Gleeman

“ And now that you love, instead of rendering him you love your captive, you throw yourself entirely in his power, and will deeply rue the confidence you have shewn. Has he not already betrayed you. You know not Glenarvon. His heart, black as it is, I have read and studied. Whatever his imagination idolizes, becomes with him a sole and entire interest. At this moment, he would fly with you to the extremity of the earth, and when he awakes from his dream, he will laugh at you, and at himself for his absurdity. ”

“ No more I'll love the treacherous man
⁠That pierced my hero's bosom.
A kind and tender heart was thine,
⁠Thy friendship was abused;
A braver man ne'er faced a foe,
⁠Hadst thou been fairly used.
For thee a maid I'll live and die,
⁠Glengyle shall ne'er espouse me;
And for the space of seven long years,
⁠The dowy black shall clothe me.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ Whatever confidence Lord Glenmore felt in possessing the full and undivided affections of Lady Glenmore, yet the particulars of such a disclosure as had come to light, of her intimacy with Leslie Winyard, could not fail, for a long period, to throw a gloom on his existence; and gave birth to a feeling, that the happiness which he had hitherto contemplated as unclouded was now obscured by some of those shades which are incident to all human enjoyments, and which are wisely ordered to wean us, perhaps, from a world we might otherwise love too well. ”

“ And so I told a tearful tale of my life on the hell-ship Glenmore. (I had once seen the Glenmore lying at anchor in San Francisco Bay.)
I was an English apprentice, I said. And they said that I didn't talk like an English boy. It was up to me to create on the instant. I had been born and reared in the United States. On the death of my parents, I had been sent to England to my grandparents. It was they who had apprenticed me on the Glenmore. I hope the captain of the Glenmore will forgive me, for I gave him a character that night in the Winnipeg police station. Such cruelty! Such brutality! ”

“ THE HISTORY OF SIR REGINALD GLANVILLE. "You remember my character at school—the difficulty with which you drew me from the visionary and abstracted loneliness which, even at that time, was more consonant to my taste, than all the sports and society resorted to by other boys—and the deep, and, to you, inexplicable delight with which I returned to my reveries and solitude again. That character has continued through life the same; circumstances have strengthened, not altered it. ”

“ You have been all that and more. You must hear me, Ferrars. And I beg that you will answer me. Why am I watched, thwarted, cajoled? Why do you and Myers fear to let me out of your sight? A few weeks ago you found, or seemed to find, your chief interest in Glenville; you looked for clues, for developments, there; and yet, you have not visited Glenville since you left it so suddenly. Even your own personal interest has not drawn you there for a single day."
"By my 'personal interest' you mean what, Brierly?" ”

“ He counted the cost, and decided that in winning her he should win all that would make life worth living. Glynn was not a conventional man. He liked society, but was not its slave. A quiet home, with such a companion, what could be a fairer lot? Would the day ever come when she would let him hold her to his heart, when her soft arms would steal round his neck, and her sweet, sad, tremulous lips return his kisses? Whatever Lambert's circumstances, misdeeds, crimes, Glynn resolved to give his life to the tender, blameless daughter. ”

“ Features of noble mould, a sharp but finely modelled nose, broad brow, and yellow, fiery eyes set almost too deeply beneath arched brows were peculiar to all these royal Asdings, the descendants of the sun-god Frey.
Gelimer's glance alone was usually subdued as if veiled, dreamy as if lost in uncertainty; but when it suddenly flashed with enthusiasm or wrath its mighty glow was startling; and the narrow oval of the face, which in all was far removed from roundness, in Gelimer seemed almost too thin. ”

“ It really is too provoking that you should have stayed so long, when you knew that I particularly wanted you to-day.' Gladys enters the room pale and breathless, just as Miss Gwynne is endeavouring to fasten in the wreath of forget-me-nots and lilies. She does not turn round, and is at the moment too much engrossed with her own appearance to think of Gladys. ”

