Edwin Arnold

“ So close those wherries hung about that the garlanded rowers who sat at the oars could scarcely pull, but, here as everywhere, it was the same good temper, the same carelessness of order, as like a flowery island in the dancing blue water the motley fleet came up.
I steered our skiff a space out from the bank to get a better view, while An clapped her hands together and laughed. "It is Hath—he himself and those of the palace with him. Steer a little nearer still, friend—so! between yon floating rubbish flats, for those with Hath are good to look at." ”

“ Slowly the urn crept round, and as each man took a ticket from it, and passed it, smiling, to the seneschal behind him, that official read out the name upon it, and a blushing damsel slipped from the crowd above, crossing over to the side of the man with whom chance had thus lightly linked her for the brief Martian year, and putting her hands in his they kissed before all the company, and sat down to their places at the table as calmly as country folk might choose partners at a village fair in hay-time. ”

“ Keener and keener grew the suspense as name after name was told and each slim white damsel skipped to the place allotted her. And all the time I kept muttering to myself about that "golden pool," wondering and wondering until the urn had passed half round the tables and was only some three men up from me—and then an idea flashed across my mind. I dipped my fingers in the scented water-basin on the table, drying them carefully on a napkin, and waiting, outwardly as calm as any, yet inwardly wrung by those tremors which beset all male creation in such circumstances. ”

“ There are twenty others will do as well for me. If not one, why then obviously another, 'tis the only rational way to think, and at all events there is the magic globe. That may tell us something." And slipping my arm round the waist of the first disengaged girl—we were not then, mind you, in Atlantic City—I kissed her dimpling cheek unreproached, and gaily followed in the drift of humanity, trending with a low hum of pleasure towards the great white terraces under the palace porch.
How well I knew them! It was just such an evening Heru had consulted Fate in the same place once before ”

“ Where fair-ones frequented their praise to yield—
To him who won the honors of the field—
There Arnold found himself, and bore away
Full oft the prizes of the gamesome day.
But he, withal those pleasures at command,
Could not forget the home of Hollybrand;
And nightly visions oft recall’d the spot;
As oft, in dreams, he saw the little cot,
Wherein he trusted there did still remain
Whom he would call (and hoped) his “virgin Jane.” XVI.
It happen’d now, when fifteen years had flown,
That Arnold’s parents, both were—dead and gone! ”

“ I took it from your pocket, and white Seth rose up before my swimming eyes, even at the scent of it. I am Si, well named, for that in our land means sadness, Si, the daughter of Prince Hath's chief sweetmeat-maker, so I should know something of such stuff. May I, please, nibble a little piece?"
"Eat it all, my lass, and welcome. How came you here? But I can guess. Do not answer if you would rather not."
"Ay, but I will. It is not every day I can speak to ears so friendly as yours. I am a slave, chosen for my luckless beauty as last year's tribute to Ar-hap." ”

“ Whose footsteps left the midnight darker, while
The rooted mountains shook, the wild winds howled,
The broken clouds shed from their caverns streams
Of levin-lighted rain; stars shot from heaven,
The solid earth shuddered as if one laid
Flame to her gaping wounds ”

“ There were eyes that looked from Isobel’s shadowy face, wherever in my fancy I saw it, that filled me with a strange unrest, and a whisper behind the whispers of that maiden voice that was hers and yet was not—a fine thin music that played upon the fibers of my heart; a presence behind a haunting presence ”

“ Quicker and quicker, for minute after minute, grew the dance, swifter and swifter the swing of the light blue drapery as the priestess, with eager face and staring eyes, swung panting round upon her orbit, and redder and redder over the city tops rose the circumference of the earth. ”

“ That air came cool and sad yonder from the English sea, and wandered melancholy down our lifeless, empty canvas streets, lifting the loose tent-flaps, and sighing as it strayed among the sleeping groups, stirring with its unseen feet the white ashes of the dead camp-fires, the only moving presence in all the place—sad, silent, and listless. ”

