Termonde

“ It was quite natural that Jacques Termonde should not dispel the legend of the suicide, which was of his own invention, and had saved the other from the galleys. It is never pleasant to have to own a thief, a forger, or a deserter, for one's nearest relation; but this, after all, is only an excessively disagreeable matter.
The second fact was of a different kind. The disproportion between the cause assigned by my stepfather and its result in the terror from which he was suffering was too great. ”

“ Was I saved? Was I lost? All depended on the moment at which somebody might go into my stepfather's room. If my mother were to return within a few minutes of my departure; if the footman were to go upstairs with some letter, I should instantly be suspected, in spite of the declaration written by M. Termonde. I felt that my courage was exhausted. I knew that, if accused, I should not have moral strength to defend myself, for my weariness was so overwhelming that I did not suffer any longer. ”

“ Fine Hôtel de Ville, with five gables and sculptured decoration. Also belfry of the fourteenth century."
Termonde is famed throughout Flanders as the birthplace of the "Four sons of Aymon," and the exploits of the great horse Bayard. The legend of the Four Sons of Aymon is endeared to the people, and they never tire of relating the story in song as well as prose. Indeed [Pg 134] this legend is perhaps the best preserved of all throughout Flanders. ”

“ At last madame beckoned to the peasant-mother, who stole across the floor toward her and paused at her side. Silently she gave the mother her child, her finger on her lips, her eyes still fixed on the spot near the fireplace.
[14]
Then she turned, and laying her hands on the head of the sleeping boy, she began in a strange, low, hissing voice, “This one shall be an avenger of Louvain, he shall be an avenger of Dinant, and Termonde, and Aerschot, and Andenne, and Liége, and Tamines, and Visé. He shall avenge our nation. He shall not forget. ”

“ This cheerful prospect was in the mind of these men, for, when we espied coming around a distant corner two gray-looking men on horseback, they turned white as the chauffeur cried, "Uhlans!"
It is a question whether the car or our hearts came to a dead standstill first. Our shock was unnecessary. They proved to be Belgians, and assured us that the road was clear all the way to Termonde; and, except for an occasional peasant tilling his fields, the country-side was quite deserted until at Grembergen we came upon an unending procession of refugees streaming down the road. ”

“ It was long past noon, and by the look of the rest-house, and the empty lane beyond the garden, and the prospect of the slope of the mountain, Ternate was abandoned. There was not a sound. Nothing moved; not a bird, not a frond. The fronds might have been of enameled metal. Perhaps everybody had departed in the steamer and the island was mine. I felt, as did Robinson Crusoe, that I must go out and make an inventory of my fortune. The lane led up toward the impending declivity, but as though that ascent were far too steep it turned lazily northward among the easy groves parallel to the beach. ”

“ Horses, harnessed one in front of the other, dragged a barge at the foot of the castle hill, and small dark skiffs moved to and fro in the stream, as if Pest and Buda were taking leave of each other before the advent of winter.
On the shore shipwrights were at work. When they perceived Christopher Ulwing, they stopped and greeted him respectfully. A gentleman came in the opposite direction; he too doffed his hat. Near the market place ladies and gentlemen were walking. Everybody saluted Ulwing the builder.
Anne was proud. Her face flushed.
“Everybody salutes us, don’t they? ”

“ They have left an only son, John Hearle Tremayne, married to Caroline, daughter of the late Sir William Lemon.
It is impossible to say too much in praise of the late Mr. Henry Hawkins Tremayne: possessed of good abilities, of a sound understanding, of practical knowledge of business, and of the utmost kindness of heart, he became the father of his neighbourhood, reconciling all disputes, adjusting all differences, and tempering the administration of justice with lenity and forbearance. ”

