Outcast

“ Life is gone out; a pauper's grave will soon close over what remains of this wretched outcast. The detective hastens down stairs, spreads the alarm over the neighborhood, and soon the House of the Nine Nations is the scene of great excitement. ”

“ In The Outcast [Pg 86] of the Islands, when Willems is exiled by Captain Lingard, the terror of that forest has at its heart not only the actual terror of that immediate scene, minutely and realistically described—it has also the terror of all our knowledge of loneliness, desolation, the power of something stronger than ourselves. ”

“ BLAGDAROSS On a waste place strewn with bricks in the outskirts of a town twilight was falling. A star or two appeared over the smoke, and distant windows lit mysterious lights. The stillness deepened and the loneliness. Then all the outcast things that are silent by day found voices. ”

“ The Outcast “There is a race of people inhabiting the Vale of Lieze,
on the French side of the Pyrenees, who are supposed to be
descended from the Saracens, and are entirely excluded from
communion with the rest of mankind.—They are even obliged to
enter the churches by a separate door, and no one will make use
of the holy water which their touch has polluted.” ”

“ On Lingard's departure solitude and silence closed round Willems; the cruel solitude of one abandoned by men; the reproachful silence which surrounds an outcast ejected by his kind, the silence unbroken by the slightest whisper of hope; an immense and impenetrable silence that swallows up without echo the murmur of regret and the cry of revolt. The bitter peace of the abandoned clearings entered his heart, in which nothing could live now but the memory and hate of his past. ”

“ Gutters running with seething matter; homeless outcasts sitting, besotted, on crazy doorsteps; the vicious, with savage visage, and keen, watchful eye, loitering at the doors of filthy "groceries;" the sickly and neglected child crawling upon the side-pave, or seeking a crust to appease its hunger—all are found here, gasping, in rags, a breath of air by day, or seeking a shelter, at night, in dens so abject that the world can furnish no counterpart. ”

“ Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets, at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world. ”

“ If their meeting or parting takes place at sunrise or sunset, as it often does, one gets the splendor of the apocalypse. There will be cloud pillars miles high, snow-capped, glorified, and preserving an orderly perspective before the unbarred door of the sun, or perhaps mere ghosts of clouds that dance to some pied piper of an unfelt wind. But be it day or night, once they have settled to their work, one sees from the valley only the blank wall of their tents stretched along the ranges. To get the real effect of a mountain storm you must be inside. ”

“ Even the submerged tenth must come up to breathe now and then. During the dreadful passage of a hot wave from the West one may count them by the dozens, coatless and even shirtless wretches, lying prone on the flag-stones like fish made ready for the grid. ”

“ Suddenly, through some unconjectured rift in the clouds, one beam of the sun, divinely clear, shot down for a moment on them with excellent brightness. Yet it was only for a moment; again the clouds drifted up, and the rain, which for that minute had ceased, began again, dripping with hopeless regular iteration on to the roof as evening closed in, some evening far away in a land of exile beneath an alien sky. ”

“ They observe the tides rise and fall, but know not the attractive law that regulates their movements; they contemplate the procession of the seasons, without any conception of the principles and causes that determine and produce their changes; they witness the storm as it rises in its wrath; they listen with awe to the thunder-peal, and gaze with startling terror upon the lightning as it flashes from within the bosom of the black cloud, and are utterly ignorant to what power to attribute the dreadful phenomena ”

“ Hardcastle, not knowing why, halted in his stride, and stood looking out across the waste. If the hills were brown and steadfast washed by rain and sun, below him lurked the mines, the bogs that sucked a man down, dragging at him till limb by limb the chill ooze chained him. And there were the Wilderness Men, whose enmity was a dread thing to earn.
A stab of fear took him unawares as if one of the Stealthy People had crept on him from behind. He shook it off, telling himself that the dread was part of his heritage of Logie. A grown man must learn to shake off nursery tales. ”

“ We often see darkness above us. We often hear the powers of apparent chaos roaring like hungry dragons around. We are often the sport of whirling eddies, and the rage of furious rapids and falls. We wind our cold, dark way at times, as if passing under the falls of Niagara, roofed over with roaring waters, and startled with bursts of spray, and shrieks and whistlings of sound from chasms and gulfs beneath ”

“ The sun was setting, the sky the earth and the air lovely with rosy light, and the world full of that peculiar calm which belongs to the evening of the day of rest. Surely the world ought to wake better on the morrow.
“Not very dangerous people, those, Miss Oldcastle?” ”

“ A fog almost every morning, chilly, damp, and all-pervading, mournful surroundings made more mournful by the incessant tolling of the bell-buoy rocking on the dangerous bar, the muffled crash of [Page 95] surf on a sandy shore and the periodical boom of the detonator from the signal-station. Then, when Father Sol has vanquished mist and fog, an hour or two of intense heat, and the glare from white sand and burnished sea and sky sufficient to blind one ”

“ Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by a faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved far away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the crucial moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence of the south-west gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, cleareyed anger of the King's north-westerly mood. ”

“ But as the day went on the stormy sky lowered yet more and more blackly, the wind, shifting between east and north, swooped in angry gusts across the black waters, or blew in so fierce a gale that the shallop scarcely bore her close-reefed sails, and more than once careened so as to ship alarming seas. ”

