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Certainly Lennox Dunbar was as far removed from religious tendencies as conformity to the canons of conventional morality and the habits of an honorable gentleman in good society would permit; yet to-day, in the intensity of his dread, lest the "consummate flower" of his heart's dearest hope should be laid low in the dust, he involuntarily invoked the aid of a long-forgotten God; and through his set teeth a prayer struggled up to the throne of that divine mercy, which in sunshine we do not see, but which as the soul's eternal lighthouse gleams, glows, beckons in the blackest night of human anguish.
"Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses. I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder which any man can scale. Do you doubt it?
Then I get up and go. The flickering ray of a gas lamp gleams up the street. I make straight for the light, lean my parcel against the lamp-post and open the letter. All this with the utmost deliberation. A stream of light, as it were, darts through my breast, and I hear that I give a little cry a meaningless sound of joy. The letter was from the editor.
"They had met, and they had parted; Time had closed o'er each again, Leaving lone the weary hearted Mournfully to wear his chain." A deliciously cool, still evening, had succeeded the intense heat of a Spanish summer day, throwing rich shadows and rosy gleams on a wild, rude mountain pass in central Spain.
It was because a lovely visitor named Hope had called upon them that evening. She had made the tremendous effort required to climb five dark flights of stairs, and had opened the door of the little room to cast a luminous glance therein. However much you may have been deceived in life, those magic gleams always dazzle you.
Was this good result effected by Kenelm's artful diplomacy, or by that insight into human passions vouchsafed unconsciously to himself, by gleams or in flashes, to this strange man who surveyed the objects and pursuits of his fellows with a yearning desire to share them, murmuring to himself, "I cannot, I do not stand in this world; like a ghost I glide beside it, and look on "?
"Then the rain grew less, and one corner of the veil of clouds was raised, And as from the broidered covering gleams out the shoulder white Of the bed-mate of the warrior when on his wedding night He layeth his hand to the linen; so, down there in the west Gleamed out the naked heaven: but the wrath rose up in my breast, And the sword in my hand rose with it, and I leaped and hewed at the Hun; And from him too flared the war-flame, and the blades danced bright in the sun Come back to the earth for a little before the ending of day.
Oh! this sanctuary seen from the silent garden, this sanctuary in which the pale gold gleams on the old ceiling of cedarwood, and mosaics of mother-of-pearl shine on the walls as if they were embroideries of silver that had been hung there. There is no faience as in the mosques of Turkey or of Iran. Here it is the triumph of patient mosaic.
Meanwhile the clouds broke in places, and there were now gleams of unwelcome moonlight and now gusts of wind-driven rain. I rose and shut to a crack the door of the room and waited. Beyond the wall, to my right, I heard of a sudden a wild shriek of "Murder! murder! Help! help!" shrill, feminine, convincing.
But am I in a position to get at the truth in any other way? All that I possess as an instrument of research, without attaching undue importance to certain gleams of light which the regular appearance of the mysterious letters has shed upon the case, all that I possess is Gaston Sauverand's story. Must I not make use of it?"
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