“ In every chamber hung the same staring portraits on the wall, cold, proud, dead eyes fixed hard upon you wherever you might look! on every rotten cornice were tattered hangings, half shrouding those dim cobwebbed windows that gazed so wistfully out upon the moonlit garden; and dusky panel doors and cupboard casements that gently creaked and moved upon the sighing draught till you could swear ghostly fingers played upon the latches ”

“ They had put me to sleep in a chamber in that same wing of the rearward buildings where slept Elizabeth and her father; thus, when I roused, the yellow sun was pouring in at my lattice, rich with sweet country scents, and the April air was swaying the white curtains, hung by dainty female hands across the diamond panes, with youth and sweetness in every breath. ”

“ Until the plague hath had its work in him,
Killing the nerves which die before the life;
Then, when his strings have cracked with agony
And all his bones are empty of the sense
To ache, the plague will quit and light elsewhere.
Oh, sir! it is not good to hold him so! ”

“ The old man call’d the “lassie” forth and said
“There, Arnold, is she not a pretty maid?—
She has the work of all the house to do,
Yet always clean: come, Arnold, we must go.”
The uncle dreamt not that his nephew’s heart
Was smitten, wounded with love’s keenest dart:
He little thought it—that henceforth this girl,
Of humble birth, would be so rich a pearl
To his “dear boy:” it never cross’d his brain
The youth so soon would wander there again ”

“ And knights and squires admixture at the board:
(Yes, two ’volutions round the sun is plann’d
Ere Jane shall doff the name of “Hollybrand,”
For that of “Mountjoy;” and when that is done
The old festivities shall be begun.) —
“To-day at dinner there will only be,”
Said Toogood, “Arnold, you—my dear, and me: [216]
But, dearest girl, I have a word to say—
You know that Arnold thinks of going away
A fortnight hence for just a year or two,
For—as he says—the benefit of you,—
Yes, dearest Jane,—the benefit of you!—
He’s going, he tells me, to the far-off East—
To Rome, Vienna, Berlin, and Trieste. ”

“ Mars! oh, dreadful, tremendous, unexpected! With a cry of affright, and bringing my fist down on the table till all the cups upon it leapt, I told him he lied—lied like a simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten as his wit—smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then turned away and let my chin fall upon my breast and my hands upon my lap.
And yet, and yet, it might be so! Everything about me was new and strange, the crisp, thin air I breathed was new; the lukewarm sunshine new; the sleek, long, ivory faces of the people new! ”

“ How often have I turned from the tinselled presence of the shore, the infinite pretensions of dry land that make life a sorry, hectic sham, and found in the black bosom of the Great Mother solace and comfort! ”

“ Oh, it was a pretty scene to see the tender countryside so fresh and green, and the rolling meadows at our feet dusted thick with gold and silver flowers all blended in a splendid web of tissue under the shining sun. And there the flush of blossom on the orchards streaked the fair valley like a sunset cloud, and here the bronze of budding oaks lay soft in the hollows, while overhead the blue canopy of the sky was one unbroken roof from verge to verge. ”

“ At length the storm subsides; the clouds disperse;
The welcome orb afresh begins t’immerse
The varied herbage, and the waving folds;
Encompassing the furze and heathery wolds:
And all was calm again—save one poor soul,
Whose head still rang with the last thunder-roll.
[176] Which passed through the village of Westonbury, (situated about two miles from the “Hall,”) where Arnold had “book’d” himself for his journey home.
[177] The Sun.
XIII.
The beam of day had kiss’d th’ horizon’s pate,
Ere Arnold reach’d the lodge at Rollingate. ”

“ Surely at last, far off, sometime, somewhere, The veil would lift for his deep-searching eyes, The road would open for his painful feet, That should be won for which he lost the world, And Death might find him conqueror of death. ”

“ All day long I wandered on through those wonderful woodlands, and in fact loitered so much over their infinite marvels that when sundown came all too soon there was still undulating forest everywhere, vistas of fairy glades on every hand, peopled with incredible things and echoing with sounds that excited the ears as much as other things fascinated the eyes, but no sign of the sea or my fishing village anywhere. ”

