OCEANIC LOVE

There have been mortals favorites of the guides as to whom it was given to understand the language of the lower animals and such I have ever envied for beast and bird I ever have seen and heard that which man know or do not know. Never could I get beyond an imperfect knowledge of their alphabet. Enabling me to spell out here and there a word of little meaning, but the great oceans ceasing speech is ever plain to me and many even in midnight hour. I have passed the cool sands that go to my island home and listened with reverential to know the secrets it whispered to the sensuous.

Sudden breeze that kissed its bosom. Strange stories of wreck and race, wild wars and desperate deeds mingled with those of love and honor, shame and sacrifice crowding upon each other like spectors in a dream. One night, when the new moon hung like a silver crescent pendant from venus, slamming orb in the summer sky thick and laid with patents of pure gold, I heard the lazy waves breaking like slumbers thunder upon the long low beach and said the sea is calling me and I went. Far out upon the long pier where the waves could dash their spray like a shower of cool pearls in my face, I lingered a long and listened to a story sad and strange as a sweet voiced woman telling in a foreign tongue and punctuating with tears and size a tail of true love. Upon the beach. They walked in days that seemed to man long, long ago. How brief and strain is the little lives of men and so best with customs reigned to cramp the heart and curse the soul before it. To me here. Since the time began to build that bridge of size and tears that link the two eternities, it seems but yesternight that I hand in hand they wandered here. So wrapped in happiness born of equal love that they hated not at my glories spread forth to tempt their place. I curled my snowy spray about their feet, flashed back the silver beams of harvest moon in one long shimmering sheet of mellow light rolled waves of brilliant plus for residents that seemed like silver billows diamond studded breaking on a beach of gold and saying the sweetest odds of the poets of 10000 years. But they heard nor saw out but the beating of their hearts in holy Rhythm and the love light flaming like virus celestial in each other's eyes.

Their limbed, shamed yet happy, they sat the waves and I cradled them on my bosom and heard them whisper of laws, defied and cruel custom set at knot and the higher law of love. But fearful, she spoke inside yet clung the closer to him as though the earth and sea contained but one perfect model of a man and that were he. Hour by hour they hovered near me and a thousand times she swore to him that their lives were so entwined that separation were deaf to her and kissed his lips. His eyes, his hands, and which she were his wife that they might blaze into the great round world. The love they fain would hide from heaven. 1 little year went by and they came again, not walking hand in hand. He spoke to her and she answered with bitter scorn. He touched with trembling lips upon the old days when love was lord of their two lives, but she mocked at love and him and bade him leave her. Then he that was one to rule first learned to sue and vainly for her heart was cold as the ashes of long forgotten kings, cruel as winter winds blown across icy northern seas. It is a guilty love, she said. And he looked at her as if doubting that he heard. Then turned and went like one that dreamed for thought of wrong to her had dwelt not with him. He had but worshipped her as devout sabian, might the sun and host of heaven. Again he came. But he was all alone, long and lonely. He paced the dreary beach beneath the wintry sky until the cold mists seemed changed to mellow light the stormy sky to one of summer jammed by a myriad stars and queens by harvest moon. The cool wind sleeping or the barren waste to music and the merry laughter of men and maids and she was by his side her lovely eyes making the blood dance through every vein he put forth his hands to her. But this guy changed from gold to lead the drift weed blew about his feet. The cold mists settled down upon him and crept with icy fingers into his heart and he cursed the lying vision, the shrieking wind, the cold mist in the lead in sky cursed the day that he first saw. And said to waves that tumbled at his feet, I must be mad the curse of my race had fallen upon me else. Why do I see that which is not here are voices that are far away. Why do I cherish the image of a fickle woman who swept along by a gust of passion or sickly sentiment thought for a day she loved me but did not nor ever loved art in life, but her own selfish cell. And he called her name to the wind and waves, but coupled with it a curse, deep and bitter as those that burst himself a breath from the parched lips of the damned and voice came back from out the gloom that seemed to mock him. Furious as a demon disturbed at some Hellas, right, he turned and shrieked to the marking voice and bade it come to him that he might reap upon its owner such vengeance as would appall the world. The far lights shone like pale ghosts of lights through the driving mist and in them loomed two weird forms that seemed an hundred cubits high.

