Farrowing

“ But it is difficult to imagine; more difficult still to imagine how they were commenced, and by what gradual means one wretched thoroughfare was added to another, until they presented themselves to the world in the shapes and forms they now bear; resembling an ungainly body with numerous limbs, every one of which is twisted and deformed. Easier to fancy that they and all the life they bear sprang up suddenly and secretly one dark night, when Nature was in a sullen mood ”

“ When, compelled by exhaustion to rest, she had so far recovered as to be able to proceed, she ran with fleet foot to make up for lost time, until, breathless and panting, she came to a standstill, and caught at the nearest object for support, generally a fence or the branch of a tree. Sometimes she caught at shadows and fell, and lay supine awhile, to rise again in ever-growing despair and continue her flight; but moral forces are powerless against the forces of physical nature, and shortly after sunrise her strength gave way, and now when she fell she was unable from exhaustion to rise. ”

“ But seest thou not, however, that in this flimsy contrivance, the dear implacable, like a drowning man, catches at a straw to save herself!—A straw shall she find to be the refuge she has resorted to. ”

“ So, she leaned as far from him as she might, watching him with frightened eyes while he frowned ever upon the road in front, and the car rocked, and swayed with their going, as they whirled onward through moonlight and through shadow, faster, and faster,—yet not so fast as the beating of her heart wherein was fear, and shame, and anger, and—another feeling, but greatest of all now, was fear. ”

“ Next year that furrow will be filled up and covered by a new furrow. Thus the majority of men make their mark and disappear in the field of humanity. A little earth effaces it, and the furrows we have made succeed one another like graves in the cemetery. Is not the furrow of the ploughman as valuable as that of the idler, who has a name, however, a name that will live, if, by reason of some peculiarity or some absurd exploit, he makes a little noise in the world?
So let us, if we can, rescue from oblivion the furrow of Germain, the cunning ploughman. ”

“ Am I not trudging on and on through life, dragging the horror of it behind me through the mud, except when the horror drags me? To whom am I to turn—to other beasts like him?—sitting patiently around, grinning and slavering, awaiting their turn when the horror of it crushes me to the mud? ”

“ He kept on doggedly, however, and although the shadow of his crime waited upon his steps, and made itself felt in the sighing and moaning of the wind, in the bending of every branch, and in the fluttering of every leaf, the craving for human companionship in which there was something of sympathy, and from which he would not be hunted like a dog, imbued him with courage to fight these terrors. ”

“ Twice a day a dole of food would be thrown on the ground before him to munch as well as he could without the use of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. ”

“ Evening fell, the sun descended; night was my enemy, and was eager to get at me, and soon its darkness fell around me like a shroud. This had ever been an enjoyment to me, but on the present occasion it served but to aggravate the mental disorder produced by my sufferings. The figures I conjured up in the gloom were the reverse of soothing, and I found myself occasionally labouring under a kind of delirium. One of my fancies was so peculiar that I will recall it. I saw on the left of me a deep cave, which as I gazed upon it grew to an enormous size. ”

“ In the city, mankind panted with thirst and fatigue, and, regardless of consequences, revelled, inordinately and greedily, in ices and cool drinks. Womankind retreated to cellars and shady nooks, and, divested of superfluous attire, indulged, gratefully, in water-melons; and mankind, coming home wearied and parched, joined womankind in her retreat, and lay at her feet, tamely. Dogkind panted, and lolled out its tongue, distressfully; but though it wandered in despair through the streets, it found no relieving moisture in kennel or gutter ”

“ There is nothing so convincing as our grosser passions. You have not answered my question. Do you remember me?"
"Yes, I remember you. I had sprained my ankle in crossing the stream that runs through the woods, and not being able to walk, was doomed to lie there all night with a fine storm playing pranks upon my helpless body. It was a wild night, and I had wild fancies. What would have become of me had you not providentially come to my assistance is easy enough to guess. I should really by this time have been in possession of the grand secret." ”

“ I heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful face rushing upon me,—not human, not animal, but hellish, brown, seamed with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes ablaze. ”

“ You fear the water. He laughs at you, we children drink the water, Though it tastes bitter, shows white particles: It may be shreds of rats drowned in the well. The village has no drainage, blights and mildews Get in our throats. I spend a certain spring Bent over, yellow, coughing blood at times, Sick to somnambulistic sense of things. You blame him for the well, that's just one thing. You seem to differ about everything— You seem to hate each other—when you quarrel We cry, take sides, sometimes are whipped For taking sides. ”

“ Whether she come up from her shaft to lean upon the kerb and bask in the sun, whether she suddenly retire underground in the face of danger, or whether she be roaming the country before settling down, never does she let go her precious bag, that very cumbrous burden in walking, climbing or leaping. ”

“ One wild, volumod malignance of yells! To have light might be death. In the dark
On the floor the poor mother groped madly about the dead child for a spark
Of the hope of pulsation of life, till the blood that was mine and her own. ”

“ For the most part these peasants plodded along in silence, a silence that licked its lips and thought of the morrow. Thousands of feet hammered the road, and an indescribable, harsh roar, blended of many sounds, suggested the rushing of water over a weir. Now and again a man would throw up his head like a dog baying the moon, and howl out some catch-cry. ”

“ The mother sees her son—idolized in her rough way—taken from her; the den of a home becomes doubly wretched, and the cursed drink-fiend is invoked to charm the sorrow away. That is the first step, 'to drown sorrow.' The steps after that are easy to count. ”