“ On the previous night they had slept in the midst of a noisy throng who chattered and made merry until an exceedingly late hour, thus preventing the more weary from sleeping, and everywhere in the air, hanging like clouds, was the dust raised by the feet of so many men. ”

“ The weather had been beautiful, but, on the eve of the day fixed for my departure, the wind rose, and the rain fell in torrents. I observed that the river which passed my window was much swollen, and rushed with great violence. In the night, I heard its voice still stronger, and felt glad I had not to set out in the dark. I rose with twilight, and was expecting my carriage, and wondering at its delay, when I heard, that the great diligence, several miles below, had been seized by a torrent; the horses were up to their necks in water, before any one dreamed of the danger. ”

“ A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking overhead, the tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory ”

“ The occulting hood, too, must be helped when the warning click came, or it would jam and fail to fall periodically, thus changing the character of the light, to the bewilderment and grave peril of any unhappy vessel striving against the exterior turmoil of wind and wave. ”

“ Sick and hungry, I started in quest of Bear Creek; and after traveling about an hour, I realized the fact that I had become lost in the fog. Previous to this discovery, I had passed within sight of several houses, but not knowing all the inhuman wretches who were hunting me down, I durst not apply within for food, and shelter from the cold, chilling fog, for fear of encountering some one in sympathy with the mob, if not one of the actual participants. ”

“ I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a high and harsh wind, carrying clouds of dust. It came out of malarious lowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom it blew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; their legs ached under the burthen of their body; and the touch of one hand upon another grew to be odious. ”

“ I know of no sound to be compared to it. There is nought in the wide range of our intelligence that can produce the dread, the almost terrific expansion which it seems to create in the mind, save it be the dizzy view over some dark and unfathomable abyss—an impression that comes over us like the dread unutterable anticipations of eternity!
Suddenly a thin white vapour was seen obscuring the brightness in the west. Then came a cloud-like haze, scudding on the very surface of the stream, wherein the plash of horses' feet announced their entrance. ”

“ Vague sounds occasionally emerged from the depths of the fog—the rumbling of wheels, the tramp of a mass of men, the distant trot of horses; sounds produced by the movements of the troops which the fog was hiding, all the evolutions of the Seventh Army Corps, now taking up its line of battle. ”

“ In certain moods, usually on dreary days when the sky is overcast and the sun is hidden, or sometimes at night when the great yellow hunter's moon rides in a black sky, the horror of the usurpers comes upon me with fresh and lurid obsession, more appalling than ever it was in the weeks of my hectic and headlong warfare. ”

“ Another day, the sixth of the interminable gale. Will it never end? The wind and drift continue with unabated violence. For some three hours to-day, I pushed, and butted, and at times almost crawled on hands and knees, back and forth across the small floe on which we are camped. ”

“ But for all the normal tranquillity, there was some hint of menace abroad: the puffs of wind might enlarge into a gale, the remote storm might move up with fierce, flashing blinks of lightning and sonorous gongs, and instead of the small squeaking bats, some prodigy of preying teeth and claws might launch itself on to the night. ”

“ Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops—as sometimes happens. ”

“ When the fog slinks down from Labrador, stealthy, sure, and slow !
Oh, men of the fleet, ’t is ye who learn, of the white fog’s biting breath,
That life may hang on the way ye turn, or the way ye turn be death! ”

“ I fear greatly that the wailing cries heard constantly from the outskirts of the city are the death cries of the inhabitants. They are constantly increasing in volume and are approaching the center of the city.
“The fog yet hangs over everything. If possible, it is even heavier than before. But the conditions have changed. Instead of an opaque, impenetrable wall of odorous vapor, now swirls and writhes a shapeless mass in contortions of almost human agony. Now and again the mass parts and I catch a brief glimpse of the streets below.
“People are running to and fro, screaming in despair. ”

“ Men were passing and re-passing on every hand, and in the darkness no one saw a small figure, in whose cap the lamp was not lighted, run swiftly from the foot of the slope up the drift where the sentinels should have been. ”

“ The frighted beasts of the field herd together, or roam in vain for a place of shelter. All the elements are thrown into confusion, and nature appears to be hastening to her ancient chaos. Scenes of desolation are disclosed by the next morning's sun ”

“ The sun was sinking when the horses smelled water and cantered to the shallow but grateful basins. Far to the south, the chaos out of which they had labored was black, and mysterious with drifting vapors. The wind which whirled forever among the chasms was left behind. ”

“ The first real heat of the summer had come in a blaze of tropic intensity which seemed to rise in blasting waves from the baking streets, and as Storm worked he felt a strange lassitude creeping over him. What if he were to be ill? That was one consideration which had not occurred to him, and, stifling as he was, a chill seemed to strike at the core of his being. Illness might mean delirium, and in delirium men babbled of the most secret, hidden things! ”

“ In nearly every house throughout the village was there sickness or death; the cold was piercing, and, however industriously we had worked filling the cracks between the logs with clay, the wind came through in many places, so that for the greater part of the time we needed to hug closely to the fire lest we freeze to death. ”

“ In winter it is a series of seemingly endless delays. Day after day, the plain on the high plateau overlooking the old city of V—— was storm-swept, a forlorn and desolate place as we looked at it from our windows, watching the flocks of crows as they beat up against the wind, or as they turned, and were swept with it, over our barracks, crying and calling derisively to us as they passed. ”