The Dead Letter quotes

“—Nor for Henry Moreland either—he never looks at me after the first minute.

Engaged people are so stupid!

I wish he and Eleanor would make an end of it. If I’m ever going to be bridemaid, I want to be—”

… the shrill whistle of the locomotive pierced the silence with more than usual power, as the evening train swept around the curve of the hill not a quarter of a mile away, and rushed on into the depot in the lower part of the village.

There is something unearthly in the scream of the “steam-eagle,” especially when heard at night.

He seems like a sentient thing, with a will of his own, unbending and irresistible; and his cry is threatening and defiant. This night it rose upon the storm prolonged and doleful.

Argyll’s, his traveling-bag by his side, his face to the ground. The bag was not touched, neither the watch and money on his person, making it evident that robbery was not the object of the murderer.

A stab in the back, in the double darkness of night and storm! What enemy had Henry Moreland, to do this deed upon him?

It is useless now to repeat all the varying conjectures rising in our minds, or which continued to engross the entire community for weeks thereafter.

Murder! and such a murder in such a place!—not twenty rods from the busiest haunts of men, on a peaceful street—sudden, sure, unprovoked!

People looked behind them as they walked, hearing the assassin’s step in every rustle of the breeze.

Murder!—the faraway, frightful idea had suddenly assumed a real shape—it seemed to have stalked through the town, entering each dwelling, standing by every hearthstone.

Murder! and such a murder in such a place!—not twenty rods from the busiest haunts of men, on a peaceful street—sudden, sure, unprovoked! People looked behind them as they walked, hearing the assassin’s step in every rustle of the breeze.

Murder!⁠—the faraway, frightful idea had suddenly assumed a real shape⁠—it seemed to have stalked through the town, entering each dwelling, standing by every hearthstone.

While the inquest was proceeding, Mr. Argyll and myself were thinking more of Eleanor than of her murdered lover.

Would you guess, I was vexed at you last evening because you didn’t come? It was that made me so gay—not because I was happy. Vexed at you for not coming, when you could not come because you were dead!” and she laughed.

As that soft, dreadful laughter thrilled through the room, with a groan Mr. Argyll arose and went out; he could bear no more.

Disturbed with a fear that her reason was shaken, I spoke with Mary, and we two tried to lift her up, and persuade her out of the room.

There was suspicion in his gaze, and my own fell before it.

Innocence itself will blush if obliged to confront the insult of accusation.

I had had many wild, and doubtless many wrong and suspicious thoughts about various persons, since the discovery of the murder; and this was turning the tables on me rather suddenly.

“There are others who love her,” he continued, “but there is a difference in the quality of love. There is that which sanctifies, and something, called by the same name, which is an excuse for infinite perfidy.

In my experience I have found the love of woman and the love of money at the bottom of most mischief

—the greed of gain is by far the commonest and strongest; and when the two are combined, there is motive enough for the darkest tragedy. But you spoke of a young woman, of whom you have suspicions.”

The more he called into play the peculiar faculties of his mind, which made him so successful a hunter on the paths of the guilty, the more marvelous became their development.

He was like an Indian on the trail of his enemy

—the bent grass, the broken twig, the evanescent dew—which, to the uninitiated, were “trifles light as air,” to him were “proofs strong as Holy Writ.”

“

Women risk themselves, always, where a little child demands it.

When the nurse finds the baby abandoned by its protector, and the wages unpaid, she will throw the charge upon the authorities. To prevent this, the girl will be back here to see after it.

I had thought to go out into the open country for a long walk; but my heart drew me and held me here.

The language of all beauty, and of infinity itself, is love.

The divine melancholy of music, the deep tranquillity of summer noons, the softened splendor of autumn days, haunting one with ineffable joy and sadness—what is the name of all this varying demonstration of beauty, but love?

A pang like that of death transfixed me, as I gazed at her.

Not one rose left in the garden of her young life!

The ruin through which she walked was not so complete—but this garden would resurrect itself in the months of another spring—while for her there was no spring on this side of the grave.

