Dale

“ The happiest laugh of all was from Dale, himself—that low, inaudible movement of the throat wherewith he expressed his gayest moods. He had been turned out in the pasture of his heart's desire, and was gathering a harvest with feverish hands. Since the first Monday morning after his arrival, when he crept to the schoolhouse at break of day and waited in the opposite thicket with his long rifle to see if Tusk would come again, the mantle of civilization wrapped quickly about him. ”

“ Dale stood by the fallen tree, looking out across the glade. It was all silent and beautiful, with that curious effect of increasing light which made the distances clearer every moment, gave more color to the earth and a more tender glow to the sky.
Then he saw her, a long way off, coming from the direction of the ride through the trees; and he felt the pressure of blood pumping into his head, the weight on his lungs, the laboring pain of his heart, that a man might feel just before he sinks to the ground in an apoplectic fit. ”

“ I bowed very low and raised my head with a cheerful and gay smile.
"Most willingly," I answered.
"And what of reservations, Mr. Dale?"
"May it please your Majesty, they do not hold across the water."
"Good. My brother is more fortunate than I. God be with you, Mr Dale."
At that I smiled again. And the King smiled. My errand was a strange one to earn a benediction.
"Be off with you," he said with an impatient laugh. "A man must pick his words in talking with you." ”

“ The mountain world of forest was a mystery to almost all men. Perhaps Dale knew its secrets, its life, its terror, its beauty, its sadness, and its joy; and if so, how full, how wonderful must be his mind! He spoke of men as no better than wolves. Could a lonely life in the wilderness teach a man that? Bitterness, envy, jealousy, spite, greed, and hate—these had no place in this hunter's heart. It was not Helen's shrewdness, but a woman's intuition, which divined that.
Dale rose to his feet and, turning his ear to the north, listened once more.
“Are you expecting Roy still?” ”

“ The breeze, dancing up over The Dale, set the fairy forest of glass swaying, with a silken rustle. On every swinging branch millions of jewels flashed in the sunlight. With a soft crashing sound some tree would let fall its priceless burden in a dazzling rain of diamonds. Crash! and the silver roof of the barn slid down into the yard, collapsing in a flood of opals. The whole world seemed unreal and unstable, toppling to pieces and vanishing in the rising mist.
To Elizabeth it seemed like her new radiant world of usefulness, which she had been building on her journey from Toronto. ”

“ THOSE DALE GIRLS 1CHAPTER I
“Julie Dale, you’re the laziest thing in creation! Come down from that window-seat and help.”
“Can’t, my dear,” a gay young voice responded. “I’m as ‘comfy as comfy can be.’”
“Look at her, Peter Snooks,” said Hester to a fox-terrier at her side; “just look at her! She’s curled up in a heap, reveling in that fascinating Kipling, with her mouth all screwed up for this popcorn, which she thinks we will take in state to her ladyship. But we’ll fool her—eh, Snooks? We’ll fool her completely. We’ll just sit complacently on the floor and eat it all up ourselves.” ”

“ And Carford was not, it seemed, a jealous lover. I was no lover—my life was vowed to another most unhappy love—but I was a gentleman, and (sweet thought!) the hour might come when the face which had looked so mockingly at me to-night should turn again in appeal to the wit and arm of Simon Dale. I grew taller as I thought of that, and, coming just then to my own door, rapped with my cane as loudly and defiantly as though I had been the Duke of Monmouth himself, and not a gentleman in his suite. ”

“ One bright morning, while he was at his camp-fire, the tame cougar gave a low, growling warning. Dale was startled. Tom did not act like that because of a prowling grizzly or a straying stag. Presently Dale espied a horseman riding slowly out of the straggling spruces. And with that sight Dale's heart gave a leap, recalling to him a divination of his future relation to his kind. Never had he been so glad to see a man! ”

“ Captain Ripley was there also, with the ill-used air that he could not conceal, although he was conscious that it only aggravated his bad fortune. He took his leave a very few minutes after Dale arrived; for what pleasure was there in looking on while everybody purred over Dale, and told him his ode was the most magnificent tribute ever paid to a youthful Prince? Dale, in his heart, thought the same,—so does a man love what he creates,—but he bore his compliments with a graceful outward modesty. ”

