Strangeways

“ After all, an honourable out-going is the best El Dorado which any man can hope to find as reward for his long life's search. If he were to die for and with Strangeways, he would at least prove to him that he was not entirely worthless. ”

“ This'll make travelling dangerous, for the thaw has already weakened the ice [78] in places and now the snow'll cover them over, making them appear safe. It's strange, for blizzards don't often happen so late as this."
"Well, there's one comfort," said Strangeways, "it's the same for all alike; if I'm delayed, so is someone else."
Granger turned his back on him, and walked over to the window where he stood tapping on the glass, attempting to dislodge the snow which had spread itself out like a blanket across the panes. "Poor devil," he said, "I pity him, whoever he is. ”

“ He recalled how, when he had discovered Strangeways' body at the bend, and had thought it Spurling's, he had bitterly accused himself of all manner of unkindness. He smiled grimly at the remembrance—it was human nature to do that. He could quite well imagine that at some future time, when Spurling was truly dead, he might blame himself afresh, with an equal bitterness and an equal sincerity. It would be easy to judge charitably of him then, for he would be beyond power of working any further mischief to the living. It is fear, not cruelty, which lies at the root of all uncharitableness. ”

“ So Spurling had not known that Mordaunt was a woman! And the body which was found at Forty-Mile had not been clothed in a woman's dress! How Strangeways must be laughing out there, alone in the coldness, three feet beneath the snow at the bend!
Yet, for all his pity, Granger could not bring himself to touch the man—he looked too absorbed in his tragedy. Out of decency he turned his back upon him, hurrying his task to an end. Already he had been too long about it; they had no time to linger. Peggy's absence might have many purposes; when she returned, she might not come unaccompanied. ”

“ He was interrupted in his thoughts by Strangeways saying, "It's a pity that that poor brute should suffer; he's certain to die."
The corporal went near, levelled his revolver and shot the leader between the eyes. The bullet did its work; the dog shivered, and tottered, rolled over on its side, tried to rise again, then stretched itself out wearily as if for sleep at the end of a hard day's travel.
"You can do that for a mere husky," said Granger bitterly; "but you refuse to do it for a man." ”

“ A creature without a memory, shut up in a remote wing of a place like this, as if he were the Man with the Iron Mask. Romance is not quite compatible with T. Tembarom.”
“He leaves everything to one’s imagination,” remarked Palliser. [Pg 772] “All one knows is that he isn’t a relative; that he isn’t mad, but only too nervous to see or be seen. Queer situation. I’ve found there is always a reason for things; the queerer they are, the more sure it is that there’s a reason. What is the reason Strangeways is kept here, and where would a detective come in? ”

“ Underneath he could hear the lapping of the current as it rushed rapidly round the bend, and could feel the trembling of the crust beneath his feet, as a man does the vibration of an Atlantic liner when the engines are working at full pressure, and every plank and bolt begins to shake and speak. When he had come to where Strangeways had been standing, he stood still and listened. He could hear no sound of travel, [106] no cursing a man's voice, urging his dogs forward, or cracking of a whip. Then he felt the ice sagging from under him, and the cold touch of water creeping round his moccasins. ”

“ That his follies had been guileless in themselves might be the very cause that his spirit had such power of repentance. His admiration of Lady Tyrrell had been burnt out, and had been fancy, not heart, and no word of it passed his lips, far less of the mirth with the Strangeways. Habit sometimes brought the phrases of the cricket-field, but these generally ended in a shudder of self-recollection and prayer.
The delirium only came with the accesses of fever, and when sensible, he was very quiet and patient, but always as one weighed down by sense of failure in a trust. ”

“ The first man was racing to preserve his own life, the second was pursuing to take it, and the third was following with all his strength that he might save the pursuer's life from danger. Of these three the last man alone had no fear of death. The other two were so eager to live, and one of them took such delight in life! Yet, Strangeways was rushing to his destruction as fast as that evil yellow-faced beast, tugging at the traces with might and main, could take him—to where beneath the ice, or in some forest ambush, lay crouched the hidden death. ”

“ Then, before it was too late, he found his words. "Be brave," he shouted hoarsely, "be brave! It is only death."
It would have seemed a preposterous supposition yesterday that the private trader at Murder Point should ever be in a position to bid the veriest scum among cowards to be brave. As he spoke, the intelligence came back to Strangeways' eyes, the fear went out from them and the features, losing their agony, straightened into an expression which was almost grave. [109] His hand became small in Granger's palm, as though it were offering to slip away. ”

“ Where a gesture will do the work of a word, let a gesture suffice.
All this Granger had learnt during the fortnight which he had lived with his wife; in watching her, he had studied to forego his former turbulence of mind as a thing most foolish, and had determined to sink down into the dull acceptance of a destiny against which it was profitless to contend—a kind of resigned contentment. If he was to be hanged to-morrow for Strangeways' death, that was no reason why he should disturb himself to-day ”

“ Every one says he has the making of a genius, but he does not look as if it agreed with him; he is grown tall, and thin, and white, and I should not wonder if those good-for-nothing servants bullied him.”
“Did you see anything of Eleonora?”
“Nothing so impossible. I meet her every day, but she is always beset with the Strangeways, and I think she avoids me.”
“I can hardly think so.”
“I don’t like it! That man is always hanging about Sirenwood, and Lenore never stirs an inch without one of those girls. I wish Frank could see for himself, poor fellow.” ”

“ Over the south door of the chancel of South Cowton Church occur two shields of arms, above each are the words "+ pofer Boynton." One shield bears on a fess between three crescents, a lion passant, impaling a bend between two saltires engrailed, the second bears. On a fess between three crescents, a lion passant, impaling two lions passant, for Strangeways. ”