“Well, no. Don’t hope that I have called you here to satisfy you with any positive discoveries. The work goes on slowly. I was never so baffled but once before; and then, as now, there was a woman in the case.

A cunning woman will elude the very Prince of Lies, himself, to say nothing of honest men like us.

She has been after the child.”

Stepping into a passing car, in a few minutes I had gone from the city of the living to the city of the dead.

Beautiful and silent city! There the costly and gleaming portals, raised at the entrance of those mansions, tell us the name and age of the inhabitants, but the inhabitants themselves we never behold.

Knock as loud and long as we may at those marble doors, cry, entreat, implore, they hold themselves invisible. Nevermore are they “at home” to us. We, who once were never kept waiting, must go from the threshold now, without a word of welcome.

Knock as loud and long as we may at those marble doors, cry, entreat, implore, they hold themselves invisible.

Nevermore are they “at home” to us.

We, who once were never kept waiting, must go from the threshold now, without a word of welcome.

“

We are all watched by the pure and penetrating eye of the All-seeing One, and if we are not fearful before Him, whom need we shrink from?

”

This was the shadowy nature of my pleasure.

Who has complete mastery of his thoughts? Who does not sometimes find them evil, unwarrantable, uncomfortable, and to be ashamed of?

From the perplexity of all these things I sunk into a slight slumber, from which I was almost immediately aroused by the tinkling of the breakfast-bell.

“

It is easier to pursue than to evade pursuit.

She has much the most difficult strategy to conceive and execute. I tell you, Mr. Redfield, I’m bound to see that woman. I shall be so piqued at my failure, as to go into a decline, if I’m disappointed.”

“ ‘Perseverance conquers all obstacles,’ the wise ones say; and

I’m a persevering man, you know, Richard.

”

I watched James pacing back and forth, with disquiet steps, through the frozen walks of the garden; presently he lit a cigar, and went out on the lawn, and from thence into the streets.

His was one of those minds which do not like their own company when they are uneasy.

How he managed to while away the day I do not know; to me it was long and oppressive; Mary remained upstairs with her sister; Mr. Argyll sat in the library with a book, which he held open but did not read.

… down, in the morning, to New York, returning in the afternoon with my little treasure, who was brimful of happiness, enjoying the ride with the zest of childhood, and confiding herself to my guardianship with a joyful content, which awakened my tenderest care in response.

This artless faith of the child in the providence of the grown-up man it is which brings out the least selfish part of his character, bowing his haughty, hardened nature to minister to the humblest of its confiding wants.

The sisters both came into the hall to receive their little visitor. They took her into the parlors, bright with chandelier and firelight, unhooding and uncloaking her before the grate.

The landscape on which we have rested our gaze, every day, for years, under these circumstances will be as novel to us, as if it were a bit of scenery transplanted from some strange and far country.

A vivid fancy, predisposed to the work, can make an excellent ghost out of a rosebush or a fence-post⁠—a fearful apparition out of the shadow of a cornice heaped with snow.

In the present case, not only were the man and his wife in that feverish state in which the eye makes visions for itself, but they were quite ready to link such phantoms with Henry’s room, which they had previously decreed to be the favorite …

Accordingly, I selected a seat on the little rustic bench, completely encircled with bushy evergreens, which not only concealed my person, but afforded me considerable protection from the cold.

I can not, to this day, breathe the pungent odor of the spicy trees, without recalling the experiences of that night.

A silence, like that which Dr. Kane speaks of as one of the most impressive features of the long Arctic night, brooded around; over against the hills came gradually stealing the silvery luster of the rising moon, while the valleys yet lay in profoundest gloom;

the dimly glimmering stretches of snow broadened into whiter fields; the picturesque villa, with its turrets and porches and pointed roof, stood black and quiet before me.

I could hear a dog barking afar off, as it were some dream-dog barking in some dreamworld.

I had almost forgotten the cause of my being there, at that strange hour, in that lone spot, gazing at that dark mass of building, empty of life and warmth as was her heart of joy or hope;

“

Peace only comes with a pure conscience,

” said Mr. Burton, sternly. “What are you doing in this house?”