“ OLD HEARTS MADE YOUNG
Nature left nothing to be desired in the weather as the hour approached for the concert at the Lucinda Home. Over the closely shaven lawn and beneath the shade of the trees lay the tranquillity of a summer’s afternoon.
This was disturbed, shortly after lunch, by the roaring of the Dale car as it rushed up the curving driveway to the main building. It was driven by Ike, and Serena sat beside him in the purity of apparel, freshly laundered and starched. ”

“ Lord Quinton came to my rescue, and began to enlarge on my devotion to His Majesty's person and my eagerness to serve him in any way I might, apart from the scruple which he had ventured to disclose to the King.
"Mr Dale says none of these fine things for himself," remarked the King.
"It is not always those that say most who do most, Sir," pleaded my lord.
"Therefore this young gentleman who says nothing will do everything?" The King turned to his companion who wore the plaster, and had as yet not spoken at all. "My Lord Arlington," said he, "it seems that I must release Mr Dale." ”

“ For he had told me nothing of all that I desired to know, and what he had told me did no more than inflame my curiosity most unbearably. Yet, if it were true, this mysterious lady, known to all London, had remembered Simon Dale! A man of seventy would have been moved by such a thing; what wonder that a boy of twenty-two should run half mad with it?
Strange to say, it seemed to the Vicar's mind no more unlikely and infinitely more pleasant that the King's favour should be bound up with the lady we had called Cydaria than that it should be the plain fruit of my lord's friendly offices. ”

“ But before him, in a moment of time, passed a picture of the life to be in the fair Dale, and all she would give him there, and the days good and lovely from morn to eve and eve to morn; and though in that moment it was hard for him to speak, at last he spoke in a voice hoarse at first, and said:
‘Thou sayest sooth, O friend; we will not die, but live; I will not drag our deaths upon us both, nor put a sword in the hands of Folk-might, who loves me not.’
Then he kissed her on the brow and said: ‘Now shalt thou take me by the hand and lead me forth from the Hall. ”

“ After the boys had left, the languorous October days passed very slowly at The Dale, and Elizabeth's energies of both body and mind soon began to cry out for a wider field of activity.
She was hourly oppressed with a sense of her own uselessness, a feeling her aunt's aggrieved manner tended to foster. Her heart smote her as she saw everyone at work but herself. She tried to help her father with his township affairs, but he met all her offers of assistance with his indulgent smile, and the remark that little girls could not understand business, and she must not bother her head. ”

“ The King's face wore a smile and the smile broadened as he spoke to me.
"You're a wilful man, Mr Dale," said he, "but fortune is more wilful still. You would not woo her, therefore woman-like she loves you. You were stubborn, but she is resolute to overcome your stubbornness. But don't try her too far. She stands waiting for you open-armed. ”

“ Mrs Dale.—"Ugly—no. A fine head—very like Dante's—but what is beauty?"
Miss Jemima.—"Very true; what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor."
Mrs Dale.—"It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once—before the Squire——." Mrs Dale paused, looked towards the Squire, and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. ”

“ Dale I had not seen for several years, but I knew that he was living in New York, where he had not long before married an heiress of obscure antecedents, according to rumor. That it was he I had little doubt; and though the fact of his having an office in the same street could not of course affect, either for evil or otherwise, the interests of my protégé, I had an indefinable feeling of dread at perceiving they were so near to one another. ”

“ Dale," said Harley, rising, and extending his hand, which the poor parson felt himself—unworthy to take,—"Mr. Dale, you are a good man,— if, indeed, this universe of liars contains some man who does not cheat our judgment when we deem him honest. ”

“ Dale!—a man, sir, who made a speech on the Currency which was complimented by Ricardo, a Jew! Good heavens! a pretty parson you are, to stand up for a fellow complimented by a Jew! Nice ideas you must have of Christianity. Irritable, sir!" now fairly roared the Squire, adding to the thunder of his voice the cloud of a brow, which evinced a menacing ferocity that might have done honor to Bussy D'Amboise or Fighting Fitzgerald. "Sir, if that man had not been my own half-brother, I'd have called him out. ”

