The Cloven Foot quotes

The air was thick with falling snow, and the countryside looked a formless mass of chilly whiteness, as the southwestern mail train carried John Treverton on a lonely midnight journey.

There were not many people in the train on that bleak night, and Mr. Treverton had a second-class compartment to himself.

“

Love very seldom grows out of a position such as ours, Mr. Treverton.

”

the multitudinous lamps; the fairy-like kiosks—all infinitely grander and more beautiful than the square of Duguesclin at Dinan, illuminated with ten thousand lampions on a festival night. Here in Paris life seemed an endless festival.

Paris is a mighty schoolmaster, a grand enlightener of the provincial intellect.

Paris taught La Chicot that she was beautiful.

“

Are not instinctive ideas convictions that jump with our own inclinations?

” speculated Celia, philosophically. “I am heartily sorry for you, Ned dear, for I know you are fond of Laura, and it does seem hard to have her willed away from you like this.

“Talent is always queer-tempered,” answered Smolendo, lightly. “

Amiability is the redeeming virtue of fools.

”

… long lashes, delicately pencilled eyebrows, a fair, complexion, low narrow brow, and regular features, a pale brown moustache, more silky than abundant, made up a face that was very handsome in the estimation of some people, but which assuredly erred on the side of effeminacy.

It was a face that would have suited the velvet and brocade of one of the French Henry’s minions, or the lovelocks and jewel-broidered doublet of one of James Stuart’s silken favourites.

It would have been difficult to imagine the owner of that face doing any good or great work in the world, or leaving any mark upon his time, save some petty episode of vanity, profligacy, and selfishness in the memoirs of a modern St. Simon.

Let us face life honestly and earnestly, and accept it for what it is worth.

Let us be faithful friends and companions, but not sham lovers.

”

She had walked in garden and orchard for more than an hour, when she came back by the old yew tree arch, and, just in the spot where she had seen him more than half a year ago, she saw John Treverton standing again today.

What an unstable thing is a woman’s anger against the man she loves.

Laura’s first feeling at sight of John Treverton was indignation.

This was hardly the tone of a lover. It was a tone that Laura’s pride would have resented had she not inwardly believed that John Treverton loved her.

There is a subtle power in the love which keeps silence mightier than all love’s eloquence.

A hand that trembles when it touches another, one swift look from loving eyes, a sigh, a tone, will tell more than an oration. John Treverton was the most reticent of lovers, yet his reserve did not offend Laura.

and it was not for her to know that Thomas snatched up his pen and put on this appearance of industry when he heard her gentle footfall at his door.

Domestic life is made up of such small secrets.

Tonight Tom Sampson was in a particularly lazy humour.

The sentence ended in a foul epithet—one of the poison-flowers of Parisian argot.

“The journey is too long,” he said. “It is not easy to travel from hell to heaven.”

Jack Chicot had been once to the Prince Frederick Theatre since his wife’s return to the stage. He went on the first night of the grand spectacular burlesque which had brought Mr. Smolendo so much money.

“If she had been my wife she might have been a very different woman,” he said to himself, not believing the innate depravity of anything so absolutely beautiful as La Chicot.

He forgot how fair some poisonous weeds are, how beautiful the scarlet berries of the nightshade look when they star the brown autumn hedges.

So La Chicot went her way triumphantly. There was no danger to life or limb for her in the new piece—no perilous ascent to the sky borders.

Mr. Smolendo shrugged his shoulders.

“I never trouble myself about the after-career of my artists,” he answered pleasantly.

He was too fond of himself, too careful of his own well-being, to fling away youth, health, and vigour in the sloughs and sewers of evil living. He had a refined selfishness that was calculated to keep him pure of low iniquities.

He had no aspiration to scale mountain peaks, but he had sufficient regard for himself to eschew gutters.

The cheque was ready for him, but, when he had signed the formal receipt, the clerk told him the editor wanted to speak to him presently, if he would be kind enough to wait a few minutes.

“At six and twenty one need not think of age.”

“No; but at six and thirty age will think of you.”

“I have asked for a week to consider his offer,” said La Chicot. “This day week I am to give him an answer, yes or no. If I keep the diamonds, it will mean yes.

Murder! an awful word under the most ordinary circumstances of everyday life

—all awful word even when spoken of an event that happened long ago, or afar off.

There was a look of infinite pain in John Treverton’s face. His lips moved as if about to speak, but he was silent.

There are some truths difficult of utterance; and it is not easy to all men to lie.

“It is too painful a story,” he began, at last, speaking hurriedly, as if he wanted to make a speedy end of a hateful subject.

There was an old cabinet in the room, so full of secret drawers, and mysterious boxes and recesses at the back of drawers, that it was in itself the study of a lifetime.

“Never hide anything in it, my dear,” Jasper Treverton had said to his adopted daughter, “for be sure if you do you won’t be able to find it.”

To this room Laura brought other treasures; the most comfortable easy chairs in the house, the best of the small Dutch pictures, the softest of the Turkey carpets, the richest tapestry curtains, two or three fine bronzes, a lovely little Chippendale bookcase.

“I am a poet, or I am nothing,” he told his friend, “Aut Caesar aut nullus.”

