Paul Pry

“ He had several mates afterwards, newcomers to the fields, who wanted someone to work with them, but they were all of the same opinion about him.
"Tell Rum-Enough there's a bit of colour about, and he'll work like a chow," they said; "but if y' don't see anything for a day or two, he goes as flat as the day before yesterday."
If he had been working, and happened on a knobby, or a bit of black potch with a light or two in it, Paul was like a child, crazy with happiness. He could talk of nothing else. ”

“ It is true that Paul Fry, the Bohemian, was a player of extraordinary strength and fortune at every game, who always tried to play with millionaires and millionairesses; but the great potin, with which Giorgio Galanti attracted the most Catholic and snobbish Spaniard, Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, was when Fry, bold and cool, began to play with Signora Azquierda, an immensely rich Argentinian, who lived at Paris, and having tried conclusions with her, she won from him three thousand francs at poker—she, the woman, from him, Paul Fry, the invincible! ”

“ Wright was not always jesting. On the contrary, he could be very serious when his hobby of paper-making, with its many interdependent industries, was mentioned.
He was, for example, in close touch with the publication of periodicals, newspapers, and books, and he immediately hailed Paul as a colleague.
"So you are the editor-in-chief of a widely circulated monthly magazine, are you, my boy?" he remarked. "Well, you certainly have an enviable job. It is a pity you are not [154] going to keep on with the work. Your father tells me he thinks you have made a great success of it." ”

“ Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the man’s ready for them. Then, it’s a pat on the back and a clean bill of health for you; and, ‘Thanks, my noble radio man; your message was music to our honest ears,’ for me.” Cray stopped.
“And so—”
Cray leaned closer.
“Get this. There’s two men we ain’t searched yet—Drake and Quayle. Either one, mebbe—”
The old captain rose.
“We’ll start with Quayle, eh?” He made for the door, but he stopped, turned. “You put that into my head, damn ye!”
“What if I did?” Cray cried. “What if I did? Since you have no detective aboard, what price Cray, hey?” ”

“ Still my heart, then break it!—Yes, one day, when the free spirit spreads her wings in a fairer heaven, and when the New Year breaks upon a purer world—when we all meet, and love, again—then shall I lay my longings, prayers, and wishes at thy feet. ”

“ The New Year’s gates are open, and Fate, standing between the sun and the burning morning clouds upon the mound of ashes of the year which has fallen to dust, deals out the days according to their lot. ”

“ And now when in the afternoon Albano heard of the peaceful march of the thunder through Liana's city, then by his faith in her newly-assured life, and by the soft dead-gold of resting fancy, and by the holy stillness of the regenerated bosom, and by the increased fervor of his love, there grew up out of all regions of his soul an evening-red, magic Arcadia,—and never did a man enter upon a fairer one. ”

“ O, love each other truly, press your throbbing, transitory hearts ardently to each other, ere the wing of Time shatters them, and glow on each other's bosoms during the short minute of life, and exchange your tears and kisses ere eyes and lips freeze in the grave! ”

“ And yet the human spirit lies at rest amid this storm, peaceful as a quiet moon above a windy night. In me, at this moment, all is gentle peace. I see my own little life-brook running by me, falling, with all the rest, into the river of Time. ”

“ “But he was there, they were all there that morning when I came down to breakfast, and saw that Paul was frightened—the man who loved me frightened and all his paraphernalia fallen, so that I knew it was impossible, because personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.” ”

“ Could his smitten heart refrain from saying to him how sharply Death, the hard, solid, insoluble, with its glacier-air, sweeps through the warm scenes of life, and leaves behind it all over which it breathes stiff and snow-white? ”

“ And so Delirium dyed for itself rosy wings in the Aurora of life, and fanned the panting soul,—and shook down golden butterfly-dust from its plumage on the path, on the flowerage of the suffering man;—in the far distance rose lovely tones, in the distance floated lovely clouds—O his heart was like to fall in pieces, but only into fluttering flower-stamina, into soft sentient nerves; his eyes were like to melt away, but only into dew-drops for the cups of joy-blossoms, into blood-drops for loving hearts ”