Furiously, he rushed upon and smote them down upon the wet sand and trampled them and strode with feet and hands to kill. But they cried out for mercy on their lives that they were honest fishermen who hearing a cry but faintly above the roaring waves had answered it thinking some boatman might have met miss hap and called for a. The flood of anger spent in blows he helped him up. Wiped the blood and sand from their bronze bases, gave them his scant purse and bidding them drink a bumper that health fins might drag him from the world before the morn sent them on their way he. The gray dawn found him sleeping with his face upon the web sand once trodden by the feet that now trampled on his heart. Then I sent waves cool and sweet to kiss his cheek and he awoke and waking said. Kisses for me. They are cold. Great mother ocean, but not so cold as love burned out leaving but the bitter ashes of contemptuous pity. I dreamed that I was afloat upon thy bosom with her. I did so dearly love and thou wish bearing a spinach a sunset sky to a fair island fringed with palms and musical with sounds of birds and rippling springs where we too should live forever that as we floated thus love's goddess descended from a golden cloud and opening the white bosom of my bride yet not my bride took thence her heart and pressed from it a black drop that fell upon the molten sea and taking form became a hideous monster. That cried my name is selfishnesses. And vanished in the way. Then breathing upon the cold heart, a serial flame that made it Throb like a hero's pulse when trumpets are blown for war. She replaced it. Healed the snowy globe with a touch and smiling upon me was caught into the golden cloud that seemed framed of music and the perfume of 1000 flowers.

Around arm stole about my neck and we floated heart to heart on to the haven. That was to be our heaven. Occurs upon your brandy waters that seem a world of bitter tears rank with dead men's bones in the rotting halls of ships. They have called me back to thy dreary, ever moaning verge to mock myself for loving one who scorns for wasting my hot hut on a block of frozen stone, hoping by foolish prayers and unmanly tears to move the gods to breathe into it the breath of human life to prevail even as did that old human who became enamored of a statue less divinely formed but with the self same heart. Tis madness leads me to this valley. The old old curse that had hung about our house like a beautiful shadow for thrice 100 years bursting at times into bloody fuse without apparent cause and dreadful mutinies against the laws of man and will of god tis vain to further fight with faith to have dragged me down even as it did my great grandfather who climbed famed dizzy heights and stood poised in mid heaven the master mind of Britain's mighty world then. Like a tall mountain pine blasted at the top by the ridden boats of god. Plunged a falling star to the depths of everlasting darkness and died a decade before his death. Nor iron wheel descended through my sire from a score of barbarous gangs nor mother's prayer for amulets woven my golden threads through every low sweet lullaby that sues my infancy can avail me. I cannot fight and fall. She might have helped me beat back the shadows, but wouldn't. And as well. Then taking from a case the withered rose, he kissed it cast a far out upon the wave, watched it dance there and said with a bitter smile. The last length advised me to other days and it is broken. The wage of sin is death and I am dead these long months passed and farthoms deep inhale yet walk the earth because norsea will yield a resting place among its honour dead to one so ignobly slay.