“ The boat and brother Sebastian left the shore. They were already in the middle of the Danube. The stream and the oars, chance and will, carried his life into the opposite town. Christopher Ulwing [Pg 27] remained in Pest. Next day, he worked in the office of the ship-broker. Then he went into the timber yard. Then further. Advancing. Rising. And the town grew with him as if their fate had been one.
Vainly did Anne ask a thousand little questions; her grandfather did not answer. He walked far behind his present self. ”

“ Tremadoc itself stands on land formerly redeemed by a similar process. The resemblance which this land, reclaimed some centuries since, has to the sandy banks of northern Germany, which were gained from the sea perhaps a thousand years ago, is very striking: the little town itself and its inhabitants—as if like soil produced like character of people—as completely resembled the melancholy villages of that country. It is dreary, neglected, and dirty; the men ill-clad; the inn not better than a Silesian one, nor less filthy ”

“ Vincent many weeks, before he learned that his father was none other than a younger brother of the present Earl of Tremarn, and that he himself—seeing that the present peer was over fifty and still unmarried—was heir-presumptive to the title and estates.
"You know the rest. Within two or three months of the memorable St. Pierre catastrophe Philip Le Cheminant had written to his uncle, Lord Tremarn, demanding his rights. Then he took passage on board a French liner and crossed over to Havre en route for Paris and London. ”

“ The pleasant village of Grandcourt was startled that evening, as the shades of night fell, by the sight of two small boys trotting hard down the High Street, side by side, some three hundred yards in advance of the coach which carried the conquering heroes of Templeton; like eastern couriers who run before the chaise of the great man. ”

“ At the top, by the door of the churning-shed, stood a boy of perhaps sixteen, a dark, good-looking boy, with clear brown eyes that sparkled and twinkled like the dancing water below. He held out a strong hand and helped them up the last of the awkward steps.
"Dr. Tremayne sent me to look for you," he volunteered, "and a hunt I've had. I thought you must have gone down the town. I wouldn't have found you, only I heard your voices. He's ready to start, and in two minds whether to set off without you or not." ”

“ With a grave exaltation too deep and too high for words, the pure man and the pure woman came to their destiny and accepted it. Then their hands fell apart, the black Tempest wheeled into place beside the white Snowbird, and, as on a day long in the past, the pair passed swiftly and lightly eastward toward the lakeside village and their home. ”

“ In the windows of the houses handkerchiefs flickered like white flames.
Anne and Christopher had run to the window. Opposite, the sun had set already behind the castle. The outline of Buda, spires, gables, showed dark on the red sky. A black town on the top of the hill. On the bridge over the Danube a dark stream of steel poured over to Pest ... soldiers with fixed bayonets. They too received the sun on their backs and had their faces in the shade.
Anne leaned out from the window.
At the head of the troops, the shape of a man dominated the floating throng. ”

“ The Juniors’ Den at Templeton, that is, the popular assembly of those youthful Templetonians who had not yet reached the dignity of the Fourth Form, had always been the most radical association in the school. Though they differed amongst themselves in most things, they were as one man in denouncing fagging and monitors. Their motto was—down with both; and it pleased them not a little to discover that though their agitation did little good in the way of reforming Templeton, it served to keep their “Den” well before the school, and sometimes to cause anxiety in high places. ”

“ It is like the flashing of distant shields. Overhead drift massed white clouds that enfold the valley as far as the eye can see, causing shadows to chase each other swiftly across the vast expanse of green uplands. The alternate gleams of sunshine and shadow seem like the various moods chasing across your memory. But the amber colored etching of Trenton remains visible through it all. Reluctantly you turn away to view the monstrous flume along your path. Then you wander out in the forest of beech and maple, whose solitude heightens your impressions of this wild place. ”

“ The road that climbs from the square, which is Thrums's heart, to the north is so steep and straight, that in a sharp frost children hunker at the top and are blown down with a roar and a rush on rails of ice. At such times, when viewed from the cemetery where the traveller from the schoolhouse gets his first glimpse of the little town, Thrums is but two church steeples and a dozen red stone patches standing out of a snow-heap. ”

