Sconce

“ Eleanor met him at the door, and his face glowed with pleasure to see her. This beautiful woman in silk and lace and jewels, with servants at her bidding, and the light of love and happiness on her face, was indeed his daughter. He put his memory of the white, sorrowful Eleanor, clothed in worn black garments, behind her for evermore. The entrance hall was in itself a beautiful apartment, with an enormous fire burning at one end, and silver sconces, filled with wax-lights, illuminating the pictures and cabinets and curiously carved old chairs with which it was furnished. ”

“ After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self- indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Still--the 'Tales of Knockespotch'..."
He paused, and thoughtfully drummed with his fingers on the backs of the non-existent, unattainable books.
"But I disagree with you about reading," said Mary. "About serious reading, I mean."
"Quite right, Mary, quite right," Mr. Scogan answered. "I had forgotten there were any serious people in the room." ”

“ What hast thou, or thine, todo with my waking thoughts?"
"Your waking thoughts, sir," said the second of Miss Vere's companions, with a sort of mock gravity, "are fixed, doubtless, upon wisdom; folly can only intrude on your sleeping moments."
"Over thine," retorted the Dwarf, more splenetically than became a philosopher, or hermit, "folly exercises an unlimited empire, asleep or awake."
"Lord bless us!" said the lady, "he's a prophet, sure enough."
"As surely," continued the Recluse, "as thou art a woman—a woman!—I should have said a lady—a fine lady. ”

“ Permanence, transience—Sir Ferdinando and his privies were gone, Crome still stood. How brightly the sun shone and how inevitable was death! The ways of God were strange; the ways of man were stranger still...
“It does one’s heart good,” exclaimed Mr. Scogan at last, “to hear of these fantastic English aristocrats. To have a theory about privies and to build an immense and splendid house in order to put it into practise—it’s magnificent, beautiful! I like to think of them all: the eccentric milords rolling across Europe in ponderous carriages, bound on extraordinary errands. ”

“ What the foul fiend sent this wench hither? As if it were not sufficient plague to be harboured in a hovel that would hardly serve for a dog's kennel in England, baited by a rude peasant-boy, and dependent on the faith of a mercenary ruffian, but I cannot even have time to muse over my own mishap, but must come aloft, frisk, fidget, and make speeches, to please this pale hectic phantom, because she has gentle blood in her veins? ”

“ Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and—a few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart—wherever he appeared, in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in him, ‘gentle or simple,’ felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott. ”

“ Lie senseless as the bloody clay,
He bade his page to stanch the wound,
And there beside the warrior stay,
And tend him in his doubtful state,
And lead him to Branksome castle-gate:
His noble mind was inly moved
For the kinsman of the maid he loved.
"This shalt thou do without delay:
No longer here myself may stay:
Unless the swifter I speed away,
Short shrift will be at my dying day." ”

“ The glover, moved as well by fear as by compassion, applied himself to recall him to life, and succeeded in doing so, but not in restoring him to composure. He hid his face with his hands, and his tears flowed plentifully and bitterly.
“For Our Lady’s sake, be composed,” said the old man, “and recall the vile word! I know you better than yourself: you are no coward, but only too young and inexperienced, ay, and somewhat too quick of fancy, to have the steady valour of a bearded man. I would hear no other man say that of you, Conachar, without giving him the lie. ”

“ Paulette exclaimed sharply. "What on earth is Skunk's Misery?"
"A village—at least, a den—of dirt, chiefly; off this road, between Caraquet and Lac Tremblant." I was thankful to have something to think about that was neither her, or me, or Dudley. I made as long a story as I could of my stay in Skunk's Misery when I took home the half-killed boy; of the filthy stuff I had spilled on my clothes, and how I had seen a wolf carry them off. ”

“ But if it sounds as though a narrow, stone-choked valley were no citadel for a man or men to have hidden themselves, or for any one to conduct an industry like making a secret scent to attract wolves, the person who said so would be mistaken. There was never in the world a better place for secret dwelling and villainy and all the rest than Skunk's Misery. ”

