Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
swings over his head, I'd stand by his side and say I was his wife."
"God pity you!" groaned Reuben.
"I want no pity," she said, "and so you can tell those who would throw it away on me. Say to them that you sought me out to cast taunts at me, but it was of no use, for what you thought I should be ashamed of I gloried in, and could look you and all the world in the face"—and she seemed to grow taller as she spoke—"and say I felt proud to be a smuggler's wife;" and, turning, she made a movement as if to go.
But Reuben took a step so as to impede her. "Is this to be our parting?" he said. "Can you throw away the only friend you've got left?"
"I don't call you a friend," she said.
"You'll know me for being so one day, though, and bitterly rue you didn't pay more heed to my words."
"Never!" she said proudly. "I'd trust Adam with my life: he's true as steel. Now," she added, stepping on one side, "I have no more time to stay: I must go back; so let me pass."
Mechanically Reuben moved. Stung by her words, irritated by a sense of failure, filled with the sharpest jealousy against his rival, he saw no other course open to him than to let her go her way and to go his. "Good-bye, then, Eve," he said, in a dry, cold voice.
"Good-bye," she answered.
"I don't think, after what's passed, you need expect to see me again," he ventured, with the secret hope that she would pause and say something that might lead to a fresh discussion.
"I had no notion that you'd still have a thought of coming. I should look upon a visit from you as very out of place."
"Oh, well, be sure I sha'n't force myself where I'm not wanted."
"Then you'll be wise to stay away, for you'll never be wanted where I am."
And without another glance in his direction she walked away, while Reuben stood and watched her out of sight. "That's ended," he said, setting his lips firmly together and hardening the expression of his naturally grave face. "That mad game's finished, and finished so that I think I've done with sweet-hearting for as long as I live. Well, thank God! a man may get on very fairly though the woman that he made a fool of himself for flings back his love and turns him over for somebody else." Then, as if some unseen hand had dealt him a sudden thrust, he cried out, "Why did I ever see her? Why was I made to care for her? Haven't I known the folly of it all along, and fought and strove from the first to get the better of myself? and here she comes down and sees a fellow whose eye is tickled by her looks, and he gets in a week what I've been begging and praying for years for; and they tell you that God's ways are just and that He rewards the good and punishes the evil!" and Reuben's face worked with suppressed emotion, for in spirit he stood before his Creator and upbraided Him with "Lo! these many years have I served Thee, neither transgressed I at any time Thy commandments; and yet this drunkard, this evil-liver, this law-breaker, is given that for which in my soul I have thirsted!" and the devils of envy and revenge ran by his side rejoicing, while Fate flew before and lured him on to where Opportunity stood and welcomed his approach.
POSSESSION
She is thine own at last, O faithful soul!
The love that changed not with the changing years
Hath its reward: Desire's strong prayers and tears
Fall useless since thy hand hath touched the goal.
See how she yieldeth up to thy control
Each mystery of her beauty: enter, thou,
A vanquished victor. None can disavow
Thy royal, love-bought right unto the whole
Of love's rich feast. Oh outspread golden hair,
White brow, red lips whereon thy lips are set
With rapturous thrills undreamed of, past compare!
Oh ecstasy of bliss! And yet—and yet—
What doth it profit thee that every part
Is thine except the little wayward heart?
AN OLD ENGLISH HOME: BRAMSHILL HOUSE
A peculiar charm hangs about an Elizabethan country-house.
The castles belong to an utterly different state of things and people—to a rougher, coarser time. Their towers and walls, where the jackdaws build in the ivy; their moats, where the hoary carp bask and fatten; their drawbridges and heavy doors and loopholed windows,—these all tell of the unrest, the semi-war-like state of feudal days, when each great seigneur was a petty king in his own county, with his private as well as public feuds, and his little army of men-at-arms ready to do his bidding, to sally forth and fight for the king or to defend his own walls against some more powerful neighbor.
The great houses of the eighteenth century have a different character again, with their Italian façades and trim terraced gardens, where the wits and beauties of dull Queen Anne's time amused themselves after their somewhat rude fashion. They speak of a solid luxury in keeping with the heavy features and ponderous minds of the worthies of those days.
But the Elizabethan, or even early Jacobean, house tells us of England in her golden age. The walls of red brick, gray with lichens; the rows of wide stone-mullioned windows and hanging oriels; the delicate, fanciful chimneys rising in great clusters above the pointed gables; the broad stone steps leading up to the hospitable door; the smooth green terraces and bowling-lawns, walled in, it is true, but closed with gates of curiously-wrought ironwork meant more for ornament than for defence,—all these serve to recall the days when learning and wealth joined hands with the Maiden Queen to raise England from the depths into which she had sunk—the days of "the worthies whom Elizabeth, without distinction of rank or age, gathered round her in the ever-glorious wars of her great reign."
It was then that Burleigh and Walsingham talked statecraft; that Raleigh and Drake, Frobisher and Grenville, sailed the seas and beat the Spanish Armada; that the "sea-dogs" brought the treasures of the New World to the feet of the queen, and filled men's minds with dreams of El Dorados where gold and jewels were as common as the sand on the seashore. It was then that English literature, all but dead during the storm of the Reformation, began to revive. And then it was that a galaxy of poets arose such as the world had never seen before; that Sidney wrote his Arcadia, Spenser his Faerie Queene; that Christopher Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher and merrie Ben Jonson founded the English drama; and that Shakespeare, poet of poets, overshadowed them all with that stupendous genius which has filled succeeding generations with wonder and love.
Then it was that men began to think of their home as a casket in which to enshrine the gentler tastes and luxuries which peace at home and continental influences from without were fostering in England. The casket must be fitted for its treasure; and so it came to pass that throughout the length and breadth of the land those fair Elizabethan mansions sprang up.
I see one such now in my mind's eye—one that I love well, for since my earliest childhood it has filled me with awe and admiration and delight. It was built by James I. as a hunting-box for his son, Prince Henry, but ere the house was finished the young prince was dead, and all the promise of his short life gone with him. Had he lived, our English history for the next hundred years might have been a different story. Bramshill then passed into other hands—first to Lord Zouch, then to the Copes, who still own it—but in the finely-carved stone balustrade above the great western door the three plumes of the prince of Wales's feathers may still be seen, the sole memento of its royal origin. Only half the original house remains: the rest was destroyed by fire a couple of hundred years ago. Yet what still stands is verily a palace.
You enter through the heavily-nailed and barred doors, and find yourself in a vast hall panelled up to the ceiling with old oak. The immense fireplace with its brass dogs and andirons tells of the yule log that still at Christmas burns upon the hearth, and trophies of arms of all ages—from the Toledo blade that can be bent by the point into a semicircle, so perfect is the temper of its steel, to the Sikh sword that was brought home after the Indian mutiny—form