“ At last Paul went on. “I know how it is, son. You won’t do it, you haven’t the nerve for it—you’re soft.” He waited, while those cruel words sank in. “Yes, that’s the word, soft. You’ve always had everything you wanted—you’ve had it handed to you on a silver tray, and it’s made you a weakling. You have a good heart, and you know what’s right, but you couldn’t bear to act, you’d be too afraid of hurting somebody.” ”

“ And when the white banner of the blooming spring fluttered abroad, and more human thrones stood before them,—and when, blissfully softened by love, the harmonica of life, they looked upon each other and their happy children, and were speechless for love and bliss,—then did Polyhymnia, invisible, float by over them, and recognize them, and gave them the tones wherewith the heart expresses and awakens love and joy. ”

“ And yet, in the depths of this ice-month of his love-imploring heart, and in the wilderness of his loneliness, Firmian still had one living, resplendent flower—and that was Nathalie’s parting-kiss. Ah! ye who waste and pine because of our insatiableness, did ye but know how a kiss, which is a first and a last, blossoms and blooms throughout a life—imperishable double-rose of speechless lips and burning souls—ye would search for bliss more enduring—aye, and find it too! ”

“ Then Victor awoke as out of a dream and out of life, and clasped the harmonious, fleeting airs to his languishing bosom, and, amidst the gushing tears which, like a rain-cloud, veiled from him the whole landscape, he cried out, beside himself: "Ah, Emanuel, come!—Ah, I thirst for thee—Float no more in sound, thou blessed one; take thy deposed human face, and appear to me, and slay me by a shudder, and keep me in thy arms!" ”

“ Fate deals the days according to their lot. What dost thou long for, Nathalie?
“Not love. Oh! those who press the thorny white rose of love to their hearts draw blood from out them; the warm tears of bliss which fall into the blossom soon grow chill, and are dried up amain. Love, all gleam and bloom, hangs on the morning sky of life, like some great rose-red Aurora in the heavens. Ah! do not enter that bright glittering cloud—it is but mist and tears. No, no; long not for love; die of a lovelier sorrow. Sink into the chill of death under a nobler poison-tree than is the lovely myrtle. ”

“ CYCLE.
On the morning after both storms were dissolved into a still cloudiness.—And out of the great griefs came only errors. Weaklings that we are! when at our sham execution fate touches us with the rod, not with the sword, we sink impotently from the block, and feel the process of dying reach far into our life! All fevers, including spiritual ones, are cooled by the freshness of a new morning, just as sad evening stirs all their embers into a glow. ”

“ Luna. If thou canst not do it, still forsake not at court the beloved soul; be her only, her most ardent friend; draw the bee-stings of earthly hours from her gentle heart. When cold words, like snow-flakes, fall upon this flower, then let the breath of love melt them to tears that shall flow before thy sight; when a tempest shall come up, over her life, then show her the angel who stands in the sun, and draws over our tempests the rainbow of hope. ”

“ Albano bore a new world of love and bliss in his bosom; and the youth,—not yet a debtor to the past, but a guest of the present,—sweetly unbent by the long Jubilee of the day, sank into clear-obscure dreams, like a towering bird of prey hanging silent on pinions open with ecstasy. ”

“ And then I was lifted up and borne along on wings of ether, with the light breaking through my closed eyelids. And a creative finger touched me, and high in heaven, upon a green cloud, I opened my eyes. Above me was the blue abyss of the stars; below me stretched a blue ocean, on whose horizon glittered, in the glow of the sunset, the countless islands of the blessed; around me floated scattered cloudlets, tinted with the red and white of roses and of lilies, and with the many colors of manifold flowers.
"Who, O God, has brought me to life out of my woe?" I cried. ”

