Various

“ Mr. Neckart did not reply for a few moments. "It is impossible that I should ever marry," he said gravely. "There is an obstacle which would make it simply criminal in me. I never think of it."
The captain colored: "I beg your pardon, Bruce: I did not know—"
"You have not intruded: you have not hurt me in the least," laying his hand for an instant on the captain's knee. "It is not a matter about which I have any soreness of feeling. The obstacle arose from circumstances: I am not in any sense guilty."
Captain Swendon nodded and occupied himself with rebuckling his shoes. ”

“ But one grows tired in town—housekeeping, models and all of it. My work is very light, but I do not like to work at all. And here—the beach is silent and the sky blue and the sea rolls—rolls all day long: it is like coming home after one has been out on the streets."
"About as keen comprehension of Nature as the tree yonder," thought Neckart contemptuously. But, after all, the tree was warmed, and its sap ran stronger, and it grew and broadened in the sun and air; and that was more than he could say of painter or poet.
He lay at her feet, leaning on his elbow, for an hour or more. ”

“ When Clementina's foot touched the shore she felt like one waked out of a dream, from whom yet the dream has not departed, but keeps floating about him, waved in thinner and yet thinner streams from the wings of the vanishing sleep. It seemed almost as if her spirit, instead of having come back to the world of its former abode, had been borne across the parting waters and landed on the shore of the immortals. There was the ghostlike harbor of the spirit-land, the water gleaming betwixt its dark walls, one solitary boat motionless upon it, the men moving about like shadows in the star twilight. ”

“ The captain took his cigar out of his mouth and turned blankly on him: "'Further your ends?' But, Bruce?—"
Neckart laughed: "Oh, no doubt they were created with some other object in view than to serve my purposes. But that is the cognizance which I take of them. Really, captain, if you were in public life, and saw with what eagerness masses of men follow feeble leaders who know the trick of piping to them, and how willing they are to be manipulated, you would soon come to look upon the American public simply as a machine ready for your own use when you had the skill to work it." ”

“ Arrived at the entrance to her own close, Lizzy next bade them good-night, and Clementina and Malcolm were left.
And now drew near the full power, the culmination of the mounting enchantment, of the night for Malcolm. When once the Scaurnose people should have passed them, they would be alone—alone as in the spaces between the stars. There would not be a living soul on the shore for hours. From the harbor the nearest way to the House was by the sea-gate, but where was the haste with the lovely night around them, private as a dream shared only by two? ”

“ Clementina stood waiting him, like a moon that could hold her own in the face of the sun. "Malcolm," she said, "I have been watching all day, but have not found a single opportunity of speaking to your mistress as you wished. But to tell the truth, I am not sorry, for the more I think about it the less I see what to say. That another does not like a person can have little weight with one who does, and I know nothing against him. I wish you would release me from my promise. It is such an ugly thing to speak to one's hostess to the disadvantage of a fellow-guest!" ”

“ As he spoke they came opposite the tunnel, but he turned from it and they ascended the dune. As their heads rose over the top, and the sky-night above and the sea-night beneath rolled themselves out and rushed silently together, Malcolm said, as if thinking aloud, "Thus shall we meet death and the unknown, and the new that breaks from the bosom of the invisible will be better than the old upon which the gates close behind us. The Son of man is content with my future, and I am content." ”

“ If I say, then, that Malcolm was always thinking about Lady Clementina when he was not thinking about something he had to think about, have I not said nearly enough on the matter? Should I ever dream of attempting to set forth what love is in such a man for such a woman? There are comparatively few that have more than the glimmer of a notion of what love means. God only knows how grandly, how passionately, yet how calmly, how divinely, the man and the woman he has made might, may, shall love each other. ”

“ The captain's cigar went out in his fingers as he sat staring with dull perplexity at Neckart. There was a certain nobility in the carriage of the powerful figure and black shaggy head, an occasional fire in the deep-set eyes, a humor in the fine smile, which argued a different order of man from this scheming, selfish politician.
"I can't place you at all, Bruce. Now, I should have thought you would have been a reformer—worked for humanity—that line, you know. You were a sensitive lad, like a girl."
"I am quite too warm-hearted a fellow to be a philanthropist," laughed Neckart. ”

“ Whoever thinks of life as a something that could be without religion is in deathly ignorance of both. Life and religion are one, or neither is anything: I will not say neither is growing to be anything. Religion is no way of life, no show of life, no observance of any sort. It is neither the food nor medicine of being. It is life essential. To think otherwise is as if a man should pride himself on his honesty or his parental kindness, or hold up his head amongst men because he never killed one: were he less than honest or kind or free from blood, he would yet think something of himself. ”

