Anthy

“ I have never seen any one in my life who was as sensible—I mean sound and wise—as Anthy is."
Two months before, Nort himself would have been the first to laugh at such a situation as this: he would have laughed at himself, at me, and even at Anthy, but now he was in no such mood. I prize the memory of that moment; it was one of those rare times in life when it is given us to see a human spirit at [Pg 320] the moment of its greatest truth, simplicity, passion. And is it not a worthy moment when everything that is selfish in a human heart is consumed in the white heat of a great emotion? ”

“ I do not wish to imply that Anthy was a mere dreamer. She was not, decidedly; but she had, always, her places of retirement. From a child she had friends of her own imagining. The first of them I have already referred to, a certain Richard and Rachel who came out through the wall near the stairway in her father's house, to be the confidants of a lonely child. ”

“ He could never have understood the other Anthy, the Anthy whose letters to Mr. Lincoln lie here in my desk.
I am not clear as to exactly what happened next, and no more, I think, was Ed; but he went out and down the steps without having told Anthy what his "proposition" was, and firmly believing that she did not know how dangerously near he had come to committing himself. Women know how to do these things. Ed did not rush away as Nort had done, nor fall over the honeysuckle bush, nor lose his hat—nor his head. Not Ed! ”

“ To keep a great household running smoothly, provisioned, cleaned, made sweet and cheerful always, and to do it incidentally as it were, with a hundred other activities filling her thoughts, is an accomplishment not sufficiently appreciated in this world. Anthy, like the true women of her race, had this capacity highly developed. She had a real genius for orderliness, which is the sanity, if not the religion, of everyday life.
"I will say this for Anthy Doane," old Mrs. Parker was accustomed to remark, "she is turrible particular." ”

“ I do not wish to indicate, however, that the talks I had with Anthy usually or even often reached these depths of the intimate. These were the rare and beautiful flowers which blossomed upon the slow-growing branches of the tree of intimacy. It was a curious thing, also, that while she let me more and more deeply into her own life she knew less about what was in my life than many other [Pg 227] friends, far less even than Nort. Youth is like that, too, and even when essentially unselfish, it is terribly absorbed in the wonders of its own being. ”

“ Ed Smith and Nort must have tried Anthy terribly in these days, Nort probably far more than Ed, because he was a more complicated human being, less broken to any sort of harness, and blest (or cursed) with an amazing gift of intimacy. Like many people who live most vividly within, he never seemed to have any proper idea of the lines which separate human beings. ”

“ Lincoln this or that, and it gave her a curious deep sense of comfort. Each evening she destroyed the letter she had written on the day before—destroyed them all, except those which lie here on my desk.
I am sure that this practice meant a great deal in Anthy's life. One cannot know much about any great human being, think what he would do under this or that circumstance, or what he would say if he were here, without coming to be something like him. ”

“ Others came later as she grew older. I know the names of some of them, and just what they meant to Anthy [Pg 126] at particular moments in her life. They came to her, as friends come to us in real life, as we are ripe for them.
It was some time after her father's death, when she felt very much alone, that Anthy wrote her first letter to Mr. Lincoln. Her father had made Lincoln one of the most vivid characters of her girlhood: a portrait of him hung over the mantel in the living-room, and there was another at the office. One day, almost involuntarily, she began a letter:
Dear Mr. ”

“ Behaving thus, Antony was beloved by all; and submitted truly to the earnest men to whom he used to go. And from each of them he learnt some improvement in his earnestness and his training: he contemplated the courtesy of one, and another's assiduity in prayer; another's freedom from anger; another's love of mankind: he took heed to one as he watched; to another as he studied: one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; he laid to heart the meekness of one, and the long-suffering of another ”

“ Anthony did not reply. He turned to the monks of Antinoë those eyes whose looks no man could sustain. He gazed for a long time at Paul, called the Fool; then he made a sign to him to approach. And, as all were astonished that the saint should address himself to a man who was not in his senses, Anthony said —
"God has granted to him more grace than to any of you. Lift thy eyes, my son Paul, and tell me what thou seest in heaven." ”

“ Antony, hearing this, prayed him with tears and groans not to desert him, but take him as his companion on such a journey. But he said, “Thou must not seek the things which are thine own, but the things of others. It is expedient for thee, indeed, to cast off the burden of the flesh, and to follow the Lamb: but it is expedient for the rest of the brethren that they should be still trained by thine example. Wherefore go, unless it displease thee, and bring the cloak which Athanasius the bishop gave thee, to wrap up my corpse.” ”

“ Miss Anthea,—bless her dear heart!—calls me her aunt, but I'm not really—Oh dear no! I'm no relation at all! But I've lived with her long enough to feel as if I was her aunt, and her uncle, and her father, and her mother—all rolled into one,—though I should be rather small to be so many,—shouldn't I?" and she laughed so gaily, and unaffectedly, that Bellew laughed too.
"I tell you all this," she went on, keeping pace to her flying needle, "because I have taken a fancy to you—on the spot! I always like, or dislike a person—on the spot,—first impressions you know! ”

“ I cried earnestly, for I felt pained at the light way in which she spoke of poor Mary.
“I am sure she is, Antony,” said Miss Carr, looking at me very earnestly; and then I began to talk of Mr Hallett, and how kind and firm he had been.
To my surprise, she stopped me, her voice sounding almost harsh as she said quietly:
“You are learning through a rough school, Antony, and are fast losing your homelike ways, and childlike—well—innocence; but you are still very impressionable, and ready to take people for what they seem. Antony, my boy, you will make many enemies as well as friends. ”

“ In early life, Antony was remarkable, as we have already seen, for a certain savage ruggedness of character, and for a stern and indomitable recklessness of will, so great that it seemed impossible that any thing human should be able to tame him. ”

