The Line of Love quotes

“As if that mattered!” cried his daughter, indignantly. “My father, you are a deplorably sordid person.”

“My dear,” replied the old gentleman, “it does matter. Fiefs last.”

So he gave his consent to the match, and the two young people were married on Walburga’s Eve, on the day that ends April.

I have outlived my friends, I may encounter difficulty in regaining my fiefs, and certainly I have lost the fairest wife man ever had. Oh, can it be, madame, that you are indeed my Adelaide!”

“Yes, every pound of me, poor boy, and that says much.”

“—And that you have been untrue to the eternal fidelity which you vowed to me here by this very stream! Oh, but I cannot believe it was thirty years ago, for not a grass-blade or a pebble has been altered;

“As for that stream,” then said Dame Melicent, “it is often I have thought of that stream, sitting here with my grandchildren where I once sat with gay young men whom nobody remembers now save me.

Yes, it is strange to think that instantly, and within the speaking of any simple word, no drop of water retains the place it had before the word was spoken: and yet the stream remains unchanged

, and stays as it was when I sat here with those young men who are gone. Yes, that is a strange thought, and it is a sad thought, too, for those of us who are old.”

“Adelaide, you profane equally love, which is divine, and marriage, which is a holy sacrament.”

“Florian, do you really love Adelaide de Nointel?” asked this terrible woman. “And now that I am free to listen to your proposals, do you wish to marry me?”

“Well, no,” said Florian: “for, as I have just said; you are no longer the same person.”

For this girl, he knew, was lovelier than any other person had ever been since Eve first raised just such admiring, innocent, and venturesome eyes to inspect what must have seemed to her the quaintest of all animals, called man.

So it was with a shrug that Florian remembered how he had earlier fancied other women for one reason or another; since this, he knew, was the great love of his life, and a love which would endure unchanged as long as his life lasted.

So Florian married Sylvie, and made her, they relate, a fair husband, as husbands go.

And children came to them, and then old age, and, lastly, that which comes to all.

The Demoiselle Mélite laughed a little—her laughter, as I have told you, was high and delicate, with the resonance of thin glass—and demanded the reason of his sudden grief.

“I sigh,” he answered, “for sorrow that this Dame Venus is dead.”

“Surely,” said she, wondering at his glum face, “that is no great matter.”

He kissed Adhelmar on either cheek and left him.

In those days men encountered death with very little ado.

Then Adhelmar rode off in the rain with thirty-four armed followers. Riding thus, he reflected upon the nature of women and upon his love for the Demoiselle de Puysange;

Yet he murmured somewhat.

“Pity, always pity!” he said, wearily.

“I shall never win aught else of you, Mélite. For before this you have kissed me, pitying me because you could not love me. And you have kissed me now, pitying me because I may not live.”

“All dead,” she answered, in a hushed voice, “save Adelais, and even to me poor Adelais seems old and strange. Walter was slain in the French wars, and she hath never married.”

“All dead,” Sir John informed the fire, as if confidentially; then he laughed, though his bloodshot eyes were not merry.

“This same Death hath a wide maw! It is not long before you and I, my lady, will be at supper with the worms. But you, at least, have had a happy life.”

“Yes,” she responded, wistfully; “but I must not be guilty of continuing such follies. It is a villainous example to my grandchildren,” Dame Sylvia told him, and smiled. “Farewell.”

Sir John drew close to her and took her hands in his.

He looked into her eyes for an instant, holding himself very erect—and it was a rare event when Sir John looked anyone squarely in the eyes—and he said, wonderingly, “How I loved you!”

but I am not sorry to have seen you thus. For I have loved no woman truly save you alone; and I am not sorry. Farewell.” And for a moment he bowed his unreverend gray head over her shrivelled fingers.

“Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!”

chuckled Sir John, and leaned back rheumatically in his chair and mumbled over the jest.

Gently she disengaged herself. This was of a pattern with Roger’s behavior any time during the past two years.

“I suppose you do,” Adelais conceded, with the tiniest possible shrug. “Perhaps that is why I find you so insufferable.”

Afterward Mistress Vernon turned on her heel and left Master Darke. In his fluent invocation of Mahound and Termagaunt and other overseers of the damned he presently touched upon eloquence.

Presently the Sieur d’Arnaye sighed, rather ostentatiously; and Adelais laughed, and demanded the cause of his grief.

“Mademoiselle,” he said⁠—his English had but a trace of accent⁠—“I am afflicted with a very grave malady.”

