Demesne

“ They’ll come to you to ask about me. I mean from Lady Demesne. She’s in an awful state. She’s so afraid of it—of the way he wants me.”
In himself too, after all, she could still press the spring of careless mirth. “I’m not afraid, if you haven’t yet brought it off.”
“Well, he can’t make up his mind. I appeal to him so, yet he can’t quite place me where he’d have to have me.” Her lucidity and her detachment were both grotesque and touching.
“He must be a poor creature if he won’t take you as you are. I mean for the sweet sake of what you are,” Littlemore added. ”

“ Headway—you seem to me very different," she added.
Waterville was not insensible to any discrimination that told in his favor; but these words gave him a slight shock, as if they had been an attempt at bribery. "I am surprised that you don't like her," he ventured to observe.
Lady Demesne looked out of the window a little. "I don't think you are really surprised, though possibly you try to be. I don't like her, at any rate, and I can't fancy why my son should. She 's very pretty, and she appears to be very clever; but I don't trust her. ”

“ Headway; he only reflected that these stately objects had for at least a hundred years furnished a background to a great deal of heavy history. Further reflexion would perhaps have suggested to him that she might yet become a feature in the record that so spread itself. Two or three ladies failed to appear at breakfast; the well-known Texan belle was one of them.
“She tells me she never leaves her room till noon,” he heard Lady Demesne say to the General, her companion of the previous evening, who had asked about her. “She takes three hours to dress.”
“She’s a monstrous clever woman!” ”

“ And she gathered up her cloak and gloves.
p. 230Meeting Rupert Waterville the next day, as he often did, at the Saint George’s Club, which offers a much-appreciated hospitality to secretaries of legation and to the natives of the countries they assist in representing, Littlemore let him know that his prophecy had been fulfilled and that Lady Demesne had been making proposals for an interview. “My sister read me a desperate letter from her.”
Our young man was all critical attention again. “‘Desperate’?”
“The letter of a woman so scared that she’ll do anything. ”

“ Demeter is no longer the subdued goddess of the quietly- ordered fields, but the mother of the gods, who has her abode in the heights of Mount Ida, who presides over the dews and waters of the white springs, whose flocks feed, not on grain, but on the curling tendrils of the vine, both of which she withholds in her anger, and whose chariot is drawn by wild beasts, fruit and emblem of the earth in its fiery strength. ”

“ At Eleusis, Demeter was venerated as the introducer of all the blessings which agriculture brings in its train—fixed dwelling-places, civil order, marriage and a peaceful life; hence her name Thesmophoros, “the bringer of law and order,” and the festival Thesmophoria (q.v.) . J. G. Frazer takes the epithet to mean “bearer of the sacred objects deposited on the altar”; L. R. Farnell (Cults of the Greek States, iii. 106) suggests “the bringer of treasure or riches,” as appropriate to the goddess of corn and of the lower world ”

“ Pray to Zeus of the Earth and to pure Demeter to make Demeter’s holy grain sound and heavy, when first you begin ploughing, when you hold in your hand the end of the plough-tail and bring down your stick on the backs of the oxen as they draw on the pole-bar by the yoke-straps. Let a slave follow a little behind with a mattock and make trouble for the birds by hiding the seed; for good management is the best for mortal men as bad management is the worst. ”

“ Dembinski, Henry, a Polish general, born near Cracow; served under Napoleon against Russia, under Kossuth against Austria; fled to Turkey on the resignation of Kossuth; died in Paris (1791-1864) .
Demerara, a division of British Guiana; takes its name from the river, which is 200 m. long, and falls into the Atlantic at Georgetown.
Demeter (lit. Earth-mother) , the great Greek goddess of the earth, daughter of Kronos and Rhea and sister of Zeus, and ranks with him as one of the twelve great gods of Olympus; is specially the goddess of agriculture, and the giver of all the earth's fruits ”

