Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (275 page)
Read Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) Online
Authors: CHARLOTTE BRONTE,EMILY BRONTE,ANNE BRONTE,PATRICK BRONTE,ELIZABETH GASKELL
it would be needless for me to give an account of the odd ceremonies that took place on his introduction to the King which besides being tedious would make my tale even dryer than it now is Arthur. But when they were over, he showed Mirza with a joyful counten- ance to his majesty who leapt from his throne in a transport & on resuming his seat poured forth an energetic speech expressive of his joy. then Mirza was consigned to a golden box enriched with gems where he lay a miserable captive till next day. at that time he was taken out & food was offered to him. being extremely hungry he eat though with great loathing & disgust as he knew what animal it was the flesh of & the taste was coarse and disagreeable .
just when he had concluded his repast he heard a tremendous sound of shouting instruments & music &c. he was then placed in his box & hurried off. after many hours of marching he was again let out & found himself in the midst of a vast army of giants who were ranged at a respectful distance from an altar where he stood in the hands of a venerable old preist clothed in wide flowing garments with a snowhite beard hanging lower than his girdle & long grey hair disheveled in the wind, a great fire burnt on the altar & as he sprinkled perfumes thereon & anointed Mirza with fragrant oils & essences he uttered these words “here is the sacrifice which thou didst demand O Mountain! here are our warriors assembled to do thee homage, accept our offering & spare us!” By these words Mirza knew his doom for though spoken in a strange tongue they were supernaturally understood by him. he trembled & quaked with horror as the idea of being burnt alive flashed through his mind but no shreik or supplication burst from his whitened lips and after some inward strife he resigned himself to his inevitable fate hoping that the joys of Paradise would be his subsequent reward. The Preist now poured the last libation over his devoted head and bathefd him in the blood of a newly slain beast & more fuel was added to the fire whose flames were already ascending with intense feirceness & heat. Mirza was on the point of being dropped headlong in when a cry of horror broke from those around, the Preist withheld his arm & looked up. a huge black mountain appeared in the sky wavering over their heads & slowly descending on them, suddenly a flood of fire burst from the summit & a terrible voice was heard to say “Have ye O wretches, provided the offeringf?” “We have” they all exclaimed in an agony of dread, with a dull rumbling sound it went up again while they watched it in breathless silence while every trace vanished from the heavens.
The Preist then turned to Mirza and said “Creature whoever thou may’st be thou art doomed to die for our saftey. we for a length of time have been tormented by that vision which thou sawst. it threatened to destroy us if a being like thee was not procured to appease it by death, At length some Good Spirit has placed thee in our power, thou wert found by the daughters of our cheif warrior asleep & defenceless in a feild. they brought thee to their father & by him thou wast delivered to our King, hitherto thou hast behaved with becoming resignation, let not thy heart fail thee in the hour of death -”
with these words Mirza was commited to the flames & the tortures he endured were hard and indescribable, for as the fire seized his feet & legs he felt all the sinews crack the calcined bones started through his blackned cindery flesh; by degrees his extremites crumbled to ashes & he fell prostrate amid their ruins, a short time now sufficed to extinguish his insupportable agony. the rising smoke presently suffocated him & he died amid shouts & cries of gladness from his sacrificers.
the remnant of my parched tale is clad in a veil of mystery. This same Mirza who suffered the extreme rigour of the law among those Giants was I know not how long subsequent to that event, wakend from his sleep of death by a shake on the shoulder which brought life again into him. he looked about & discovered that he was standing upright against the door cheek of his hut with a bundle of faggots lying before him. his surprise & joy I will not attempt to depict but on examining his hands and feet he found that they were all marked with long seams & scars of burning, this staggered him a little but after some consideration he concluded that it was all the machinations of those evil spirist who haunt the Caucasian range, for my part I do not agree with him but think that these circumstances I have related really occured. Mirza never knew wether the Giants were inhabitants of the sun moon stars or earth. I beleive the latter.