At lunch next day,I came with my friends and we found there were very nice pies, crayfish and mutton cutlets and while we were eating, nick nor the cook came up to ask what the visitors would like for dinner, he was a man of medium height with a puffy face and little eyes. He was closed shaven and it looked as though his mustache had not been shaved. But had been pulled out by the roots. One of men told us that the beautiful one was in love with this cook. As he drank and was of a violent character, she did not want to marry him, but was willing to live with him without knowing he was a very religious convictions could not allow him to live in sin. He insisted on her marrying him and would consent to nothing else and when it was drunk, he used to abuse her and even beat her whenever we got drunk, she used to hide upstairs and sobs and on such occasions, my friend and the servant stayed announced to be ready to defend her in case we begin talking about love. Our love is born, said my friend. But why servant does not love somebody more like herself in her spiritual and external qualities and why she fell in love with other ladies? We all call him this note how far questions of personal happiness are of consequence of love. All that is unknown. One can take what view one likes of it. So far, only one incontestable truth has been uttered about loud. This is a great mystery. Everything else that has been written or said about love is not a conclusion, but only a statement of questions which have remained unanswered, the explanation which would seem to fit one case does not apply in a dozen others and the very best thing to my mind would be to explain every case individually without attempting to generalize. We ought, as the doctors say to individualized each case. Perfectly true. We are of the educated class and we have a partiality for these questions that remain unanswered. Love is usually poeticize decorated with roses. We can decorate our loves with these momentous questions and select the most uninteresting of them too. When I was a student., I had a friend who shared my life, a charming lady and every time I took her in my arm, she was thinking what I would allow her a month for housekeeping and what was the price of beef a pound. In the same way, when we are in love, we are never tired of asking ourselves questions, whether it is honorable or dishonorable. Sensible, or stupid what this love is leading up to and so on. Whether it is a good thing or not, I don't know. But that it is in the way unsatisfactory and irritating. I dunno. It looked as though he wanted to tell some story.

People who lead a solitary existence always have something in their hearts, which they are eager to talk about in town. Bachelor's use to visit the baths and the restaurants on purpose to talk and sometimes tell the most interesting things to bath attendants and waiters. In the country, as a rule, they unbosom themselves to their guests.

Now from the window, we could see a gray sky trees drenched in the rain in such weather. We could go nowhere and there was nothing for us to do but to tell stories and to listen. I lived in many towns and I had been farming for a long time. Alden began ever since I left the university, I am an idle gentleman by education. A studious person by disposition, but there was a big debt owing on the estate when I came here and as my father was not dead, partly because he had spent so much on my education. I resolved not to go away but to work till I had paid off the debt. I made up my mind to do this and set to work. Not I must confess without some repugnance. The land here does not yield much. And if one is not to farm at a loss, one must employ surf labor or hired laborers, which is almost the same thing or put it on a peasant footing that is work to feel oneself and with one's family there is no middle path. But in those days I did not go into such subtleties. I did not leave a cloud of earth unturned. I gathered together all the peasants, men and women from the neighboring villages. The work went on at a tremendous pace. I myself cloud and sold and raped and I was bored doing it and frowned with disgust like a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen garden. My body ached and I slept as I walk. At first it seemed to me that I could easily reconcile this life of toy with my cultured habits to do so. I thought all that is necessary is to maintain a certain external order in life. I established myself upstairs here in the best rooms and order them to bring me there coffee and liquor after lunch and dinner and when I went to bed, I read every night the ethnic European. But one day our priest father, I of him came and drank up all my liquor at one sitting and the vast neat European went to the priest's daughters as in the summer, especially at the hay making.

I did not succeed in getting to my bed at all and swept in the sledge in the barn or somewhere in the foresters lodge, what chance was there of. Little by little I moved downstairs, began dining in the servants kitchen and of my former luxury nothing is left but the servants who were in my father's service and whom it would be painful to turn away. In the first years I was elected here in honor a justice of the peace. I used to have to go to the town and take part in the sessions of the congress and of the circuit court and this was a pleasant change for me when you live here for two or three months without a break. Especially in the winter, you begin at last to pine for a black coat and in the circuit court there were fraught coats and uniforms and dress coats to all lawyers men who have received a general education. I had someone to. After sleeping in the sledge and dining in the kitchen to sit in an armchair and clean linen in thin boots where the chain on one's waistcoat is such a luxury. I received a warm welcome in the town. I made friends eagerly and of all my acquaintances the most intimate and to tell the truth the most agreeable to me was my acquaintance with Logan of it. The vice president of the circuit courts. You both know him a most charming personality. It all happened just after a celebrated case of incendiarism. The preliminary investigation lasted two days. We were exhausted Logan of itch, looked at me and said. Look here, come round to dinner with me. This was unexpected as I knew lugan of it very little only officially and I had never been to his house. I only just went to my hotel room to change and went off to dinner. And here it was my lot to meet Anna alexiev na lucado vichy's. At that time she was still very young, not more than 22, and her first baby had been born just six months before. It is all a thing of the past and now I should find it difficult to define what there was so exceptional in her what it was in her attracted me so much at the time at dinner, it was all perfectly clear to me. I saw a lovely. Young, good, intelligent, fascinating woman such as I had never met before and I felt her at once some one close and already familiar as though that faced those cordial, intelligent eyes I had seen somewhere in my childhood in the album. Which lay on my mother's chest of doors. 4 Jews were charged with being incendiaries. Who were regarded as a gang of robbers and to my mind quite groundlessly at dinner, I was very much excited. I was uncomfortable and I don't know what I said, but Anna alexiev now kept shaking her head and saying to her husband how is this. Look out of it is a good natured man, one of those simple hearted people who firmly maintain the opinion that once a man is charged before a court is guilty and to express doubt of the correctness of a sentence cannot be done except in legal form on paper and not had dinner in private conversation. You and I did not set fire to the place, he said softly and you see, we are not condemned and not put in prison. And both husband and wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible from some trifling details from the way they made the coffee together, for instance, and from the way they understood each other at half a word. I could gather that they lived in harmony and comfort and that they were glad of a visitor. After dinner, they played a duet on the piano, then it got dark and I went home. That was at the beginning of spring.

