Robert Hugh Benson

“ Enormous birds, larger than ostriches, rose occasionally by ones or twos with incredible swiftness, and soared like balloons against the heavy, glimmering sky. He fired at these and feathers sprang from them, but not a bird fell. Once he inflicted an indescribable wound ... and the bird sped across the sky, blotting out half of it, screaming. Then as the screaming died he became aware that there was a human note in it, and that Frank was crying to him, somewhere across the confines of the wold, and the horror that had been deepening with each shot he fired rose to an intolerable climax. ”

“ They were both glowing with the splendid air and exercise, and were just in that state of weariness that is almost unmixed physical pleasure to an imaginative thinker who contemplates a hot bath, a quantity of tea, and a long evening in a deep chair. Frank still preserved his impassive kind of attitude towards things in general, but Jack noticed with gentle delight that he seemed more off his guard, and that he even walked with something more of an alert swing than he had on that first evening when they trudged up the drive together. ”

“ He had had very confused ideas just now as to what was possible with regard to the pursuit of Frank; a general vision of twenty motor-cars, each with a keen-eyed chauffeur and an observant policeman, was all that had presented itself to his imagination; but he had begun to realize by now that you cannot, after all, abduct a young man who has committed no crime, and carry him back unwillingly, even to Cambridge! Neither the Dean of Trinity nor a father possesses quite unlimited power over the freedom of a pupil and a son. ”

“ I'm a wicked girl ... a wicked girl ... it's all so beautiful ... the church bells ... my mother!"
He understood, then, what had precipitated this crisis and broken down the girl's reserve. It was, in fact, exactly that same appeal which holds a gallery breathless and tearful in the last act of a Surrey-side melodrama—the combination of Sunday quiet, a sunset, church bells, associations and human relationships; and Gertie's little suburban soul responded to it as a bell to a bell-rope. ”

“ The road, as a whole, bears an aspect of desperate and fierce dignity; there is never here the glimpse of a garden or of flowers, as in Mortimer Road, a stone's throw away. There is nothing whatever except the tall, flat houses, the pavements, the lampposts, the grimy thoroughfare and the silence. The sensation of the visitor is that anything might happen here, and that no one would be the wiser. There is an air of horrible discretion about these houses.
Mrs. Partington was—indeed is (for I went to see her not two months ago) —of a perfectly defined type. ”

“ It was a sleepy afternoon, even up here among the hills, and Jenny had not read many pages before she became aware of it. The Rectory garden was an almost perfect place for a small doze; the yews about her made a grateful shade, and the limes behind them even further cooled the air, and, when the breeze awoke, as one talking in his sleep, the sound about her was as of gentle rain. The air was bright and dusty with insects; from the limes overhead, the geranium beds, and the orchard fifty yards away, came the steady murmur of bees and flies. ”

“ These were the bones of the Universe—a stuffy bedroom, a rasping flannel suit, a cold dawn, a snoring in the gloom, and three bodies, heavy with weariness.... There once had been other facts: Merefield and Cambridge and Eton had once existed; Jenny had once been a living person who loved him; once there had been a thing called Religion. But they existed no longer. He had touched reality at last.
Frank drew a long, dismal sigh; he lay down; he knew the worst now ”

“ There was a copse a hundred yards away from the road, and in the copse a couple of small shelters built, probably, for wood-pigeon shooting. The Major and Gertie took possession of one, and Frank of the other, after they had supped in the dark under the beeches.
Frank slept deeply and well, half waking once, however, at that strange moment of the night when the earth turns and sighs in her sleep, when every cow gets up and lies down again. He was conscious of a shrill crowing, thin as a bugle, from some farm-yard out of sight; then he turned over and slept again. ”