“Well my sons what witch or wizard-craft is going on between you that you have need to do it under the midnight (or thereabouts) moon & sky? come home my young scape-graces,” exclaimed a voice close behind them, they started to their feet & saw their father standing near.
“I’ll come directly” replied lord Wellesley. “Tringia Tringia where are you?”
Tringia sprang from under his branch of brushwood & in a short time was seated in softer & warmer quaters with Trill Philomel & Pol on the rug of the private parlour before a warm blazing fire.
C Bronte
The Green Dwarf
is Charlotte’s romantic love-story, written before she had turned eighteen, featuring star-crossed lovers, concealed identities and magical revelations, heavily influenced by the works of Sir Walter Scott.
The narrative is much more sustained and sophisticated than anything she had produced in her early juvenilia works. The use of flashbacks to unfold the story is a rudimentary, though not unsuccessful, attempt to maintain the tension and deepen the mystery. At the age of seventeen, Charlotte was already an experienced writer and
The Green Dwarf
proves her early ability as a novelist.
Please note: This novel was never published in Charlotte’s lifetime and survives from an unpolished manuscript, thus there are frequent errors in punctuation and spelling, due to the original state of the text.
A TALE OF THE PERFECT TENSE
BY LORD CHARLES ALBERT FLORIAN WELLESLEY
CONTENTS
I am informed that the world is beginning to express in low, discontented grumblings its surprise at my long, profound, & (I must say) very ominous silence. What says the reading publick as she stands in the market place with gray cap & ragged petticoat the exact image of a modern blue “What is the matter with lord Charles?” “is he expifli- cated by the literary captains lash? have his good genius & his scribbling mania forsaken him both at once?” “Rides he now on Man-back through the mountains of the moon or mournful thought lies he helpless on a sick-bed of pain?”
the last conjecture I am sorry to say is or rather was true. I have been sick, most sick, I have suffered dreadful indescribable tortures arising chiefly from the terrible remedies which were made use of to effect my restoration.’ One of these was boiling alive in what was called a hot-bath, another roasting before a slow fire, & a third a most rigid system of starvation, for proof of these assertions apply to Mrs Cook, back of Waterloo Palace situated in the suburbs of Verdopolis. How I managed to survive such a mode of treatment, or what the strength of my victorious constitution must be wiser men than I am would fail in explaining.
Certain it is however that I did at length get better or to speak more elegantly become convalescent but long after my cadaverous cheek had begun to reassume a little of its wonted freshness I was kept penned up in a corner of the House-keepers parlour, forbid the use of pen, ink & paper, prohibited setting foot into the open air & dieted on rice-gruel, sago, snail soup panado, stewed cock-chaffers, milk-broth & roasted mice. I will not say what was my delight when first Mrs Cook deigned to inform me about two o’clock on a fine summer afternoon that as it was a mild warm day I might take a short walk out if I pleased, ten minutes sufficed for arraying my person in a new suit of very handsome clothes & washing the accumulated dirt of seven diurnal revolutions of the earth from my face & hands.
as soon as these necessary operations were performed I sallied out in plumed hat & cavalier mantle. Never before had I been fully sensible of the delights of liberty, the suffocating atmosphere which filled the hot, flinty street was to me as delicious as the dew-cooled & balm- breathing air of the freshest twilight in the wildest solitude, there was not a single tree to throw its sheltering branches between me & that fiery sun but I felt no want of such a screen as with slow but not faltering step I crept along in the shadow of shops and houses. At a sudden turn the flowing ever-cool sea burst unexpectedly on me. I felt like those poor wretches do who are victims to the disease called a calenture. the green waves looked like wide-spread plains covered with foam - white flowers & tender spring grass & the thickly clustered masts of vessels my excited fancy transformed into groves of tall, graceful trees, while the smaller craft took the form of cattle reposing in their shade. I passed on with something of that springing step which is natural to me, but soon my feeble knees began to totter under the frame which they should have supported, unable to go further without rest I looked round for some place where I might sit down till my strength should be un peu retabli. I was in that ancient & dilapidated court, called (pompously enough) Quaxmina Square, where Bud, Gifford, Love-dust, & about twenty other cracked old antiquarians reside. I determined to take refuge in the house of the first mentioned as well because he is my most intimate friend as because it is in the best condition.
