John Vernon

“ The glow will pass, the sunlight die, the flowers will fade, the bird-songs sink into silence. And, if you have not profited by that gleam of heaven which opened upon your soul, you are certain to have lost by it, especially when such a warmth, such a light, broke, by God’s grace, through the dull sky of a cold and worldly life. If any message from God have warmed your bare heart into leaf and bloom, beware how you let the golden opportunity remain unemployed. Beware lest the east winds return, and nip and scatter the frail petals ere the germ of some good fruit be formed. ”

“ Of all this there is no hint given yet, nor need we yet awake to the knowledge that we have indeed bid the Summer farewell till next year. The evenings are still warm, warm with that cool warmth which is so delicious: it will be some time yet before we can see our breath as we talk: we can stay out well until eight or later, and hear through the open window the clatter of arranging tea-cups, and watch the lamp, still faint in the twilight, warm the room with a dim orange glow. ”

“ Vernon is a cautious man, sir, a very cautious man."
"And who is this person?" asked Marlow, pointing to the personage who spoke.
"A messenger of the powers that be," replied Mr. Hastings; "it seems that because Sir John Fenwick dined here a short time ago, and has since been accused of some practices against the state, his Majesty's advisers have thought fit to connect me with his doings, or their own suspicions, though they might as well have sent down to arrest my butler or my footman, and I am now to have the benefit of a journey to the Tower of London under arrest." ”

“ The woman passed the light of her lantern over Vernon's form and face. "His dress is a peasant's, but such clothes may be a nobleman's whim. I have heard it of the English."
"I am English," said Vernon in French.
She turned on him with a quick movement of relief.
"You are English and a gentleman? But I know nothing of you, only that you have come out of the sea. Up in the House we women are alone, and my mistress has death to face, or a worse than death. We have no claim on you, and if you give us your service it means danger—oh, what danger! The boat is waiting. ”

“ Keeping the Child’s heart through the Woman’s life; feeling sorrow lightly, and with an April heart; disarming anger or harshness by its simple gleeful innocence; frail yet safe as a feather upon the whirls and eddies of life. Laugh on, light and cheery heart, amid the jay’s harsh dissonance, and the blackbird’s thought, and the thrush’s strength, and the dove’s sadness! Amid Life’s gravities and stern realities there is a grateful place for the gleams of a glad-hearted song like thine! ”

“ Is a son of the Right Hon. Edward Venables Vernon, D.C.L. Lord Archbishop of York, Primate of England, and Lord High Almoner to the King, &c. &c. &c. by Lady Anne Leveson Gower, third daughter of Granville, first Marquis of Stafford. He is consequently descended from William de Vernon, sole proprietor of the town and district of Vernon, in Normandy, anno 1052, whose eldest son, Richard de Vernon, came over to England with William the Conqueror, in 1066. The Archbishop of York is the youngest son of the first Lord Vernon, and brother to the present peer. ”

“ Autumn days are here: the gladness and glee of the year have gone, and a tender sweet sadness and mellow lucid gloom seem to have gathered over the still calm expecting landscape. The corn is all cut and carried, the pale stubble fields, edged with the deep green hedges, lie a little blankly on the hill-side or in the valley; the brighter Summer-shoots of the elms and the apple-trees have all sobered down now into uniform darkness; the little blue harebells tremble in clusters on the dried sunny hedge-banks ”

“ There seems no prophecy of those wild tossing October arms, with the stream of leaves hurrying away in the wind; no presage of the dull November days, when, from the scanty foliage of the trees, great drops plash down upon the decaying leaves beneath, and the whole wood looms out of the fog. Far less, in the full-bosomed, sober, rather air- than mist-mellowed woodlands, do you detect any foretelling of the time when all will stand, a bare thicket of gaunt boughs and naked twigs, dully shadowed in the ice, or made darker and more dreary by the great white fields of snow. ”

