Thomas Graham

“ He had a simple dinner then at the inn, a pint of cider and a pipe under the portico, where he sat until all the village folk were once more at work. Then he went back to the church again, ascended the glen, and recommenced painting.
A more happy or peaceful time Graham never spent than those hours beneath Anerly Bridge. He was young, in full health, had enough money to keep himself comfortably, was by nature light of heart, and had made a good beginning of a picture which he firmly believed would establish his fame. ”

“ HONORED MISTRESS DEERING,--I lay myself at your feet, and with myself a pretty bit of game I have just killed, thinking that the fair Venetian might fancy a venison steak for her breakfast. I kiss your hand, dear my lady, and am your most unworthy but loyal servitor,
JOHN GRAHAM.
"Of course, knew it was Graham, queer creature. Wonder why he did not stop and take breakfast with us. He is an unaccountable fellow."
"What did you call him?"
"Graham; his full name is John Douglass Graham. Just like a hero's in a novel. But Graham never does anything very heroic, I fancy." ”

“ Graham going away to school, and manfully fixing his mind on his first long trousers, so he would not cry; Graham at college, coming in with the winning crew, and stumbling, half collapsed, into the arms of a waiting, cheering crowd. And the Graham who had followed his mother up the stairs that night, to come down baffled, thwarted, miserable.
He rose and threw away his cigar. He must have the thing out with Natalie. The boy's soul was more important than his body. He wanted him safe. God, how he wanted him safe! But he wanted him to be a man. ”

“ On first entering the gardens, Graham's eye was attracted and dazzled by a brilliant form. It was standing under a festoon of flowers extended from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite shone full upon the face,—the face of a girl in all the freshness of youth. If the freshness owed anything to art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature. The beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant; and yet one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of deep mournfulness. She was surrounded by a group of young men, and the ring of her laugh jarred upon Graham's ear. ”

“ Graham did not succeed in that important branch of art: the individual had little interest for him; men and women absorbed him less than nature. Every tree and brooklet, dead forest leaf or purpled thunder-cloud, held for him a lesson. Men and women seen from a distance were more likely to interest him than those with whom he was thrown in close contact. When their lives and actions were viewed in an impersonal perspective, he understood them better, and often theorized about them. His thoughts were oftener occupied with people of whom he knew little than with his friends and intimates. ”

“ Men, as a rule, respected and feared Graham; a few of his heart-friends would have given their lives for him with a smile. To those who understood and loved him, there was something more than human about the man,--a quality to which the highest part of their nature did homage. ”

“ At first the glitter of the gathering had raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile and satirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere of courteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, the shining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transient interest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skilfully modulated voices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woven together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a time forgot his spacious resolutions. ”

“ Judged by any right test of greatness, Graham was more a man than was Napoleon or John Howard. He that ruled his stomach was greater than he who took a city. Béranger's Roi d'Yvetot, who ate four meals a day,—the Esquimaux, with his daily twenty-pound quantum of train-oil, gravy, and tallow-candles,—the alderman puffing over callipash and callipee,—the backwoodsman hungering after fattest of pork,—such men as these were no common sinners: they were assassins who struck at the very fountain of life, and throttled a human stomach. ”

“ Piled up on the horizon, like a vast range of purple-black hills, heavy masses of cloud drifted, scarce perceptibly, from east to west of the pale slate-blue sky; and where these rugged heaps were broken the heavens sank away in limitless wells of pure pale light, each edged with a border of bright grass-green. All the light of the day seemed gathered there—like a reflection from a world beyond—and Graham, as he stood at gaze before it, began to wonder if he should ever come any nearer to it than he was just there and then. ”

“ John W. Graham, the son of an illustrious father, who served his State as Governor and United States Senator, William A. Graham. Major Graham, [Pg 59] promoted from Captain of Company D, was quite young, stout and hardy, always at his post except when disabled by wounds—full of youth and enthusiasm, he always proved himself the bravest of the brave. He is a prominent lawyer in his native town, Hillsboro. ”

“ George Graham is an honourable fellow, who believed you as faithful as himself. Thus has your thoughtless, nay, I will go farther, and say highly culpable levity, sacrificed the happiness of two as honest hearts as ever beat in the human breast ”

“ It would have puzzled Graham to tell which of these moods he preferred: perhaps it would have depended on which of them he was experiencing at the moment.
His saving grace was a sturdy sense of his duty to himself. He felt that sense to be sadly shaken in many ways; but he clung to his work tenaciously, perhaps a little feverishly.
"Nuthin' like a woman to make a man work," observed Bill Martin sagely, "whether she's fur him, or agin' him."
"How about Billy?" inquired Old Mizzou. ”

“ Miss Graham was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when their eyes began to dance dangerously.
However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small, round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the sinner, and drew 'amens' of admiration from the saints. ”

“ And I have to be myself."
"I love yourself," Graham murmured.
"Oh, you do now, because you can't have me. That's always a charm. But you were nasty before the Admiral. I won't be engaged to a man who's ashamed of me."
"Ashamed! I'm prouder than—"
"Nonsense!" Violet stopped his impassioned flow of words. You're English, with an English standard, and I'm American, with an American one. And neither of us is a jellyfish, and—what are you going to do about it?"
"It's not the first experiment of the sort," Graham pointed out. ”