“What is the name of this malady?” said she.

“It was before I knew you, Catherine. The stars are beautiful, m’amye, and a man may reasonably admire them; but the stars vanish and are forgotten when the sun appears.”

“Ysabeau is not a star,” the voice pointed out; “she is simply a lank, good-for-nothing, slovenly trollop.”

“You are still in love with her.”

“Has the world, think you, known lovers, long dead now, that were once as happy as we?”

“Love was not known till we discovered it.”

“I am so happy, François, that I fear death.”

In accordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of how he had received it. René lied uphill and down-dale, while in a corner of the room François monotonously wept.

Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.

The Rue Saint Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured François de Montcorbier dangling from Montfaucon. “Horrible!” said the Rue Saint Jacques, and drew a moral of suitably pious flavor.

It was not good to hear François’ laughter. “What a world we live in!” he giggled. “You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest, Master Pharisee, beware!

Villon is good French for vagabond, an excellent name for an outcast.

And as God lives, I will presently drag that name through every muckheap in France.”

“Love!” Sieur Raymond barked like a kicked mastiff. “It is very discreetly fabled that love was brought forth at Cythera by the ocean fogs. Thus, look you, even ballad-mongers admit it comes of a short-lived family, that fade as time wears on.

I may have a passion for cloud-tatters, and, doubtless, the morning mists are beautiful; but if I give rein to my admiration, breakfast is likely to grow cold.

I deduce that beauty, as represented by the sunrise, is less profitably considered than utility, as personified by the frying-pan. And love! A niece of mine prating of love!”

“Undoubtedly,” purred Sieur Raymond, “you love the lad unboundedly, madly, distractedly! Now we come to the root of the matter.” He sank back in his chair and smiled. “Young people,” said he, “be seated, and hearken to the words of wisdom.

Love is a divine insanity, in which the sufferer fancies the world mad. And the world is made up of madmen who condemn and punish one another.

”

“Last night,” said she, “I thought that I was strong. I know now it was my vanity that was strong—vanity and pride and fear, Raoul, that for a little mastered me.

But in the dawn all things seem very trivial, saving love alone.

”

Perplexed joy flushed through his countenance. “You will do this—for me?” he cried, with a sort of sob. “Matthiette, Matthiette, you shame me!”

“But I love you,” said Matthiette. “How could it be possible, then, for me to live after you were dead?”

He bent to her. They kissed.

A sick anger woke in me, remembering the burden of ignoble years this hag had suffered me to bear; yet my so young gentility bade me avoid reproach of the dying peasant woman, who, when all was said, had been but ill-used by our house.

Death hath a strange potency

:

It was my will to make a beggar of Tom’s son, but at the last I play the fool and cannot do it. But do you play the fool, too, dearie, and”—she chuckled here—“and have your posture and your fine long words, whatever happens.”

“ ’Tis my vocation,” I answered, briefly; and so went forth into the night.

I came to Tiverton Manor through a darkness black as the lining of Baalzebub’s oldest cloak. The storm had passed, but clouds yet hung heavy as featherbeds between mankind and the stars;

“Fool,” said he, “you walk late.”

“Faith!” said I, “instinct warned me that a fool might find fit company here⁠—dear cousin.”

He frowned at the word, for he was never prone to admit the relationship, being in disposition somewhat precise.

I shall not easily forget that riding away from the old vicomte’s preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable chequerings of blue and silver.

Tightly he clung to my crupper, that swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content.

The horses’ hoofs beat against the pebbles as if in chorus to the Devon cradlesong that rang idly in my brain. ’Twas little to me—now—whether the quest were won or lost;

I laughed and was content. “As surely as God reigns in Heaven,” I cried aloud, “I am content, and this moment is well purchased with a marquisate!”

Indeed, I was vastly uplift and vastly pleased with my own nobleness, just then, and that condition is always a comfort.

More alertly she regarded me; and in her eyes I saw the anxiety and the wonder merge now into illimitable pity. “That, too!” she said, smiling sadly. “That, too, O son of Thomas Allonby!”

By Saint Gregory! I wear steel at my side, Master Mervale, that will serve for other purposes save that of opening oysters!” So he blustered in the spring sunlight, and frowned darkly when Master Mervale appeared the more amused than impressed.

