Aristide Briand

“ I had taken care to have several persons present who had been acquainted with David Brinsley, and as the lid of the coffin was taken off, I said collectively to these people as they crowded round:—
"Look well at the face of that dead man, and tell me if it is David Brinsley's face."
In reply to this question there arose a unanimous chorus of "Noes."
"Is that David Brinsley's face?"
Perhaps I smiled a little to myself in spite of the "solemn presence of the dead," but a man may be pardoned for smiling, even under such circumstances, when he knows that he has achieved a triumph. ”

“ My home is Fardel in Cornwood, east of Plymouth; and even so I am but late returned to it, having been long in France and the Low Countries.’
And then Brion told him all his secret, for what was the use to withhold the rest, when he had confessed so much. And as he spoke, the glamour of that sweet time returned upon him, so that his voice grew husky with passion and grief, and the recognition of that loss which could never now be made good.
‘Nay,’ said his comforter at the end: ‘never’s no word for love. A City knight, and I for London! ”

“ Brinn, senior, in 1914, he inherited an enormous fortune and a preponderating influence in the B.U.E.S.C. He has never taken any active part in conduct of the concern, but has lived a restless and wandering life in various parts of the world.
‘Mr. Nicol Brinn is a confirmed bachelor. I have been unable to find that he has ever taken the slightest interest in any woman other than his mother throughout his career. ”

“ The very next day, at the same hour, Brion returned to the glen, and climbed the hill to the hidden bower. Somehow he believed that he would find his lady ensconced there: and there he found her. She essayed only a brief pretence of surprise—and she was looking prettier than ever. He admired all the points in her which a man would have admired; but with better than a man’s eyes. The pink and white, the little tapering fingers and shapely arms, the cup of her throat, the soft provocation of her lips and rounded chin—they moved him not to the beatitude of passion but of reverence. ”

“ I retorted. "Or of men either?"
"I am only a girl. But as to men, I have met one or two. There is your father, for example. And that brave and handsome Brignan de Brignan."
Whether I loved or not, I was certainly capable of jealousy; and jealousy of the fiercest arose at the name of Brignan de Brignan. I had never seen him; but she had mentioned him to me before, too many times indeed for me to hear his name now with composure. He was a young gentleman of the King's Guard, of whom, by reason of a distant relationship, her family had seen much during a residence of several months in Paris. ”

“ And Brion understood without resentment. He had long decided his own attitude towards that question: for one thing to accept it as, virtually, an open secret; for another, to refuse to suffer for it in any way to himself, since honour was a matter of conscience, and not of arbitrary bestowal. But he only thanked his new friend, and answered that, like that friend himself, he must win his spurs before he took his reputation to market.
‘And so thou shalt,’ said the other admiringly. ‘Thou shalt carry thy quest knight-errantly, and strike for England’s name. ”

“ He learned the facts from those who lived there. The good old untidy Dame, so improvident yet so lovable, so busy yet so unbusinesslike, was dead these many years; the boys, Gregory and Richard, were, the one, in an attorney’s office at Bristol, the other, a clerk at Oxford; the ex-Divine himself, burdened with years, and much reduced in circumstances since his scholars had gradually deserted him with his faculties, lived with his only daughter, now grown a comely young woman, in a humble way in a small domicile near the church.
Sorry at heart, Brion sought and found them there. ”

“ How long did the money last, Hans? I could not hear your mother. What did she say?"
"I said, Raff," stammered Dame Brinker in great distress, "that it was all gone."
"Well, well, wife, do not fret at that; one thousand guilders is not so very much for ten years and with children to bring up. . .but it has helped to make you all comfortable. Have you had much sickness to bear?"
"No, no," sobbed Dame Brinker, lifting her apron to her eyes.
"Tut, tut, woman, why do you cry?" said Raff kindly. "We will soon fill another pouch when I am on my feet again. ”