“ Your father commissioned us to create peaceful Demeter, the patroness of agriculture, peace, marriage, and Arachne, the mortal who was the most skilful of spinners; for he is both a grain dealer and owner of spinning factories. The best Demeter is to be placed in the Alexandrian temple of the goddess, to whose priestesses you belong; the less successful one in your own house in the city, but whose Demeter is destined for the sanctuary, I repeat, is now virtually decided. Myrtilus will add this prize to the others, and grant me with all his heart the one for the Arachne. ”

“ Demming could hear the talk, the pitying comments, the praise of the Bishop: “Such a good man!” “His poor daughter, the only child, and her mother dead!” “They were so fond of each other, poor thing, poor thing!” And a soft voice added, “Let us pray!”
“Prayin’,” muttered Demming, “jes’ like wimmen! [Pg 37] Laws, they don’ know no better. How’ll I git ter him?”
He began to crawl to the car, dragging his shattered leg behind him, reckless of the throbs of pain it sent through his nerves. “Ef I kin on’y stan’ it till I git ter him!” he moaned. “Burnin’ alive’s harder nor this.” ”

“ Yet we mortals bear perforce what the gods send us, though we be grieved; for a yoke is set upon our necks. But now, since you are come here, you shall have what I can bestow: and nurse me this child whom the gods gave me in my old age and beyond my hope, a son much prayed for. If you should bring him up until he reach the full measure of youth, any one of womankind that sees you will straightway envy you, so great reward would I give for his upbringing."
Then rich-haired Demeter answered her: "And to you, also, lady, all hail, and may the gods give you good! ”

“ Helpless with horror, he became a man again in his indignation. Such villainy should not succeed. He would fight not only for his own life, but for this woman's. Miss Demarest was doubtless safe. Yet he wished he were sure of it; he could work with so much better heart. Her window was not visible from where he crouched. It was on the other side of the house. If she screamed, he would not be able to hear her. He must trust her to Providence. But his dream! his dream! The power of it was still upon him; a forerunner of fate, a picture possibly of her doom. ”

“ The thought of Demeter is impressed here, with all the purity and proportion, the purged and dainty intelligence of the human countenance. The mystery of it is indeed absent, perhaps could hardly have been looked for in so slight a thing, intended for no sacred purpose, and tossed lightly from hand to hand. But in his firm hold on the harmonies of the human face, the designer of this tranquil head of [139] Demeter is on the one road to a command over the secrets of all imaginative pathos and mystery ”

“ To Demeter, the Earth Mother, was born a daughter more fair than any flower that grew, and ever more dear to her became her child, the lovely Proserpine. By the blue sea, in the Sicilian meadows, Proserpine and the fair nymphs who were her companions spent their happy days. Too short were the days for all their joy, and Demeter made the earth yet fairer than it was that she might bring more gladness to her daughter Proserpine. ”

“ The Deemster listened to the short night-service with alternate restlessness—tramping to and fro by the side of the grave—and cold self-possession, and with a constant hardness and bitterness of mind, breaking out sometimes into a light trill of laughter, or again into a hoarse gurgle, as if in scorn of the Bishop's misplaced confidence. But the crowds that were gathered around held their breath in awe of the mystery, and when they sang it was with such an expression of emotion and fear that no man knew the sound of his own voice. ”

“ Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl—a marvellous, radiant flower. ”

“ The Bishop had dropped to his knees.
"I see that you are a coward," said the Deemster, contemptuously. "And so this is what your religion comes to! I tell you that the eyes of the people of this island are on you. If you take the right course now their reverence is yours; if the wrong one, it will be the worst evil that has ever befallen you from your youth upward." ”

“ In dying she had given premature birth to a child, a girl, and the infant was alive, and was taken from the mother at the moment of death.
When the Deemster entered the room, with a face of great pallor and eyes of fear, Mona was standing by the bed-head gazing down, but seeing nothing. The Deemster felt the pulse of the arm over the counterpane with fingers that trembled visibly. Then he shot away from the room, and was no more seen that day. The vicar, the child-wife's father, came with panting breath and stood by the bedside for a moment, and then turned aside in silence. ”

