Innes

“ Innes published this as his own in 1728, as ‘Ἀρετηλογία, an Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue.' Innes not only won reputation by the work, but a good living in Essex. In August 1730 Campbell went to London, saw Innes, and says that he ‘made him tremble in his shoes.' He consented, however, to an advertisement claiming his own book, but only saying that ‘for some certain reasons’ it had a peered under the name of Innes. Even this was delayed for a time that Innes might not lose a post which he was expecting. Stuart, physician to the queen, was a cousin of Innes, and interceded for him. ”

“ He had sent her six melodies—strange, old-world rhythms, recalling in a way the Gregorian she used to read in childhood in the missals, yet modulated as unintermittently as Wagner; the same chromatic scale and yet a haunting of the antique rhythm in the melody. Ulick knew her father; he had said, "Mr. Innes is my greatest friend." He loved her father, she could see that, but she had not dared to question him. Talking to Owen was like the sunshine—the earth and only the earth was visible—whereas talking to Ulick was like the twilight through which the stars were shining. ”

“ And a long time ago, a lifetime ago, Rickard had told her that she always should wear blue, because of her eyes.
Innes from the next room could hear Gerty teasing Tom to wear his Tuxedo.
“Isn’t one dude enough for you?” growled her surly lord. Innes recognized the mood, and shrank from the ordeal ahead. It was the mood of the Hardin in the rough, the son of his frontier mother, the fruit of old Jasper Gingg, whose smithy had been the rendezvous for the wildest roughs, the fiercest cattlemen in Missouri. ”

“ I had come over from Ireland with a few pounds in my pocket, and a portmanteau full of music, which I soon found no one wanted."
"You had written music before you had met father?"
"Yes, I was organist at St. Patrick's in Dublin for nearly three years. There's no one like your father, Miss Innes."
"No one, is there?" she replied enthusiastically. "There's no one like him. I'm so glad you are friends. You see him nearly every day, and you show him all your music." ”

“ The high back of the settle screened it from her, and a little table stood conveniently beside her for her endless knitting.
Sunia now brought up tea, and Olwen poured it out.
"Fancy," said Madam to Balmayne, "Miss Innes reads aloud so well that I quite enjoy it. I always hated to be read to, but the story she is reading is so amusing that I am quite longing to hear the rest. I have been thinking about it all day, and it cheers me up."
"That's the very thing you want," said the doctor heartily. "Miss Innes will do you more good than my medicine." ”

“ Innes saw the blush and remembered the boarding-house. She could think of nothing to say. The three relatives sat down to that most uncomfortable travesty, a social meal where sociability is lacking. Innes said it had been a pleasant morning. Gerty thought it had been hot. And then there was silence again.
Innes began to tell them of her Tucson visit, when Gerty laid down her fork. “I’ve meant to ask you a hundred times. Did you attend to my commission in Los Angeles?” ”

“ Innes admitted that to know the bitterness of love and its sweetness is the common lot of all men. The conversation dropped again, and Owen felt there was to be no unbosoming of himself that afternoon.
"The room has not changed. Twelve years ago I saw those old instruments for the first time. Not one, I think, has disappeared. It was here that I first heard Ferrabosco's pavane."
Innes remembered the pavane quite well, but refused to allow the conversation to digress into a description of Evelyn's playing of the viola da gamba. ”

“ She was getting a bit unbearable when Miss Innes arrived, but she has somehow contrived to tame her entirely. Ayah is perfectly devoted—waits on you hand and foot, doesn't she?" He spoke standing up, with his cup in his hand, close to Olwen, determined that she should be included in the conversation. She had never liked him so well. His mother chimed in.
"Yes, as I hear Ninian telling your daughter, it is a most remarkable thing the way my ayah has taken to Miss Innes. It was almost instantaneous. She positively worships her. Miss Innes, tell General Kendall about the table." ”

“ An inner tenderness diluted the sneer that disfigured his face. He could see Innes as she moved around in the little fenced-in strip that surrounded [81] her desert tent. She insisted on calling it a garden, in spite of his raillery.
“Gerty’s in bed, I suppose,” thought Tom. He had a sudden vivid picture of her accusing martyrdom. His mouth hardened again. Innes, stooping over a rose, passed out of his vision.
It came to Hardin suddenly that a man has made a circle of failure when he dreads going to his office and shrinks from the reproaches at home. ”

