Blakely

“ Hope never died in Mrs. Blakely's sanguine bosom, and she now shook a prophetic finger. "He'll be back here inside of two days when that charm gets workin'."
"I hope you're right, mother," Edith replied wistfully.
Several miles from the Longhorn bosque Ben drew rein and looked long and intently at a horseman in pursuit of a cow and calf.
"That ain't Blakely," he said finally. ”

“ Edith heard her father calling impatiently, and hurried out. There was a furrow between Blakely's eyebrows and fine lines of anxiety in his face.
"You ride the range I went over yesterday, Edie. I thought I covered it well, but there's a chance I may have missed them. They might have been in the brush somewhere's out of the way of the flies. I hope so; but in my heart I know they ain't. We're short fifteen head now, and if we don't find them to-day I'll be sure that they're rustled, and that means that we've got to fight or git. We won't hardly dare to sleep now." ”

“ Plume. "The shock has unnerved [37] you," she charitably, soothingly whispered: "Come away with me," but the major's wife refused to go. Hart, the big post trader, had just reached the spot, driving up in his light buckboard. His usually jovial face was full of sympathy and trouble. He could not believe the news, he said. Mr. Blakely had been with him so short a time beforehand and was coming down again at once, so Downs, the striker, told him, when some soldier ran in to say the lieutenant had been half killed by Captain Wren. ”

“ Blakeney slowly rose to his feet, and, making a deep and elaborate bow before his wife, he said with consummate gallantry,—
“I had the pick of the market, Madame, and my taste is unerring.”
“More so than your chivalry, I fear,” she retorted sarcastically.
“Odd’s life, m’dear! be reasonable! Do you think I am going to allow my body to be made a pincushion of, by every little frog-eater who don’t like the shape of your nose?”
“Lud, Sir Percy!” laughed Lady Blakeney as she bobbed him a quaint and pretty curtsey, “you need not be afraid! ’Tis not the men who dislike the shape of my nose.” ”

“ Blake. "You amply merit your doom and you shall suffer it to the end for all time."
"It will read well in the papers," exclaimed the son.
"The papers are to know nothing about it," I broke in. "All knowledge of your connection with Mr. or Mrs. Blake is to be buried in this spot before we or you leave it. Not a word of her or him is to cross the lips of either of you from this hour. ”

“ Blake know anything about it?"
The faintest shadow of a change came into her manner. "Yes," said she, "I told him at breakfast time; but Mr. Blake doesn't take much interest in his servants; he leaves all such matters to me."
"Then he does not know you have come for the police?"
"No, sir, and O, if you would be so good as to keep it from him. It is not necessary he should know. I shall let you in the back way. Mr. Blake is a man who never meddles with anything, and--"
"What did Mr. Blake say this morning when you told him that this girl--By the way, what is her name?" ”

“ He saw Blake in his football suit, looking like a bronze god and running like a wild deer down the entire field. He saw Blake naked and remembered how it had been. He remembered the grin. Even with his eyes closed he could see the tight muscles of the arms about him, and the hand massaging his bare flesh was very plain.
"Bob," he breathed, lingering on the name. He felt as if his entire being was boiling, was steaming like a boiler seeking a quick release. His heart pounded and back of his exploding mind a thousand dreams became alive. ”

“ Sir Percy Blakeney, as the chronicles of the time inform us, was in this year of grace 1792, still a year or two on the right side of thirty. Tall, above the average, even for an Englishman, broad-shouldered and massively built, he would have been called unusually good-looking, but for a certain lazy expression in his deep-set blue eyes, and that perpetual inane laugh which seemed to disfigure his strong, clearly-cut mouth. ”

“ Blakeney. "Giraffe marrow-bone is the king of veldt fare. There's nothing to equal it. But we must cry enough. It's rich food, and I've known men in the low country bring on a fresh attack of fever simply from over-indulging themselves in too much of this good thing."
They sat after supper near the blazing fire--the boys writing up their diaries by its cheerful light, Mr. Blakeney smoking his pipe and skinning a beautiful crimson-breasted shrike which he had shot that afternoon in some thorn bush along the river. ”

