Richard Harding Davis

Name: The Messengers
Author: Richard Harding Davis

Summary

“The Messengers”, is a work by Richard Harding Davis. It explores elements such as Ainsley, Lone Lake and Polly Kirkland.

Quotes from The Messengers (Richard Harding Davis)

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ To the smiling expanse of the farm the lake was what the eye is to the human countenance. The oaks were its eyebrows, the fringe of reeds its lashes, and, in changing mood, it flashed with happiness or brooded in sombre melancholy. For Ainsley it held a deep attraction. Through the summer evenings, as the sun set, he would sit on the brick terrace and watch the fish leaping, and listen to the venerable bull-frogs croaking false alarms of rain. Indeed, after he met Polly Kirkland, staring moodily at the lake became his favorite form of exercise. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ They moved with the last effort of complete exhaustion. In the drooping head and dragging wings of each was written utter weariness, abject fatigue. For a moment they hovered over the dahabiyeh and above the two young lovers, and then, like tired travellers who had reached their journey’s end, they spread their wings and sank to the muddy waters of the Nile and into the enveloping night.
“Some day,” said Ainsley, “I have a confession to make to you.” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ Between the house and the lake there was a ridge of rock higher than the head of a man, and to this Ainsley and his guests ran for cover. On hands and knees, like hunters stalking game, they scrambled up the face of the rock and peered cautiously into the pond. Below them, less than one hundred yards away, on a tiny promontory, the six white birds stood motionless. They showed no sign of fear. They could not but know that beyond the lonely circle of the pond were the haunts of men. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ But he was so sure she was the most charming and most wonderful girl in all the world, and he an unworthy and despicable being, that when the lady demurred, he faltered, and his pleading, at least to his own ears, carried no conviction.
“When one thinks of being married,” said Polly Kirkland gently, “it isn’t a question of the man you can live with, but the man you can’t live without. And I am sorry, but I’ve not found that man.”
“I suppose,” returned Ainsley gloomily, “that my not being able to live without you doesn’t affect the question in the least?” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ From the end of the wharf Ainsley watched the funnels of the ship disappear in the haze of the lower bay. His heart was sore and heavy, but in it there was still room for righteous indignation. “Read it in my heart!” he protested. “How the devil can I read it in my heart? I want to read it PRINTED in a cablegram.”
Because he had always understood that young men in love found solace for their misery in solitude and in communion with nature, he at once drove his car to Lone Lake. But his misery was quite genuine, and the emptiness of the brick house only served to increase his loneliness. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ I dream about you all night, think about you all day, go through the woods calling your name, cutting your initials in tree trunks, doing all the fool things a man does when he’s in love, and I am the most miserable man in the world—and the happiest!”
He finally succeeded in making Miss Kirkland so miserable also that she decided to run away. Friends had planned to spend the early spring on the Nile and were eager that she should accompany them. To her the separation seemed to offer an excellent method of discovering whether or not Ainsley was the man she could not “live without.” ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ Lone Lake Farm was spread over many acres of rocky ravine and forest, at a point where Connecticut approaches New York, and between it and the nearest railroad station stretched six miles of an execrable wood road. In this wilderness, directly upon the lonely lake, and at a spot equally distant from each of his boundary lines, Ainsley built himself a red brick house. Here, in solitude, he exiled himself; ostensibly to become a gentleman farmer; in reality to wait until Polly Kirkland had made up her mind to marry him. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ If they held any touch of feeling they seemed to show that she was sorry for him, and as she could not regard him in any way more calculated to increase his discouragement, he, in utter hopelessness, retreated to the solitude of the farm. In New York he left behind him two trunks filled with such garments as a man would need on board a steamer and in the early spring in Egypt. They had been packed and in readiness since the day she sailed away, when she had told him of the possible sign. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ At each week-end he filled the house with people, but they found him gloomy and he found them dull. He liked better the solitude of the midweek days. Then for hours he would tramp through the woods, pretending she was at his side, pretending he was helping her across the streams swollen with winter rains and melted snow. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Harding Davis, The Messengers

“ The suddenness of their approach, their presence so far inland, something unfamiliar and foreign in the way they had winged their progress, for a moment held the group upon the terrace silent.
“They are gulls from the Sound,” said Lowell.
“They are too large for gulls,” returned Mortimer. “They might be wild geese, but,” he answered himself, in a puzzled voice, “it is too late; and wild geese follow a leader.” ”

Richard Harding Davis

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Quotes from The Messengers (Richard Harding Davis)

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