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do not mean to presume on it. The odd thing I have to say will come far better
from a stranger. Mr. Harrogate, I say one word and go: take care of your
sister in her great sorrow.
Even for Frank s truly fraternal indifference the radiance and derision of
his sister still seemed to sparkle and ring; he could hear her laughter still
from the garden of the hotel, and he stared at his somber adviser in
puzzledom.
Do you mean the brigands? he asked; and then, remembering a vague fear of
his own, or can you be thinking of Muscari?
One is never thinking of the real sorrow, said the strange priest. One can
only be kind when it comes.
And he passed promptly from the room, leaving the other almost with his mouth
open.
A day or two afterwards a coach containing the company was really crawling
and staggering up the spurs of the menacing mountain range. Between Ezza s
cheery denial of the danger and Muscari s boisterous defiance of it, the
financial family were firm in their original purpose; and Muscari made his
mountain journey coincide with theirs. A more surprising feature was the
appearance at the coast-town station of the little priest of the restaurant;
he alleged merely that business led him also to cross the mountains of the
midland. But young Harrogate could not but connect his presence with the
mystical fears and warnings of yesterday.
The coach was a kind of commodious wagonette, invented by the modernist
talent of the courier, who dominated the expedition with his scientific
activity and breezy wit. The theory of danger from thieves was banished from
thought and speech; though so far conceded in formal act that some slight
protection was employed. The courier and the young banker carried loaded
revolvers, and Muscari (with much boyish gratification) buckled on a kind of
cutlass under his black cloak.
He had planted his person at a flying leap next to the lovely Englishwoman;
on the other side of her sat the priest, whose name was Brown and who was
fortunately a silent individual; the courier and the father and son were on
the banc behind. Muscari was in towering spirits, seriously believing in the
peril, and his talk to Ethel might well have made her think him a maniac. But
there was something in the crazy and gorgeous ascent, amid crags like peaks
loaded with woods like orchards, that dragged her spirit up alone with his
into purple preposterous heavens with wheeling suns. The white road climbed
like a white cat; it spanned sunless chasms like a tight-rope; it was flung
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round far-off headlands like a lasso.
And yet, however high they went, the desert still blossomed like the rose.
The fields were burnished in sun and wind with the color of kingfisher and
parrot and humming-bird, the hues of a hundred flowering flowers. There are no
lovelier meadows and woodlands than the English, no nobler crests or chasms
than those of Snowdon and Glencoe. But Ethel Harrogate had never before seen
the southern parks tilted on the splintered northern peaks; the gorge of
Glencoe laden with the fruits of Kent. There was nothing here of that chill
and desolation that in Britain one associates with high and wild scenery. It
was rather like a mosaic palace, rent with earthquakes; or like a Dutch tulip
garden blown to the stars with dynamite.
It s like Kew Gardens on Beachy Head, said Ethel.
It is our secret, answered he, the secret of the volcano; that is also the
secret of the revolution that a thing can be violent and yet fruitful.
You are rather violent yourself, and she smiled at him.
And yet rather fruitless, he admitted; if I die tonight I die unmarried
and a fool.
It is not my fault if you have come, she said after a difficult silence.
It is never your fault, answered Muscari; it was not your fault that Troy
fell.
As they spoke they came under overwhelming cliffs that spread almost like
wings above a corner of peculiar peril. Shocked by the big shadow on the
narrow ledge, the horses stirred doubtfully. The driver leapt to the earth to
hold their heads, and they became ungovernable. One horse reared up to his
full height the titanic and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a
biped. It was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the whole coach heeled
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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