Hugh Walpole

“ They sat down. Harkness between the elder Crispin and the girl. The night was black beyond their windows. Crispin pressed the button. The interior of the car was at once in darkness, and instantly the night was no longer black but purple and threaded with wisps of grey lavender that seemed to hold in their spider filigree all the loaded scent of the summer evening. Again, as the car turned into the long ribbon of the dark road. Harkness was conscious through the open window of the smell of innumerable roses, the late evening smell when the heat of the day is over and the flowers are grateful. ”

“ I've fallen in love, and I know at last that there's such a hunger for beauty in my soul that it must go on and on and on. Why should it be there? My parents hadn't it, my sisters haven't it, no one tried to give it to me. I've done nothing with it until last night, but now when I've needed it, it's come to my help. I've touched life at last. I'm alive. I never can die any more!"
The macaw screamed again and again, beating at the cage with its wings.
"Hesther, never lose courage. Remember that he can't touch you, that no one can touch you. You're your own immortal mistress." ”

“ Along the market-place went the beadle, the drum, the trumpet and the flute.
For a moment a marvellous silence fell.
To Harkness this silence was exquisite. The myriad stars, the high buildings, their façades ruby-coloured with the leaping light, the dark piled background, the crowd humming now with quiet, like water on the boil, the glow of rich suffused colour sheltering everything with its beautiful cloak, the rich voices tossing into the air the jolly song, the sense of well-being and the tradition of the lasting old time and the spirit of England eternally fresh and sturdy and strong ”

“ But don't miss—oh, don't miss!—the love of a man like Dunbar. There's so little of that unselfish devoted love in the world, and when it comes to you it's a crime to miss it."
"But you can't force yourself to love any one!" she cried, sharply.
"No, you can't force yourself, but it's strange what seeing new qualities in some one, looking at some one from another angle, will do. Try and look at him as though you'd met him for the first time, forget that you've known him always. I tell you that he's one in a million!" ”

“ His lids were closed over his eyes, lying like little pieces of pale yellow parchment under the faint red eyelashes.
"Here we are!" he cried. "Out you get, Herrick." And as Harkness stepped out of the car something deep within him whispered: "I am going to be hurt. Pain is coming——"
Before him swung a cavern of light. It swung because on his stepping from the car he was dizzy, dizzy with a kind of poignant thick scent in the soul's nostrils, deep deep down as though he were at the edge of being spiritually anæsthetised. ”

“ The path appeared. "Tell me, did you have a queer time with Crispin—the elder one, I mean?"
"I've never had so strange a conversation with any one," said Harkness. "Madness is a queer thing when you are in actual contact with it, because we have, every one of us, enough madness in ourselves to wonder whether some one else is so mad after all. He talked the most awful nonsense, and dangerous nonsense too, but there was a kind of theory behind it, something that almost held it all together. A sort of pathos too, so that you felt, in spite of yourself, sorry for the man." ”

“ Every one was splitting up into little groups, some to look at the fireworks, some to have a last drink together, some to creep off into the dark shadows and there confirm their vows, some to drive home on their carts and waggons to their distant farms, some to sit in their homes for a last chatting about all the news, some to go straight to their beds—the common impulse was over although it would not be forgotten.
Harkness looked around to find Gideon, but that giant was gone nor was he ever to see him again. ”

“ Harkness found, therefore, what at first seemed to be naked pandemonium and, stepping into it, crossed into the third room of his house of delivery. The old buildings—the town hall, the church, the old grey tower—were lit up as though by some supernatural splendour, all the lights of the booths, the hanging clusters of fairy lamps, and, in the very middle of the place, a huge bonfire flinging arms of flame to heaven. ”

“ Harkness was crushed in upon his enormous friend so completely that he had no other impression for the moment but of a vast expanse of heaving, leaping, corduroy waistcoat, of a hard brass button in his eye, and of himself clutching with both hands to a shiny trouser that must hold himself from falling. But they were off indeed! Four of them now in a row and the song was swinging fine and strong. One—two—three, one—two—three. Forward bend, one leg in air, backward bend, t'other leg in air, forward bend again, down the market-place and round the corner voices raised in one tremendous song. ”

“ Chinese work of carved ivory and jade, cap ornaments exquisitely worked, a cap of a Chinese emperor with its embroidered gold dragon and its crown of pearls. Then the inlaid Chinese feather work, and at the sight of these tears of pleasure came into Harkness's eyes, cells made as though for cloisonné enamel, and into these are daintily affixed tiny fragments of king-fisher feather. Colours of blue, green and mauve here blend and tone one into another miraculously, and the effect of all is a glittering sheen of gold and blue. ”