“ The attributes of Demeter are chiefly connected with her character as goddess of agriculture and vegetation—ears of corn, the poppy, the mystic basket (calathus) filled with flowers, corn and fruit of all kinds, the pomegranate being especially common. Of animals, the cow and the pig are her favourites, the latter owing to its productivity and the cathartic properties of its blood. The crane is associated with her as an indicator of the weather. As a chthonian divinity she is accompanied by a snake ”

“ Broken as they, too, are, the Hymn and the statue are “free among the dead,” and eloquent of the higher religion that, in Greece, attached itself to the lost Maiden and the sorrowing Mother. Demeter, in religion, was more than a fertiliser of the fields: Korê, the Maiden, was more than the buried pig, or the seed sown to await its resurrection; or the harvest idol, fashioned of corn-stalks: more even than a symbol of the winter sleep and vernal awakening of the year and the life of nature. She became the “dread Persephone” of the Odyssey,
“A Queen over death and the dead.” ”

“ But he spoke to deaf ears and won only looks of new-born suspicion.
‘It is the custom of the island,’ they growled. ‘It has been done in Neopalia time out of mind.’
‘Yes,’ said the priest. ‘Time out of mind has a man been free to ask this oath of whomsoever he suspected. Swear, Demetri, as our Lady and our law bid.’ And he ended the words of the oath.
Demetri looked round to right, to left, and to right again. He sought escape. There was none; his way was barred. His arms fell by his side. ”

“ When the drama of Demeter and Kore was played before the eyes of the initiated at Eleusis, were not they too uplifted in mind until amid the magic of night they were no longer spectators of a drama but themselves had a share in Demeter’s sorrow and wandering and joy? For the pagan story is not unlike the Christian story in its power to move both tears and gladness. As now men mourn beside the bier of Christ, so in old time may men have shared Demeter’s mourning for her child who though divine had suffered the lot of men and passed away to the House of Hades. ”

“ Strike!” And I did not dare to look to the right or the left, for I felt the Fiend by me. So I shut my eyes and grasped my knife; but the lady’s eyes drew mine open again, although I struggled to keep them shut. Now many devils seemed to be round me; and they were gleeful, saying, “Oh, he is ours! Yes, Demetri is ours. He will do this thing and then surely he is ours!” Suddenly I sobbed; and when my sob came, a gleam lighted the lady’s eyes. Her eyes looked like the eyes of the Blessed Virgin in the church; I could not strike her. I flung down my knife and fell to sobbing. ”

“ I remember that evening so well; we could see the stars through the window plainer and plainer as the fire went down, and we could hear the noise of the sea.
"Do you remember in the old myth of Demeter and Persephone," Kate asked me, "where Demeter takes care of the child and gives it ambrosia and hides it in fire, because she loves it and wishes to make it immortal, and to give it eternal youth; and then the mother finds it out and cries in terror to hinder her, and the goddess angrily throws the child down and rushes away? ”

“ Then Demeter was glad, and she caused the grain to grow abundantly for the people of Eleusis, and taught them ceremonies, and a kind of play in which all the story of her sorrows and joy was acted. It was also taught that the souls of men do not die with the death of their bodies, any more than the seed of corn dies when it is buried in the dark earth, but that they live again in a world more happy and beautiful than ours. ”

“ By six o’clock, penniless and tipsy, Demming was apologizing to the Bishop on the hotel piazza. He had the grace to seem ashamed of himself. “Wust o’ ’tis flingin’ away all thet money; but I felt kinder like makin’ everybody feel good, an’ I set ’em up. An’ ’t ’appened, somehow, they wuz a right smart chance o’ people in, jes’ thet thar minit,—they gen’rally is a right smart chance o’ people in when a feller sets ’em up! ”

“ Had I not done this, I should have had to hold to Demian, to entrust myself to him. The fact that I did not, appeared to me then to be due to justifiable distrust of his strange ideas; in reality it was due to nothing else than fear. For Demian would have required more of me than did my parents, much more. By stimulation and exhortation, by scorn and irony he would have tried to make me more independent. Alas, I know that to-day: nothing in the world is so distasteful to man as to go the way which leads him to himself! ”