After that I spent the whole summer at town without a break and I had no time to think of the town either. But the memory of the graceful, fair haired woman remained in my mind all those. I did not think of her, but it was as though her light shadow were lying on my heart. In the late autumn there was a theatrical performance for some charitable object in the town I went into the governor's box. I was invited to go there in the interval. I looked and there was another friend sitting beside the governor's wife and again the same irresistible, thrilling impression of beauty and sweet caressing eyes and again the same feeling of nearness we sat side by side then went to the foyer. You have grown thinner, she said, have you been. Yes, i've had rheumatism in my shoulder and in rainy weather I can't sleep. He looked dispirited in the spring. When you came to dinner, you were younger, more confident you were full of eagerness and talked a great deal. Then you were very interesting and I really must confess I was a little carried away by you for some reason you often came back to my memory during the summer and when I was getting ready for the theatre to day, I thought I should see you and she laughed. But you looked dispirited to day. She repeated it makes you seem older.

The next day I lunched on another hotel. After lunch, they droped out to their villa in order to make arrangements there for the winter and I went with them. I returned with them to the town and at midnight drank tea with them in quiet domestic surroundings while the fire glowed and the young mother kept going to see if her baby girl was. And after that. Every time I went to town, I never failed to visit this new hotel. They grew used to me and I Grew used to them as a rule. I went in unannounced as though I were one of the family. " Who is there?" I would hear from a far away room in the drawling voice that seemed to me so lovely. "It is my friend." Answered the maid. The nurse would come out to me with an anxious face and would ask every time, "Why is it so long since you have been here? Is there anything happened." Her eyes, the elegant, refined hand she gave me her indoor dress the way she did her hair, her voice, her step. I always produced the same impression on me of something new and extraordinary in my life and very important. We talked together for hours and then we were silent thinking each our own thoughts and she played for hours the piano. If there were no one at home, I stayed and waited. Talked to the nurse, played with the child or lay on the sofa in the study and read and when she came back, I met her in the hall. Took all her parcels from her and for some reason I carried those parcels every time with as much love with as much solemnity.

There is a proverb that if a peasant woman has no trouble, she will buy a pick. The new hotel had no trouble, so they made friends with me if I did not come to the town, I must be ill or something must have happened to me and both of them were extremely anxious. They were worried that I an educated man with the knowledge of languages. Should instead of devoting myself to science or literary work live in the country rush round like a squirrel in a cage, work hard with never a penny to show for it. They fancy that I was unhappy and that I only tore. Laughed and ate to conceal my sufferings and even at cheerful moments when I felt happy I was aware of their searching eyes fixed upon me. They were particularly touching when I was really depressed or when I was being worried by some creditor or had not money enough to pay interest on the proper day. The two of them husband and wife. I could whisper something at the window, then he would come to me and say whether gray face. If you really are in need of money at the moment. The husband said, "You can start to knowledge my wife and I beg you not to hesitate to borrow from us" He would blush to his ears with emotion and it would happen that after a whispering in the same way at the window, he would come up to me with red ears and say my wife and I earnestly beg you to accept this present. And he would give me studs a cigar case or a lamp and I would send them game butter and flowers from the country. They both, by the way, had considerable means of their own. In early days, I often borrowed money. Is not very particular about it borrowed wherever I could, but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the hotel. But why talk of it? I was unhappy at home in the fields in the barn. I thought of her. I tried to understand the mystery of a beautiful, intelligent young woman's marrying someone so uninteresting, almost an old man. Her husband was over 40 and having children by him to understand the mystery of this uninteresting, good, simple hearted man who argued with such where is some good sense that balls and evening parties kept near. The more solid people looking listless and superfluous with a submissive uninterested expression as though he had been brought there for sale. Yet who believed in his right to be happy to have children by her.