“ During this colloquy Olwen had sat with eyes closed, and the doctor stood staring upon her as though he had been turned to stone. As the talk went on he saw the girl shrink and wince; and when Ninian came back into the room she was sitting up, holding the arms of her chair, shivering and shedding tears.
"What is it? You're not afraid to stay, are you?" cried he explosively, going to her side.
"Miss Innes has no alternative," put in the doctor curtly. "She is not in a condition to talk; in fact I doubt if she ought to be moved at all. ”

“ This last argument was convincing, and the happiest time in their lives was the week they spent in Dulwich. They sat down together to dinner under the lamp at the round table in the little back room, and their evenings were passed at the harpsichord and the clavichord; and amid the dreams and aspirations of great men they attained their sublime nature. The music that had been given and that was to be given at St. Joseph's furnished a never-failing subject of discussion, and Mr. Innes told them stories of Italy in the sixteenth century. ”

“ To render the story of Psalmanazar's early life more plausible, Innes declared that the convert was a native, not of Japan, but of the neighbouring island of Formosa, of which he safely assumed that very few Englishmen had heard. Jesuits, Innes said, had abducted him from his native island, and had carried him to Avignon. There the young man had withstood all persuasions to become a Roman catholic, and the Jesuits, angered by his obstinacy, threatened him with the tortures of the inquisition. In order to escape persecution he fled to Germany, where he suffered the direst poverty. ”

“ I believe Innes is one of the cleanest living men I know. He is not rich, but, I take it, he lives within his income. He is fond of a modest gamble, but he won't play for big stakes, and he will only sit down where there's ready-money. His manner is a trifle suggestive of a poker down his back, but if I had been run in a different mould I could have fraternised with Innes. The man to me rings true--he is a man. He dislikes me--it is perhaps, just as well for him that he should.
Then there was Tommy Verulam, an ass, if ever there was one. ”

“ Hermann Goetze, your agreement is with me, not with Sir Owen Asher."
"Quite so, Miss Innes, but—"
"If people don't care sufficiently for art to dine half-an-hour earlier, they had better stay away."
"But you see, Miss Innes, you're not in the first act; there are the other artistes to consider. The 'Venusberg' will be sung to empty benches if you insist." ”

“ Miss Innes appeared at once and invited Balmayne to Madam's room. He was altogether satisfied with his patient, and quite willing that she should be brought downstairs if it could be managed.
When they had left the sick chamber and were passing through the adjoining sitting-room, he said to the girl, "I should like a few minutes talk with you."
She stopped. "It had better be here, then," said she in a low voice, "for on the stairs or in the hall we shall be overheard. The Hindu woman cannot be cured of listening behind the arras; I think she looks upon it as part of her duties. ”

“ You hungry, my sahib—eh?"
"Hungry! As a wolf! Nearly ate Miss Innes on the way up. Some storm last night—what? Bad enough in Caryngston. Here, Ezra tells me, it was prime. Miss Innes wanted to come up last night in the dark, but I wasn't taking any risks."
"Poor Missee have a dreadful journey," murmured the ayah, her melting eyes on Olwen, who stood by the fire, her foot held to the blaze. "You come with me—yes?" she said, in the accents of one coaxing a shy child. Olwen met her gaze and smiled, with a quick sensation of liking, as she followed her guide to the curtain by the door. ”

“ Everybody will be cross, and everybody will be working. Perspiring men are not inspiring men!”
As she left the tent beyond, Innes could hear the vibrant voice of Godfrey persuading Mrs. Hardin to stay there a few weeks longer. She could hear him say, “This will delay the turning of the river at the most but a few weeks. Rickard told me so a week ago. And think what it would be here without you!”
“They were all expecting it!” resisted Innes Hardin. She turned back toward the river. She must find Tom. ”

“ William Innes of Edinburgh who like himself had left the church of Scotland and become the one an independent, and the othera baptist minister, agreed with Robert Haldane, of Airthrie—who sold his family estate in order to provide the funds—to go out to India that they might act as missionaries to the natives. ”

