Fisticuff

“ They are men who seek their prey within four walls, cutting their way through every danger. They strike at once, and, by their first salute, save him whom they approach the trouble of returning thanks for a second. Between ourselves they are called the express couriers of hell: and when Beelzebub is hungry they want but a wink, and he gets his mutton warm.
FIESCO. Thou art an hardened villain—such a tool I want. Give me thy hand—thou shalt serve me. ”

“ To think is madness. Peace! conscience, peace! I will not hear thee! She shall be mine.” Fitzalan, wrought to phrensy during this soliloquy, had raised his dagger: a door now opened just before him, from which Fitzurban came out, with a lamp and sword in his hand. As soon as he saw Fitzalan, he shrieked, dropped the sword, and before he could call for mercy, felt the dagger in his bosom. He fell; and seeing Fitzalan prepare to repeat the blow, feebly uttered, “Hold! in mercy hold your hand! It is enough!” ”

“ By the way, where on earth is Fitzhugh?”
“Trying to fit a kind and gentlemanly expression over a swollen sense of injury, for a guess,” replied the girl carelessly. “I left him in sweet and lone communion with nature three hours ago.”
“Polly, I wish—”
“Oh, dad, dear, don’t! You’ll get your wish, I suppose, and Fitz, too. Only I don’t want to be hurried. Here he is, now. Look at that smile! A sculptor couldn’t have done any better. Now, as soon as he comes, I’m going to be quite nice and kind.”
But Mr. Fairfax Preston Fitzhugh Carroll did not come direct to the Brewster table. ”

“ JULIA (stops him) . Stay! art thou mad? Must I, then, declare a passion which the whole race of men, upon their knees, should not extort from my inflexible pride? Alas! in vain the darkness strives to hide the blushes which betray my guilt. Fiesco—I wound the pride of all my sex—my sex will all detest me—Fiesco—I adore thee— (falls at his feet) .
FIESCO (steps back without raising her, laughing with exultation) . That I am sorry for, signora— (rings the bell—draws the tapestry, and discovers LEONORA) . Here is my wife—an angel of a woman! (Embracing her.) ”

“ FITZ. My Marian wanteth words, such is her woe;
But old Fitzwater, for his girl and him,
Begs nothing but world's plague for such a foe,
Which causeless harm'd a virtuous nobleman,
A pitier of his griefs, when he felt grief.
Therefore, bethink thee of thy hateful deed,
Thou faithless Prior, and thou this ruthless thief.
PRIOR. Will no man curse me, giving so much cause?
Then, Doncaster, ourselves ourselves accurse,
And let no good betide to thee or me! ”

“ JULIA (in a tremulous, imploring tone) . Falsehood is the armory of hell! Fiesco needs not this to gain his Julia. (She sinks exhausted on a sofa: after a pause—energetically.) Hear, Fiesco! One word more. When we know our virtue to be in safety, we are heroines; in its defence, no more than children; (fixing her eyes on him wildly) —furies, when we avenge it. Hear me! Should'st thou strike me to the heart with coldness?
FIESCO (assuming an angry tone) . Coldness? coldness? Heavens! What does the insatiable vanity of woman look for, if she even doubt the man who lies prostrate at her feet? ”

“ Miss Fitzhugh put back the hairpin and made a few jabs at the hair under her hat.
"If you want my plain opinion ... O, I do look a sight ... I think you've made a conquest, Nancibel. O, you are a lucky girl! And that Wendell boy's dreadfully good looking.... Well, I must go." Miss Fitzhugh drew the taller girl down on her firm plump bosom and kissed her moistly—"Just think of being loved by Salinski!" She kissed Nancibel on the mouth again and fled with a little giggle out the door. ”

“ Since we were reconciled in the matter of social equality, I was prepared, for my comfort, to drift, and suffer or enjoy the charge the gods had put upon me. I came to do both, in fact, but with ever a leaning towards the contented side. And so Fifine and I became comrades.
CHAPTER V That evening after dinner I deliberately tempted the Providence which had offered me Fifine as a mild mental stimulant. There were several of my paintings hanging on the walls of the sitting-room, and, when I followed her in thither, I found her standing meditatively, cigarette in hand, before one of them. ”