“ An oar hung all along one ceiling, painted on the blade with the arms of an Oxford college. There was a small prie-dieu, surmounted by a crucifix of Ober-Ammergau workmanship: there was a mahogany writing-table with a revolving chair set before it; there were a couple of deep padded arm-chairs, a pipe-rack, and a row of photographs—his mother in evening dress, a couple of sisters, with other well-bred-looking relations. Altogether, with the curtains drawn and the fire blazing, it was exactly the kind of room that such a wholesome young man ought to have in the East of London. ”

“ His becoming a Catholic had been an amazing shock to Jack, who had always supposed that Frank, like himself, took the ordinary sensible English view of religion. To be a professed unbeliever was bad form—it was like being a Little Englander or a Radical; to be pious was equally bad form—it resembled a violent devotion to the Union Jack. No; religion to Jack (and he had always hitherto supposed, to Frank) was a department of life in which one did not express any particular views: one did not say one's prayers; one attended chapel at the proper times ”

“ The Major and Gertie instinctively made for a gate in the hedge, rested down their bundles and leaned against it.
Frank gathered the articles—a shirt, a pair of softer shoes, a razor and brush, a tin of potted meat, a rosary, a small round cracked looking-glass and a piece of lead piping—and packed them once more carefully together on the bank. He tested his string, knotted it, drew it tight, and it broke again. The tin of potted meat—like some small intelligent animal—ran hastily off the path and dived into a small drain. ”

“ So Jack put on a sweater, trousers, socks, canvas shoes, and a blazer, and went immediately down the oilcloth-covered stairs. As he undid the door he noticed a white thing lying beneath it, and took it up. It was a note addressed to himself in Frank's handwriting; and there, standing on the steps, he read it through; and his heart turned suddenly sick.
There is all the difference in the world between knowing that a catastrophe is going to happen, and knowing that it has happened. ”

“ To be impulsive certainly leads to trouble sometimes, but also, sometimes it saves it.
Jenny looked charming in repose. She was in a delightful green habit; she wore a plumy kind of hat; she rode an almost perfect little mare belonging to Lord Talgarth, and her big blue, steady eyes roved slowly round her as she went, seeing nothing. It was, in fact, the almost perfect little mare who first gave warning of the approach to the sportsmen, by starting violently all over at the sound of a shot, fired about half a mile away. ”

“ At this Jack, mentally, threw up the sponge.
"You really mean to go on at this rotten idea of yours?"
Frank opened his eyes wide.
"Why, of course. Good Lord! did you think I was bluffing?"
"But ... but it's perfectly mad. Why on earth don't you get a proper situation somewhere—land-agent or something?"
"My dear man," said Frank, "if you will have it, it's because I want to do exactly what I'm going to do. No—I'm being perfectly serious. I've thought for ages that we're all wrong somehow. We're all so beastly artificial. I don't want to preach, but I want to test things for myself. ”

“ He began by remembering that Jenny would not live for ever; in fact, she might die at any moment; or he might; and he ended by wondering, firstly, whether human love was worth anything at all, and, secondly, whether he possessed Jenny's. He understood now, with absolute certitude, that there was nothing in him whatever which could possibly be loved by anyone; the whole thing had been a mistake, not so much on his part as on Jenny's. ”

“ It was a little after four o'clock on the following morning that a policeman, pacing with slow, flat feet along the little lane that leads from Trinity Hall to Trinity College, yawning as he went, and entirely unconscious of the divine morning air, bright as wine and clear as water, beheld a remarkable spectacle.
There first appeared, suddenly tossed on to the spikes that top the gate that guards the hostel, a species of pad that hung over on both sides of the formidable array of points. Upon this, more cautiously, was placed by invisible hands a very old saddle without any stirrups. ”

“ About ten minutes later he woke up from a doze, very wide awake indeed, and looked round. There lay on the table by him a Dutch cheese, a large crusty piece of bread and some very soft salt butter in a saucer. There was also a good glass of beer left—not claret-cup—in a glass jug, very much as Frank had pictured it.
He got up and went out to the street door, shading his eyes against the sun. But the street lay hot and dusty in the afternoon light, empty from end to end, except for a cat, nose in tail, coiled on the grocery door-step. ”