“ The wicked world will in the end have its way, and the opponents of the wicked world will come to acknowledge that it is not a bad way, and that they are none the worse for accommodating themselves to it: in fact, that they are themselves a part of the world, and cannot do without it.
One little matter I noticed this morning cannot but work in the direction of opening the eyes of these naturally conservative peasants to their true interests. Some time after we had entered the valley—it was at about 7 A.M.—we met a walking postman with a bulky bag on his back. ”

“ In every office, on every floor Are Swanks, and Swanks, distracting Swanks, And Acting-Swanks a score, And coldly distant, sub-assistant Under-Swanks galore. In peaceful days when the countryside Poured wealth to Gosh, and the skies were blue, The great King Splosh no fault espied, And seemed entirely satisfied With Swanks who muddled thro'. ”

“ Now, you can't blame a skunk—he was born that way, an' he's got good reasons for keepin' on th' way he was born. But a human, goin' out of his way, to smell like some I knows of," he broke off, shrugging his shoulders expressively. ”

“ But there is no heartiness about them—they can never forgive a fair fall upon the sod—they bear malice, and that I hate as I do a black cloak, or a Geneva skull-cap, and a pair of long ears rising on each side on’t, like two chimneys at the gable ends of a thatched cottage. They are as sly as the devil to boot; and, therefore, Lance Outram, take two with you, and keep after them, that they may not turn our flank, and get on the track of the Countess again after all. ”

“ The swarming howling wretches below
Gained and gained and gained.
Skene looked at his pale young wife:—
"Is the time come?"—"The time is come!"—
Young, strong, and so full of life:
The agony struck them dumb. ”

“ Such is a part of the various labors of a drudging, depressing kind, by which his head is made wrong and his heart faint. "If there is a mental drudgery," says Sir Walter Scott, "which lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves, like the toil of a slave, it is that which is exacted by literary composition, when the heart is not in unison with the work upon which the head is employed. ”

“ Are my ears turned rebels, that they deceive me with sounds so extraordinary?—And yet it is no wonder that, having conversed so long with rebellion, they should now force its language upon my understanding. Say I am mistaken, my lords—say, for the honour of yourselves and the Scottish nobility, that my right trusty cousins of Lindesay and Ruthven, two barons of warlike fame and ancient line, have not sought the prison-house of their kind mistress for such a purpose as these words seem to imply. ”

“ I marvell of that, said Scogin, I am sure you did not use the medicine as you should have done. They said: wee did cast it in our beds and in our chambers. I, said he, there be a sort of fooles that will buy a thing, and will not aske what they should doe with it. I tell you all, that you should have taken every flea by the neck, and then they would gape; and then you should have cast a little of the powder into every flea’s mouth, and so you should have killed them all. Then said the wives: we have not onely lost our money, but we are mocked for our labour. ”

“ All waited for the stranger's answer.—His features, austere even to ferocity, with a cast of eye which, without being actually oblique, approached nearly to a squint, and which gave a very sinister expression to his countenance, joined to a frame, square, strong, and muscular, though something under the middle size, seemed to announce a man unlikely to understand rude jesting, or to receive insults with impunity. ”

“ Even if thou shouldst feel that the kindly influence of her whom thou art soon to behold should loosen the bonds of thy tongue, presently imprisoned, as the good Soldan expresses it, within the ivory walls of its castle, beware how thou changest thy taciturn character, or speakest a word in her presence, even if thy powers of utterance were to be miraculously restored. ”

“ She lost the fresh elasticity of form, the colour and the mien of health, and became wasted, wan, and feeble. She appeared to have no formed complaint; yet it was evident to those who looked on her that her strength waned daily. ”

“ And yet, when he had finished, the difficult screw-thread was in a fair way to be properly cut.
He came hot from these nightmare experiences to the Speaker’s reception; and when he looked round and contrasted the one scene with the other, he had a sense of phantasmagoria that made him feel dizzy. It was almost too much for his reason ... on top of a transition that would have overbalanced most normal men.... ”