“ Many of the vaulted carriage-ways frame a glimpse of the rushing river which washes the massive foundations of the courtyards, the blue hills and lines of forked battlement.
In Verona one first sees Venetian painting too, on canvases which are to Titian and Tintoretto as the colors of dawn are to those of sunrise, but the glory is in them. The radiant pencil of Paul Veronese was early lost by his birthplace and given to Venice, in illustration of the parable, but even without her most glorious son native art makes a fair show in the picture-gallery and churches. ”

“ To herald his suit with his rank would be to insult her, declaring that he regarded her theories of humanity as wordy froth. And what a chance of proving her truth would he not deprive her of if, as he approached her, he called on the marquis to supplement the man!—But what, then, was the man, fisherman or marquis, to dare even himself to such a glory as the Lady Clementina? This much of a man, at least, answered his waking dignity, that he could not condescend to be accepted as Malcolm, marquis of Lossie, knowing he would have been rejected as Malcolm MacPhail, fisherman and groom. ”

“ If there was one quality in himself on which the captain could build with confidence, it was his keen insight into other men. He read Neckart's life as an open book. "Bruce is married already," he said to himself. "He was precisely the kind of lad to be taken in by some creature that is now a secret burden on him. Drinks or chews opium, I've no doubt, or has gone to the devil with one jump. Tut! tut! He would not be divorced. I know what his opinion is on that head. But she'll die: that sort of women never live long.—It will all come right, Bruce," he said aloud. ”

“ Where the turn-outs bear such a proportion to the drays, no wonder cafés thrive, exquisite drinks are served, and a corky people, who have a happy faculty, as illustrated by the late war, of coming up the quicker the farther they are pressed down, find the thing enjoyable.
A café-front indeed is better than an omnibus-top for studying Paris, and the café itself is a club for everybody. People go to it to gossip and regale themselves, play games, talk politics, read the newspapers, write letters, transact business it may be, sit, think, dream, and rest themselves. ”

“ From every direction came to Courance, where the ceremony was to be performed in the chapel, the great families of the Loiret—a more distinguished assembly of the aristocracy of France than could have been gathered elsewhere beyond the limits of Paris and the court. Throngs of lovely dames and gallant gentlemen greeted the arrival of the bridal-party from La Pontoise, and if the shrinking bride attracted attention, her emotion was attributed to maiden shyness, none dreaming that a desperate terror was shaking that harassed heart. ”

“ The difference between past and present is not greater or more startling than is their likeness, the groundwork of human nature being the same for ever. Especially in these old lands, how like the life of to-day to that of hundreds of years ago in all that makes life real and intense! The same thing in a mould of other shape, the same thoughts in a speech a little varied, the same motives under a dress a little less natural and crude—even the same pleasures in a great degree, for the wine-flask played fully as great a part in old German times as it does now. ”

“ It is here that, for the traveller coming from the North, Venetian architecture begins—not Byzantine of course, but the purest, noblest Cisalpine Gothic. It imparts a highly patrician air to the streets with their long lines of deserted palaces, which keep their caste through every change of fortune. Verona has not the fallen look of some old Italian capitals, nor the forsaken air of others, but suggests the idea that once her aristocracy closed their houses and withdrew to some retreat where they maintain their traditions, waiting for better times to return to their former homes. ”

“ The sources of the factor's restless discomfort were now two—the first, that he had lifted his hand to women; the second, the old ground of his quarrel with Malcolm brought up by Lizzy.
All his life, since ever he had had business, Mr. Crathie had prided himself on his honesty, and was therefore in one of the most dangerous moral positions a man could occupy—ruinous even to the honesty itself. Asleep in the mud, he dreamed himself awake on a pedestal. At best, such a man is but perched on a needlepoint when he thinketh he standeth. ”

“ I have not said much concerning Malcolm's feelings with regard to Lady Clementina, but all this time the sense of her existence had been like an atmosphere surrounding and pervading his thought. He saw in her the promise of all he could desire to see in woman. His love was not of the blind-little-boy sort, but of a deeper, more exacting, keen-eyed kind, that sees faults where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of the perfection of the beloved. ”

“ Your groom wants a coachman's place, my lady."
"Oh, Malcolm! do you mean you would be my groom?" cried Clementina, pressing her palms together.
"If you would have me, my lady; but I have heard you say you would have none but a married man."
"But, Malcolm, don't you know anybody that would—Could you not find some one—some lady—that—I mean, why shouldn't you be a married man?"
"For a very good and to me rather sad reason, my lady: the only woman I could marry or should ever be able to marry would not have me. ”