“ Yes, once upon a time we stood there: and the Spring air was rife with half-shaped songs and indistinct delicious whispers; and we knew that the hedges and copses were full of all sweet promise-buds; and there were songs in the distance, and an interminable thronging of inexhaustible flowers; and life seemed too sweet, when the first blossom that was our own was grasped in our hand, and the stir of life growing conscious and intelligent first made the heart glow and kindle, as we paused musing upon the Threshold, and looked out upon the sweet, strange opening year of Life. ”

“ It is beautiful when it rains far away in the distance, the bright sun shining on the mound on which you stand, and only a few guerilla drops heralding the approach of the shower towards you. It is beautiful among leafless trees, in early Spring or late Autumn, under an avenue, or in a copse, when every long bough and black branch is glittering, strung with trembling diamonds; when, the force of the wind and rain being kept from you by the trees and underwood, the gentle sadness and quiet melancholy of the scene can be gathered into your heart. ”

“ You are not sorry to shut the windows, and to have the curtains drawn, and to let the earth stand without, like a shrouded ghost, clad in winding-sheet of fog, while you enjoy the genial blaze, the cosy meal, the little ones on your lap after dinner, the gentle wifely smile that loves to see these loved. ”

“ Up into the sky, bright thoughts and dreams, quivering wings, swelling throat, hurrying ecstasies and crowding notes of joy, impatient, yet impossible to be uttered. Careless flowers upon the lap,—withering, are they? But there is a worldful more to be had for the gathering. ”

“ No more quick blood coursing in the veins, no more excess of animal life making stillness impossible and silence torture; no more young devotion and quick enthusiasm, warming the heart even to tinder, ready to flare at the first spark of friendship or love. No more glow of poetry cast about every face, and every daisy, and every sky, and every scene of every act of the coming years. No more expectation of becoming a great poet, a mighty warrior, an evangeliser of the world. ”

“ They have given over their watchfulness, their close observation of marks; the breath of prayer has fallen to a stillness; the waves seem to gleam and ripple and rustle as of old, and how shall the unearnest heart and the unwatchful eye ever know that the tide is going down?—a sinking so gradual, so stealthy, with such slight difference from day to day. ”

“ And, perhaps, we are content to pause on the threshold, and lean against the lintel, and survey the smile close at hand, and the gleam far away; and, while the robin draws near in a cheerful, not to say jovial, sympathy with our humour, and the faint branchy shadows move tenderly on the glistening lawn, to muse on the year’s threshold, concerning the programme that the wind is whispering among the bushes, and the promises that the warm air is wafting into the heart. ”

“ The black, soaked trees have, we find, taken a warm hue of life; the dull willow bushes have the gleam of golden hair; the first soft air of the year comes to our hearts with a gush of promises; flowers and leaves seem possible to the heart waking from its winter stagnation; trees and men alike feel a new life, a fresh impulse. ”

“ Such times there are, when the mists of November have departed, and the frosts of the succeeding months, and the bitter winds of March, and the flooding tears of April; it is the May, with its lavish promise and exuberant life, and ecstatic beauty! Times when illness or earth or laziness or lack of power no longer chill the soul that is indeed eager to burst into leaf; times when we are winged, when the hardest toils are easy to us, the heaviest stone rolled away ”

“ Yet who will expect the young heart to believe in the destiny of all its mere earth-dreams, so long as, within it, the tide is coming up? You almost smile, though with no scorn, to hear that momentary despairing sigh. For you stand now on a point from which you can see a seemingly exhaustless and endless array of ever-new schemes, and hopes, and fancies, and purposes, and ambitions and dreams, line chasing line, towards that magic disenchanting shore. ”

“ Beautiful to lie in the grey mounds of the soft, fragrant, new-made hay, dying, if this be to die, so graciously, and sweetly, and blessingly; lovely in life, and sweet in death. Beautiful when even this bloom-grey has gone, and we shake out from their close-pressed sleep the loose masses of the yellow hay, and brown leaves and flowers, all, however, still fragrant, and full of hints in Winter days, of the warm Summer. ”

“ There are still the gleeful leaves lying, poor dead things, in the lanes; there are yet the unburied flowers, black on the garden-beds; the air is tepid; the trees are not entirely bare; the state is one of transition. ”