“ That," she explained triumphantly, "ees why he mak' the good gift for the fiesta!"
She arose and offered her hand in farewell.
"But I cannot accept——" repeated Brainerd feebly.
"To riffuse the gift of the Espanish people for the first fiesta of the young girl, Señor Brainerd," stated the Señora courteously, but with a totally unexpected edge to her voice, "is the same thing as one who says 'I am not your frien'.' It is the custom of old time; and we are people of the old time."
"It is kind of you; most kind," said Brainerd, after a slight pause. "Daphne will be delighted. ”

“ He said he was prepared to meet his fate, and that he should send letters from the scaffold to many of his relatives and friends. He professed the greatest esteem for Mr. Brion, and bade him good bye with a considerable show of feeling, saying that the latter should hear from him again. Mr. Brion returned to London by the ten o’clock train.
LETTER TO MR. GOODLAD.
Peace was a staunch friend as well as an implacable enemy. Two of his oldest friends were Mr. George Goodlad and Mr. Cragg, and he was much disappointed when he was informed that they could not be permitted to see him at Armley. ”

“ Like soiled armour which, being cleaned, looks richer than when new, so, under the rubs of Fate, was Bérard’s soul to reveal its intrinsic worth. And Briande took a little house next to the Presbytery, between whose garden and hers was a wall both high and frail, and yet to them a barrier of rock which no speciousness might scale or passion overthrow. And there, on either side, they grew their flowers; and that was the sole bond between them. And, like him, she gave her virgin life to God until she died. Very young she died, Felix, and on the same day died Bérard. ”

“ She walked like a proud little lady, and, turning her head over her shoulder, bade her assailant a stiff good-morrow.
‘May I not see you from the dark wood?’ said Brion; and ‘I forbid you to come with me,’ she answered, and walked on.
Nevertheless, he followed her at a distance; when, nearing the fringe of the copse on its east side, what was his surprise to see her already mounted and riding away upon a little ass, which had apparently been tethered there awaiting her return all the time. She never once looked round, but, skirting the moat, vanished in the direction of the moor. ”

“ If reason could not explain a horror, it could master by facing it.
In and about the trees went the ghostly chase: one and the other, phantom and mortal, they took either side of a writhed trunk and met beyond. With a savage cry, Brion flung out his arms, and something dropped beneath them. He stooped, and his hands touched warm and throbbing flesh.
‘God’s ’slid!’ said the boy, taking his oath from Clerivault: ‘Say what art thou!’
He was panting, with set teeth: in the gloom and the wild flurry of his mood he could distinguish nothing clearly. ”

“ It carried, as Byrne gazed, a connotation of swifter, fiercer thinking, than if the gaunt old man had stalked the floor and poured forth a tirade of words.
The girl came to meet the doctor. She said: "Will you use a narcotic?"
"Why?" asked Byrne. "He seems more quiet than usual."
"Look more closely," she whispered.
And when he obeyed, he saw that the whole body of Joe Cumberland quivered like an aspen, continually. So the finger of the duellist trembles on the trigger of his gun before he receives the signal to fire—a suspense more terrible than the actual face of death. ”

“ This was the sight which Doctor Byrne and Kate Cumberland saw from the veranda of the ranch-house as they turned and looked back before going in.
"A funeral procession," suggested the doctor.
"No," she answered positively. "If Black Bart were dead, Dan wouldn't allow any hands save his own to touch the body. No, Black Bart is alive! Yet, it's impossible."
The word "impossible," however, was gradually dropping from the vocabulary of Randall Byrne. True, the wolf-dog had seemed dead past recovery and across the eyes of Byrne came a vision of the dead rising from their graves. ”

“ He is my friend, Granton.’
And so it was that Brion, a man escaped from a deadly hazard, yet keeping for ever in his mind the picture of that tragic hour, the gloomy building and the room set like a lustrous shrine in its midst, found himself once more in the free and open street, an exultation at his heart, but also a wistful pain. That, in a measure, was never to leave him; yet even so it was as balsam on an ancient wound, the amelioration of one hurt by another. ”

“ It was only on her near approach that Brion perceived these to be a sort of fantastic clogs, half a yard in height, which she wore to the soles of her embroidered slippers, over which they were strapped; but so little gravity did they afford to the poor body that she needed the prop of a walking cane on the one side, and on the other of a sweet ape of fashion in a French doublet, who was her cicisbeo, to hold her up; in despite of which buttresses, she had a hard ado to keep her equilibrium as she passed, smirking and ogling. ”