“I ought to have come right here at first,” continued my friend, pursuing his train of thought. “

Women are like mother-birds, when boys approach the nest.

They betray themselves and their cherished secret by fluttering about the spot. If this Miss Sullivan had been a man, she would have been in Kansas or California by this time;

For, if I mistake not, the same person who confided his impressions to me, has recently been gradually confiding them to others. The very thought, the very possibility, once entertained, or half-entertained and driven away again, as an unwelcome guest, still has its injurious influence.

You are standing upon an earthquake, Richard⁠—you may be swallowed up any instant.

”

Mr. Burton had given me the clue to the feelings which prompted this rupture of a lifelong friendship—it was such as to forbid any questions. No explanations could be made—nothing could obliterate the memory of so deadly a wrong as they were committing upon me.

The golden bowl of friendship was broken at the fountain⁠—the waters spilled upon the ground.

I told him that I had contemplated a visit to my mother, which I would take this opportunity to make. I might find what I wished for, in the way of business, in the vicinity of my father’s former home;

… kindness (which I was mentally vowing I would find some means to repay), and begging him to trouble himself not at all about my fortunes, I bowed myself from the office where I had spent so much of the last three years of my life.

Blind, dizzy, cold, I went to my boardinghouse to pack my trunks.

Before I went to bed, my few arrangements were completed. My clothes, books, the few little articles of taste, or gifts of friends, allowable in one small rented room, were easily put away in their traveling receptacle.

It is one of my greatest aids in the profession to which I have devoted myself. The results I obtain sometimes astonish my friends. But, I assure you, there is nothing marvelous in them.

Patient study and unwearied observation, with naturally quick perceptions, are the only witchcraft I use.

With moderate natural abilities, I assert that any other person could equal me in this art (black art, some of my acquaintances regard it,) by giving the same time to it that a musician would to master an instrument.”

I know not if my companion guessed my disturbance, as I passed the office and came up in front of the lawn, black beneath the starlight, with the shadows of its fine old trees.

The past was not half so dead as I had got in the habit of believing it⁠—life is sweet and strong in the heart of youth, which will endure many blows before it will cease to beat with the tremulous thrill of hope and passion.

A bright light was shining from the windows of the parlor and several of the other rooms, but the hall-door was closed, and everything was so quiet about the premises that I did not believe I ran any risk in entering the gate and seeking …

“I’ve told you my motto—‘learn to wait,’ Richard.

The gods will not be hurried

; but have you the knife?”

He would not give me up, nor allow me any peace from his persecutions. He dogged my steps whenever I went out, and if I spoke to any other man, it put him in a rage.

I got to feeling that I was watched all the time

; for sometimes he would laugh in his hateful way, and tell me of things he had seen when I thought him miles away.

… confronted him across the “pale specter of the salt,” he kept asking himself, with inward anguish, why it was that he had not circumvented this adventurer sooner, before the young, girlish creature he saw before him had involved her fate with that of the guilty.

Beautiful as our dreamiest fancies of Spanish women she was, according to the report of Mr. Burton, and he was no enthusiast.

He saw that she was as uneasy as a bird which misses its mate, her black eyes constantly wandering to the door, and her ear so preoccupied with listening for the expected step as scarcely to take note of the remarks made to her by …

The air was cold and fresh; her feverish lips swallowed it as a reviving draught. I gazed alternately at her and the landscape, already flushed with the red of early sunset.

It was a December day, chill but bright; the ground was frozen, and the river sparkled with the keen blueness of splintered steel.

The red banner of twilight hung over the Palisades. I lived really three years in that short ride—the three years just past—and when we reached our destination, I walked like one in a dream.

I gazed alternately at her and the landscape, already flushed with the red of early sunset. It was a December day, chill but bright; the ground was frozen, and the river sparkled with the keen blueness of splintered steel.

The red banner of twilight hung over the Palisades.

I lived really three years in that short ride—the three years just past—and when we reached our destination, I walked like one in a dream. It was quite evening when we got out at Blankville, though the moon was shining.

I sat there dumb.

But there is always strength in innocence⁠—even when betrayed by its friends!

So I remained quiet and listened.