Levantines

“ Enough that, supporting upon my arm the half-fainting form of one woman, but with my attention, and interest devoted to another, I descended the stairs of the Leavenworth mansion, and re-entered the dreaded presence of those inquisitors of the law who had been so impatiently awaiting us.
As I once more crossed that threshold, and faced the eager countenances of those I had left so short a time before, I felt as if ages had elapsed in the interval; so much can be experienced by the human soul in the short space of a few over-weighted moments. ”

“ And so long as they shall bide in that strong vessel no plague shall come from elsewhere upon the island of Britain.
"The third plague," continued Llevelys, "is caused by a mighty magician, who takes your meat and drink and stores of provisions. Through his illusions and charms he causes everyone to sleep. Therefore must you watch your food yourself. And, lest he should overcome you with sleep, have a cauldron of ice-cold water by your side, and if you begin to get drowsy, plunge into the cauldron."
Then Lud thanked his brother for his good counsel, and returned to his own land. ”

“ Here sat a terrified woman, face to face with some evil thing!
Then there came a knock at the door. As with the touch of her fingers upon the switch the gloom of the room was changed into brilliant light, so Félanie almost miraculously recovered herself. She swung round in her dainty revolving chair. Her lips, even, fell naturally and easily into the lines of her most seductive smile. What fear there was at the woman's heart showed itself no longer in her face.
'Monsieur Lavendale—Monsieur Ambrose Lavendale, is it not?' she added, with a momentary glance at the card. 'You wish to see me? ”

“ He knew that Levendale was undoubtedly a very wealthy man: there were all the signs of wealth about him; he had brought several servants down to the Highlands with him: money appeared to be plentiful with him as pebbles are on a beach. Purdie learnt bit by bit that Levendale had made a great fortune in South Africa, that he had come home to England and gone into Parliament; that he was a widower and the father of two little girls—he learnt, too, that the children's governess, Miss Elsie Bennett, a pretty and taking girl of twenty-two or three, had come with them from Cape Town. ”

“ Bedient arose at length and took the cold hand. He could not forbear a laugh.
"I am flexible enough to appreciate your position," he said. "As an acknowledged resource of the government, I suppose it is rather hard to see me—at this particular moment in the history of Equatoria—as carrying anything so simple as a friendly token."
"You are very absorbing to me, Mr. Bedient," the Señor said delicately. "An old man may express his fondness.... I am glad The Pleiad pleases you. I have built it out of the clods that the world has hurled at me, and have preserved enough vitality to laugh at it all. ”

“ The answer came in low, muffled tones, ‘Hannah, Miss Leavenworth’s girl! Please let me in at the kitchen door.’ Startled at hearing the well-known voice, and fearing I knew not what, I caught up a lamp and hurried round to the door. ‘Is any one with you?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Then come in.’ But no sooner had she done so than my strength failed me, and I had to sit down, for I saw she looked very pale and strange, was without baggage, and altogether had the appearance of some wandering spirit. ‘Hannah!’ I gasped, ‘what is it? what has happened? ”

“ You are not ready to return—even for the evenings. You stand now for austere purity—for plain, ancient, mother’s knee ideals. You must not delude yourself. A man must be apart in order to see. You did not begin really to live—until you drew apart.”
He felt her stripping his heart. His face lifted in agony, and his eyes caught the picture on the wall of the meeting of Beatrice and Dante. The Florentine woman seemed not to touch the earth; the poet was awed, mystic in the fusion of their united powers. It was fateful that Morning saw the picture at this instant. ”

“ He seizes, not upon some faculty of genius given but to few, but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of his laws. The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?' Our Lord replies by the parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the other side. That priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have been learned in the law ”

“ Mr. Leavenworth had the most bitter antagonism to the English. It was one of his marked peculiarities. He would never be introduced to one if he could help it."
It was my turn to look thoughtful.
"You know," continued the secretary, "that Mr. Leavenworth was a man who carried his prejudices to the extreme. He had a hatred for the English race amounting to mania. If he had known the letter I have mentioned was from an Englishman, I doubt if he would have read it. He used to say he would sooner see a daughter of his dead before him than married to an Englishman." ”

“ Levigne is away from home a good deal, and there's no family beyond a lady who's his private secretary, Miss Monniment. And there's a day-woman comes to help—she comes at eight of a morning and stays till eight at night, so of course I'm not over-worked, and I've a good chance of observing things. Now, Mr. Levigne, he's one of those gentlemen that are what I call difficult to deal with! You never know when he'll be in for his dinner, or if he'll be in at all, or if he's coming home that night. ”

“ But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart, “Behold what is greater than yourselves!” ”

“ Them I saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then? O, no! mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves there is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with Levana; they whispered not; they sang not; though oftentimes methought they might have sung, for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. ”

“ What? I determined to ascertain. Casting about in my mind for the means of doing so, I remembered that the ventilator running up through the house opened first into the passage-way connecting Mr. Leavenworth’s bedroom and library, and, secondly, into the closet of the large spare room adjoining mine. Hastily unlocking the door of the communication between the rooms, I took my position in the closet. Instantly the sound of voices reached my ears; all was open below, and standing there, I was as much an auditor of what went on between Mary and her uncle as if I were in the library itself. ”