“ Just’s brother is a noted republican. There was some talk of a family feud between him and my cousin, the Marquis de St. Cyr. The St. Justs’ are quite plebeian, and the republican government employs many spies. I assure you there is no mistake. . . . You had not heard this story?”
“Faith, Madame, I did hear some vague rumours of it, but in England no one would credit it. . . . Sir Percy Blakeney, her husband, is a very wealthy man, of high social position, the intimate friend of the Prince of Wales . . . and Lady Blakeney leads both fashion and society in London.” ”

“ Blake give any intimation of the direction he intended taking. A few minutes revealed to me his elegant form well mounted and showing to perfection in his closely buttoned coat, slowly approaching up the road. Taking advantage of a rise in the ground, I lingered till he was almost upon me, when I cantered quickly on, fearing to arouse his apprehensions if I allowed him to pass me on a road so solitary as that which now stretched out before us: a move provocative of much embarassment to me, as I dared not turn my head for the same reason, anxious as I was to keep him in sight. ”

“ He sat on the wooden bench, lost in thought, not feeling its hardness; his soul filled with the dream that had come so often lately, and the mirrored stars swept silently across his child-like face. He closed his eyes and in the dream Blake took his hand and drew him close. He remembered the grin, how cute it was, how genuine. He made a wide circle of all those he knew and decided again that Blake was the only one. The pleasure, the sheer physical delight of their bodies touching, grew within him to such an extent that he wanted to stay in their protection forever ”

“ Every minute that you spend inside the city now is full of danger—oh, no! not for you,” added Blakeney, checking with a good-humoured gesture Armand’s words of protestation, “danger for the others—and for our scheme tomorrow.”
“How can I go to St. Germain, Percy, knowing that she—”
“Is under my charge?” interposed the other calmly. “That should not be so very difficult. Come,” he added, placing a kindly hand on the other’s shoulder, “you shall not find me such an inhuman monster after all. But I must think of the others, you see, and of the child whom I have sworn to save. ”

“ Mr. Blake uttering a cry sank on his knees before the drawer. "My God! My God!" was his only reply, "what are these?" Suddenly he rose, his whole form quivering, his eyes burning. "Where is Mrs. Daniels?" he cried, hastily advancing and pulling the bell. "I must see her at once. Send the house-keeper here," he ordered as Fanny smiling demurely made her appearance at the door.
"Mrs. Daniels is out," returned the girl, "went out as soon as ever you got up from dinner, sir."
"Gone out at this hour?"
"Yes sir; she goes out very often nowadays, sir." ”

“ In such cases, the traces of past beauty do but heighten the melancholy of its utter ruin. Amid so much that was beautiful in her affectionate, wifely spirit, these externals were little noticed. To friends who remember Blake in Fountain Court, those calm, patriarchal figures of Job and his Wife in the artist's own designs, still recall the two, as they used to sit together in that humble room.
All I have met, who at any period of the poet-artist's life knew much of Blake, speak with affection of him. A sweet, gentle, lovable creature, say all; courageous too, yet not bitter. ”

“ I too have a picture of my father and the copy of his first love-verses; but they have been mine long. Blake is a real name, I assure you, and a most extraordinary man, if he is still living. He is the Robert [William] Blake whose wild designs accompany a splendid folio edition of the "Night Thoughts," which you may have seen, in one of which he pictures the parting of soul and body by a solid mass of human form floating off, God knows how, from a lumpish mass (fac-simile to itself) left behind on the dying bed. ”

“ As they got down into the gulley, the rocks became more steep and slippery, and the way more difficult. Blake held out his hand to help Elsie over the stones. She slipped and fell into his arms, but quickly recovered herself, and poised with the lightness of a fawn on a jutting rock. "You don't seem to like taking my hand," said Blake, resentfully.
"I am a very good climber," she answered. " And besides, Mr. Blake, did you really mean what you said? Is everything that you or I do or say to be counted as a move in the game?" ”

