Mord

“ There was the slight mist in the air that seems for ever floating about South London, ready, if joined by auxiliary forces, to become a fog; content, when alone, to remain reticent, and to mellow the tone of the evening. When a stretch of private houses, with long, stubbly lawns, came now and again, Mord Em'ly's eager interest relaxed, to become alive the moment that lighted shops appeared in view. ”

“ As they crossed the road the traffic stopped, warned by the danger signal of the young constable's disengaged hand; Mord Em'ly noted this in spite of her dazed sullenness. The hoarse butcher on the other side and his customer both ceased haggling to watch her; a stream of people, increasing in breadth as it went, followed. It seemed to Mord Em'ly that she had suddenly grown deaf, for the voices sounded as though they were a long way off. ”

“ Once more there came the sound of feet and lo! men marched in from the darkness on either side. Eric and Skallagrim looked up and knew them. They were those of Ospakar’s folk whom they had slain on Horse-Head Heights; all their wounds were on them and in front of them marched Mord, Ospakar’s son. The ghosts gazed upon Eric and Skallagrim with cold dead eyes, then they too sat down by the fire. Now once more there came the sound of feet, and from every side men poured in who had died at the hands of Eric and Skallagrim. ”

“ The gang, spurred to instant action, snatched a share of the meringues from Miss Gilliken, and flew, in accordance with the rules, in various directions. Mord Em'ly, distracted for the moment ran half-way across the road. There came shouting from a street near, a bawling "Fah, fah, fah!" taken up and repeated by everyone, a shining brass fire-engine, with excited helmeted men atop, and drawn by wild-eyed, galloping horses, swung round into the main road; sparks flying from the funnel and giving the atmosphere a not displeasing scent of burning wood. ”

“ When the feast was over, the giants rose and stretched themselves.
'Now,' said the biggest one, 'we'll go a-hunting. There's always to-morrow's feast to be thought of. We go, O Nine Man Mord, to the Tsar's city. There is still good flesh to be got there, though we have been feeding on it for many, many years. ”

“ Mord Em'ly was busily serving the customers in the various pews, taking orders, and running to the back to hurry the cook with encouragement and reproach, finding newspapers for those desirous of combining study with restoration of the body, telling an insurgent match-boy to get outside before she forced him to do so, and keeping ever a watchful eye on departing customers, when a youth, of medium height, broad-shouldered, bullet-headed, square-chinned, pushed open the glass doors, and looked round. ”

“ Mord Em’ly smiled at the nodding green bird as she hung her hat on the nail near the doorway. These promises were always made on Saturday nights, and there were times when, knowing quite well that there was no chance whatever of their realisation, she, nevertheless, felt joy in listening to her mother's dreamy projects.
“You'd look nice in a light pink silk, my dear,” said her mother, opening one eye. “My eldest sis'r had a light pink silk once.”
“I should look well in anything,” said Mord Em’ly cheerfully. “Fine, tall, upstanding lady like me can’t be off from it.” ”

“ What's her nime?"
"’Tain't a murder, is it?" (In tones of hopefulness, modified by fear of disappointment.)
"Murder? Someone ses it's a murder. Very like she's put her parents aw'y. What a 'orrible thing, to be sure! ”

“ The regular tramp of mules attached to the tram-cars, the rattle of other traffic, the indignant whistling by tram-car drivers when the other traffic dared to intrude upon their lines—all these came into Mitchell's with the fresh air, and made the customers, as they talked to each other, raise their voices to a higher pitch. As Mord Em'ly stood at the open doorway, looking thoughtfully at the street, Miss Mitchell came to the pew where Henry Barden was seated, with a view to rallying him upon his absorbed appearance. ”

“ It chanced that the man appealed to was Mord the Grim; the old counsellor justified the nickname by the look he bent on Rolf’s son.
“Are you forward in this direction, also?” he inquired. “Starkad’s daughter will not think that news so much worth having.”
Brynhild drew a step nearer and answered for herself: “I should think it a sad story if I did not want news about a brave man’s fate. To come from a circle of merrymakers into a group of such menace—Though it were no more than a thrall that was bound here, I should wish to know what this betided him! I beg you to tell me as quick as you can.” ”

“ But Njal heard what they had been saying, and he warned Gunnar.
‘You have always dealt truly and kindly with me,’ said Gunnar, when Njal had finished speaking, ‘and if ill befall me, take heed, I pray you, of my son and Hogni. As for Grani, he has an evil nature, and there is no turning him from bad deeds.’
It was in the autumn that Mord, the son of Valgard, sent word to Gunnar’s foes that the time had come to make the attack upon Lithend, as all his men had gone to the haymaking on the isles of the sea. ”

“ I screamed, screamed in utter horror at the thing I saw there. Dead? Good God, I do not know. It was a corpse, a dead human body, standing before me like some propped-up thing from the grave. A face half eaten away, terrible in its leering grin. Twisted mouth, with only a suggestion of lips, curled back over broken teeth. Hair—writhing, distorted—like a mass of moving, bloody coils. ”

“ Many there be who yet do grace their dead with a salt platter putten upon the breast of the corpse, and all those friends who do view the dead and it be the common custom for all so to do, do first touch the corpse on the face or hands and then lay their own hands upon the platter first having full and free forgiven the dead any fault or ill-feeling they had in life held as a grudge again the dead. ”

“ So I made a big fire in the fireplace and got the shack good and hot, then went out and brought in the corpse. I got sick at the stomach on that job, but that was the only way. I didn’t have the heart to leave the thing outside and build a fire over it out there. I try to respect the dead, even if the corpse is that of a man who had been dead several thousand years and looked more like an animal than a human being. ”