“ Before such a force of nature no woman could be expected to maintain her negative attitude. Fitz's Illyrian became volcanic. In the end the lady at the piano spread her hands, said "Hein!" and rose from the music stool. A moment she stood irresolute, but the gaze upon her was that of a serpent fixed upon the eyes of a bird. The man's determination had won the day. For, clearly at his behest, she quitted the room, and Fitz, white and tense, yet with blazing eyes, followed her.
For the moment it seemed that he had forgotten his fellow conspirators. ”

“ They may be accustomed to exact a homage from their world which in ours is reserved more or less for the "dear Evelyns" and their compeers. But the gaze of this haughty queen of the sawdust, when she condescended to exert it, was the most direct and arresting thing that ever exacted tribute from the English male or fluttered the devecotes of the scandalised English female. Her "what-pray-are-you-doing-on-the-earth?" air was so vital that it sent a thrill through the veins. Small wonder was it that the hapless Fitz had struggled so gamely to pull himself together. ”

“ For Fifine was tidy: have I never remarked upon it? Our difference in that respect was her perpetual lament. She could never be at ease in the presence of casual litter; a piece of paper flung in a grate, a picture hung crooked on a wall, would spoil the whole æsthetic value of a room to her; she folded her clothes at night; her toilette accessories had each its definite place on her dressing table, and any natural disorder was no sooner done with than she must be removing its evidences. Tidying-up was an obsession with her; I used to laugh at her about it, but it was no good. ”

“ Suddenly lights flashed upon us out of the shrubbery.
"It is all right," I called. "Do not disturb us. Go into another part of the grounds."
The voice seemed unlike my own, but the watchers obeyed it.
Nature exhorted us as we walked in the garden. Her purity, her calm, the incommunicable magic of her spaciousness, the thrall of her splendour entered our veins. We were her children, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. The mighty Mother spoke to us.
A little wind moved softly among the gaunt branches of a pine.
"I must make quite sure that the Voice has spoken to me," said Fitz. ”

“ Life was a scramble and devil take the hindermost with him. If anybody but Fitz—one of the level-headed men in the Street—had talked to him thus, he might not have paid attention, but he knew Fitz was sincere and that he spoke from his heart. The still water at the bottom of the banker’s well—the water that was frozen over or sealed up, or so deep that few buckets ever reached it—began to be stirred. ”

“ I murmured, “I’ll fish you up if you’re there, or a fistful of gravel for Jim and Frenchy—little devil! It’ll be change for his fiver;” and I chuckled at my joke.
I drew a long breath and dropped quietly into the water, head first; down, down, down—gently, softly. A couple of easy strokes and I glided along the bottom. Then something touched me. God in heaven! how it all burst on me at once! I felt four rigid fingers laid on my shoulder and drawn down my chest, the finger-nails scratching me. ”

“ Shall Fitzwater and Clifford place the sacred diadem on this boy's head, and become chiefs in the land where they now pine obscurely?"
Lord Fitzwater fastened his keen eyes on his companion, while his hand involuntary grasped his dagger's hilt. "I am not an old man," he cried; "fifty-seven winters have shed no snows upon my head. ”

“ Could orthodoxy have shewn a better case for love? But let the matter rest there. If stones are to be cast, here am I, blithe to be made their target. I am jealous for her good fame; not a copper farthing for my own.
But, while I insist on that specific truth, I make generally no pretence of drawing the portrait of any Fifine but the one commonly known to me. ”

“ Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.
Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. ”

“ As she stood up, the picture she made—her face, half in glow half in shadow, the vivid life of her contrasting with the golden ruins of the walls—wrought with such ardour upon my imagination, that I felt that, if I failed in that moment to take advantage of the creative impulse its beauty awoke in me, I deserved to be writ down for ever more the emasculate cypher of her strictures. So very quietly I got out the block, pencils, and a handful of coloured crayons which I made it my constant practice to carry about with me.
“Fifine,” I said, “don’t move: stand just as you are. ”