“ They were the celestials of the Angel Meadow district who knocked the constable’s teeth out. Hallelujah! The place is not so far from the Cathedral and the Strangeways Gaol, but neither the promise of present punishment that the gaol holds forth for evil courses, nor the hope of Heaven for the repentant that the Cathedral typifies, suffices to blanch the scarlet sins of Redbank, or to win the inhabitants of Angel Meadow to a better life.
If one thing is more certain than another in any great town, it is that the stranger should not explore back streets. ”

“ Granger was man enough to answer, "The fault would be mine. I told him untruth till he could not believe me when I spoke the truth which would save his life."
Now that he was left solitary again, he resumed that old habit of lonely men of arguing with himself. Between each hurrying stride, he panted out within his brain his unspoken words, his thoughts gasping one behind the other as if his very mind was out of breath. Why had Spurling come back? Why hadn't he killed all ten huskies outright, and so prevented Strangeways from pursuing farther until the break-up of the ice? ”

“ You'll let your youth slip by, and you'll spend your old age, and your middle age too, repenting it."
Her ladyship lapsed into contemplative silence, soothed by the brandy.
But Connie was not keen on going to London, and being steered into the smart world by Lady Bennerley. She didn't feel really smart, it wasn't interesting. And she did feel the peculiar, withering coldness under it all; like the soil of Labrador, which has gay little flowers on its surface, and a foot down is frozen.
Tommy Dukes was at Wragby, and another man, Harry Winterslow, and Jack Strangeways with his wife Olive. ”

“ Ah, well, after he had been married a few years, he would have his children running hither and thither, laughing and chattering, about the Point; then it would be in his own choice to make of his environment what he liked. Gazing whimsically forward to such a time he could conceive that, were he given the opportunity to return to civilisation, by some curious turn of the wheel of fortune, he might prefer to stay; that such an opportunity might be possible, it would first be necessary that he should have been acquitted from all suspicion concerning the death of Strangeways. ”

“ It may be that he comes back, as my missis fancies, to silently reproach her. It's odd that she always sees him in the same place, and in his shroud. Several times she has seen him now, and her description of how he looks never varies. Nothing will ever persuade her, sick or well, that it is fancy."
"You have seen him also, I hear?"
"Not I," said Hatch. "I have upheld what my missis says. For which was best, Mr. Strange, sir—to let the servants think she is shaking and raving from fear of a ghost, or to let 'em get to suspect her the worse for drink?" ”

“ The house above me was as silent and dark as a tomb. The street was as empty as a church. Had the thing been a meteor out of a star-lit sky, or a wildcat leaping from a tree-branch, it could not have startled me more.
I stood looking at it, in wonder, as it lay beside the very area-railing on which my hand had rested. Then I stepped back and leaned in over this railing, more clearly to inspect the mystery. Whatever it was, it had fallen with amazingly little noise. There was no open window to explain its source. There had been no wind to blow it from an upper-story sill. ”

“ There is one passage in this little play which I want to point out as containing one of the main keys to Strindberg's character and art. It is the passage where The Stranger—who, of course, is none but the author himself—says to his brother: "I have beheld life from every quarter, from every standpoint, from above and from below, but always it has seemed to me like a scene staged for my particular benefit." ”

“ He felt the invisible Stranger suddenly as real as that. There was only one thing to see--only one thing everywhere. The beauty of the discovery put reason utterly and finally to flight. But that one thing was hiding. The Stranger concealed himself--he hid on purpose. He wanted to be looked for--found. And the heart grew "warm" or "cold" accordingly: when it was warm that mysterious anticipation stirred-- "Some one is coming!"
And Uncle Felix, sitting in the sunlight of that breakfast-room, understood that the entire universe formed a conspiracy to hide "him." ”

“ When he did think of it, it seemed only something too far away to remember, something phantasmal, something belonging to another world. There were times when all his journeying through steaming swamplands and forests of teak and satinwood and over indigo lagoons and mountain-passes of moonlit desolation seemed utterly and unfathomably foolish. But he fought back such moods, as though they were a weakness. He let nothing deter him. He stuck to his trail, instinctively, doggedly, relentlessly. ”

“ The commonplaces of street life continued to take on an alien aspect. They seemed vague and far away, as though viewed through a veil. He felt that the world had gone on, and in going on had forgotten him. ”

“ Her shadow slowly approaches that of the STRANGER.)
STRANGER (who, to begin with, looks only at his own shadow) . Ah! The sun! It makes me a bloodless shape, a giant, who can walk on the water of the river, climb the mountain, stride over the roof of the monastery church, and rise, as he does now, up into the firmament—up to the stars. Ah, now I'm up here with the stars.... (He notices the shadow thrown by the LADY.) But who's following me? Who's interrupting my ascension? Trying to climb on my shoulders? (Turning.) You!
LADY. Yes. I!
STRANGER. So black! So black and so evil. ”

“ I could go to Mr. Brightman, and he would supply me—Charles Strange is in Paris again. I could go to other places. But I prefer to have it from Mr. Ravensworth, and save myself trouble and annoyance. It is not a pleasant thing for a peeress of the realm—as you just now put it—to go about borrowing a five-pound note," she concluded with a faint smile.
"Very well, Blanche. If ill comes of this wild step of yours, remember you were warned against it. I can say no more."
Gathering up his cloak as he spoke, Major Carlen threw it over his shoulders, and went forth, muttering, into the night. ”

“ I began to wonder if this were due to the feeling, so teasing and persistent, of that painted canvas being an actual presence in the room, a sentry-like and sentient being who might witness and resent any movement I essayed. Then it crept into my mind how wary and artful the little old miser had been, in reality; how there was now something more intimidating in his very absence than in his presence. Once beyond my range of vision, in that midnight house, he threatened me from every imaginable quarter. Each silent door became a danger, each moving shadow a menace. ”