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Then we duck before the thing breaks, and divide the fruits of our industry and superior intelligence, as the economists say. Isn't that one great little game!" Mrs. De Peyster stared at his face, grinning like an elated gargoyle; herself utterly limp, her every nerve a filament of icy horror. "Well, what do you say, girls?" prompted Mr. Pyecroft. Mrs. De Peyster at first could say nothing at all.
The comic characters in the book are all like images bought in an old curiosity shop. Quilp might be a gargoyle. He might be some sort of devilish door-knocker, dropped down and crawling about the pavement. The same applies to the sinister and really terrifying stiffness of Sally Brass. She is like some old staring figure cut out of wood.
It was the most natural of column forms and therefore the most suitable for any surroundings. That was why he had used it in his villa. For his interiors, he had partly followed Pompeian models, and there was to be an atrium. He spoke of a little figure, a gargoyle, which he intended to place over a square fountain.
"Eye of the bull! does he carry his hatchet?" gasped the host, cherishing with renewed tenderness the subject of their jests. "And an Iroquois, too, the most terrible of them all, they say. What shall I do to protect my guests?" Du Puys and Bouchard laughed boisterously, for the host's face, on which was a mixture of fear and doubt, was as comical as a gargoyle.
To say that he had not enough mastery over form to express himself perfectly like Tennyson or Swinburne is like criticising the griffin of a mediæval gargoyle without even knowing that it is a griffin; treating it as an infantile and unsuccessful attempt at a classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts.
Here rose a subterranean spring, there a rudely carved gargoyle grinned from the granite roof; curious and intricate windings enticed his eager steps, while all the time the deathlike and horrible silence which might have deterred an ordinary child from further advance, failed of its effect upon ears unable to distinguish between the living sounds of the outer world and the stillness of a sepulchre.
Never in his wildest imaginings had he fancied such forms and faces. The most beautiful girl in Bear Valley bore the face of a gargoyle compared with the soft, creamy faces he saw that night. The flashing, long-lashed eyes, the red lips, the coils on coils of fluffy hair, the swishing silk, unfamiliar furs, sparkling jewels, and the slender French heels were stupefying. He was growing hungry.
"Think of Queen Mary and her four Maries, and Darnley, and Rizzio, and Bothwell, and John Knox passing along as we pass now, on their way up to Holyrood?" said I. "Yes. Oh, yes! I do think of them," she answered obediently, her eyes straying into the shadows of wynd or close, or tracing out the detail of some carved gargoyle on an old façade. "Only you think of yourself more "
The head nurse stood there, white-frocked, smiling, her stout arms full of rosy gladioli and the lavender and white of Japanese iris. The two doctors started to help her with the fragrant burden, but not before Gargoyle sprang out of his chair. With a start, as if shocked into galvanic motion, the boy sat upright. With a throttled cry he leaped at the surprised woman.
We had still a long journey ahead of us, and riding at night was not particularly safe. I got into the car and they bundled in after me the damaged pictures, the horseshoe, the piece of gargoyle from the Cloth Hall and the nose of the shell. The orderly reported that a Zeppelin had just passed overhead; but the General shrugged his shoulders. "They are always seeing Zeppelins," he said.
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