“ Sorrowfully but with no reproach in his tone, Gelimer answered: "Yes, the sound man cannot understand why the sick man does not sing and leap. I must 'brood,' as you call it; I cannot do otherwise. Yet often I think my way through. Often I, too, in my way, break through the mists. So now, by fervent prayer, I have again won my way to the old strong consolation. Verus, my confessor, knows these conflicts and the cause of my victory: right is on my side. I am not a usurper, as the Emperor falsely calls me. Hilderic, the assassin, was justly deposed. ”

“ I have never been in America in my life." And then Henry's haggard eyes caught a look in the old priest's face. "My God!" he cried, agony in his voice, "you would suggest that it is some one I may know!"
"I suggest nothing, Monsieur. I make my own deductions from events. Will you not do the same?"
Henry covered his eyes with his hands. It seemed as though reason were slipping from him; and then, like a flash of lightning which cleared his brain, the reality struck him.
"It is Michael Arranstoun," he said with a moan.
"We know nothing for certain," proclaimed the Père Anselme. ”

“ Springing to the ground, they passionately clasped Gelimer's hands.
"What troubles you, brother?" asked Gibamund. "That is not the glance of the rescuer."
"O my brother," sighed Gelimer, "pity me! I feel a loathing for my people; and that is hard."
"Yes, for it is the best thing we possess," replied Zazo, gravely.
"On earth," answered the King, thoughtfully. "Yet is it not a sin to love even this earthly thing so ardently? All earthly possessions are but vanity. ”

“ To withdraw Lady Glenmore from that circle was nevertheless no easy task. Habits of conventional dissipation are seldom broken through without producing a mutual aversion between the parties. From this feeling, on the part of her former associates, it was his anxious wish to guard Lady Glenmore; for he felt that to a young and inexperienced heart there can be no greater temptation to return to error, than to be exposed to those sneers and contemptuous remarks which the world of folly is ever ready to apply when it finds itself tacitly reproved. ”

“ Say but kindly that my letters are no longer a solace to you, and I will of myself cease to write; but do not hurl me at once from adoration to contempt and hate. Do not throw me off, and doom me to sudden, to certain perdition. Glenarvon, have mercy. Let compassion, if love has ceased, impel you to show me some humanity. I know it is degrading thus to write. I ought to 78 be silent, and to feel that if you have the heart to treat me with harshness, it is lowering myself still further thus to sue. But oh! my God, it is no longer time to think of dignity—to speak of what is right. ”

“ There is quite sufficient of the erratic and unusual in the character of Glahn, the hero, but the tone is more subdued. The madcap youth of genius has realised that the world looks frigidly at its vagaries, and the secretly proud “au moins je suis autre”—more a boast than a confession—gives place to a wistful, apologetic admission of the difference as a fault. ”

“ You know how unwilling I was to enter on a life of dissipation." Lord Glenmore again sighed, as if in assent to the truth of these words; and blamed himself inwardly that he had ever suffered Lady Glenmore to mingle, unprotected by himself, in society which now, for the first time, appeared to him, in its full force, to be of such dangerous tendency, that he felt he ought to have known better.
"But your greater intimacy abroad," he went on to ask, "Georgina? for it was abroad that these notes seem to have been written. Did you receive none such before your departure?" ”

“ Glendower bent over her.
“Sleep,” said he, “sleep on! The wicked do not come to thee now. Thou art in a world that has no fellowship with this,—a world from which even happiness is not banished! Nor woe nor pain, nor memory of the past nor despair of all before thee, make the characters of thy present state! Thou forestallest the forgetfulness of the grave, and thy heart concentrates all earth’s comfort in one word,—‘Oblivion! ‘Beautiful, how beautiful thou art even yet! that smile, that momentary blush, years have not conquered them. ”

“ The fact is, it is a maxim often resorted to in idleness or indifference, and is more frequently an apology for bad conduct in those who make it, than arising from any true nobility of soul or any moral or religious principle. Lord Glenmore, from living in the midst of the world of fashion, and from never having (a rare instance) been spoiled by such a life, was less aware than any human being perhaps of the danger to which he was exposing his young wife. ”

