Whisperer

“ The Whisperer may be an outlaw, but he's a man. This Goggles is merely a cowardly little sneak who hides in the terror of the name of the Whisperer. That's why he had the courage to face Mortimer Lauriston. He knew that he could send his man-killer after my cousin. But I'm going to set a trap for the Whisperer, bait it with Goggles, and catch your man for you.”
“Going to do which?” gasped Ugly Joe.
“Wait!” murmured Patricia, and smiled into the contented distance. ”

“ The wild, lonely region, the black, mysteriously forested slope towering so close behind the house; the footprint in the road, the sick, motionless whisperer in the dark, the hellish cylinders and machines, and above all the invitations to strange surgery and stranger voyagings—these things, all so new and in such sudden succession, rushed in on me with a cumulative force which sapped my will and almost undermined my physical strength. ”

“ Just like Martha. I can get you four gunmen who'd do any murder for a price. There's Chic Wood. He climbed a tree with a shotgun over at Tomanac and shot a man for fifty dollars. But he'd maybe want fifty thousand for killing the Whisperer. I could get some more like Chic. D'you want to work with men like him, Pat?”
“The end,” said Patricia, “justifies the means. Yes, I want any four men—as long as they are dangerous.”
“Then I guess I can get 'em. None of the crooks have any special liking for the Whisperer. He's run most of them out of range of Eagles. ”

“ It ain't any common voice. It's a sort of a husky hissing, like something had gone wrong with his throat. It takes the heart out of a man to just hear that voice.”
“Yes,” murmured Patricia, “it's ghostly; it's horrible! But are you sure that it was really the Whisperer who threw that paper through the window?”
“That's what a lot of people wanted to know, and particularly Lew Lauriston—you know him—old Mort's brother. He didn't think the Whisperer had anything to do with the case. So he got Porky Kennedy, the two-gun man, to go on the trail of Goggles and put him under the sod. ”

“ ODDLY enough that interview increased her respect for the Whisperer rather than for St. Gore. She saw another reason now why the outlaw should cling to this dapper little fop and extend over him the dark cloak of his protection. It was because the outlaw had been a man of culture and had been ostracized from the paths of civilized men. All that he saved from the wreckage was the friendship and occasional meetings with this St. Gore, this absurd little dude with his cold, keen mind. ”

“ No robber but himself does much flourishing while he's around. There's some say the only ones he picks on is the other crooks. Others say different. I don't know. Well, a couple of days later Lew Lauriston does a fade-away. He didn't even stop to tell us whether the Whisperer had paid him a visit or not, but we just took it for granted.
“If you want to try your hand, Pat, why, it ain't hard to find Eagles, and in Eagles it ain't hard to find Goggles.”
But the arrows of this sarcasm flew harmless over the head of Patricia, for she had fallen into a brown study. ”

“ It is very uneasy that we must necessarily be under Persecution. Next to these Bawlers, is a troublesome Creature who comes with the Air of your Friend and your Intimate, and that is your Whisperer. There is one of them at a Coffee-house which I my self frequent, who observing me to be a Man pretty well made for Secrets, gets by me, and with a Whisper tells me things which all the Town knows. It is no very hard matter to guess at the Source of this Impertinence, which is nothing else but a Method or Mechanick Art of being wise. ”

“ His exaggerations are generally without effect upon those whom he compels to hear them; and though it will sometimes happen that the timorous are awed by his violence, and the credulous mistake his confidence for knowledge, yet the opinions which he endeavours to suppress soon recover their former strength, as the trees that bend to the tempest erect themselves again when its force is past.
The Whisperer is more dangerous. He easily gains attention by a soft address, and excites curiosity by an air of importance. ”

“ For some time Grace Krowl remained at her small table awaiting some further message from the mysterious whisperer. No further message came. Had this whisper told the truth? Was he a mile away? She could not believe it.
On descending to the floor below, she found her strange uncle prepared to leave his odd store.
“Today I go to an auction,” he said to her with a smile. “Today there is nothing to unpack. Not many people will come. They come only when there are trunks. ”

“ The giglers and the whisperers are innumerable; they beset us wherever we go; and it is observable, that after a short murmur of whispers, out comes the burst of laughter: like a gunpowder serpent, which, after hissing about for some time, goes off in a bounce. ”

“ He’s a man, all right. And he’s a tiger. Nearly got me. Never again!”
Spider led the way off the grounds.
And so for the time the mystery of the Whisperer remained unsolved. Only this was known with a fair degree of certainty: his place of retreat was one high tower of the Sky Ride.
[204] CHAPTER XXI
CHRISTMAS EVE
The dawn of the day before Christmas arrived and with it, in Grace Krowl’s tiny parlor, came the hoarse whisper of the mysterious one:
“Tonight,” it insisted, “you will not fail me. It is for the good of all. You owe us more than you know. ”

“ Whisperers are like the wind that creeps in by the chinks and crevices of a wall, or the cracks in a window, that commonly proves more dangerous than a storm that meets a man in the face upon the plain.—Trapp. ”

“ The Seven Whisperers.—I have been informed by an old and trustworthy servant that about twenty years ago, as he was walking one clear starlight night with two other persons, they heard, for the space of several minutes, high up in the air, beautiful sounds like music, which gradually died away towards the north. ”

“ In each case country folk reported seeing one or more very bizarre and disturbing objects in the surging waters that poured down from the unfrequented hills, and there was a widespread tendency to connect these sights with a primitive, half-forgotten cycle of whispered legend which old people resurrected for the occasion. ”