So I kept trying to understand why. She had met him first and not me and why such a terrible mistake in our lives need have happened. And when I went to the town I saw every time from her eyes that she was expecting me and she would confess to me herself that she had a peculiar feeling all that day and had guessed that I should. We talked a long time and were silent, yet we did not confess our love to each other, but timidly and jealously concealed it. We were afraid of everything that might reveal our secret to ourselves. I loved her tenderly deeply, but I reflect it and kept asking myself what our love could lead to if we had not the strength to fight against it. It seemed to be incredible that my gentle, Sad love could all at once coarsely break up the even tenor of life of her husband, her children and all the household in which I was so loved and trusted would it be honourable. She would go away with me, but where could I take her would have been a different matter. If I had no a beautiful nor a interesting life there before. For instance, I had been struggling for the emancipation of my country. But on other side I had been a celebrated man of science and artist or a painter. But as it was, it would mean taking her from one every day humdrum wife to another as humdrum or perhaps more so and how long would our happiness last? What would happen to her in case I was ill in case I died or if we simply grew cold to one another and another. And she apparently reasoned in the same way she thought of her husband, her children of her mother who loved the husband like a son. If she abandoned herself to her feelings. She would have to why or else to tell the truth and in her position either would have been equally terrible and inconvenient. She was tormented by the question whether her love would bring me happiness. Would she not complicate my life, which as it was was hard enough and full of all sorts of trouble she faced.

She was not young enough for me that she was not industrious nor energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often talked to her husband of the importance of my marrying a girl of intelligence and merit, who would be a capable housewife and help to make. And she would immediately add that it would be difficult to find such a girl in the whole town. Meanwhile, the years were passing. She had already had two children. When I arrived at the hotel, the servant smiled cordially the children shouted that uncle of it had come and hung on my neck. Every one was overjoyed they did not understand what was passing in my soul and my thought. Everyone looked on me as a noble being and grown ups and children alike felt that a noble being was walking about the rooms and that gave a peculiar charm to their manner towards me as though in my presence their life too was pure and more beautiful.

The wife and I used to go to the theater together, always walking there. We used to sit side by side and the stalls our shoulders touching. I would take the opera glass from her hands without a word and feel at that minute that she was near me that she was mine that we could not live without each other, but by some strange misunderstanding when we came out of the theater, we always said goodbye and parted as though we were strangers couldn't snows what people were saying about us in the town already. But there was not a word of truth in it at all in the latter years. She took to go away for frequent visits to her mother or to her sister. She began to suffer from low spirits she began to recognize that her life was spoilt and unsatisfied. At that time she did not care to see her husband nor her children she was already being treated goodly. We were silent and in the presence of outsider she displayed a strange irritation in regard to me whatever I talked about, she disagreed with me and if I had an argument, she cite it with my opponent. If I dropped anything, she would say coldly I congratulate you. If I forgot to take the opera glass when we're going to the theater, she would say afterwards I know you would forget it. Luckily or unluckily.

There is nothing in our lives that does not end sooner or later. The hotel owner collapsed financially and the hotel was taken by president. They had to sell their furniture, their horses, their summer villa. When they drove out of the villa and afterwards looked back as they were going away to look the last time at the garden at the green roof, everyone was sad and I realized that I had to say good bye not only to...