Richard Dowling

“ To think of shaking off the dust of the weary world, and gathering oneself into this pastoral Warwick, sunk in the memories of its histories and of its great son: in an English orchard with gentle Kate, with gentle Kate! 'Oh my Kate! Who could ever have fancied I should turn out such a lover? Love cannot beautify me, but it beautifies all the rest of the world for me; and what need I care for my ill-looks so long as my Kate cares for me and is at my side? Under an apple-tree in an English garden! What a handsome fellow that Osborne is! ”

“ Fancy--for you have the temperament of a poet, if you have not the art--fancy gold and iron now blazing in the sun, and mountains of flaming hydrogen springing two thousand miles into space! Fancy the history of the world as now read by science, compared with the history of the world read by our grandfathers! Why, sir, they lived on the crust of the earth, with only a day and a night of history revealed to them, with souls that only wondered at the stars, and eyes that saw no further into earth than a mole will burrow. ”

“ Oh Life, thou givest to us full sensations in our pulses! Oh Death, thou takest Goddess and Paradise and sensations all away! Cruel Life, to give us woman and earth! Vile Love, to give us goddess and Paradise! Blessed be kindly Death, that putteth all our pains and all our longings, all our hopes and all our sorrows, all our memories and all our dreams away for ever in the great sable storehouse of forlorn void! Once more George Osborne banished thought as, leaving London Road, he passed through St George's Circus into Westminster Bridge Road. ”

“ If I was a man I should go crazy over her.' 'And now, Miss Gordon,' said Mrs Osborne, 'if you come with me, I will show you your room.' When his mother and sweetheart had left the room, George went to Kate; and said, in a low voice,--' I never expected my mother to take to Marie so kindly. I am amazed. Can you make it out, Kate? As a rule, mother is so slow to get on with people. Did you ever see mother so amiable before?' he asked, in a tone of proud triumph. 'No; but who can help liking, who can help loving Marie? I know no one who could resist her. ”

“ But, Mrs Osborne, we must not believe all we hear on our travels--' 'Nor, Mr Nevill,' said Alice, 'all we hear when we sit at home.' 'Nor, Miss Osborne, as you say, all we hear when we sit at home, except when we have the word of a credible eye-witness. In this case I would not dream of asking you to believe Cross-Poll caught a bull by the horns and swung the beast around his head, for I did not see it, and I make it a point never to accept as true wonders at second hand. If a thing isn't good enough to happen in my presence, I am not going to bother my friends or burden my memory with it. ”

“ Osborne was shocked by it. Mrs Barclay exclaimed, 'What is the matter with you, Miss Gordon? You look as if you had had no sleep.' 'I have had no sleep,' she said gravely, as she sat down. 'No sleep! What was the matter? Are you not well?' 'I am quite well, thank you. I did not feel sleepy. I couldn't sleep. That is all.' 'Bless my soul!' cried Nevill. 'Miss Gordon, what an extraordinary thing to find a great traveller like you cannot sleep! I can scarcely believe it. I thought travellers were commanders-in-chief of sleep. I have never yet been beaten by sleep. ”

“ Anything but this cold-blooded prying into Nature, this wilful disturbing of things settled for thousands of years. What had satisfied a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Dante, might surely satisfy Nevill and himself. While Osborne was earnestly wishing the address over, that they might go away, a great buzz and commotion arose. Most of the men got on their feet, wiped their spectacles, and looked eagerly in the direction of the speaker, who was holding up in one hand the thigh-bone of a man, and in the other a stone vessel like a chemist's mortar. ”

“ How much more merciful to kill all than to leave some to mourn! Suppose he had been in London at the time, it would have been hard upon his mother and sister; much harder than if the whole family had been carried off together, for then they would have had no earthly sorrow, and would have entered at once upon their heavenly union hereafter. His mother and his sisters were all the people in the world who would grieve for him. He had no other relatives now. All his other relatives were dead, and he had no close friend, no friend who would say more than 'Poor Osborne!' in a passing kindly way. ”