“ Bedient found his servant, ordered the ponies, and the two rode up Calle Real, before one in the afternoon. They passed The Pleiad bluffs, overlooking the Inlet, where the Savonarola lay, and on for a mile or more into the solitude. Here Bedient sent forward his servant with both ponies and let himself down the bluff to follow the shore back.
The sand was white as paper and hot as fresh ashes. The muscles of his face grew lame from squinting in the vivid light. There was not a human being in sight on either length of curving shore, nor a movement in the thickly covered cliffs. ”

“ Leavenworth himself, and, chewing it till it was mere pulp, threw it into a corner; but the other had blood on it, and nothing, not even the hope of safety, could induce me to put it to my lips. I was forced to lie with it clenched in my hand, and the flitting image of Hannah before my eyes, till the slow morning broke. I have heard it said that a year in heaven seems like a day; I can easily believe it. I know that an hour in hell seems an eternity! ”

“ We may suppose that the Levite's sending the mangled pieces of his wife's body to the several tribes helped very much to inspire them with all this fury, and much more than a bare narrative of the fact, though ever so well attested, would have done, so much does the eye affect the heart. ”

“ Tall, lithesome and strong without masculinity, the sight and nature of the beauty explained the paternal whim that caused the merchant to give his child the name Velleda, the name of an illustrious heroine in the patriotic annals of the Gauls. Mademoiselle Lebrenn could be readily imagined with her brow wreathed in oak leaves, clad in a long white robe belted with brass, and vibrating the gold harp of the female druids, those wonderful teachers of our forefathers who, exalting them with the thought of the immortality of the soul, taught them to die with so much grandeur and serenity! ”

“ Levan was solitary. The immediate neighbourhood of the church is even now not very densely populated, for the visible buildings are only the rectory and a cottage; and it can, I conceive, scarcely be called cheerful; for the bell-buoy on that submerged rock, the Rundlestone, out to sea, is for ever heard tolling, sometimes like a funeral knell and at others like some harsh gong, calling lost mariners to dinner down there in weedy caves with the mermaids. ”

“ A well-known man can't disappear in that way unless for some very grave reason! For anything we know, Levendale—and Purvis with him—may be safely trapped within half-a-mile of Praed Street—or, as I say, they may have been quietly murdered. Of one thing I'm dead certain, anyway—if you want to get at the bottom of this affair, you've got to find those two men! ”

“ Bedient was impressed with something passionate and courageous, possibly dangerous. He could not have told the source of this impression. It was not in the contour, in the white softness of skin, in the full brown eyes, fair brow, nor in the reddened arch of her lips. It was something from the whole, denoted possibly in the quick dilation of her delicate nostrils or in the startling discovery of such a woman in Manila.... She lowered her eyes, started for her carriage—then turned again to the tall figure of Bedient in fresh white clothing. ”

“ The trim beard and mustache were hopelessly lost, and there were lines on Levendale's face which they concealed, but Levendale himself was now smartly groomed and carefully dressed, and business-like, and it was with the air of a man who means business that he strode into the room and threw a calm nod to the officials.
"Now, Inspector," he said, going straight to the desk, while Stephen Purvis turned to his brother. "I see from the papers that you've all been much exercised about Mr. Purvis and myself—it just shows how a couple of men can disappear and give some trouble before they're found. ”

“ In the face of anguish like this, I could not keep still.
"Dear Miss Leavenworth," I essayed, "there is no cause for such despair as this. The future looks dark, but not impenetrable. Your cousin will listen to reason, and in explaining——"
But she, deaf to my words, had again risen to her feet, and stood before me in an attitude almost appalling.
"Some women in my position would go mad! mad! mad!" ”

“ Any one of them could do as well as any other, dancing around a Maypole. That was her credo when she left Watertown, dad having hardening of the arteries and softening of the brain all at the same time. A party girl she was the minute she hit 'Frisco. Up all night every night, cock-eyed plenty, but always feeling good by the next evening when the old merry-go-round would start twirling again. ”

“ At any rate, she shivered most naturally. But there were a few dying embers in the grate, and when I saw her thrust her hand again into the folds of her dress I became distrustful of her intentions and, drawing a step nearer, looked over her shoulder, when I distinctly saw her drop something into the grate that clinked as it fell. Suspecting what it was, I was about to interfere, when she sprang to her feet, seized the scuttle of coal that was upon the hearth, and with one move emptied the whole upon the dying embers. ”

“ LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW From 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'
Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness,—typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. ”

“ He listened. He shouted. No reply. His voice died away against the walls and ceiling of the box in which he was shut up, and he felt that the whole house—drawing-rooms, staircases, and passages—remained deaf to his appeal.
And yet ... and yet ... Mlle. Levasseur—
"What does it mean?" he muttered. "What can it all mean?"
And motionless now and silent, he thought once more of the girl's strange attitude, of her distraught face, of her haggard eyes. And he also began to wonder what accident had released the mechanism which had hurled the formidable iron curtain upon him, craftily and ruthlessly. ”