“ Major Fitzgerald laughed in spite of himself.
"I consider Miss Bury a necessity, and not a luxury," he replied. "A governess is the very last person we could dispense with. I should like to see you setting your own lessons! Remarkably short and easy ones they would be! No, little woman, I'm afraid Firefly is an impossibility, and you must just try to forget his existence."
Unfortunately, that was exactly what Honor could not do. She thought continually about the beautiful black cob, and the more she dwelt on her disappointment the more keenly she felt it. ”

“ Hannibal Fitzflummery Fitzflam. To reduce a six-and-ninepenny gossamer to the fac-simile of a bereaved muffin in mourning by one vigorous blow wherewith he secured it on his head, grasp his ample cane and three half-sucked oranges (in case it should come to pelting) , and rush to the theatre, was the work of just twelve minutes and a half. In another brief moment, payment having been tendered and accepted, Fitzflam was in the boxes, ready to expose the swindle and the swindler! ”

“ Ha! and the transport that enwrapped his soul, when, with fixed eyes, he sat like painted ecstacy, as if the world around him had dissolved, and naught remained in the eternal void but he and Julia. Gallantry? Poor thing! Thou hast never loved. Think not that thou canst teach me to distinguish gallantry from love!
ROSA. No matter, Signora! A husband lost is as good as ten lovers gained.
LEONORA. Lost? Is then one little intermission of the heart's pulsations a proof that I have lost Fiesco? ”

“ Suddenly her eye fell on an intimate scene across the room—Rachael and Captain Wolf were engrossed in a long kiss. Gloria shivered slightly—she knew not why.... Pink face approached again.
"You shouldn't look at them," he whispered. Almost immediately his other arm was around her ... his breath was on her cheek. Again absurdity triumphed over disgust, and her laugh was a weapon that needed no edge of words.
"Oh, I thought you were a sport," he was saying.
"What's a sport?"
"Why, a person that likes to—to enjoy life." ”

“ The simplicity of his utterance had in it a certain grandeur which few would have expected to find in a man with the reputation of Nevil Fitzwaren. "Everybody doesn't believe in this sort of thing, Arbuthnot, but I and my princess do. She will never lie in the arms of another. God help her, brave and noble and unluckly soul!"
This was not the Fitz the world had always known. ”

“ The well of English undefiled grows more copious with the process of ages. By what mysterious alchemy the quality of mad keenness transforms its possessor into "a regular nut" I was too low-spirited to elucidate.
"Fitz is a game bird, ain't he?" Flamboyant youth heartily poured half a bottle of Worcestershire sauce over its cutlet. "Didn't think he had it in him. Merely shows how you can be deceived."
I groaned in spirit, but plucked up the courage to take a dismal nibble at a piece of toast.
"That chap Coverdale is a bit of a funkstick. Made himself rather an ass about those firearms." ”

“ I repeat that man is— (“Take that!”—an apple in Fitzflam’s eye.) I say he is another (“There it is!”—in his other eye) person altogether—a— (“Boxkeeper!”) Nothing of the sort; a— (“Constable!”) I’ll take— (“Take that fellow out!”) Allow me to be— (“Off! off!”) I am— (“‘Out! out!”) Let me request.— (“Order! order!—hiss! hiss!—oh! oh!—ah! ah!—phit! phit!—Booh!—booh!—wooh!—oh!—ah!”) ”
Here Mr. Fitzfunk came forward, and commenced bowing like a mandarin, while the gentleman who had blacked Fitzflam’s eye desisted from forcing him out of the box, to hear the “great creature” speak. ”

“ Possessing a charming personality, a keen intellect, a fund of humour and a considerable knowledge of the world, Fitz was an extremely attractive figure quite apart from the exceptional qualifications which he possessed for a post which he filled with so much credit to himself, and with such advantage to others. ”

“ Macy held out his hand.
"I'm glad we're to be associated in this scheme—I've been for you all along—especially lately. I'm glad we're to be on the same side of the fence."
"I want to thank you, sir," said Dalyrimple simply. He felt a whimsical moisture gathering back of his eyes.
The Four Fists
At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all his hitable qualities have quite vanished. ”