“ Know that when the time of your death has arrived, those most dear, will be the first to thrust you out. And what will be your real home? A grave will be the home of your body until the day of judgment; and your soul will have to go to its long home, either to paradise or to hell. ”

“ If they visit where there is a dead body, or accompany a funeral, show them the dead body as covered with earth in the grave, or an animal that has been killed, and say, “God destroyed them because of wickedness.” ”

“ I pray for thee no more:
The corpse’s tongue is still;
Its folded fingers point to heaven,
But point there stiff and chill:
No farther wrong, no farther woe
Hath licence from the sin below
Its tranquil heart to thrill.
I charge thee, by the living’s prayer,
And the dead’s silentness,
To wring from out thy soul a cry
Which God shall hear and bless!
Lest Heaven’s own palm droop in my hand,
And pale among the saints I stand,
A saint companionless. ”

“ Do the dead return? Are the dead indeed dead? You have nailed down the coffin-lid; you have seen the coffin as it sunk into the grave; you have heard the rattling of the clod,—but is that all? Is the beloved one whom you have given to the grave, indeed dead, or only more truly living in a new body, formed of refined matter, invisible to our gross organs? Is that which we call soul, only the result of a particular organization of gross matter, or is it the real, eternal substance of which all other matter is but the servant and the expression? Do the dead return? ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! ”

“ Oh! if one spot did fully his pure soul In heaven hath he wip'd it clean away, With this his sweet unfeigned oraison. SECOND MURDERER.
'Tis true— The King to us hath ever been most kind, We've serv'd and gained honours under him; 'Twould have disgrac'd the name of Murderer Had we to cold death sent him unprepar'd. For e'en the rigid law itself allows To most crimes most daring, most atrocious, A time to pray, a time to ask for mercy. FIRST MURDERER.
Why how now? Hast thou forgot thine errand, Wast sent here to prate thus, Or to fulfil thy promise? ”

“ In a shroud of mourning liest thou among the woes,
My senses in a horrid darkness trapped expire.
Thy hands are bound, my freedom’s gone; eternal throes
Of death have chained my mind upon a funeral pyre. ”

“ A corpse is laid with no one near.
Ah, what is this—this nameless fear—
The ghouls are stirring—they are here!
One hears them—they are gliding on—
And strange and weird their ghostly song.
“The body to the earth is told,
Alas! for him who lost his soul.” ”

“ Whenever it came, a heavy numbing throb seemed to take hold of my heart, and say, 'Dead—dead—dead.' And I cried out, 'The living, the living shall praise Thee O God; the dead cannot praise Thee. [16] There is no work in the grave; [17] in the night no man can work. ”

“ Death, which after the haemorrhage had appeared as the beautiful winged boy who is so easily mistaken for the god of love—Death, who had incited me to write saucy, defiant verses about him, now confronted me as a hollow-eyed, hideous skeleton. ”

“ And the worms' gnawing, and thy body's rottenness,
And the rottenness in thy bones and in thy brain!
1st Corpse.
O beautiful, O dead, O spit upon,
He speaketh well that is but lately dead;
Thy flesh lies all along thee like green slime,
O pudding gravied in thine own dead sauce!
2nd Corpse.
Rotten one!
1st Corpse.
Dung-heap!
2nd Corpse.
Dead one!
1st Corpse.
Beast! beast! beast!
Therefore perhaps, thou art so early dead?
2nd Corpse.
They say that those thou lovedst were not men,
O goat-face—Shall I say what was thy death?
4th Corpse. ”

“ The illustrations to the Arte del bene Morire comprise a hideous outline cut of Death, scythe on shoulder, flying over ground strewn with corpses (this is enclosed in a large black border used by Mischomini in 1492) , and cuts of Death showing a young man Heaven and Hell, [13] of a sick man with his good and bad angels watching him and Death standing without the door, and of a dying man attended by a friar, Death sitting now at his bed's foot, and the angels watching as before. ”

“ With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can’t control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: “You may try all day, but you’ll never jam me in”? ”

“ Bring out your dead! what a solemn, terribly solemn cry! How it must have filled with awe and dread all who heard it! And if that call were repeated, if the holy angels of God were to go through the length and breadth of our land, and, stopping before each house, were to cry to those within, 'Bring out your dead, bring out your dead,' not your dead bodies, but your dead souls; bring out all in your house who are not alive unto God, who are dead in trespasses and sins, how many would have to be carried out of our houses? Should we ourselves be left behind? Are we alive or dead? ”

“ SECOND MURDERER. Make peace with God, for you must die,
my lord.
CLARENCE. Have you that holy feeling in your souls
To counsel me to make my peace with God,
And are you yet to your own souls so blind
That you will war with God by murd'ring me?
O, sirs, consider: they that set you on
To do this deed will hate you for the deed.
SECOND MURDERER. What shall we do?
CLARENCE. Relent, and save your souls.
FIRST MURDERER. Relent! No, 'tis cowardly and womanish.
CLARENCE. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. ”

“ Since the period of which I now write, I have often witnessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opinions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the survivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying—whether the moment of dissolution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. ”

“ Bury the Dead, bury the Dead, Out of our sight! But there are other Dead That will not buried be, That walk about in glaring day With noiseless tread. And stalk at night; Unburied Dead, unburied Dead, Ever in sight. Dear friendships snapt in twain. Sweet confidence betrayed, Old hopes forsworn, old loves worn out, Vows pledged in vain. There is no flight, Ye living, unrelenting Dead, Out of your sight. ”

“ Hie thee back, thou find'st not here Corpse or coffin, grave or bier; The Dead Alive is gone and fled— Go thou, and join the Living Dead! 'The Living Dead, whose sober brow Oft shrouds such thoughts as thou hast now, Whose hearts within are seldom cured Of passions by their vows abjured ”