FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122  
123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   >>   >|  
e alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor lad's face seem more ghastly than ever. "You must sit down, Clarian," cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely. Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,-- "Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that you shall govern me as your learned skill suggests. And do not be uneasy about my 'creamfaced' aspect, as I see Ned is: there is plentiful cause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, and to-night is not the first time I have worn these 'linen cheeks.' Read on, Mac." We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,--for all of us saw the boy's agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable to understand it,--until, at last, in a voice made more impressive by its tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,--to read as I had never heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins and ran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy. Then, as he read on and painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxed stronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a supernatural effect to the room's deep shadows, the picture's funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy's countenance, startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning. "Thou canst not say, I did it! Never shake Thy gory locks at me!" As the reader thrust the terror of these words upon us, all started back, for the curtain was plucked suddenly away, and there before us, not in Clarian's picture, it seemed, but in very truth, stood Macbeth, conscious of the murdered presence. Even the reader, absorbed as he was in his text, paused short, amazed; and I forgot that I had seen this picture, only knew that it was a living scene of terror. Doubtless much of this startling effect was the result of association, the agitation of anxiety, the influence of the impressive text, the suddenness of the apparition, the unusual light; but in the figure of Macbeth, at which alone we gazed, there was a life, a terrible significance, that outran all these causes. It was not in the posture, grand as that was,--not in the sin-stamped brow, rough with wrinkles like a storm-chafed sea,--not in the wiry hair, gray and half rising in haggard locks, like adders that in vain try to
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122  
123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Clarian
 

picture

 

terror

 

curtain

 

impressive

 
effect
 
aspect
 

terrible

 
reader
 

Macbeth


lightning

 

chafed

 
wrinkles
 

thrust

 
midnight
 

shadows

 
supernatural
 
lending
 

splendor

 

adders


haggard

 

alcoholic

 

painful

 

startled

 

countenance

 

rising

 

funereal

 

unearthly

 

pallor

 

stamped


living

 
Doubtless
 

amazed

 

forgot

 

startling

 
apparition
 

unusual

 
figure
 

suddenness

 
influence

result
 

association

 
agitation
 
anxiety
 

paused

 

absorbed

 
posture
 

suddenly

 
started
 

plucked