“ She wondered whether, after all, Madam was the best judge of her own son, and whether this knowledge was the cause of her anxiety to get him married, even to so poor a match as Olwen Innes. She must know, or suspect, the worst. Her opinion of Ninian, as the girl had seen from the first, was anything but high—was, in fact, what it must be, granted the truth of this ugly story. ”

“ Evelyn Innes, as La Belle Hélène, would set musical London by the ears.
She had often wondered whether, by having absorbed so much of Owen's character, she had proved herself deficient in character. Owen maintained, on the contrary, that the sign of genius is the power of recognising and assimilating that which is necessary to the development of oneself. He mentioned Goethe's life, which he said was but the tale of a long assimilation of ideas. The narrow, barren soul is narrow and barren because it cannot acquire. ”

“ The purely spurious matter must be entirely rejected. It is by such a process only that we can hope to dispel the fabulous atmosphere which surrounds this period of Scottish history, and attempt to base it upon anything like a genuine foundation.
The first to attempt this task was Thomas Innes, a priest of the Scots College in Paris, who published in 1729 his admirable Essay on the ancient inhabitants of Scotland. In this essay he assailed the fabulous history first put into shape by John of Fordun and elaborated by Hector Boece, and effectually demolished its authority ”

“ Something fell, and Miss Innes screamed for help. I rushed in, to find Inns clutching his mother by the throat; and seizing an overturned chair, the first thing handy, I dealt him a crack on the head that would have fractured any ordinary skull. He was not even stunned, however, but fell plump, like a sack of grain, into the corner, where he made no attempt to rise, but lay growling and cursing at large. When I turned round Mrs. Innes and her daughter, both looking very pale, were clasping each other at the farther end of the room.
"Who is this man?" Mrs. Innes demanded ”

“ He laughed uncomfortably. "You're not speaking seriously, Miss Innes," he replied, rather ceremoniously. "I would recognise you anywhere—and however changed. But you are not changed, except for the better."
She turned to Aunt Maud and Gracie. "Isn't that beautiful?" she asked. "Could it have been better said! Well, and so here we are at last, and the black barrier which was stretched over the whole future of the world is broken and gone. We are free once more to think and talk of ourselves a little."
It was on her tongue to tell him that she had met Wilfrid Guyse only that afternoon ”

“ Mrs. Parrish shivered. “I wouldn’t sleep a wink. I’d be waiting for Indians all night.”
“The Indians are harmless,” cried Innes. “They wouldn’t hurt any one.”
“They’re Indians!” persisted Mrs. Parrish. “I’ll never get over being afraid of their dark faces. They’re heathens.”
Innes turned her eyes hopelessly away from the woman’s twitching face. She looked out the wire-meshed door beyond the line of stakes which stood for the proposed canal. She wondered when MacLean, Jr., would be coming back for her.
“Is that a company rig?” she asked.
“I declare if it isn’t the Busby wagon!” ”

“ Many other sunken headstones denote the last resting-places of soldiers and sailors, and civilian officials, who died between 1821 and 1830, when the little port was a thriving place, and when, as the old gossips will tell you, it made a "rare show, when the Governor came here, and Major Innes—him as brought that cussed lantana plant from the Peninsula—sent ninety mounted men to escort him to Lake Innes." ”

“ It is the one influence on our side."
She was born, he said, under two great influences, but each could be modified; one might be widened, the other lessened, and both modifications might finally resolve into her destiny. So far as he could read her future, it centred in him or another. That other, he was sure, was not Sir Owen, nor was it himself, he thought; for when she and he had met in the theatre, she had experienced no dread, but he had dreaded her, recognising her as his destiny. He had even recognised her as Evelyn Innes before she had been pointed out to him. ”

“ The victim in that case, ejected by the heir of entail, was John Innes, who had sold his property in Moray to invest the produce in the great barony of Durris. The new tenant, believing himself almost proprietor, built a comfortable house under the walls of the old castle, and in that house was born the writer of these notes. I do not feel myself severed by any disgusts from the country of my youth where I spent my best years, or at least the years of most enjoyment. ”