“ He looked near enough to it, poor lad!"
"Raff Brinker! If you're going to treat me this way, and I nursing you and bearing with you since I was twenty-two years old, it's a shame. Aye, and a disgrace," cried the vrouw, growing quite red and scant of breath.
Raff's voice was feeble yet. "Treat you WHAT way, Meitje?"
"What way," said Dame Brinker, mimicking his voice and manner. "What way? Why, just as every woman in the world is treated after she's stood by a man through the worst, like a--"
"Meitje!"
Raff was leaning forward with outstretched arms. His eyes were full of tears. ”

“ Yet the illusion held with Randall Byrne in spite of all his scepticism.
He was certain that he had made not the slightest sound in opening the door, but presently the head of the watcher turned slowly, and Byrne was looking into those same yellow, terrible eyes. At the same instant the sick man moaned faintly. The doctor closed the door as softly as he had opened it and turned a drawn face upon Kate Cumberland.
"I don't understand; it isn't possible!" he whispered.
"No one understands," said the girl, and smiled mirthlessly. "Don't try to, Doctor Byrne. Go to bed, and sleep. If you can. ”

“ And rapturously, reverently, while the birds sang about, and the chiming of the water came up to them in their warm high covert, he set the signature of his fealty on that lovely tablet.
It was the ecstatic moment of Brion’s life, never forgotten and never surpassed—innocence fulfilling beauty and beauty innocence, trustfully, confidingly. So to such sexless kisses angels love—the flowers that ask no fruit. ”

“ Brill hadn't slept the clock around. I saw his red head and heavy shoulders coming up out of the companionway and heard his astonished whistle when his eyes lighted upon the women. Alison heard it, too, and started up like a scared wild creature. By that time I had run aft and was on the job.
“The least said is the soonest mended, Brill,” I snapped at him. “I'm the captain of this ship and this lady and her maid are my guests. So long as you treat them as my guests you'll live. When you forget you'll die. Go up forward and Dorgan will tell you what happened in the night.” ”

“ Hans and Gretel looked astonished.
“Like enough, Raff,” she said, nodding her head and raising her eyebrows. “When a heavy man like thee falls on his head, it’s hard to say what will come—but thou’rt well NOW, Raff. Thank the good Lord!”
The newly awakened man bowed his head.
“Aye, well enough, mine vrouw,” he said after a moment’s silence, “but my brain turns somehow like a spinning wheel. It will not be right till I get on the dikes again. When shall I be at work, think you?”
“Hear the man!” cried Dame Brinker, delighted, yet frightened, too, for that matter. ”

“ One of its ends was rounded off, and some deep cuts had been made on the top.
“Do you know what that is, Father?” asked Hans.
Raff Brinker’s face brightened. “Indeed I do, boy! It is the boat I was making you yest—alack, not yesterday, but years ago.”
“I have kept it ever since, Father. It can be finished when your hand grows strong again.”
“Yes, but not for you, my lad. I must wait for the grandchildren. Why, you are nearly a man. Have you helped your mother through all these years?”
“Aye and bravely,” put in Dame Brinker. ”

“ He was full of regrets for that, but clearly attributed his failure to the unreasonable distance, and not to any miscalculation of his own. Having explained which, he turned to the subject of the voyage, in which he was truthfully much more interested than in this paltry local uprising, and asked Brion a thousand questions, which the poor fellow made shift in his distraction to answer to the best satisfaction he could. ”

“ I will not ask you who it is. I know naught about your private matters, nor, by my troth, seek to know. This privacy of ours is passing sweet, and it is enough for me. But one thing only: tell me you do not favour this same suitor.’
She was easily coaxed. She had no real will to repel him, but allowed herself to be drawn back into his arms, where he won a lovely smile from wet eyes.
‘Become his wife!’ she said, with a little catch in her breath, ‘I would liefer be a wild man’s squawk.’
Brion did not respond: for all his tragic mood, an irresistible spasm seized him. ”