“Your patience shames Job the Patriarch,” said Master Mervale

, “yet, it seems to me, my lord, you do not consider one thing. I grant you that Pevensey and I are your equals neither in estate nor reputation;

I grant you that Pevensey and I are your equals neither in estate nor reputation; still, setting modesty aside, is it not possible the Lady Ursula may come, in time, to love one of us?”

“Setting common sense aside,” said the marquis, stiffly, “it is possible she may be smitten with the smallpox. Let us hope, however, that she may escape both of these misfortunes.”

The younger man refrained from speech for a while. Presently, “You liken love to a plague,” he said, “yet I have heard there was once a cousin of the Lady Ursula’s—a Mistress Katherine Beaufort—”

“H’m!” Master Mervale cleared his throat, twirled his mustachios, and smiled at some unspoken thought.

“We pay for our follies in this world, my lord, but I sometimes think that we pay even more dearly for our wisdom.”

“Ah, lad, lad!” the marquis cried, in a gust of anger; “I dare say, as your smirking hints, it was a coward’s act not to snap fingers at fate and fathers and dare all! Well! I did not dare.

Gone to seek me abroad, no doubt, poor wench! Dead, dead, beyond question, Master Mervale!” The marquis swallowed, and rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. “Ah, well!” said he; “it is an old sorrow!”

The male animal shaken by strong emotion is to his brothers an embarrassing rather than a pathetic sight.

Master Mervale, lowering his eyes discreetly, rooted up several tufts of grass before he spoke. Then, “My lord, you have known of love,” said he, very slowly; “does there survive no kindliness for aspiring lovers in you who have been one of us?

“You are adamant?” sighed the boy.

“The nether millstone,” said the marquis, smiling grimly, “is in comparison a pillow of down.”

“Yet—yet the milk was sweet, my lord?” the boy suggested, with a faint answering smile.

Falmouth had placed himself on guard; but Master Mervale stood with chattering teeth and irresolute, groping hands, and made no effort to draw.

“Oh, the block! the curd-faced cheat!” cried the marquis. “Will nothing move you?”

With his left hand he struck at the boy.

But, ah, why fuddle that quaint little brain by trying to understand such matters as lie without your realm? For a woman’s kingdom is the home, my dear, and her throne is in the heart of her husband—”

“All this is but another way of saying your lordship would have us cups upon a shelf,” she pointed out⁠—“in readiness for your leisure.”

He shrugged, said “Nonsense!” and began more lightly to talk of other matters.

“True tales, no doubt.” He shrugged. “

Lacking the moon he vainly cried for, the child learns to content himself with a penny whistle.

”

No, nor can you, I am afraid, give me what all maids really, in their heart of hearts, desire far more than any sugar-candy Arcadia. Oh, as I have so often told you, Kit,

I think you love no woman. You love words.

And your seraglio is tenanted by very beautiful words, I grant you, though there is no longer any Sestos builded of agate and crystal, either, Kit Marlowe.

And Cynthia began to smile, with tremulous hurt-looking young lips. “So my poet’s love is very much the same as Pevensey’s love! And I was right, after all.”

“Oh, oh!” said Marlowe, “that ever a poet should love a woman! What jokes does the lewd flesh contrive!”

Of a sudden he was calmer; and then rage fell away from him like a dropped cloak, and he viewed her as with respectful wonder.

… when all is done, not even detestable, not even a worthy peg whereon to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures whom poets—oh, and in youth all men are poets!—whom poets, now and always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy.

No, I concede it: you kill without premeditation, and without ever suspecting your hands to be anything but stainless.

So in logic I must retract all my harsh words; and I must, without any hint of reproach, endeavor to bid you a somewhat more civil farewell.”

but, after all, she would probably marry George, in the end. He was really almost unendurably silly, though, about England and freedom and religion and right and wrong and things like that.

Yes, it would be tedious to have a husband who often talked to you as though he were addressing a public assemblage.⁠ ⁠…

Yet, he was very handsome, particularly in his highflown and most tedious moments; that year-old son of his was sickly, and would probably die soon, the sweet forlorn little pet, and not be a bother to anybody:

“As Lord Pevensey rode through the Strand this afternoon, on his way home, the Plague smote him. That is my sad news. I grieve to bring such news, for your cousin was a worthy gentleman and universally respected.”

“Ah,” Cynthia said, very quiet, “so Pevensey is dead. But the Plague kills quickly!”

“Yes, yes, that is a comfort, certainly. Yes, he turned quite black in the face, they report, and before his men could reach him had fallen from his horse. It was all over almost instantly. I saw him afterward, hardly a pleasant sight.