“ At the next it slackened and stopped; and, without any transition, he found himself prone, staring into the blackness as he had hopelessly stared when he saw the cellar-roof coming down upon him. He felt no pain, nor was there any singing or dizziness in his head. There was only a sort of blankness, in which he had hardly begun to wonder where he was. He assumed for a moment that he was in his own bed and in his own flat. ”

“ Until you are pleased to remove such suspicions, your lodgings and nourishment are those of a prisoner. In the meantime, before subjecting you to the question, take notice, I will myself ride to the Abbey of Saint Bride, and satisfy myself whether the young person whom you would pass as your son, is possessed of the same determination as that which you yourself seem to assert. It may so happen that his examination and yours may throw such light upon each other as will decidedly prove either your guilt or innocence, without its being confirmed by the use of the extraordinary question. ”

“ I have known a person of this kind so perverse, that if you had told him that his wife and children had been burnt to death on the first-floor of a house, the intelligence would have had no effect upon him, if he chanced to suppose that you were inaccurate, and were calling the ground-floor the first-floor. ”

“ I snatched my scone off the fire, raw as it was, put it into my haversack, and formed. We remained under arms until dark, and then took up our old quarters upon Gallows Hill, where I ate my raw scone, sweetly seasoned by hunger. In our advance to the town we were much entertained by some of our men who had got over a wall the day before, when the enemy were in the rear ”

“ Plenty of blood, plenty of pride, and right great scarcity of ducats, I warrant thee.—Well, gossip,” he said to his companion, “go before us, and tell them to have some breakfast ready yonder at the Mulberry grove; for this youth will do as much honour to it as a starved mouse to a housewife's cheese. And for the Bohemian—hark in thy ear.” ”

“ One of the footpads scratched at the door, which was opened by a female, and they entered with their unhappy prisoner. An old woman, who was preparing food by the assistance of a stifling fire of lighted charcoal, asked them, in the name of the devil, what they brought the wench there for, and why they did not strip her and turn her abroad on the common?
“Come, come, Mother Blood,” said the tall man, “we’ll do what’s right to oblige you, and we’ll do no more; we are bad enough, but not such as you would make us,—devils incarnate.” ”

“ And the spirit and dash of those four lines were quickly recognized as marking a new power in Scotch letters; and an echo of them, or of their spirit, in some shape or other, may be found, I think, in all his succeeding poems and in all the tumults and struggles of his life. The elder Scott does not like this philandering with rhyme; it will spoil the law, and a solid profession, he thinks; and true enough it does. ”

“ For what fate has given me such a power I know not; but bred an ignorant maiden, in this sequestered valley, mine eyes can too often see what man would most willingly hide—I can judge of the dark purpose, though it is hid under the smiling brow, and a glance of the eye says more to me than oaths and protestations do to others. ”

“ Thou wert wont to be generous, though stern and stubborn in thy resolves; let not thy sense of what thine own thoughts term duty, draw thee farther than mine have done. Remember, that every sheep whom thou shalt here lead astray from the fold, will be demanded in time and through eternity of him who hath left thee the liberty of doing such evil. I ask no engagement of thee, save that thou remain a prisoner on thy word at this tower, and wilt appear when summoned. ”

“ Jeremy looked at him coolly, and spoke in a tone of restrained sorrow. “Scott,” he said, “it takes more than jabberers like this chap here to make a revolution. They want a few damned fools like you to help them. I’m going on before the trouble begins.” And he drew back from the lorry and began to look about for a place where the crowd might be a little sparser. ”

“ As the years rolled on, and the boy—always a boy to her—had passed from childhood into youth, his bearing towards her had been constantly in keeping with the opinion he usually expressed to any of his companions about her: "She's dotty half the time, and when she ain't, she's scotty." ”

“ The good man had so unfeigned a horror of night air, that is to say of admitting fresh air from without, into the room in which he was sleeping, in consequence of some supposed ill-effects it would have on the eyes, that [Pg 211] there was nothing for it but to comply with his prejudice.
We were now in Italy, and had been since we descended the Stretta. Our dinner, therefore, on the banks of the Spöl had been eaten in Italy, and this had somewhat heightened the flavour of the enjoyment so many other pleasant adjuncts had contributed to impart to it. ”