Bulwer-Lytton Lucretia - Volume 04

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5183-5724-4
Verlag: Krill Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 100 Seiten

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a well known English novelist in the 19th century, and he's been immortalized for coining famous phrases like  'pursuit of the almighty dollar' and 'the pen is mightier than the sword'.


In addition to being a politician, he wrote across all genres, from horror stories to historical fiction and action titles.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward

Leseproben

CHAPTER II.
.................. SUDDENLY ACROSS THE GAZE OF Percival St. John there flashed a face that woke him from his abstraction, as a light awakes the sleeper. It was as a recognition of something seen dimly before,—a truth coming out from a dream. It was not the mere beauty of that face (and beautiful it was) that arrested his eye and made his heart beat more quickly, it was rather that nameless and inexplicable sympathy which constitutes love at first sight,—a sort of impulse and instinct common to the dullest as the quickest, the hardest reason as the liveliest fancy. Plain Cobbett, seeing before the cottage-door, at her homeliest of house-work, the girl of whom he said, “That girl should be my wife,” and Dante, first thrilled by the vision of Beatrice,—are alike true types of a common experience. Whatever of love sinks the deepest is felt at first sight; it streams on us abrupt from the cloud, a lightning flash,—a destiny revealed to us face to face. Now, there was nothing poetical in the place or the circumstance, still less in the companionship in which this fair creature startled the virgin heart of that careless boy; she was leaning on the arm of a stout, rosy- faced matron in a puce-coloured gown, who was flanked on the other side by a very small, very spare man, with a very wee face, the lower part of which was enveloped in an immense belcher. Besides these two incumbrances, the stout lady contrived to carry in her hands an umbrella, a basket, and a pair of pattens. In the midst of the strange, unfamiliar emotion which his eye conveyed to his heart, Percival’s ear was displeasingly jarred by the loud, bluff, hearty voice of the girl’s female companion— “Gracious me! if that is not John Ardworth. Who’d have thought it? Why, John,—I say, John!” and lifting her umbrella horizontally, she poked aside two city clerks in front of her, wheeled round the little man on her left, upon whom the clerks simultaneously bestowed the appellation of “feller,” and driving him, as being the sharpest and thinnest wedge at hand, through a dense knot of some half-a-dozen gapers, while, following his involuntary progress, she looked defiance on the malcontents, she succeeded in clearing her way to the spot where stood the young man she had discovered. The ambitious dreamer, for it was he, thus detected and disturbed, looked embarrassed for a moment as the stout lady, touching him with the umbrella, said,— “Well, I declare if this is not too bad! You sent word that you should not be able to come out with us to see the ‘luminations, and here you are as large as life!” “I did not think, at the moment you wrote to me, that-“ “Oh, stuff!” interrupted the stout woman, with a significant, good- humoured shake of her head; “I know what’s what. Tell the truth, and shame the gentleman who objects to showing his feet. You are a wild fellow, John Ardworth, you are! You like looking after the pretty faces, you do, you do—ha, ha, ha! very natural! So did you once,—did not you, Mr. Mivers, did not you, eh? Men must be men,—they always are men, and it’s my belief that men they always will be!” With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to Mr. Mivers, who, thus appealed to, extricated with some difficulty his chin from the folds of his belcher, and putting up his small face, said, in a small voice, “Yes, I was a wild fellow once; but you have tamed me, you have, Mrs. M.!” And therewith the chin sank again into the belcher, and the small voice died into a small sigh. The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming her address, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile, observed encouragingly,— “Yes, there’s nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, as you will find some day. Howsomever, your time’s not come for the altar, so suppose you give Helen your arm, and come with us.” “Do,” said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice. Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen’s, and an evident pleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines. “I cannot resist you,” he began, and then he paused and frowned. “Pish!” he added, “I was talking folly; but what head would not you turn? Resist you I must, for I am on my way now to my drudgery. Ask me anything some years hence, when I have time to be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call me.” “Well,” said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, “are you coming, or are you not? Don’t stand there shilly-shally.” “Mrs. Mivers,” returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, “I am sure you would be very angry with your husband’s excellent shopmen if that was the way they spoke to your customers. If some unhappy dropper-in,—some lady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish,—was suddenly dazzled, as I am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly coveted,—a splendid lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever else you ladies desiderate,— and while she was balancing between prudence and temptation, your foreman exclaimed: `Don’t stand shilly-shally’—come, I put it to you.” “Stuff!” said Mrs. Mivers. “Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sake of your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless,” added Ardworth, irresolutely, and glancing at Helen,—"unless, indeed, you are not sufficiently protected, and—” “Purtected!” exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella; “as if I was not enough, with the help of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a dozen such. Purtected, indeed!” “John is right, Mrs. M.,—business is business,” said Mr. Mivers. “Let us move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us, and sniggering.” “Sniggering!” exclaimed the gentle helpmate. “I should like to see those who presume for to snigger;” and as she spoke, she threw a look of defiance around her. Then, having thus satisfied her resentment, she prepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master. Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, and taking care to protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cut her way through the crowd like the scythed car of the Ancient Britons, and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might be guessed by a slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the general stream, accompanied by a prolonged murmur of reproach or expostulation which gradually died in the distance. Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of regret; and when it vanished, with a slight start and a suppressed sigh he turned away, and with the long, steady stride of a strong man, cleared his path through the Strand towards the printing-office of a journal on which he was responsibly engaged. But Percival, who had caught much of the conversation that took place so near him,—Percival, happy child of idleness and whim,—had no motive of labour and occupation to stay the free impulse of his heart, and his heart drew him on, with magnetic attraction, in the track of the first being that had ever touched the sweet instincts of youth. Meanwhile, Mrs. Mivers was destined to learn—though perhaps the lesson little availed her—that to get smoothly through this world it is necessary to be supple as well as strong; and though, up to a certain point, man or woman may force the way by poking umbrellas into people’s ribs and treading mercilessly upon people’s toes, yet the endurance of ribs and toes has its appointed limits. Helen, half terrified, also half amused by her companion’s robust resolution of purpose, had in Mrs. Mivers’s general courage and success that confidence which the weak repose in the strong; and though whenever she turned her eyes from the illuminations, she besought Mrs. Mivers to be more gentle, yet, seeing that they had gone safely from St. Paul’s to St. James’s, she had no distinct apprehension of any practically ill results from the energies she was unable to mitigate. But now, having just gained the end of St. James’s Street, Mrs. Mivers at last found her match. The crowd here halted, thick and serried, to gaze in peace upon the brilliant vista which the shops and clubs of that street presented. Coaches and carriages had paused in their line, and immediately before Mrs. Mivers stood three very thin, small women, whose dress bespoke them to be of the humblest class. “Make way, there; make way, my good women, make way!” cried Mrs. Mivers, equally disdainful of the size and the rank of the obstructing parties. “Arrah, and what shall we make way for the like of you, you old busybody?” said one of the dames, turning round, and presenting a very formidable squint to the broad optics of Mrs. Mivers. Without deigning a reply, Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her usual tactics. Umbrella and husband went right between two of the feminine obstructives; and to the inconceivable astonishment and horror of the assailant, husband and umbrella instantly vanished. The three small...