“ The interview lasted long. There was much excellent advice and wise admonition on one side, profuse expression of gratitude and lasting fidelity on the other. “Very well, very well,” said old Hickman, at the close of a very devoted speech, in which Gleeson professed the most attached and the most honorable motives,—for he was not at all aware that his bill was known of,—“I am not ignorant of mankind; they are rarely, if ever, very bad or very good; they can be occasionally faithful to their friends; but there is one thing they are always—careful of themselves. ”

“ What are the reproaches of conscience—what the fancied pangs of remorse, 299 to the glory, the ecstacy of being thine! Low as I am fallen; despised, perhaps, by all who hear my fate, I have lived one hour of joy, worth every calamity I may be called upon to endure. Return Glenarvon, adored, beloved. Thy words are like the joys of Heaven: Thy presence is the light of life: existence without thee would not be worth the purchase.—Come all the woes that may, upon me, never will I forsake Glenarvon.”
The nurse entered Calantha’s room, bearing her boy in her arms. ”

“ Like a child which buries its face on its mother's breast and does not know whether her features are homely or beautiful, he seems to be hiding his face in the grass and listening to the pulse-beats of the earth rather than standing off and looking at it. "I seem to be lying face to face with the bottom of the universe," says Glahn, as he gazes into a clear sunset sky, "and my heart seems to beat tenderly against this bottom and to be at home here." ”

“ For Lord Glenmore was a man of honourable, as well as kindly feelings; and in giving the counsel of a prudential marriage to Lord Albert, was at the same time the last person to think that, in an union for life, happiness ought to be sacrificed to interested views: the furthest also from his thoughts would have been any design to interfere between, or to disunite any two persons who were attached to each other. ”

“ Thousands daily sacrifice their hearts to mercenary and ambitious views; thousands coldly, without one feeling of enthusiasm or love, sell themselves for a splendid name; and can there be a mind so cold, so corrupted, as to censure the girl, who, having rejected a Buchanan, gave her hand and heart, and all that she possessed, to save, to bless, and to reclaim a Glenarvon. ”

“ In the matter of words he might hold his own, and, to any one who believed him, appear a man of great strength and courage. But when, by any mischance, he stumbled across an opponent who knew enough to correctly estimate the value of his professions, and who was self-reliant and sturdy enough to face him and challenge a proof of his assertions, Gleeson retired, or, failing escape, subsided rapidly. ”

“ Only my brave General, Theudigisel, accompanied me in the fishing boat which bore me across the narrow arm of the sea from Calpe, and will be carrying me home again when you read this, Gelimer. You are a true king, a true hero. I saw you slay the tiger to-night; but you cannot kill the serpent of degeneration which has coiled around your people. Your guards sleep at their posts; your nobles go naked, or in women's garb. ”

“ Yet there was something in his eye that indicated no ordinary spirit, and instantly impressed Glenn with the respect that he conceived to be due to superior genius; for notwithstanding all the miraculous things told of the fire-wizard, he rightly conjectured the personage before him to be nothing more than a human being, a recluse, perhaps, and, like himself, seeking in solitude the enjoyments which (for peculiar reasons) could not be found among mankind. ”

“ She was alone with Miss Glanville. Our conversation soon turned from common-place topics to those of a graver nature; the deep melancholy of Glanville’s mind imbued all his thoughts when he once suffered himself to express them.
“Why,” said Lady Glanville, who seemed painfully fond of her son, “why do you not go more into the world? You suffer your mind to prey upon itself, till it destroys you. ”

“ Where he is going the white snow is falling gently on the road, a cart full of sweet-smelling roots is moving on velvet, the driver stops to exchange views with a farmer who has been feeding his sheep, within the humblest cottage the fire is burning clearly. With every mile northwards the Glenman's heart lifts; and as he lands on his far-away little station, he draws a deep breath of the clean, wholesome air. It is a long walk through the snow, but there is a kindly, couthy smell from the woods, and at sight of the squares of light in his home, weariness departs from a Drumtochty man. ”