“ Barradine now intended to gratify Dale by a few polite sentences of small talk, and thus show him that his offense had been pardoned. "Yes, I soon begin to pine for my garden. Friday, at latest, sees me home again. I always call the Abbey home. No place like home, Dale."
Dale going out, through the long passage to the hall, felt momentarily depressed by a sense of humiliating failure in the midst of his apparent success. If only he could have fought them and beaten them alone, as a strong man fighting unaided, instead of being pulled through the battle by that veinous, blotchy, ringed hand! ”

“ Dale of Vine-Pits Farm, sitting in his office window for all the world to see; looking livid, shaky, old; and feeling like a Christian missionary in some far-off heathen land, who, having preached to the gang of pirates into whose hands he had fallen, lies now at the roadside with all his inside torn away, and waits for birds with beaks or beasts with claws to come and finish him.
Before the horse was put into the wagonette and the trunk brought down-stairs, Dale had left the house and gone some distance along the road in the direction of the Barradine Arms. ”

“ Dale was following the stream, whether it showed itself or hid itself, and could have found his way blindfold. He knew the wood by night as well as he knew it by day.
He stopped on the edge of the biggest of all the glades, looked about him cautiously, advanced slowly, and stopped again to wipe the perspiration from his forehead. He was very near to the main ride now; straight ahead of him, say two hundred yards away, on the other side of the invisible ride lay the invisible rocks. ”

“ I do not happen to live in that sacred locality you mention, and I would not for worlds take you beyond the pale.”
“Miss Dale,” he gasped, “you don’t think I abide by any such nonsense—you are doing me a great injustice. Surely you are not going to dismiss me!”
“Yes,” she said, smiling, and showing her dimples in a sudden access of pleasure at the thought of getting rid of him, “I really believe I am.” ”

“ He only knows that he loves them and—oh! Miss Dale,” sweeping aside this strangely complicated case, “if you had a brother in times like these, what would you do?”
“Do?” she cried; “why, I’d help him off to the front without a moment’s hesitation! Julie and I would be the proudest girls in the world if we had a brother to go to the war! If Daddy were well he would go—there never was a finer officer than Daddy. Oh! Mr. Landor, you know us so little that you’ve no idea how strongly we feel about these things. ”

“ Dale involuntarily sat up, and looked back, over the tops of the reeds, at the boys who were brook-leaping.
"Would you like to know who it was that did it, Dale?"
"Yes, if you like to tell; but——And if he treats you ill, after the way you used him, he cannot expect you should consider him so——Besides, I am your best friend; and I always tell you everything!"
"Yes, that you do. And he has treated me so shamefully to-day! And I have nobody to speak to that knows. You will promise never—never to tell anybody as long as you live." ”

“ We look at the world through our own glasses; little as it recks of us, it is to us material and opportunity; there in the dead of night I wove a dream wherein the part of hero was played by Simon Dale, with Kings and Dukes to bow him on and off the stage and Christendom to make an audience. These dream-doings are brave things: I pity the man who performs none of them; for in them you may achieve without labour, enjoy without expense, triumph without cruelty, aye, and sin mightily and grandly with never a reckoning for it. ”

“ Now, poor Mr Dale had set his heart on dining with an old college friend, and having, no stupid, prosy double dummy, in which one cannot have the pleasure of scolding one’s partner, but a regular orthodox rubber, with the pleasing prospect of scolding all the three other performers. ”

“ I heard the house-door shut behind him, and I rose, looking at Darrell with an easy smile.
"Madness and moonshine, good friend," said I. "Don't let it disturb you. If Jonah admits the fellow again he shall answer for it."
"Indeed, Mr Dale, when I prayed you to share my lodging, I did not foresee the nature of your company."
"Fate more than choice makes a man's company," said I. "Now it's you, now Phineas, now my lord the Secretary, and now his Grace the Duke. ”