“ I had heard of men being lured into traps. Vividly enough I saw myself a cadaver drifting on the tide, and I liked not the picture. Yet after all it takes tremendous courage to be a coward, so I drew nearer. Strange! the sobbing, so low, so pitiful, had ceased. It was followed by a silence far more sinister. There was a vibrating agony in that silence, a horrible, heart-clutching suspense. ”

“ It's not in me.
My sinking heart I pray Thee raise
So shall I give it Thee.
My life as spider's webb's cut off,
Thus fainting have I said,
And living man no more shall see
But be in silence laid. ”

“ A poor creature with dishevelled hair, with a horrible wound in her throat, clasping a baby in her arms, and her bosom dabbled with the child’s blood. She swayed herself, the agony of despair in her eyes ”

“ Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was the excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till it tears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall unconscious on the pavement? To faint is the resource of a woman, and the humiliation of a man. ”

“ An angry red mounts to her comb, the fire of despair illumines her eye. She even goes—miracle of mother love—she even goes so far as to risk one foot in the water, that perfidious element, the sight of which makes her almost faint with fear. ”

“ This was a dreadful sight to me, especially as, going down to the shore, I could see the marks of horror which the dismal work they had been about had left behind it—viz. the blood, the bones, and part of the flesh of human bodies eaten and devoured by those wretches with merriment and sport. ”

“ Sometimes, as the men gazed upon this picture, and thought of the morrow, with all its death horrors, they turned from each other with a sort of terror, and sat with downcast eyes, gazing upon the floor, for it made them heart-sick—the contrast of that peaceful slumber and the brutal death-sleep into which they were guarding the old man. ”

“ Yet on the present occasion the knowledge that he was physically loathed roused in the man a feeling rather of that despair which may be experienced by the drowning at that precise moment when the straw so eagerly clutched has proved itself a straw, and he winced as beneath a shocking blow between the eyes. ”

“ Her face is thin and haggard, and the expression on her features is one of despair and agony. In the clear light of the healthy winter's day she walks up and down, and round and round the little room where love once dwelt, and where she called up fair visions. ”

“ The other threw himself upon pleasure's tide, and, blind to earnest duty, drank the sunshine of life's springtime in draughts so intemperate that he became intoxicated with poisonous fire, and, falling into the arms of the knaves who thrive on human weakness and depravity, his moral sense, like theirs, grew warped, and he ripened into a knave himself. ”

“ Why exhaust herself in a fruitless chase after the fleeting mother whose speed was so much greater than her own and who had dashed away simply to deceive her foe and in the hope of drawing her from the spot where her offspring was concealed? The fawn, far more desirable than its elder, could be had for the mere finding. ”

“ These poor creatures, marching from ten to twenty-five miles a day, for twenty-two days, through muddy sloughs, swollen rivers, in tempests and floods and dreary cold, leaving their wives and their children dead by the way—dead of the sufferings of the march—are yet docile, obedient, and “work splendidly!” ”

“ The instant that the poor wretch of a girl is released from the hands, and toes, of her tormentor, she runs with the swiftness of agony to the river, there to soothe with the cool flowing water the frightful, burning ache. ”

“ We would fain imagine the shrunken-cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burthen, as she shifts the loom,—the burthen of her life, and fain believe that the voice was innocent as the sky-lark's. ”

“ We struggled voiceless, neither having breath for useless speech, and each realizing that the end would probably mean death either to the one or the other. Only our heavy breathing, the quick shuffling of feet on the stony road, and an occasional rending of cloth, evinced the desperation in which we strove. ”

“ Bracing herself convulsively on the threshold of her home, she dies there, dries up there, devoted to her family even after death. It needs an accident, a breath of air, to make her fall from her post. ”

“ And mad we tore along the shore to claim our bitter dead.
And from that hell of frenzied foam, that crashed and fumed and boiled,
Two little bodies bubbled up, and they were heedless then;
And oh, they lay like senseless clay! and bitter hard we toiled,
Yet never, never gleam of hope, and we were weary men. ”

“ Weak as I was, exhausted, prostrate, my muscles contracted with such desperate violence that I was thrown up up through the air, to fall two, three, four yards from my chair, which was thrown over backwards by the push I gave it.
I fell ... I fell ... my head and arms [Pg 203] thrown forward ... and I lost consciousness again.
I lost consciousness again; but not before I had had time to see the Man likewise hurled headforemost into the abyss, where He fell, and fell, and fell, to be dashed to death on the white boulders under the black rushing water.... ”

“ It remains no longer, but to mock my sense and scoff at my sorrow, to rend my bosom with a woe, complicated, matchless and inexpressible. The cheek is pale and livid; the eyes are sunk and circled with blackness. Corruption and ruin have already seized their prey and turned it into horror. ”

“ At length, after a struggle for life, and a horror of death possibly unprecedented in the annals of crime, he was pushed upon the drop, the spring was touched, and the unhappy man passed shrieking into that eternity which he dreaded so much. ”

“ Their own way to the brink:
Then—shall I call you blind?—
You chose to plunge and sink.
God knows the gall we drink
Is not the mead we cry for,
Nor was it, I should think—
For you—a thing to die for. ”

“ They bite their hands, tear the bed-clothes, bury their nails in their faces disfigured with rage. Then they rise to escape, and fall heavily backwards into bed, exhausted, pallid, with distorted face, a rattling in the throat, and their eyes rolling in the most awful despair. ”

“ There are many whose loads are too heavy--for instance, asses. There are a few whose loads are too light--scoffers, like myself. You have had occasion to rebuke me, this night, Father Capel, and were I not a hardened sinner I should be groaning in tribulation. ”