The Wyvern Mystery quotes

The excited nerves of children people the darkness of the nursery with phantoms.

The moral and mental darkness of suspense provokes, after its sort, a similar phantasmagoria. Alice Maybell’s heart grew still, and her cheeks paled as she looked with most unreasonable alarm upon the carriage, which had come to a standstill.

He is not a pleasant picture of an English squire, but such, nevertheless, as the old portraits on the walls of Wyvern here and there testify, the family of Fairfield have occasionally turned out.

He is not cheery nor kindly. Bleak, dark, and austere as a northern winter, is the age of that gaunt old man.

He is too proud to grumble, and never asked anyone for sympathy. But it is plain that he parts with his strength and his pleasures bitterly.

The old Squire was not much considered, and less beloved, by his sons. The gaunt old man was, however, more feared by these matured scions than their pride would have easily allowed.

The fears of childhood survive its pleasures.

Something of the ghostly terrors of the nursery haunt us through life, and the tyrant of early days maintains a strange and unavowed ascendancy over the imagination, long after his real power to inflict pain or privation has quite come to an end.

… in drowsy houses like Wyvern, where events are few, all theses of conversation are valuable and speculation is active, and you may be sure that what was talked of in the town was no mystery in the servants’ hall, though more gossiped over than believed.

Men who are kings in very small dominions are whimsical, as well as imperious⁠—eccentricity is the companion of seclusion

—and the Squire had a jealous custom, in his house, which was among the oddities of his despotism; it was simply this:

The old Squire had got to his feet again, and was holding giddily by the balustrade. His hat still lay on the ground, his cane was gone.

The proud old Squire was a tower dismantled.

To be met and foiled so easily in a feat of strength—to have gone down at the first tussle with the “youngster,” whom he despised as a “milksop” and a “Miss Molly,” was to the old Hercules, who still bragged of his early prowess, and …

… point from which her husband and his brother might be expected to emerge, for the geography of this complicated house was still new to her, and disappointed, she lingered in contemplation of a view which so well accorded with the melancholy of her lonely misgivings.

How soon in the possession of our heart’s desire comes the sense of disappointment, and the presence of the worm, and promise of the blight among the flowers of our vernal days.

Pitch the tent or drop the anchor where we may, always a new campaign opening, always a new voyage beginning—quiet nowhere.

“Ay, ay, no doubt that’s it; but there was no drapery there, ma’am, sich as this world’s loom ever wove.

Them as weaves that web is light o’ hand and heavy o’ heart, and the de’el himself speeds the shuttle,

” and as she said this the old woman smiled sourly. “I was talking o’ that very thing to Mrs. Crane here when you came up, ma’am.”

“Frighten the young lady? And why not, if she’s frighted wi’ truth. She has asked for the truth, and she’s got it.

Better to fright the young lady than fool her,

” answered Mildred Tarnley, coldly and sternly.

There was a face that seemed to have discharged a smile, that still would not quite go. The eyelids drooped, the eyebrows raised, a simulated condolence, such as we all have seen.

In our moral reviews of ourselves we practise optical delusions even upon our own self-scrutiny, and paint and mask our motives, and fill our ears with excuses and with downright lies.

So inveterate is the habit of deceiving, and even in the dark we form our features by hypocrisy, and scarcely know all this.

As they stood together in that embrace his eyes also filled with tears and his smile met hers, and they seemed wrapt for a moment in one angelic glory, and she felt the strain of his arm draw her closer.

Such moments come suddenly and are gone; but, remaining in memory, they are the lights that illuminate a dark and troublous retrospect forever.

“We’ll make ourselves happy here, little Ally, and I—in spite of everything, my darling!—and I don’t know how it happened that I stayed away so long;

Charlie was looking down on the table as he spoke, and tapping on it feverishly with the tips of his fingers. Harry’s countenance showed that unpleasant expression which sometimes overcame its rustic freshness.

The attempt to discharge an unsuitable smile or a dubious expression from the face⁠—the attempt, shall we bluntly say, of a rogue to look simple.

It is a loose way of talking and thinking which limits the vice of hypocrisy to the matter of religion. It counterfeits all good, and dissimulates all evil, every day and hour;

Harry’s countenance showed that unpleasant expression which sometimes overcame its rustic freshness. The attempt to discharge an unsuitable smile or a dubious expression from the face—the attempt, shall we bluntly say, of a rogue to look simple.

It is a loose way of talking and thinking which limits the vice of hypocrisy to the matter of religion.

It counterfeits all good, and dissimulates all evil, every day and hour; and among the men who frankly admit themselves to be publicans and sinners, whose ways are notoriously worldly, and who never affected religion, are some of the worst and meanest hypocrites on earth.

This was certainly Alice’s doing.

Women are such headstrong, silly creatures!

Alice laughed; Lord Tremaine was a distant figure now, and this little triumph a dream of the past. But is not the spirit of woman conquest?

Is not homage the air in which she lives and blooms?

So Alice’s dark, soft eyes dropped for a moment sidelong with something like the faintest blush, and a little dimpling smile.

Perhaps it needs some manifold confluence of internal and external conditions, trifling and unnoticed, except for such unexplained results, to evolve these tremblings and lightings up that surprise us like the fiercer analogies of volcanic chemistry.

It is sad to see what appear capabilities and opportunities of a great happiness so nearly secured, and yet by reason of some inflexible caprice of circumstance quite unattainable.

It was not for some hours, and until after his wife had gone to her room, that the darkness and chill that portended the return of his worst care crept over him as he sat and turned over the leaves of his book.

