John Talbot

“ YORK.
He dies, we lose; I break my warlike word;
We mourn, France smiles; we lose, they daily get,
All long of this vile traitor Somerset.
LUCY.
Then God take mercy on brave Talbot’s soul,
And on his son young John, who two hours since
I met in travel toward his warlike father.
This seven years did not Talbot see his son;
And now they meet where both their lives are done.
YORK.
Alas, what joy shall noble Talbot have
To bid his young son welcome to his grave?
Away! Vexation almost stops my breath,
That sunder’d friends greet in the hour of death. ”

“ In 1447 John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, who had succeeded him as lord-lieutenant, accused him of high treason, but the king dismissed the complaint, and by patent, 20 Sept. 1448, declared that 'no one should dare, on pain of his indignation, to revive the accusation or reproach of his conduct.' He died at Atherdee in the county of Louth, on 23 Aug. 1452. He specially interested himself in history and antiquities, and bequeathed lands to the College of Heralds. By his first wife, Johan, daughter of Gerald, fifth earl of Kildare, he had three sons—successively earls of Ormonde—and two daughters ”

“ Nor was John Talbot himself one whit disheartened. He had lost some of his best men on the bloody day of the Tourelles, but he had [Pg 149] plenty more. He had lost Orleans, but the river towns on either side of it were still his, Meung, Beaugency, Jargeau; all strongly fortified, all guarding river and high road so that no man might pass without their leave.
He had retreated in excellent order from that field where his offered battle had been—strangely, he may have thought—refused by the Maid and her victorious army ”

“ Talbot smiled slightly as he recalled the sufferings of the boy long dead. There had been months when he had felt half mad; then had succeeded several years of melancholy and a distaste for everything in life but work. He could not bring himself to sell the ranch and flee from the scene of his disappointment, for he was young enough to take a morbid pleasure in the very theatre of his failure.
He did not see Delfina again for three years. By that time she had three children and had begun to grow stout. But she was still very beautiful, and John kept out of her way for several years more. ”

“ He knew her at last, the wicked enchantress, the soulless siren. He knew that she had never loved him; that she was of course powerless to love; good for nothing but to wreath her white arms and flash the dark splendour of her eyes for weak man's destruction; fit for nothing but to float in her beauty above the waves that concealed the bleached bones of her victims. Poor John Mellish! Talbot reproached himself for his hardness of heart in nourishing one spiteful feeling towards a man who was so deeply to be pitied. ”

“ Talbot quite forgot that, up to the time of the arrival of John Mellish, he had been perpetually arguing against his passion, and had declared to himself over and over again that he would be a consummate fool if he was ever beguiled into making Aurora his wife. He reversed the parable of the fox; for he had been inclined to make faces at the grapes while he fancied them within his reach, and now that they were removed from his grasp, he thought that such delicious fruit had never grown to tempt mankind. ”

“ The stranger immediately turned towards Richard, to whom he was introduced by the name of Mr. Augustus Talbot.
This gentleman and the baronet then conversed together for a few moments; and Chichester, drawing near Markham, seized the opportunity of observing, "Talbot is an excellent fellow—a regular John Bull—not over polished, but enormously rich and well connected. You will see that he is not more cultivated in mind than in manners; but he would go to the devil to do any one a service; and, somehow or another, you can't help liking the fellow when once you know him." ”

“ Out there I've heard say as how one body's as good as another, so if you're a good boy and make plenty of brass, you can marry a lady as well as not." She forgot the words immediately, but John never forgot them.
Mrs. Talbot died soon after their arrival in New York, and the brother who had sent for her put John to school for two years. One day he told him to pack his trunk and accompany him to California in search of gold. They bought a comfortable emigrant wagon and joined a large party about to cross the plains in quest of El Dorado. ”

“ The captain refused to allow 158 Talbot to go ashore to be tried by a council of his relatives; he carried him to Virginia and handed him over to the governor, Lord Howard of Effingham. Talbot was imprisoned not far from the site where once had stood the red man’s village, Werowocomoco, where he was in imminent danger of the gallows, or perhaps of having to pay his whole fortune as a bribe to the greedy Howard. But Talbot’s brave wife, with two trusty followers, sailed down the whole length of Chesapeake Bay and up York River in a boat. ”

“ The Talbot—old and now almost obsolete term for a large kind of hunting dog—has acquired a literary celebrity from having been substituted for the old sign of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, whence the pilgrims started on their merry journey to Canterbury. In 1606, we find the Talbot the sign of Thomas Man, bookseller in Paternoster Row, which, however, at that time, was not such a book market as now, being occupied by “eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen ”

“ God help that household, or any such household, through the weary time of waiting which it may please Him to appoint, until that day in which it shall be His good pleasure to reveal the truth! God help all patient creatures labouring under the burden of an unjust suspicion, and support them unto the end!
John Mellish chafed and fretted himself ceaselessly all through that August day at the non-appearance of the detective. Why didn't he come? He had promised to bring or send them news of his proceedings. Talbot in vain assured his friend that Mr. Grimstone was no doubt hard at work ”

“ Some old receipts which seem to establish the fact that Cyrus Talbot really did have the right to rent the place to a certain John Briggs. I don't know how these receipts came into the possession of our branch of the family, but probably Briggs gave them to our great-grandfather to keep safely. At [242] all events, Berkley Matthews and Mr. Jeffreys have worked it all out."
"I don't see how Berkley could have the conscience. It is outrageous for him to be party to a scheme for defrauding an orphan girl."
"Oh, Aunt Ri, you mustn't say it is defrauding; it is just legal rights. ”