Buds’ mansion is indeed far from being either incommodious or unseemly, the outside is venerable & has been very judiciously repaired by modern masons (a step by the bye which brought down the censure of almost all his neighbours) & the inside is well & comfortably furnished. I knocked at the door, it was opened by an old footman with a reverend grey head. on asking if his master were at home he showed me upstairs into a small but handsome room. Here I found Bud seated at a table surrounded by torn parchments & rubbish & descanting copiously on some rusty knee-buckles which he held in his hand to the Marquis of Douro & another puppy who very politely were standing before him with their backs to the fire.
“What’s been to do with my darling?” said the kind old gentleman as I entered “what’s made it look so pale & sickly, I hope not chagrin at Trees superannuated drivel”
“Bless us” said Arthur before I could speak a word “What a little chalky spoon he looks! the whipping I bestowed on him has stuck to his small body right well.
f
hey Charley any soreness yet?”
“Fratricide” said I “how dare you speak thus lightly to your half murdered brother, how dare you demand whether the tortures you have inflicted continue yet to writhe his agonized frame?”
he answered this appeal with a laugh intended I have no doubt to display his white teeth & a sneer designed to set of his keen wit & at the same instant he gently touched his riding-wand.
“Nay my lord” said Bud who noticed this significant manoeuvre, “let us have no more of such rough play - you’ll kill the lad in earnest if you don’t mind”
“
I’m not going to meddle with him yet” said he “he’s not at present in a condition to show game but let him offend me again as he has done & I’ll hardly leave a strip of skin on his carcase”
What brutal threats he would have uttered besides I know not but at this moment he was interrupted by the entrance of dinner.
“My lord & Colonel Morton” said Bud “I hope you’ll stay & take a bit of dinner with me, if you don’t think my plain fare too coarse for your dainty palates”
“On my honour Captain” replied Arthur “your bachelor’s meal looks very nice & I should really feel tempted to partake of it had it been more than two hours since I breakfasted, last night or rather this morning I went to bed at six & so it was twelve before I rose, therefore dining you know is out of the question till seven or eight o’clock in the evening”
Morton excused himself on some similar pretext & shortly after both the gentlemen much to my satisfaction took their leave.
“Now Charley” said my friend when they were gone “you’ll give me your company I know, so sit down on that easy chair opposite to me & let’s have a regular two-handed crack.”
I gladly accepted his kind invitation because I knew that if I returned home Mrs Cook would allow me nothing for dinner but a basin-full of some filthy vermined slop. During our meal few words were spoken for Bud hates chatter at feeding time & I was too busily engaged in discussing the most savoury plateful of food I had eaten for the last month & more to bestow a thought on anything of less importance, however when the table was cleared & the dessert brought in, Bud wheeled the round table nearer the open window poured out a glass of sack seated himself in his cushioned arm-chair & then said in that quiet satisfactory tone which men use when they are perfectly comfortable :
“What shall we talk about Charley.”
“anything you like” I replied .
“Anything?” said he “why that means just nothing, but what would you like?”
“Dear Bud” was my answer “since you have been kind enough to leave the choice of a topic to me there is nothing I should enjoy so much as one of your delightful tales if you would but favour me this once I shall consider myself eternally obliged to you.”
Of course Bud according to the universal fashion of all story-tellers refused at first but after a world of flattery, coaxing & intreating he at length complied with my request & related the following incidents which I now present to the reader not exactly in the original form of words in which I heard it but strictly preserving the sense & facts.
July 10th -33.
C. Wellesley