“ Compared with this dark heroic babe, young Blakeney, joining the 28th Regiment as a boy of fifteen, must seem a hardy veteran. Yet he too pleads, as excuse for lack of style in the Memoirs which he left behind him, that soldiering and fighting began so early in his life as to leave scant time for acquisition of the literary airs and graces. And in the same apologetic vein he says that he wrote his Memoirs in an island where were no libraries and no books of reference in which he might verify the dates and facts of his plain unvarnished tale. ”

“ Once more Blakeney turned, and from his high altitude looked down on the choleric little man before him; but not even for a second did he seem to lose his own imperturbable good-humour. He laughed his own pleasant and inane laugh, and burying his slender, long hands into the capacious pockets of his overcoat, he said leisurely—
“A duel? La! is that what he meant? Odd’s fish! you are a bloodthirsty young ruffian. Do you want to make a hole in a law-abiding man? ”

“ The cold grey dawn was just breaking, dreary and damp, as all the past days had been. Blakeney watched the lad as he approached, the small, naked feet falling noiselessly on the cobblestones of the road. When the boy was quite close to him and to the house, Blakeney shifted his position and took the pipe out of his mouth.
“Up early, my son!” he said gruffly.
“Yes,” said the pale-faced little creature; “I have a message to deliver at No. 9 Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois. It must be somewhere near here.”
“It is. You can give me the message.”
“Oh, no, citizen!” ”

“ More than that, the Blakeleys themselves had none, at least only what came to them by Blakeley's will.
I read on, to see what, if any, contest she had intended to make. And as I read I could picture old Stuart Blakeley to myself—strong, direct, unscrupulous, a man who knew what he wanted and got it, dominant, close-mouthed, mysterious. He had understood and estimated the future of New York. On that he had founded his fortune.
According to the old lady's story, the marriage was a complete secret. She had demanded marriage when he had demanded her. ”

“ The mingling of sound sagacity with the utmost licence of imagination showed itself at every hour of Blake's life. He would, at any moment, speak as he here writes, and was not a mere sensible mortal in the morning, and a wild visionary in the evening. Visionary glories floated before his eyes even while he stooped over the toilsome copper-plate. There was no pause or hiatus in the life-long wedding of spiritual and earthly things in his daily course; no giving the reins to imagination at one time more than other. ”

“ There was another—Malachy Blake his name was—a great man, full of gosther and brag; you’d think it was the world he must have for himself, the whole world, no less, from Liscanor Head to Renvyle Point out yonder, and farther still. Well, I will tell you now about Malachy Blake. The heart of him was no better than the heart of a pullet—of a sick pullet, when the eyes of it begin to turn up, and it squeaks when you take it in your hand and turns over and dies on the floor. That was what Malachy Blake’s heart was like—no better! ”

“ He is not taught this; it comes to him as blossoms come to the spring, and is the first mark of his vocation. It was this inward thirst and longing that sent out the boy Blake into the fields and lanes, and among the surburban hills. The force of boyish imagination must have been stronger in him than in most, even of the children of genius, for, as early as the age of thirteen or fourteen, the conceptions of his mind began to assume an external form. He saw a tree sparkling in the sun, and discovered that it was filled with angels. ”

“ No one to whom he could talk. He felt unprotected, beaten and alone. He dared not look at the bronze face for fear of doing something wrong; instead, he thought of the many times he had wanted Blake to take him in his arms and love him instead of just saying, "Hello," and passing on down the long school corridors, sidewalks, in their cars. Again he saw the face he thought so handsome, searched that unknown landscape, that grin he could never invade. ”

“ Blake's victories," said Frank Hallett. "He is always the triumphant hero."
He laughed as he spoke, but there was a shade of bitterness in his tone.
Elsie wore black and crimson that night. Lady Horace declared that people would think she did so on purpose, as a tribute to Blake, the winner, and tried to persuade her to put on an old white gown instead. But Elsie would not. "I did not know that they were Mr. Blake's colours," she answered. "And let people think what they like." ”