“ A month, a little month of thirty days! Only a month. I know many men think the month before they receive the hand they court a century. To me it seems but an hour, a moment. I am not a child, impatient to possess a new toy. I am a man who has set his heart on obtaining a noble object, and I am so profoundly grateful for my success I can think of nothing but that some day soon you will be mine. The fact that you will be mine is everything. I could have waited for you years. But as you said, the sooner the better.--I am, my darling love, your own sweetheart,
George. ”

“ I place my goddess with the unalterable deities of the ideal. She shall never be other to me than she is. I shall marry some day, I suppose; but I shall never marry her. The emotions which lead men to marriage have no connection with what I now feel. While I am under the spell of her presence I shall enjoy this madness. When she is gone I shall live in the light of a memory. 'I shall stay in London. I shall take chambers and live alone, that is, unless I marry. I shall lead my old life, read by night, and wander about by day. ”

“ For what are these thousands of men hurrying into this vast human camp every year? To seek employment, pleasure, oblivion, fame, instruction, solitude, wealth, friends--and to find in the end--a grave. Yearly an army equal to that just passed through London Road comes to increase London, over and above its yearly loss. Among those who had come into London to find pleasure and instruction was he himself. What had he found? Love. Oh Life, thou givest to us woman and earth. Oh Love, thou transmutest woman and earth into goddess and Paradise! ”

“ You are like us, merely the result of the great current of life striking the shore. While the river flows by banks, you have voice, as we. But in the great ocean beyond the shores of time you shall be like us, dumb. You are no better than we, or these rushes here, in anything you can show, except that you enjoy more privileges. Fools, why should you not be content? Is it not much to be lords of earth, without aspiring to be peers of heaven?" 'Has it all come to this? Has it all come to this at last? Mother and Alice away in Stratford, are they nothing more than ripples on the stream of life? ”

“ I am not so foolish or so wicked as to play with the man I love; and I am glad to think my George has not fallen in love with a woman whose pretty face and figure are all she has worth his consideration. If I were plain I should be more worthy of George's admiration than if I were the greatest beauty in England and had a less unselfish heart.' Those hours in London had been for Marie full of large and liberal thoughts. That moment in the train, when she saw the cloud drift away, had been one of intense relief, followed by strong, vague thankfulness. ”

“ Pretty isn't the word, George, and a moonstruck poet like you ought to know better. Why, she's simply exquisite. Such a lovely quiet smile for a home as she has! George, is she awfully stuck up?' 'Not at all. She is wickeder than you.' 'Now, George, if there is one thing I hate it's a paragon, and if such a lovely girl as that was as wicked as I, she would be a paragon. Wicked as I! Why, she looks like an angel.' 'And so does little Alice, now,' laughed Nevill. In the meantime Mrs Osborne had led Marie to her room. ”

“ The idle man's faith is open to continual assault. The idle man's heart is ever exposed to the arrows of outrageous love. And yet neither his own faith nor his heart had been assailed until now. Did that fact result from the nature of life led by him, or from qualities inherent in himself? Most likely from the kind of life. Happy you busy people down there who have no time for the luxury of such soul-abandoned love! Your dull lives are mere routines of commonplaces. Your love-making is no more exciting than your going to a new school or taking a new house. ”

“ He believed that if a man were thoroughly good, that man could worship worthily. He lifted his eyes and asked help or sympathy fearlessly when he thought of his manhood; when he thought of himself he bent his eyes upon the ground. He aspired with all his soul to rise above evil; the daily routine of petty cares and petty passions dragged him down. He would have given up his life freely any day for his fellow-man. Upon this man, when all the faculties of his intellect, all the sensibilities of his emotions, had come to their full development, had burst the passion of love. ”

“ George was now in too disturbed a state of mind to press home the question, and, indeed, there seemed to be no need to press home the question at all, for he had inferentially answered it favourably. For hours they walked about arm-in-arm through the chill dark streets. Now they skirted the enclosures of quiet squares; now they pushed their way through the crowd of a street thronged with people. Nevill was killing time, Osborne was trying to leave memory behind. Anything was better than to recall the past. Even the future might be more cheerfully faced. ”