“ General Sullivan regarded his scheme as impracticable, but finally consented to give Talbot permission to make the attempt. A draft of men for the purpose was allowed, and with sixty resolute, patriots, Talbot sailed from Providence in a coasting sloop called the Hawk, which he had fitted out for the purpose. Armed with only three three-pounders, besides the small arms of his men, he sailed by the British forts at Bristol Ferry, and anchored within a few miles of the Pigot. Procuring a horse on shore, he rode down the east bank and reconnoitered. ”

“ Not a doubt but that he loved her still! Sonia, Sonia! The pool wrinkled at the sound of her name, as he shrieked it in anguish across the water. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as she. Her figure rose before him more entrancing than this fairy lake with its ever-changing loveliness. Its shadows under the trees were in her eyes, its luster under the sun was the luster of her body! Oh, there was nothing of beauty in it, perfume, grace, color, its singing and murmuring on the shore, that this perfect sinner had not in her body!
He steadied himself with the thought of old Martha. ”

“ The mirror gave back a shrunken, sickly figure, somewhat concealed by new garments, and the eyes betrayed a poor soul, cracked and seamed by grief and wrong; no longer Horace Endicott, broken by sickness of mind and heart, and disguised by circumstance, but another man entirely. What a mill is sorrow, thus to grind up an Endicott and from the dust remold a Dillon! The young aristocrat, plump, insolent, shallow, and self-poised, looked commonplace in his pride beside this broken man, who had walked through the abyss of hell, and nevertheless saved his soul. ”

“ No hard-eyed nurses and physicians with their array of bottles, no hypocrites snuffling sympathy while dreaming of fat legacies, no pious mummeries, only the innocent things direct from the hand of God, unstained by human sin and training, trees and bushes and flowers, the tender living things about, the voiceless and passionless music of lonely nature, the hearty sun, and the maternal embrace of the sweet waters. ”

“ To fight every minute against this monster, to fight in every fashion, to irritate her, to destroy a grain of her influence, in a single mind, in a little community, to expose her pretense, her sham virtues, her splendid hypocrisy, these are the breath of my life. ”

“ The trained and spiritual ear might have caught the faint sighs and velvet footsteps of long-departed souls, or interpreted them out of the sighing and whispering of the leaves outside the window, and the tread of nervous mice in the fireplace. The dawn came and lighted up the faces of the men, faces rising out of the heavy dark like a revelation of another world; the veil of melancholy, which Sleep borrows from its brother Death, resting on the head which Sonia loved, and deepening the shadows on the serious countenance of the priest. ”

“ There were thirty men in all who worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said coldly, "I don't make friends of miners." ”

“ We discovered Johnny and Yank, and pounded each other’s backs, and had drinks, and generally worked off our high spirits. Then we adjourned to a corner, lit cigars–a tremendous luxury for us miners–and plunged into recital. Talbot listened to us attentively, his eyes bright with interest, occasionally breaking in on the narrator to ask one of the others to supplement some too modestly worded statement.
“Well!” he sighed when we had finished. “You boys have certainly had a time! What an experience! You’ll never forget it!” He brooded a while. “I suppose the world will never see its like again. ”

“ Talbot understood perfectly the kind of flattery which would succeed with the youth, and by allusion to his ancient lineage, his more than noble blood, the rights to which he was entitled, and to which he would unquestionably be restored, not only stimulated his ardour in the cause, but bound him in a debt of gratitude to all who encouraged him to engage in it. ”

“ To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his ever having lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day's publicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him that he was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasion of friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passing up and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of his still room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets ”

“ About an hour before, Talbot, to whom the night previous had been a sleepless one, although racked with anxiety, had fallen into a light and fitful slumber, when he was instantly aroused by a hand being laid upon his chest, and a voice whispering in his ear, “Do not speak, but follow; imitate my motions as exactly as you can. For God’s sake be cautious, you know not how much is at stake.”
The speaker, who was lying beside him on the deck, then rolled over toward the hatchway; but when the sentry turned in his round, he remained perfectly still. ”

“ He then took out the vodka, settled Bucephalus, his cat, on his lap and began to pour.
Several hours later Henry Talbot sprawled in the armchair and took stock of himself. He came to two conclusions:
1. At his age, what did he care about fame? He knew his theory was sound, and if the people in his own country didn't appreciate it, what difference did it make? Now, free from rancor, he could understand how they must have received his paper. They all knew old Dr. Talbot—seventy-five and not dead yet. What a ridiculous age for a nuclear physicist! ”

“ Talbot was a practical man of business to-day. The olive orchard was his, the toy hotel at the end of the plateau, the land upon which had grown the rough village, with its one store, its prosperous saloon, its post-office, and several shanties of citizens not altogether estimable. He was also a man of affairs, for he had represented the district for two years at the State Legislature, and was spoken of as a future Senator. It cannot be said that the people among whom he had spent so many years of his life loved him, for he was reserved and had never been known to slap a man on the back. ”

“ The Countess of Shrewsbury to Lord Burghley: representing her care of the Lady Arabella. [86] “My honourable good Lord,—I received your Lordship’s letter on Wednesday towards night, being the 20th of this September, by a servant of Mr. John Talbott, of Ireland. My good Lord, I was at the first much troubled to think that so wicked and mischievous practices should be devised to entrap my poor Arbell and me, but I put my trust in the Almighty, and will use such diligent care as I doubt not but to prevent whatsoever shall be attempted by any wicked persons against the poor child. ”