“ He had brought up with him, too, from his subterranean school-room a certain bashfulness which ordinary men and almost his father take for simplicity, but which men in higher life, if it only appears, as with him, in the company not of a staring, but of an overfull, enthusiastic eye, regard as the order-cross of a brother of the order. Nevertheless, eight days after, his parents repented not that they had shut him up, but that they had ever let him out.
The wife of the Head-forester, von Knör, had brought a lot of Moravian men and women with her to hear the disciple of the grave ”

“ And this morning renewed in his heart the painful likeness of four things,—life, a day, a year, a journey, which resemble each other in their fresh, exultant beginning, in the oppressive interlude, in the weary, sated close.—
Outside in the copse, in the background of the woodland, Nature unrolled before him her altar-piece, miles long, with its chains of hills, with its dazzling country-houses, which had decked themselves with gardens as with festoons, and with the miniature-colors of the flowerets which played on the silver line of beauty traced by the brooks. ”

“ Gottreich soon confirmed it to himself. He would fain have infused the fire of conquest, reflected in his own bosom, which, like a red evening cloud, was announcing a fair dawn to Europe, into that old and once strong heart; but he heard neither wish nor question of it. The old man gazed steadily upon the sun, until at last it was hid by the storm. Nevertheless the war of the elements seemed to touch him but little; the glare of life broke dimly through the thickening ice of death. A dying man knows no present,--nothing but the future and the past. ”

“ He would certainly have started earlier, but he wanted to avoid the moon, whom he could no more marry to the sun than he could their respective children to each other,—namely, night-thoughts and morning-thoughts. For when the morning-clouds envelop man in their dew, when the loving birds dart noisily through the gleaming mist, when the sun looms forth out of the hazy glow, then does man, quickened in spirit, press his foot more deeply into the earth, and cling with new ivy-twigs of life more firmly to his planet. ”

“ Ah! before these beams have blackened to ebony by the winter smoke, many an eye-socket will have grown red with grief; many a northwester of life will blow through the window upon trembling hearts, and into these nooks, which are yet to be darkly walled up, will many a back, sore with bruises from the warfare of common life, creep away to wipe off sweat or blood. ”

“ These now gushed forth; and behind his dimmed eyes, in the overshadowed inner chamber, lined with the green of nature, and darkened, as it were, with curtains of evening redness, a colored night came on, wherein all the little shapes of his childhood rose cloudily before him,—the earliest playthings of life were laid out,—his first May months played like little angels on an evening cloud, and they could not in their wing-clothes fly round the great cloud, and the sun did not scorch them. ”

“ Ephemera die all at sunset, and no insect of this class has ever sported in the beams of the morning sun. Happier are ye, little human ephemera! Ye played only in the ascending beams, and in the early dawn, and in the eastern light; ye drank only of the prelibations of life; hovered for a little space over a world of freshness and of blossoms; and fell asleep in innocence before yet the morning dew was exhaled! ”

“ Deeply touched by human virtue, he wept out of his boundless love for men, who, amid the craving of their own needs, under low-hung clouds, behind mists which stream over the sharp-cutting paths of life, never turn away from the lofty star of duty, but in their darkness stretch out loving arms towards every suffering breast they encounter, while around them nothing glimmers but the hope of setting like the sun in the old world, in order to arise in the new. ”

“ Human blood paints the fluid figure called man on the monument, as oil on marble forms forests; Death wipes away the man, and leaves the stone. O Gione! I would have some consolation, if thou wert but far away from us all, on a clouded forest, in a cave of the Earth, or on the most distant world in space. But thou art gone, thy soul is dead, not only thy life and thy body.
See, Nadine, on the judgment-seat of Time lies the crushed angel, with the death color of the spirit-world. ”

“ That is why I should like to control a newspaper, that I might make it the mouthpiece of all that is highest and noblest. To my mind only persons of splendid ideals should be entrusted with the [161] publishing of papers. If the editor is to form the opinion of the masses, he should be a man worthy of his mission."
Paul toyed with his cuff-link.
"So, son," concluded Mr. Wright, "you've got to be a very good person if you aim to be a newspaper man—at least, that's what I think. Any printed word is like seed; it is liable to take root you know not where. ”