“ Old Faulkener was possessed with joy, dancing and capering round that huge carcass as though he were a ten-years’ urchin, his white beard all astream, his elfin locks shaggy on his head, his black venerable robes flapping like the wings of a great bat, his hands clasped fervidly as he leaped and skipped with pleasure, and his lips moving rapidly as he babbled incoherent adulation and love upon that firstling of his hopes. ”

“ The sixth drop gathered, and fell; already the seventh was like a seedling pearl in its place. The dying wolf yanked affectionately at my hand, but I put her by and undid my tunic. Big and bright that drop hung to the spout lip; another minute and it would fall. A beautiful drop, I laughed, peering closely at it, many-coloured, prismatic, flushing red and pink, a tiny living ruby, hanging by a touch to the green rim above; enough! enough! ”

“ Hath's boat could no more escape than if it had been planted on a rocky pedestal, garlands and curtains trailing in the water hung so heavy on it. The gilded paddles of the slender rowers were so feeble—they had but made a half-turn from that great javelin's road when down it came upon them, knocking the first few pretty oarsmen head over heels and crackling through their oars like a bull through dry maize stalks. ”

“ There, behind these tawny mercenaries in endless waves of steel, D’Alençon rode, waving his princely baton, and marshaled as he came rank upon rank of glittering chivalry—a fuming, foamy sea of spears and helmets that flashed and glittered in the sun, and tossed and chafed, impatient of ignoble hesitance, and flowed in stately pride toward us, the white foam-streaks of twenty thousand plumed horsemen showing like breakers on a shallow sea, as that great force, to the blare of trumpets, swept down. ”

“ And when I did not die, when the savage sea, like a great beast of prey, let me live by gasps to spread its enjoyment the more, and tossed and teased me, and shouted so hideous in my ears and weighed me down—why, the last spark of spirit in me burnt up on a sudden, fierce and angry. ”

“ There they formed, after a breathing space, in the long, stern line that had overwhelmed a hundred nations, and charged us like a living rampart of steel. And as the angry waves rush upon the immovable rocks, so rushed we upon them. For a moment or two the sun shone upon a wild uproar, the fierce contention of two peoples breast to breast, a glitter of caps and javelins, splintered spears and riven shields, all flashing in the wild dust of war that the Roman Eagle loved so well. ”

“ The fair young boy and gray-bearded sire, the freeman and the serf, the living and the dead, all went down together, till a broad rampart stretched along our swinging, shouting front, and the glittering might of France surged up to that human dam and broke upon it like the futile waves, and went to pieces, and fell back under the curling yellow stormcloud of mid-battle. ”

“ Slowly the fire died away; slowly the quivering gold and black arabesques on the walls merged in a red haze as the sticks dropped into tinder, and the great black outline of the hairy monster who had thrown himself down by the embers rose up the walls against that flush like the outline of a range of hills against a sunset glow. ”

“ Even as I did so there was a mighty crack, a groaning of a thousand timbers, and there before my very face, with a resounding roar, Electra’s lordly mansion, and all the wings, and buttresses, and basements, the rooms, and colonnades, and corridors of that splendid home of luxury and power, lurched forward, and heaved, and collapsed in one mighty red ruin that tinctured the sky from east to west, and buried alike in one vast, glowing hecatomb besiegers and besieged! ”

“ I drew a stool to the maiden bier, and sat and took her hand, so white and smooth and cold, and looked at the fair young face that death had made so passionless—that sweet mirror upon which, the last time we had been together in happiness, the rosy light of love was shining and sweet presumption and maiden shame were striving. ”

“ She press’d his hand, and breathed the mono-word [237]
To which George Hollybrand at once concurred:
And silently pour’d forth this orison,—
“O righteous God, bless Thou this gen’rous man!”
[237] Yes!
IX.
Sleep’s slumbering influence now began to fall,
And Arnold must have felt it most of all,—
The day had been a double-day to him;
His dark blue eye had lost its sparkling beam
(And only those who pass through similar scenes,—
Who are the objects of such welcomin’s,— [252]
Can comprehend one half th’ attendant pain,
Extreme of pleasure forces on the brain) . ”