernest; but remember this, she is weak as water. She always was so from a child; those beautiful women often are; Nature does not give them everything, you see.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I say, nothing more. She is very weak; and you must not be surprised if she throws you over.”
“Good heavens, Florence! Why, she loves me with all her heart!”
“Yes; but women often think of other things besides their hearts. ”

“ I have always loved him; I always shall love him. I love him so well that I can do my duty to him, Reginald. It is my duty to strain every nerve to prevent this marriage. I had rather that my heart should ache than Ernest’s. I implore of you to help me.”
“Dorothy, it has always been my dearest wish that you should marry Ernest. I told him so just before that unhappy duel. I love you both. All the fibres of my heart that are left alive have wound themselves around you. Jeremy I could never care for. Indeed, I fear that I used sometimes to treat the boy harshly. He reminds me so of his father. ”

“ As soon as he was gone Eva flung herself down on the sofa and sobbed as though her heart would break.
When Dorothy saw a fresh-faced young officer, who had come up to see Ernest, mysteriously lead him aside, and whisper something in his ear which caused him to turn first red and then white, being a shrewd observer, she thought it curious. But when Ernest asked her to ring the bell and ordered a fly to be brought round at once, the idea of Eva at once flashed into her mind. She and no other must be at the bottom of this mystery. ”

“ Then slowly Jeremy began to gather purchase, swaying backwards and forwards, and the Dutchman swayed with him.
“Make an end of him! make an end of him!” shouted the Boers. But behold! their champion's eyes are starting from his blackened face; his head sinks lower and lower, his buttocks rise; he cannot stir.
To and fro sways Jeremy, and now the giant's feet are lifted from the ground. Then one slow and mighty effort—oh, gallant Jeremy!—up, still up above the gasping of the wonder-stricken crowd, up to his shoulder—by Heaven, over it! ”

“ Dorothy tossed her head and coloured.
“It is not a question of consolation,” she said; “it is a question of Ernest’s happiness in life.”
“Don’t alarm yourself, Dorothy; people’s happiness is not so easily affected. He will forget all about her in a year.”
“I think that men always talk of each other like that, Reginald,” said Dorothy, resting her head upon her hands, and looking straight at the old gentleman. “Each of you likes to think that he has a monopoly of feeling, and that the rest of his kind are as shallow as a milk-pan. ”

“ Presently it came; it was powerful and even musical, but coarse.
“He is not a gentleman,” thought Eva to herself; and then dismissing him and his sermon too from her mind, she leaned back against the poppy-head at the end of the pew, half-closed her eyes, and let her thoughts wander in the way that thoughts have the power to do in church. Far cross the sea they flew, to where a great vessel, labouring in a heavy gale, was ploughing her steady way along—to where a young man stood clinging to the iron stanchions, and gazed out into the darkness with sorrow in his eyes. ”

“ Marriage with a woman of high caste, quick intellect, and beauty, might give him the tone that his social system so sadly needed. He was a man in a good position, he had money, he had intelligence of a robust if of a coarse order, he had fairly good looks, and he was only thirty-five; why should he not marry blood, brains, and beauty, and shine with a reflected splendour?
Such were the thoughts which were simmering in the astute brain of the Reverend James Plowden when he first set eyes upon Eva Ceswick in the old church at Kesterwick. ”

“ Thou art right: now is my life the life of a woman; never again shall I hear the sound of rifles or the ringing of steel in war. And so thou goest, Mazooku. It is well. But at times thou wilt think of thy blind master Mazimba, and of Alston, the wise captain who sleeps, and of the Lion who threw the ox over his shoulder. ”

“ Cardus, Jeremy, and a few idlers, who, seeing the church door open, had strolled in to see what was going on. Indeed, the marriage had been kept a profound secret; for since he had been blind, Ernest had developed a great dislike to being stared at. Nor, indeed, had he any liking for the system under which a woman proclaims with loud and unseemly rejoicings that she has found a man to marry her, and the clan of her relations celebrate her departure with a few outward and visible tears and much inward and spiritual joy. ”

“ Shortly afterwards Dorothy and Ernest also went to bed, reaching their room by a back entrance, for they neither of them felt inclined to come under the fire of the crystal eyes again, and soon they were asleep in each other's arms.
The minutes stole on one by one through the dead silence of the night, bearing their records with them to the archives of the past. Eleven o'clock came and fled away; midnight came too, and swept across the world. Everywhere—on land, sky, and sea—there was silence, nothing but silence sleeping in the moonlight. ”

“ Faith, perfect faith, is only to be won by struggle, and in most cultivated minds by the passage through the dim, mirage-clad land of disbelief. The true believer is he who has trodden down disbelief, not he who has run away from it. When we have descended from the height of our childhood, when we have entertained Apollyon, and having considered what he has to say, given him battle and routed him in the plain, then, and not till then, can we say with guileless hearts, “Lord, I believe,” and feel no need to add the sadly qualifying words, “help Thou mine unbelief.” ”

“ The eyes of a corpse are shut, but the eyes in this head were wide open, and the long black lashes, as perfect now as on the day of death, hung over what, when the light struck them, appeared to be two balls of trembling fire, that glittered and rolled and fixed themselves upon the face of the observer like living human eyes. ”

“ The mist will cease to rise, and fall again in rain, and bring a blessing; but the incense of human suffering rises night and day for so long as the earth shall endure, nor does it fall again in dews of mercy. ”

“ To Eva it had been and was a sorrow, sometimes a very real one; to Ernest, the destruction of all that made life worth living. The contrast, indeed, was almost pitiable, it was so striking; so wide a gulf was fixed between the two. The passion of the one was a wretched thing compared to the other. But both were real; it was merely a difference of degree. If Eva’s affection was weak when measured by Ernest’s, it was because the soil in which it grew was poorer. She gave all she had to give. ”