“ And one man's whisper is much like another's. It could have been Deveril's or Taggart's or even Mexicali Joe's.
"Who are you?" her own whisper answered him.
"Is Standing in there?"
"Who are you?" she insisted.
There was a pause, a silence; a long silence. Then:
"Come with me ... just a few feet. So we won't be overheard."
She found herself frowning. Was it Babe Deveril? She did not fancy a man's whispering; she could not imagine a man like Bruce Standing whispering at a moment like this! More like him, like any man who was a man, to roar out what he had to say rather than whisper in the dark. ”

“ As the evening shadows lengthen, and the night wind softly steals through the trees, touching with restless fingers the still waters of the little lochans that would fain have rest, there can be heard a long, long whisper, like a sigh. There is no softer, sadder note to be heard in all Pan's great orchestra, nor can one marvel that it should be so, for the whisper comes from the reeds who gently sway their heads while the wind passes over them as they grow by lonely lake or river. ”

“ The clew to the play we take to be that old whisper which first allured our parents from their allegiance, and tempts forever the race of man: Ye shall be as gods. The whisper runs through the piece from the first line to the last, and lends to it a purpose and a plan of its own. ”

“ He has believed in himself without reservation, and just as absolutely in his art as he has formulated it. There is one god, and Whistler is its prophet; a creed narrow and intolerant, but abundantly justified, if you accept his god, which, again, is Whistler—the spiritual ego within him to which all his life he has tried to give an adequate expression. ”

“ It is called whisper, because, as the whisper of the air penetrates subtly into the organ of hearing, so this most subtle and delicate knowledge enters with marvelous sweetness and delight into the inmost substance of the soul, which is the highest of all delights. ”

“ It is Whistler who represents her movement as she turns into the room, his art seeming to show a consciousness that the body that turns thus, the grace of the clothes, are but a temporary habitation of swiftly passing spirit. ”

“ By Jove! the invention of the Whispers was certainly a clever mode of preserving the secret, for nobody cares deliberately to court disaster and death, especially among a superstitious populace like the villagers here and the Hungarian peasantry."
Both Gabrielle and her lover expressed their astonishment, the latter remarking how cleverly the weird legend of the Whispers invented by Sir Henry had been made to fit historical fact. ”

“ A whisper will often awake a sleeper who would not be disturbed by an ordinary conversation; and never say “hush!” Let your clothes and foot covering be of as noiseless and unobtrusive a character as possible, and instead of gliding and tottering about like a rickety ghost, do not hesitate to walk. If you have occasion to say anything in the room, say it so that the patient can hear it if he wishes, and do not let him be aware of your conspiring privately with the others, especially at the door. ”

“ In both whisper and aspirate leave the throat free and open; and be energetic, remembering that force is [Pg 53] made by control of muscles at the waist, and not by effort of throat or mouth. The clearer you can make a whisper, the better quality you can make in pure and orotund. Pure tone or quality is sound made with no disagreeable quality being heard; and is the same as pleasant quality, spoken of as being necessary to make listeners. Pure quality is made with ease, with no waste of breath, and is used for expression of agreeable feelings. ”

“ It is no Spirit who from Heaven hath flown,
And is descending on his embassy;
Nor Traveller gone from Earth the Heavens to espy!
'Tis Hesperus—there he stands with glittering crown,
First admonition that the sun is down,
For yet it is broad day-light!—clouds pass by;
A few are near him still—and now the sky,
He hath it to himself—'tis all his own. ”

“ He had small eyes, but they were infinitely more terrible than all his other deformity put together; at one moment they glowed with a phosphorescent sheen, which changed again to a vivid purple light, and from that to diamond flashes, without the closing of an eyelid.
“Ho! Ho! Who is more powerful than fire, stronger then the wind, and deeper than the streams? Whiskerkiss—I am he.”
The voice of the old fellow was dreadful, and echoed with a sullen roar like the growl of a lion, “I am Whiskerkiss, King of the Mountain Barrier, and Lord of Birds and Beasts. Who art thou?” ”

“ In the blank of a marine existence things that are nobody's business very soon become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. ”

“ The host slept on their arms along the bank of the stream through the hot night, and the banner was pitched in their midst. Soon the moon rose, and only the footsteps of the sentries along our front went up and down, while across the water was the same silence; for both hosts were wearied out, and each had learned that the other were true men, and there was no mistrust on either side. When the light came once more we should fight to prove who were the best men at arms, and with no hatred between us. ”

“ You think it is a late bird until you weigh the sound in your ear, and then you find no bird could touch so delicate a note, reach so weird a meaning. Then all at once a hundred soft whispers steal along the shore and from the surface of the stream, and you wait and listen minute after minute in the hope or fear the whisperings will shape themselves in some human speech. You wait until disappointment yields to despair. ”

“ Whistler's night is the vast blue and golden caravanry, where the jaded and the hungry and the heavy-hearted lay down their burdens, and the contemplative freed from the deceptive reality of the day understand humbly and pathetically the casualness of our habitation, and the limitlessreality of a plan, the intention of which we shall never know. ”

“ With all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.
⁠The fitful breezes die
Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep;
⁠And sweetly, mournfully,
Starting to sight, in the transparent sky,
⁠Lone in the upper deep,
Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye ”

“ I uttered these words in a whisper, thinking [52] of the listening ones there might be on the other side of that door, and when I got through I tiptoed first to one end of the porch and then to the other to keep a lookout for Johnson. I was afraid of the “snooping” qualities that the fellow had developed, and if he had suddenly come around the corner of the house and caught me in the act of whispering to my friends I would not have been at all surprised at it. ”

“ Rather flattered, he said, "So you recognized me from behind, did you, master?"
"Yes," said Whistler, with a wicked laugh; "I spied you through a hole in your coat."
* * * * *
"Do you think genius is hereditary?" asked an admiring lady one day.
"I can't tell you, madam," Whistler replied. "Heaven has granted me no offspring."
* * * * *
Whistler once took Horne, his framer, to look at one of his paintings at the exhibition. ”