“So she did, mayhap, for there did come a message for Master Harry from the farmer beyond Gryce’s mill; but he went his way again.”

Mildred was fibbing with a fluency that almost surprised herself.

“I dessay you’ve done wi’ me now, ma’am?” said Mildred. “Lugged out o’ my bed, ma’am, at these hours—my achin’ old bones—’taint what I’m used to, asking your pardon for making so free.”

taking profligacy for granted as the rule of life, it did not even shock her. But she was stung with a furious pang of jealousy, for that needs no love, being in its essence the sense of property invaded, supremacy insulted, and self despised.

In this sort of jealousy there is neither the sublimity of despair nor the pathos of sorrow, but simply the malice, fury, and revenge of outraged egotism.

There she sat, unconscious of the glimmer of the firelight, feeding as a beast will bleeding after a blow. Beast she was, with the bestial faculty of cherishing a long revenge, with bestial treachery and seeming unconcern.

“Ha! no; I knew that—no, and I’d rather be a little pale. I don’t like your great, coarse peony-faced women; it’s seven years in May last since I lost my sight.

Some people are persecuted; one curse after another⁠—rank injustice!

Why should I lose my sight, that never did anything to signify—not half what others have, who enjoy health, wealth, rank—everything. Things are topsy-turvey a bit just now, but we’ll see them righted yet.”

She sat by the fire, troubled in mind, with her eyes turned askance on the windows.

What a small thing is a human body, and what a gigantic moral sphere surrounds that little centre!

That blind woman lay still as death, on a six-foot-long bedstead, in a remote chamber.

“

Be kind to yourself. I hold it’s the best way in this bleak world, Mr. Charles.

I never was thanked for kindness yet.”

“Be kind to yourself. I hold it’s the best way in this bleak world, Mr. Charles.

I never was thanked for kindness yet.

”

He was speaking with the friendliness of distress.

It is in pain that sympathy grows precious, and with the yearning for it, returns something of the gentleness and affection of childhood.

“She’s come for no good,” said Mildred, “she’s sly, and she’s savage, and if you don’t mind me saying so, I often thought she was a bit mad—folk as has them fits, ye know, they does get sometimes queerish.”

Very tired was Charles Fairfield when he had folded and addressed his letters.

No physical exertion exhausts like the monotonous pain of anxiety.

For many nights he had had no sleep, but those wearying snatches of half-consciousness in which the same troublous current is still running through the brain, and the wasted nerves of endurance are still tasked.

The demure cat creeps on and on softly as a gray shadow till its green eyes glare close on its prey.

Nature, with her gentleness and cruelty, her sublimity and meanness, resembles that microcosm, the human heart, in which lodge so many contrarieties, and the shabby contends with the heroic, the diabolic with the angelic.

In this still night Alice’s heart was heavy.

… and good friends raised up on every side, and the old squire, Harry o’ Wyvern, although he be a bit angered for a while he’s another good friend, that will be sure to make it up, whatever it is came between him and Master Charles.

Hot blood’s not the worst blood; better a blow in haste and a shake hands after than a smile at the lips and no goodwill wi’ it.

I tell you, they’re not the worst, they hotheaded, hard-fisted, outspoken folk; and I’ll never forget that day to him, when he brought you home that had no home, and me that was thinkin’ o’ nout but the workhouse.

Again a shock, a chasm—his brain had mocked him.

Dreadful when that potent servant begins to mutiny, and instead of honest work for its master finds pastime for itself in fearful sport.

“My God! what am I thinking of?” he said, with a kind of chill, looking back over his shoulder.

Of course I don’t say I love anyone, all out, as well as Harry Fairfield. You’re my brother, and I stand by you according; but as I said before,

I love my shirt very well, but I like my skin better.

Hey! And that’s all fair.”

The metal flows molten by, and then chills and fixes forever. So with the life of man—so with the spirit of man. Work while it is called day.

The moment fixes the retrospect, and death the character, forever.

The heart knoweth its own bitterness. The proud man looks on the past he has made. The hammer of Thor can’t break it; the fire that is not quenched can’t melt it. His thoughtless handiwork will be the same forever.

When all their rogueries breaks down they take to cantin’ and psalm singin’, and turns up their eyes, the limmers, and cries the Lord’s will be done.

Welcome death, quoth the rat, when the trap fell.

Much thanks to ’em for takin’ what they can’t help.

Lilly Dogger, with red eyes and an inflamed nose, blubbered heartbroken, and murmured to the baby—lest old Mildred should overhear and blow her up—her leave-takings and endearments, as she held it close in her arms.

Beautiful though to us men, utterly mysterious is the feminine love of babies.

Lilly Dogger had led a serene, if not a very cheerful life, at Carwell Grange up to this. But now came this parting, and her peace was shivered.

“Well! well!” repeated Mildred, gaping at him still, with scarcely a breath left her, “sin is sin, be it seen or no; judgment follows.

God has feet o’ wool and hands o’ iron.

”

As he walked by the Sergeant he began to prattle, at first timidly, and then more volubly.

The first instinct of the child is trust.

It was a kind of consolation to the boy to talk a great deal of his home, and Tom Orange was of course mentioned with the usual inquiry, “Do you know Tom Orange?”

“Hold out the other;” and the same discipline was repeated.

Mingled with and above the pain which called up the three great black weals across the slender fingers of each hand, was the sense of outrage and cruelty.

The tears sprang to his eyes, and for the first time in his life he cried passionately under that double anguish.