“That was a first-rate motto⁠—for Caesar,” said the journalist, “but I think it’s rather misleading for fellows of average talent. The result is so often nullus.”

Mr. Clare was on the point of asking his friend to take another brandy and soda, but at this remark he coiled up, as the Yankees say. Average talent, indeed. Imagine one of Mr.

“Red tape and drudgery, with a salary that would scarcely afford dry bread and a garret,” interrupted Edward contemptuously. “No, my dear father, as a poet I will stand or fall.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” sighed the Vicar, “for at present it looks like falling.”

What Edward really meant was that he would depend upon his father until the public and the critics, or the critics and the public, could be brought to acknowledge him as one of the new lights in the starry world of imagination. Mr.

“They are,” said Celia, warmly; “and they deserve to be. If you knew how good they are to their tenants, their servants, and the poor.”

“Goodness of that kind is a very sagacious investment, my unsophisticated child. It may cost a man five percent of his income, and it buys him respectability.”

“I am a man of the world, Celia, and not to be hoodwinked by shams and appearances.”

“I’m afraid you are encouraging pauperism,” said Celia.

“No, Celia; I am waging war against rheumatism.”

“I hope you don’t expect gratitude.”

“The nearest approach to perfect happiness I ever beheld is a child eating something it considers nice. For the moment the mind of that infant is in a state of complete beatitude. It lives in the present, and the present only.

Its little life is rounded into the narrow circle of Now.

Slowly, thoughtfully, it smacks its lips, and gloats upon the savour it loves. Hardly an earthquake would disturb it from that deep and tranquil delight. With the last mouthful, its gladness departs, and the child learns that earthly pleasure is fleeting.

“I should think the great point was to give them enough to eat,” he said, meditatively. “

The nearest approach to perfect happiness I ever beheld is a child eating something it considers nice.

For the moment the mind of that infant is in a state of complete beatitude. It lives in the present, and the present only. Its little life is rounded into the narrow circle of Now.

The man had aged within the last six months. Every line in his face had deepened. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes haggard and bloodshot.

The sands of life run fast for a man whose chief nourishment is brandy.

“Well,” he exclaimed, in a hard, husky voice. “You do not welcome me very warmly, my child.”

“No,” said Treverton, “that is a dark page in my life which I would willingly tear out of the book; but I have always known the probability of my finding myself identified with the past, sooner or later.

This world of ours is monstrous big when a man tries to make a figure in it; but it’s very small when he wants to hide himself from his fellow-men.

I have told my wife all I can tell her without stripping the veil from that past life of mine. To reveal more would be to make her unhappy. You can have no motive for telling her more than I have told her.

“Dearest, do you think any worse of me now you know that man is my father,” asked Laura, when the door had closed upon Desrolles, and the bell had been rung to warn Trimmer of the guest’s departure.

“Do I think any worse of a pearl because it comes out of an oyster,” said her husband, smiling at her.

“Dear love, if the parish workhouse were peopled with your relations, not one of them more reputable than Mr. Mansfield, my love and reverence for you would not be lessened by a tittle.”

“I am sorry for it. I had hoped that part of my life was dead and buried—that no phantom from that hateful past would ever arise to haunt my innocent young wife. It is very hard upon me: it is harder upon her.”

“There are some ghosts not easily laid,” returned Gerard. “I should think the ghost of a murdered wife was one of them.”

“Edward Clare is no friend to me,” pursued Treverton, hardly hearing Gerard’s remark. “He will make the most malicious use of this knowledge that he can. He will tell my wife.”

At that moment I considered only my own interest. I saw as it were a gate standing open leading into a new world. Was I very much to blame if I took advantage of my chance, and left my old life behind me?”

“No man can leave his past life behind him,” answered Gerard.

“If you are innocent I am sorry for you; as I should be sorry for any innocent man who had acted so as to seem guilty. I am still more sorry for your wife.”

“Good gracious, poor things! Is it an epidemic?”

“No, a chronic disorder⁠—poverty.”

“Oh, poor souls, then I’m sure I pity them. I’ve been subject to occasional attacks towards the end of the quarter ever since I’ve been an independent being with a fixed allowance.”

“As for that young man, I don’t believe he knows what he is eating.”

“Heaven forbid that he should be like my father and his dinner the most important event in his day!”

retorted Celia, whereat Mrs. Clare murmured mildly—

“I can’t,” answered Laura.

“All my thoughts are of him. He is a part of my mind.”

Celia sighed, and felt more sympathetic than usual. She had been thinking about George Gerard for the last four days more than seemed at all reasonable;

“The police have done very little in a twelvemonth,” said Treverton.

“The police have not a monopoly of human intelligence,” answered Mr. Leopold.

“We may do better than the police.”

“Come,” said Sampson cheerily, “you’re old enough to remember seventeen years ago. You look like an old inhabitant.”

“I can remember sixty years ago as well as I can remember yesterday,” answered the man, “and I shall have lived in this house sixty-nine years come July.”

“You’re the man for us,” said Sampson. “I want you to look up your books for the year 1856, and tell me if you buried Mr. Malcolm, of Ivy Cottage, Markham Lane. You buried Mrs. Malcolm first, you know, and the husband soon followed her.