“ It was this community of injury, then, that primarily drew Dick's attention to Frank; and, when once it lead been so drawn, it lingered on other points in his personality. Artistic Stoicism is a very satisfying ideal so long as things go tolerably well. It affords an excellent protection against such misfortunes as those of not being appreciated or of losing money or just missing a big position—against all such ills as affect bodily or mental conveniences. But when the heart is touched, Artistic Stoicism peels off like rusted armour. ”

“ For there stood, as if straight out of a Christmas number, the figure of a monk, tall, lean, with gray hair, clean-shaven, with a pair of merry eyes and a brisk manner. He wore a broad leather band round his black frock, and carried his spare hand thrust deep into it.
(II)
The monk sighed humorously.
"Another of them," he said. "Well, my man?"
"Please, father—"
The monk closed his eyes as in resignation.
"You needn't try that on," he said. "Besides, I'm not a father. I'm a brother. Can you remember that?"
Frank smiled back.
"Very well, brother. I'm a Catholic myself." ”

“ She visited poor people for an hour or so two or three days a week, and occasionally, when Lord Talgarth was well enough, rode out with him and her father after tea, through the woods, and sometimes with Lord Talgarth alone.
She suffered practically no pangs of conscience at all on the subject of Frank. Her letter had been perfectly sincere, and she believed herself to have been exceedingly sensible. (It is, perhaps, one may observe, one of the most dangerous things in the world to think oneself sensible; it is even more dangerous than to be told so.) ”

“ And in winter, with the heavy carpets down, and the thick curtains, the very polished floors, so cool in summer, seem expressly designed to glimmer warmly with candle and fire-light; and the books seem to lean forward protectively and reassert themselves, and the low beamed ceilings to shelter and safeguard the interior comfort. The center of gravity is changed almost imperceptibly. In summer the place is a garden with a house in the middle; in winter a house surrounded by shrubberies. ”

“ Jack said nothing. He was inclined to be a little strenuous himself in some ways, and he had always been conscious of a faint annoyance with Dick's extreme leisureliness.
"I see you agree," went on Dick. "Well, we must see what can be done."
He stood up smiling and began to expand and contract his fingers luxuriously before the fire behind his back.
"If we can only get Frank away," murmured Jack. "That's enough for the present."
"And what do you propose to do with him then?"
"Oh, Lord! Anything. Go round the world if he likes. Come and stay at my place." ”

“ Barham, as all Yorkshire knows, lies at the foot of a long valley, where it emerges into the flatter district round Harrogate. It has a railway all to itself, which goes no further, for Barham is shut in on the north by tall hills and moors, and lies on the way to nowhere. It is almost wholly an agricultural town, and has a curious humped bridge, right in the middle of the town, where men stand about on market days and discuss the price of bullocks. ”

“ Now Thomas's nerves were strong: he was a little lean kind of man, very wiry and active, nearly fifty years old, and he had lived with his master, and the mice and the snakes, and disagreeable objects in bottles, for more than sixteen years. He had been a male nurse in an asylum before that. Yet there was something—he told me later—that gripped him suddenly as he was half-way down the stairs and held him in a kind of agony which he could in no way describe. It was connected with the room behind that lighted door. It was not that he feared for his master, nor for Frank. ”

“ A boy, coming home for the holidays for the first time, cannot make clear to his mother, or even to himself, what it is that has so utterly changed his point of view, and his relations towards familiar things.
So with Frank.
He could draw countless little vignettes of his experiences and emotions—the particular sensation elicited, for example, by seeing through iron gates happy people on a lawn at tea—the white china, the silver, the dresses, the flannels, the lawn-tennis net—as he went past, with string tied below his knees to keep off the drag of the trousers, and a sore heel ”