“ A wave of heat struck Tremaine. Let it be cool here, he thought. Now, Niss world....
"No!" Bram's voice shouted. "Stop, stop!"
Tremaine hesitated. He stared at the vista of volcanic fury before him.
I could destroy it all, he thought. And the stars in the Niss sky....
"Great is the power of your hate, man of Earth," Bram cried. "But curb it now, before you destroy us all!"
"Why?" Tremaine shouted. "I can wipe out the Niss and their whole diseased universe with them, with a thought!" ”

“ CHAPTER X. The outer side of Tromö, which lies off the entrance to Arendal, has only the ordinary barren stone-grey appearance of the rest of the islands along the coast; a wooden church, with a little belfry like a sentry-box and serving as a landmark, which lies drearily down by the sea, and under which on Sundays a pilot-boat or two may be seen lying-to while service is going on, is the only feature for the eye to rest upon. The land side of the island, on the contrary, presents a scene all the richer and livelier for the contrast. ”

“ Whether we can bring that fierce, wild charger from the sea I do not know. We can but try, but there is great danger in it.”
Then the gray steed bade Tremsin go to the town and buy twenty hides, twenty [134] poods of tar and twenty poods of horse-hair. “Load them upon my back,” he said, “and drive me down to the seashore.”
Tremsin went to the town and bought the twenty hides; he bought the twenty poods of tar and the twenty poods of horse-hair. He loaded them on the gray horse and drove him down to the sea. ”

“ A half-opened drawer, an empty cupboard, could stop Anne for hours. In her poor tortured brain memories alone had room. Everything spoke of the past. Even in the attics she only met with memories.
Uncle Sebastian’s shaky winged armchair; the grimy engravings of Fischer von Erlach and Mansard; the out of date coloured map of Pest-Buda.... She took the map to the light of the attic window. For a long time she contemplated the lines of the short crooked streets, the Danube painted blue, the small vessels of the boat-bridge, the small churches, the many empty building plots. ”

“ On the fourth evening of the term, as the Den was assembled in full session, for the purpose of swearing in Coote and denouncing the powers that be, that honourable fraternity was startled out of its never superabundant wits by an apparition far more terrible than the Templeton Ghost.
Dick was in the chair at the time, and Heathcote was in the act of moving a resolution, “That this Den considers all the monitors ought to be hanged, and hopes they will be,” when the Captain of Templeton suddenly entered the room. ”

“ When the natives of Ternate prudently assemble their canoes at signs more violent than usual, and even abandon their nutmeg groves, they are not showing timidity, for on the summit I got the impression that in the belly of the island there was a power latent which could lift it bodily from the sea. ”

“ Tremorne, I am but a poor benighted woman who has had no one to talk to for months and months. I cannot unburden my soul to Mr. Hemster, because I like him too well; and if I talk to the captain he will merely laugh at me, and tell funny stories. There is no one but you; so you see, unfortunate man, you are the victim of two women. ”

“ Perceiving Christopher Ulwing, she curtseyed deeply.
“With your permission, I am Amalia Csik, from the Fisherman’s bastion.”
She wore a hat like a hamper. Everything on her was faded and shabby. Anne noticed [Pg 30] that whenever she moved a musty odour spread from her clothes. In the shop nobody took any notice of this. All these people were dressed differently from her grandfather.
“Even the little children are dressed in a modish way,” the lady said disparagingly. “Of course, everything in Pest is different from what we have in Buda.... ”

“ Robert of Mortain, riding gaily down to the west, found a wealth of manors awaiting him and two castles—afterwards to be mentioned in Domesday—those of Launceston and Trematon.
Trematon is on the Lynher which, rising near Five Lanes towards the centre of the county, flows steadily south until it is joined by the Tidy near Ince Castle, (the only sixteenth-century brick house in the county) , and with a sharp easterly turn flows broadly and genially into the Tamar below Saltash. ”