“ A pause followed.
"But do you not sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work?" asked Clementina.
"Not very hard, my lady. Sometimes I wake up to find that I have been in an evil mood and forgetting Him, and then life is hard until I get near Him again. But it is not my work that makes me forget Him. When I go a-fishing, I go to catch God's fish; when I take Kelpie out, I am teaching one of God's wild creatures; when I read the Bible or Shakespeare, I am listening to the word of God, uttered in each after its kind. ”

“ And now the shore was bare of presence, bare of sound save the soft fitful rush of the rising tide. But behind the long sandhill, for all they could see of the sea, they might have been in the heart of a continent.
"Who would imagine the ocean so near us, my lady?" said Malcolm after they had walked for some time without word spoken.
"Who can tell what may be near us?" she returned.
"True, my lady. Our future is near us, holding thousands of things unknown. Hosts of thinking beings with endless myriads of thoughts may be around us. ”

“ Rhondorf shows us a monument of one of the last robber-lords of Drachenfels, and Honnef a smiling modern settlement, a very Nice of the North, where the climate draws together people of means and leisure, littérateurs, retired merchants and collectors of art-treasures, as well as health-seekers. These little colonies, of which most of the large cities on the Rhine have a copy in miniature, even if it be not a bathing-place, are the places in which to seek for that domestic taste and refinement which some hasty and prejudiced critics have thought fit to deny to the Fatherland. ”

“ Clementina asked. Was it not rather as if, from a corner of the tomb behind, she saw the back parts of a resurrection and ascension—warmth, outshining, splendor; departure from the door of the tomb; exultant memory; tarnishing gold, red fading to russet; fainting of spirit, loneliness; deepening blue and green; pallor, grayness, coldness; out-creeping [Pg 228] stars; further-reaching memory; the dawn of infinite hope and foresight; the assurance that under passion itself lay a better and holier mystery? ”

“ Not the less, however, did he shrink from the thought of taking her prisoner under the shield of his marquisate, beclouding her nobility, and depriving her of the rare chance of shining forth as the sun in the splendor of womanly truth. No: he would choose the greater risk of losing her for the chance of winning her greater.
So far Malcolm got with his theories, but the moment he began to think in the least practically he recoiled altogether from the presumption. Under no circumstances could he ever have the courage to approach Lady Clementina with a thought of himself in his mind. ”

“ But one thing was plain, even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him—and there was eternal content in the thought—that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand women of old, whose religion was simply what religion is—life, neither more nor less than life. She would be a saint without knowing it, the only grand kind of sainthood. Whoever can think of religion as an addition to life, however glorious—a starry crown, say, set upon the head of humanity—is not yet the least in the kingdom of heaven. ”

“ Then the long sands lay open to their feet. Presently they heard the Scaurnose party behind them, coming audibly, merrily on. As by a common resolve they turned to the left, and crossing the end of the Boar's Tail, resumed their former direction, with the dune now between them and the sea. The voices passed on the other side, and they heard them slowly merge into the inaudible. At length, after an interval of silence, on the westerly air came one quiver of laughter, by which Malcolm knew his friends were winding up the red path to the top of the cliff. ”

“ The boat rose and sank a little, just enough to rock the sleeping children a little deeper into their sleep: Malcolm thought all slept. He did not see how Clementina's eyes shone back to the heavens, no star in them to be named beside those eyes. She knew that Malcolm was near her, but she would not speak, she would not break the peace of the presence. A minute or two passed. Then softly woke a murmur of sound that strengthened and grew, and swelled at last into a song. She feared to stir lest she should interrupt its flow. And thus it flowed:
The stars are steady abune ”

“ Clementina replied after a moment's reflection. "I hardly know, as the guest of Lady Lossie, what answer I ought to make to it. One thing I will say, however, that, though you may know more of the man than I, you can hardly dislike him more. Whether I can interfere is another matter. Honestly, I do not think it would be of any use. But I do not say I will not. Good-night."
She hurried away, and did not again offer her hand.
Malcolm walked back through the tunnel, his heart singing and making melody. Oh how lovely—how more than lovely, how divinely beautiful—she was! And so kind and friendly! ”

“ Courance, then, remained but a name and a shadow for many and many a year, drifting slowly back to the sole dominion of Nature and out of the very memory of mankind. But the late war, sweeping over the land and destroying so much of old France, made a break at last in the barriers surrounding the ancient demesne—not, indeed, by direct assault, as Fontainebleau and its neighborhood were not in the line of the Prussian march, but by one of those little eddies of reaction by which great movements affect distant currents of event. ”

“ Captain Swendon, with the majority of his sex, was never less a hero than when at home. Brute force, od, backbone, whatever you call the resistant power which keeps a man erect among other men, weakens under the coddling of feminine fingers and the smoke of conjugal incense. The aching tooth, the gnawing passion or the religious problem that strikes across his life like a blank wall, all of which he pooh-poohs out of sight in the street, master him indoors. ”