“ Never, to the last day of his life, one may fancy, would Graham forget the little scene before him, which, indeed, always returned to his memory with an impression as vivid as that made upon him now—the overturned table, the scattered cards, Madelon in her white frock, her pale scared face, her wavy hair, her great brown eyes illuminated by the candle she still held, the terrified Legros, the ghastly look of the dying man—he saw it all at a glance, as he entered the room he had left so dim and silent but half an hour ago. ”

“ The dead thud of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of the tumult in which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle of light, the whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visible attendants in the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The huge ears of a phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, the black eyes of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning hum. ”

“ Mortified as he was at finding himself thus excluded from public life, Mr Graham possessed too good a digestion to let the circumstance prey upon his spirits. His home was then, as it continued to be to the last, the chief scene of his happiness; and the birth of his first-born son, on the 7th of April 1820, shed additional light over the domestic circle. It suited neither his means nor his tastes to reside in London as an idler ”

“ A tall, dark man in a flowing black robe, with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a man who for all the little things about him held neither ears nor eyes nor thoughts.... For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham’s bloodless face. In a moment it had gone and he was fighting in the swaying crowd. A lad weeping with terror thrust against him, pressing towards the stairways, yelling “Clear for the aeropile!” The bell that clears the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging. ”

“ It's there!... Graham, get busy! A contractor; lumber; building materials; carpenters! We build a town as big as Big Pine and we build it faster than ever a town grew before! A store, blacksmith shop, hotel. Shacks of all sorts. Graham!"
Graham, like a man with an electric current shot through him, jumped out of his chair.
"Send a man on the run to Big Pine with a message for Young Gallup! And the message is this: 'Bruce Standing promised to pull your damned town down about your ears ... and the pulling has begun!'"
"Yes, Mr. Standing," said Graham. And sent a man on a running horse. ”

“ Far below, mere stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleeping city in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their incessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It was like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall. The street showed warm and lit, and Graham was wet now to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. ”

“ For some minutes Graham remained where she left him, trying to accustom his eyes to the dim—though far from religious—light. He made out men in [128] dress clothes sitting here and there and the glint of nymph-like forms passing from place to place, springily. The scent of cigarette smoke mixed with that of some queer intoxicating perfume. The sound of water plashing from a fountain came to his ears.
On his way to find a seat, Graham's arm was suddenly seized, he was pulled into a corner and found himself, gladly enough, alone with the girl who called herself Ita Strabosck. ”

“ I shall now have the usufruct of a kingdom—his kingdom by courtesy, mine by right. Hark, Graham! How is this vision to be realised? The seer pointed to James's death—who is to kill the tyrant?"
"I with this hand shall strike the blow," replied Graham. "My plans are already laid, and I wanted only your cooperation and assistance; for why, you know, should I be so improvident as to kill one king, until another is ready to take his place?"
"I cannot speak lightly of this affair," said the duke, in check of Graham's levity. "What are your plans? The fewer co-operators in a conspiracy the better." ”

“ For several minutes Graham remained alone in the alcove, with his blood running swiftly through his veins—his brain hard at work. The woman on the dais was still singing. In the vague, uncertain light he could see the Papowsky curled up on a divan near by, smoking a cigarette. Other people had come in and made groups among the foolish rockery. Then he got up quietly, went out into the passage and looked about. He had never before explored the place, he only knew the studio and the roulette room. It dawned upon him that this apartment was just beneath the roof of the building. ”

“ But when in time the young man went the way of the rest of the camp and began to show a more intimate interest in her, the conditions were quite altered. We may rejoice in anathema against the sins of humanity, in which we may acknowledge a share; we always resent being personally blamed.
Graham indeed went the way of the rest of the camp. His progress from indifference to love he could not have traced himself, although he might with tolerable accuracy have indicated the landmarks—a look, a gesture, a flash of spirit, revealing by a little more the woman whom he finally came to idealize. ”

“ He is also a grandee of revolutionary politics. Both in literature and in politics he is a figure of challenge for the love of challenge more than any other man now writing. Other men challenge us with Utopias, with moral laws and so forth. But Mr. Graham has little of the prophet or the moralist about him. He expresses himself better in terms of his hostilities than in terms of visionary cities and moralities such as Plato and Shelley and Mazzini have built for us out of light and fire. It is a temperament, indeed, not a vision or a logic, that Mr. Graham has brought to literature. ”

“ And in certain other ways you have influence, with your eighteenth-century notions."
"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
"With your old-world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every feature of our State."
"Am I a fool?"
"Certainly not."
"Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?"
"You were never expected to act at all. No one counted on your awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we thought that you were dead—a mere arrest of decay. And—but it is too complex. ”

“ He was minister of the Close meeting-house at Newcastle from 1770 till his death, 29 Jan. 1801. He married in 1759 Mary, daughter of George Johnstone of Whiteknow in Dumfriesshire. Graham was a man of liberal sentiments, and is said to have been an excellent scholar. He made a special study of mathematics in the hope of discovering a method for finding the longitude at sea, but his machinery proved a failure.
Graham wrote: 1. ‘The Worth of the Soul,’ Newcastle, 1772. 2. ‘Four Discourses on Public Vows,’ Glasgow, 1778. 3. ‘A Candid Vindication of the Secession Church,’ Newcastle, 1790. 4. ”