And then he began to laugh in a peculiar way of his own which was both violent and soundless. His heavy reclining body, draped in its black gown, heaved to and fro. His knees drew themselves up to his chin. His arms dangled over the sides of the chair and were helpless. His head rolled from side to side. It was as though he were in the last stages of strychnine poisoning. But no sound came, nor did his mouth even open. Gradually the spasm grew weaker, and when the natural sand colour of his face had returned (for his corked-up laughter had turned it dark red) he began his smoking again in earnest.
Mervyn PeakeHis mother stood before him like a monument. He saw her great outline through the blur of his weakness and his passion. She made no movement at all.
Mervyn PeakeTags: mother
Indeed he had worn that piece of furniture - or symbol of bone-laziness - into such a shape as made the descent of any other body than his own into that crater of undulating horsehair a hazardous enterprise.
Mervyn PeakeHow merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could have stopped the occurrence, so suddenly it sprang upon them.
Mervyn PeakeTags: future ignorance premeditation
Noon, ripe as thunder and silent as thought, had fled unfingered.
Mervyn PeakeTags: passing-of-time noon
To say that the frozen silence contracted itself into a yet higher globe of ice were to under-rate the exquisite tension and to shroud it in words. The atmosphere had become a physical sensation. As when, before a masterpiece, the acid throat contracts, and words are millstones, so when the supernaturally outlandish happens and a masterpiece is launched through the medium of human gesture, then all human volition is withered at the source and the heart of action stops beating.
Such a moment was this. Irma, a stalagmite of crimson stone, knew, for all the riot of her veins that a page had turned over. At chapter forty? O no! At chapter one, for she had never lived before save in a pulseless preface.
How long did they remain thus? How many times had the earth moved round the sun? How many times had the great blue whales of the northern waters risen to spurt their fountains at the sky? How many reed-bucks had fallen to the claws of how many leopards, while that sublime unit of two-figure statuary remained motionless? It is fruitless to ask. The clocks of the world stood still or should have done.
Tags: love lovers middle-age falling-in-love passing-of-time
Meanwhile Bellgrove had been savouring love's rare aperitif, the ageless language of the eyes.
Mervyn PeakeBut his mind saw nothing of all this. His mind was engaged in a warfare of the gods. His mind paced outwards over no-man's-land, over the fields of the slain, paced to the rhythm of the blood's red bugles. To be alone and evil! To be a god at bay. What was more absolute?
Mervyn PeakeHe had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the floor.
Mervyn PeakeShe had shown him by her independence how it was only fear that held people together. The fear of being alone and the fear of being different.
Mervyn PeakeTags: revolution independence fears
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