“ It was as though all the troubles and jars and difficulties and vexations, which, added upon youth by years, made one feel the loss of early sprightliness, had been removed, and the full irresponsible joyousness had been restored. Love in women takes off all responsibility save the duty of loving. It may add to the cares of man the burden of which woman is relieved. But then George had broad shoulders and a brave spirit. The burden of her own responsibilities had always sat lightly upon her; it surely could not bow down, much less break down, George. He was no coward; he was no weakling. ”

“ Suppose you had undertaken to keep this compartment, you would have known no other way of doing it than of crawling up servilely to the guard, touching your hat to him, and tipping him half-a-dollar-crown, I mean. I don't see why a man of no intellect like you should be allowed to fatten on my genius. Why should you, like the gentlemen of England, sit in your compartment at ease, while I have been squandering my genius to save you from the rude shock of the world? You owe me half-a-crown, Osborne. As an honourable man you owe me half-a-crown. ”

“ This London, the noblest monument of man, was reared by the hands of my brothers of Greater Britain. I am their fellow, their equal. We it was who did it. 'Under Him whom I adore, nothing fills me with such emotions of worship as the spirit of this great concrete empire, of which London is the sign-manual on earth. 'In the still meadowlands around Stratford, I have led a quiet if not a blameless life. Now and then I have been here and there--Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Leamington, Warwick, Oxford, Lichfield, Burton, Leicester; but all put together do not equal London. ”

“ How was it I had escaped, you will reasonably ask--' 'To be unreasonably answered,' interrupted the solid-looking man, with a smile. 'Sir,' said Nevill, 'I am a practical man--a man of business. If I have fiction on hand, I go to a publisher and sell it. If I have truth on hand, I give it away to my friends. Truth fetches nothing in the market. Look at science. You can't make money out of science; and yet science is the only branch of human knowledge you can be sure of, for you can prove your work day by day. ”

“ As the future is the fairest, so is the past the most dear. The feeling you must lose all the heart-savings of a love-time is the most bitter sting that can enter the soul of man. Ay, but Dante did not think he or anyone should lose the memory of love at the silent side of the grave. That accounted for Dante saying, the bitterest thing of all was remembering brighter hours. Into Dante's code oblivion did not enter. Miserere nobis. Miserere nobis. With a weary, vacant smile he held out his hand to Kate. 'I am very tired, Kate, very tired, and am going to bed. ”

“ Beyond that belt is a region of poor shops; and beyond, all reaching out to touch the green fields, lie pleasant villas where men, sufficiently good as men go, sleep, where women of spotless purity dream blameless dreams. Westward repose those who own the riches which are for expense. Here are coronets embroidered upon the hangings of the beds. Here is ambition, restless and insatiable, ambition not of the moneygrubbing kind, but for place, position, power. The East and the West are the latest to sleep. One is kept awake by orgies and broils, the other by pleasure and aspirations. ”

“ Those who are born in London never fathom its depths, its influence, its strength, its significance, its import. 'Those who come to London young are cowed at first by its proportions, become familiar with half one district, and treat all other districts into which accident may drag them as pagan regions beyond the pale of the true civilisation. 'But I confront London for the first time in the mature years of youth, with book knowledge of all its wonders, and a feeling of brotherhood for it. Greater England is my father, but this London is my most beloved sister, of whom I am proud. ”

“ I am sorry I came out with her to-day.' 'Mr Osborne.' He looked down. Her face was turned up to his. His eyes met hers. 'And what place on all earth could I choose, if not that by her side?' he asked himself helplessly. Aloud he said merely, 'Yes.' 'You are not nearly so amusing as yesterday. If you keep on this dreary, woebegone look, I shall walk away and leave you to your musings. Why are you so silent?' 'I have a different audience to-day, and I am not clever enough for it.' 'I don't want you to be clever. I hate clever men. They are always too stuck-up and smart. ”

“ I shall live in London and cherish my image, and when I die I hope I may be found no worse than my fellow-man, and may fall within the mercy of God and the pity of my Saviour; for I must not let the little money, or London, or this wonder at the hotel turn my head and darken up my heart against the great matter of life. ”