“ Nature is always beautiful to those who always look for beauty in her. But perhaps she is least lovely when clad in a close thick fog. And it is thus that we have seen her continually of late. The wet black trees stood dim and ghostlike in the mist, and much like seaweed under tissue-paper. The hedges looked unreal and distant, as you passed between them on the pale road. Passengers and carriages loomed blurred and big and indistinct, out of the chill cloud in front of you, long after the wheels and the steps had been heard. ”

“ But let us not grudge the short hour of pure lightness of heart, that was God’s gift; nor hunt for ripe71 fruit among the sheets of blossom; nor dull with our heart’s twilight the first flush of the morning; nor desire, in the song of the lark, the thoughtfulness of the blackbird—far less the moan of the dove. Let not our work ever be to check, only to guide, and to tend, and to develop, the heart’s songful gladness, pointing it, indeed, heavenward; or, again, ready to tend the germ which some gust has stolen from its white petal-wings. ”

“ In January we were indoors, beside the fire, and there seemed little of new and various to tempt us out. But February comes, and with it the first dream of change, the first scarce-heard whisper of the Spring. ”

“ A watching form stands on a point towards the sea, until, at last, far away over the water, in the sultry horizon, a little dark speck, like a man’s hand, arises, and, on rapid wing, the delicious cool clouds gather and spread their awning between the burnt earth and the pitiless sun. Then the glorious sudden rush of the restoring rain, steady, incessant, abundant, settling in pools on the caked ground, streaming down the sides of the orange hills, sending eddying torrents to brim the parched cracked river-beds. ”

“ Dimly out of a corner of his eye he saw the girl pick up the silver lamp and stand by the door holding it high.
Vernon had learned the rudiments of wrestling among the dalesmen of the North, but now he was dealing with one who followed no ordinary methods. It was a contest of sheer physical power. Vlastos was a stone or two heavier, and had an uncommon length of arm; but he was clumsily made, and flabby from gross living. Vernon was spare and hard and clean, but he lacked one advantage—he had never striven with a man save in friendly games, and the other was bred to kill. ”

“ And yet, how Wintry our hearts are in our prayers! how seldom they burst into exuberant flower! how constantly the sky above us seems pale and heavy, and dull and impenetrable, and our hearts beneath abiding in their Wintry sleep! ”

“ Vernon called Constantine from the bows and asked him what the word might mean. The Epirote crossed himself also before he spoke. "It is the Lady of the Land," he said, in a hushed voice. "It is the great witch who is the Devil's bride. In old days in spring they made sacrifice to her, but they say her power is dying now. In my country we do not speak her name, but elsewhere they call her 'Queen.’" The man's bluff sailorly assurance had disappeared, and as Vernon stared at him in bewilderment he stammered and averted his eyes. ”

“ Vernon asked, though he already knew the answer.
"But no," she said. "We live only on the landward side of the House. My lady told me that God would send a man to our aid. And I bade Mitri fetch him."
The door was unlocked and the three climbed a staircase which seemed to follow the wall of a round tower. Presently they came into a stone hall with curious hangings like the old banners in a church. From the open flame of the lantern another was kindled, and the light showed a desolate place with crumbling mosaics on the floor and plaster dropping from the cornices. ”

“ Time was, when other thoughts and purposes than these which now possess us, held sway in our hearts. Time was, when we stood on the threshold, dazzled, and wondering, in a delicious dream, which of all the sublime or lovely paths that opened before us we should pursue. ”

“ No praise from my pen can do adequate justice to this lamented young man; as an officer, he was active, correct, and zealous, to the highest degree; the leader in every kind of enterprise, and regardless of danger; he delighted in whatever could tend to promote the glory of his country: his last words were, ‘huzza! push on! England for ever!’
“Mr. Hawkey had been away in the boats on different services, since last Monday, accompanied by Lieutenant Vernon, whose conduct in this affair has been highly exemplary, and shewn him worthy to be the companion of so heroic a man ”