“ A glittering candelabrum, hanging high up, was fully lit, but it seemed to give a very feeble illumination, as though the fog had penetrated here also.
Crispin was wearing white silk pyjamas, brown leather slippers, and a dressing-gown of a rich bronze-coloured silk flowered with gold buds and leaves. His eyes were half-closed, as though the light, dim though it was, was too strong for him. His face wore a look of petulant rather childish melancholy. The two servants were statues indeed, no sign of life proceeding from them. ”

“ Even as he spoke it swept up, thick and grey deeper than before. The trees disappeared, the hedges. They had once more to grope for one another's hands and walk close.
Harkness could feel from the way that Hesther leaned against him, and the drag of her feet, that she was near the end of her endurance. She said nothing. Only walked on and on.
They were all now silent. They must have walked it seemed to them, for miles. An endless walk that had no beginning and no end. And then Harkness was strangely aware—how, he never knew—that Dunbar and Hesther were drawing closer together. ”

“ All the soil of the English country, all the deep lanes with their high dark hedges, the russet cornfields with their sudden dips to the sea, the high ridges with the white cottages perched like birds resting against the sky, the smell of the earth, the savour of the leaves wet after rain, the thick smoke and damp of the closed-in rooms, the mud, the clay, the running streams, the wind through the thick-sheltering trees, all these were in Gideon's speech as he stood, close pressed, thigh to thigh with Harkness. ”

“ If ever I have been justified in any action of my life it has been this, in helping that poor girl out of the hands of those two men. All the same . . . oh! it's sad, Dunbar! There is something so tragic in madness, whether it's dangerous or no—something captive, like a bird in a cage, and something common to us all. . . ."
"Well, if you think that the kind of things that Crispin Senior is after are common to us all you must have a pretty low view of humanity. The beastly swine! Something pathetic? Why, you're a curious fellow, Harkness, to feel pathos in that situation." ”

“ Let us go. You'll never hear from any of us again. In the morning, in the decent daylight, you'll know that you've won a victory more important than any you've ever won in your life.
"You talk about mastering us, man. Master your own evil spirit. You know that you loathe it, that you've loathed it for years, that you are miserable and wretched under it. It is life or death for you to-night, I tell you. You know that as well as I."
For one moment, a brief flashing moment, Harkness met for the first and for the last time the real Crispin. No one else saw that meeting. ”

“ I want to go home only for a little while. Just for a week before we go abroad."
"All our plans are made now. You know that we are sailing to-morrow evening."
"Yes, but I could come afterwards. . . . Forgive me, Herrick. You may do anything to me if I can only go home for just some days. . . . You may do anything. . . ."
"I don't want to do anything, Hesther. No one wishes to do you any harm. But whatever my father wishes that every one must do. It has always been so."
She seemed to be seized by an absolute frenzy of fear; Harkness could see her white shadow quivering. ”

“ Harkness showed me. I've been so selfish all these years, and I suppose I shall go on being selfish, because one doesn't change all in a minute, but at least I've got the two best friends a woman ever had."
"Hesther," Dunbar said, turning towards her, "if we get free of this and you can get rid of that man—I ask you as I've asked you every week for the last ten years—will you marry me?"
"Yes," she said. But for the moment she turned to Harkness. He was looking through the bars out to the sky where the mist was now very faintly rose like the coloured smoke of far distant fire. ”

“ I've never had any leaning that way, but I take it that the moment that any one crosses the division between sanity and insanity it means that they can control their brain no longer, that they are dominated by some desire or ambition or lust or terror that nothing can stop, no fear of the law, of public shame, of losing social caste. Crispin is mad, and Hesther, whom I love more than anything in this world and the next, is in his hands completely and absolutely. They go abroad to-morrow morning where no one can touch them. ”

“ Harkness answered.
"It's rather strange to have the friend of your life explained to you by some one who has known him only for an hour or two." She laughed a little angrily.
"But that's just why I'm speaking," he answered. "When you've known some one all your life you can't see them clearly. That's why one's own family always knows so little about one. You can't see the wood for the trees. In the first minutes a stranger sees more. I don't say that I know Dunbar as well as you do—I only say that I probably see things in him that you don't see." ”

“ He stumbled as he walked, and at his side, step by step in time the Fog accompanied him, a mountainous grey-swathed giant.
He was talking, words were for ever pouring from him, words mixed with fog, so that they were damp and thick before ever they were free. "In life there are not, you know, enough moments of clear understanding. Between nations, between individuals, those moments are too often confused by winds that, blowing from nowhere in particular, ruffle the clear water where peace of mind and love of soul for soul are reflected. ”