“ It had come so naturally to him to worship the pink, gay, careless little man that then was Antony—growing every year pinker and redder until he seemed just like a sunball, the loveliest child that ever a house and a dark brother were blessed with; for Roger, even then dark-haired and pale—anyway, beside that little meteor—used to despise himself very heartily, and inarticulately fumble with a theory that any one who looked as he did could come to no good in the world, whereas Antony—oh, but the world was made for Antony! ”

“ I said, "and I have not even a biscuit to give you."
"We are not so sordid as that at Dane Mount. We do not die for biscuits, but because we love the lady," said Antony.
I bent down and kissed Ulfus, who was nearest to me.
"Now I am going to show you some Thornhirst pictures and some older Athelstans that are in the hall and the dining-room, and a portrait of my mother that I have in my own smoking-room."
Antony made the most interesting guide. There was something amusing and to the point about all his comments. I soon knew the different characteristics of each member of the family. ”

“ This, I grew to realise, was the secret of the contradiction that was Antony—this pose of strength where he himself knew he was weak: the most penalising pose that ever bolstered a man's vanity the more completely to wreck him. For the world might have allowed Antony a certain length of forgiveness if he could have been brought to reveal himself as he actually was, if he could only have bowed his head and revealed the hesitancies of his nature, and his contrition ”

“ Twelve months to-day since Antony went to Paris! The first struggle must be a sharp one for an unknown lad in that vast, overcrowded place, even if he be as clever as young Antony Watteau. We may think, however, that he is on the way to his chosen end, for he returns not home; though, in truth, he tells those poor old people very little of himself. ”

“ When I think of his paltry education, his limiting circumstances, the scanty appreciation of his contemporaries, his indifferent health, and recall his stupendous achievement, I am fain to apply to him, as most appropriate, the words he gave to his alter ego, Antony, Antony who, like himself, was world-worn and passion-weary:
“A rarer spirit never Did steer humanity; but you, gods, will give us Some faults to make us men.” ”

“ Oh, Bacchus, to whom we owe the juicy fruit of the vines! Omestes, sweet as tender figs, thou art welcome!" The whole town, wherever Antony's chariot passed, was decorated with ivy and garlands of flowers. Music resounded and blue clouds of incense mounted heavenward.
If Antony did not actually believe himself to be the son of Jupiter, he was drunk with flattery and claimed some of the privileges of divine ancestry, chiefly that of being beyond the control of human laws. ”

“ Like Richard II., he sees his own fall with the eyes of a poet, but a poet much greater than the young Shakespeare, who could never have written Antony’s marvellous speech about the sunset clouds. But we listen to Antony, as we do not to Richard, with entire sympathy, partly because he is never unmanly, partly because he himself is sympathetic and longs for sympathy.
The first of living soldiers, an able politician, a most persuasive orator, Antony nevertheless was not born to rule the world. He enjoys being a great man, but he has not the love of rule for rule’s sake. ”

“ For they were placed behind the great ships, which, in breaking through, they put into disorder. The enemy was astonished to see them sailing off with a fair wind towards Peloponnesus. Here it was that Antony showed to all the world that he was no longer actuated by the thoughts and motives of a commander or a man, or indeed by his own judgment at all, and what was once said as a jest, that the soul of a lover lives in some one else's body, he proved to be a serious truth. ”

“ Robbers broke in the tomb for the treasure just as Anthia awoke. They carried her off with them to Alexandria. No one else knew she was alive. Habrocomes heard from an old woman the story of Anthia’s death, of the pillaging of her tomb and the carrying off of her body. So leaving Hippothoos he started off alone by ship for Egypt hoping to find the brigands who had committed such sacrilege. The bandits had already sold Anthia to a rajah named Psammis, but Anthia saved herself from his amorousness by telling him that she was a consecrated priestess of Isis so he respected her. ”

“ He stamps his foot, and makes his way through the rocks with rapid step, then stops, out of breath, bursts into sobs, and flings himself upon the ground.
The night is calm; millions of stars are trembling in the sky. No sound is heard save the chattering of the tarantula.
The two arms of the cross cast a shadow on the sand. Antony, who is weeping, perceives it.
"Am I so weak, my God? Courage! Let us arise!"
He enters his cell, finds there the embers of a fire, lights a torch, and places it on the wooden stand, so as to illumine the big book. ”

“ Antony sat very still. His coat lay beside him on the stoep. A small wire-haired puppy named Josephus mounted guard upon it. Woe betide the person other than Antony’s self who ventured to lay finger on the garment. There would be a bristling of short wiry white hair, a showing of baby white teeth, and a series of almost incredibly vicious growls. Josephus permitted no man to take liberties with his master’s property, nor indeed with his ridiculously dignified small self. Antony was the sole exception to his rule. ”

“ And he answered, “I know not that I ever did any good; and, therefore, when I rise in the morning, I say that this whole city, from the greatest to the least, will enter into the kingdom of God for their righteousness: while I, for my sins, shall go to eternal pain. And this I say over again, from the bottom of my heart, when I lie down at night.” When Antony heard that, he said, “Like a good goldsmith, thou hast gained the kingdom of God sitting still in thy house; while I, as one without discretion, have been haunting the desert all my time, and yet not arrived at the measure of thy saying.” ”

“ At the end, when Anthia had proudly recounted the lovers she had escaped, Moeris, Perilaos, Psammis, Polyidos, Anchialos, the ruler of Taras, Habrocomes was able to reply that no other lady had ever seemed to him fair or desirable: his Anthia found him as she had left him in the prison at Tyre. [70] So hero and heroine shine as types of perfect virtue. The nobility of the romance, as Dalmeyda points out, appears not only in the purity of Habrocomes and Anthia, but in a restrained expression of the sentiments and the acts of love. ”