enough about its ways to think that if he gave Miss La Creevy one little
kiss, perhaps she might not be the less kindly disposed towards those he
was leaving behind. So he gave her three or four with a kind of jocose
gallantry, and Miss La Creevy evinced no greater symptoms of displeasure
than declaring, as she adjusted her yellow turban, that she had never
heard of such a thing, and couldn’t have believed it possible.”
“‘Do you remember the boy that died here?’
“‘I was not here, you know,’ said Nicholas, gently; ‘but what of him?’
“‘Why,’ replied the youth, drawing closer to his questioner’s side, ‘I
was with him at night, and when it was all silent he cried no more for
friends he wished to come and sit with him, but began to see faces round
his bed that came from home; he said they smiled, and talked to him; and
he died at last lifting his head to kiss them.’”
“‘Oh, uncle, I am _so_ glad to see you!’ said Mrs. Kenwigs, kissing the
collector affectionately on both cheeks. ‘So glad!’
“Now, this was an interesting thing. Here was a collector of water-rates,
without his book, without his pen and ink, without his double knock,
without his intimidation, kissing—actually kissing—an agreeable
female, and leaving taxes, summonses, notices that he had called, or
announcements that he would never call again, for two quarters’ due,
wholly out of the question. It was pleasant to see how the company looked
on, quite absorbed in the sight, and to behold the nods and winks with
which they expressed their gratification at finding so much humanity in a
tax-gatherer.”
“‘Mr. Nicholas!’ cried Miss La Creevy, starting in great astonishment.
“‘You have not forgotten me, I see,’ replied Nicholas, extending his hand.
“‘Why, I think I should even have known you if I had met you in the
street,’ said Miss La Creevy, with a smile. ‘Hannah, another cup and
saucer. Now, I’ll tell you what, young man; I’ll trouble you not to
repeat the impertinence you were guilty of on the morning you went away.’
“‘You would not be very angry, would you?’ asked Nicholas.
“‘Wouldn’t I!’ said Miss La Creevy. ‘You had better try; that’s all.’
“Nicholas, with becoming gallantry, immediately took Miss La Creevy at
her word, who uttered a faint scream and slapped his face; but it was not
a very hard slap, and that’s the truth.
“‘I never saw such a rude creature!’ exclaimed Miss La Creevy.
“‘You told me to try,’ said Nicholas.
“‘Well, but I was speaking ironically,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy.
“‘Oh! that’s another thing,’ said Nicholas; ‘you should have told me
that, too.’”
“‘Look at me,’ said Nicholas, wishing to attract his full attention.
‘There; don’t turn away. Do you remember no woman, no kind woman, who
hung over you once, and kissed your lips, and called you her child?’
“‘No,’ said the poor creature, shaking his head, ‘no, never.’”
“‘It’s naterally very gratifying to my feelings as a father, to see such
a man as that, a kissing and taking notice of my children,’ pursued Mr.
Kenwigs. ‘It’s naterally very gratifying to my feelings as a man, to
know that man. It will be naterally very gratifying to my feelings as a
husband, to make that man acquainted with this ewent.’”
“‘No, no,’ cried Arthur, interrupting him, and rubbing his hands in an
ecstasy. ‘Wrong, wrong again. Mr. Nickleby for once at fault: out, quite
out! To a young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely, bewitching, and not
nineteen. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips that to look at
is to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair that one’s fingers itch to
play with, such a waist as might make a man clasp the air involuntarily
thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet that tread so lightly
they hardly seem to walk upon the ground,—to marry all this, sir,
this,—hey, hey!’”
“Upon his knees Nicholas gave him this pledge, and promised again that
he should rest in the spot he had pointed out. They embraced, and kissed
each other on the cheek. ‘Now,’ he murmured, ‘I am happy.’
“He fell into a light slumber, and waking smiled as before; then, spoke
of beautiful gardens, which he said stretched out before him, and were
filled with figures of men, women, and many children, all with light upon
their faces; then, whispered that it was Eden,—and so died.”
The following passages are from “David Copperfield:”
“As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and
kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow
than a monarch,—or something like that; for my later understanding comes,
I am sensible, to my aid here.”
“I am glad to recollect that, when the carrier’s cart was at the gate,
and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and
for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I
am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat
against mine.
“I am glad to recollect that, when the carrier began to move, my mother
ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me
once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which
she lifted up her face to mine.”
“When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea,
Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her
nearest approach to a kiss.”
“‘And I’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And
I’ll—I’ll—’ Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me.
“‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you
promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and
little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they
might suppose, and that I sent ’em all my love,—especially to little
Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’ The kind soul promised, and
we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection,—I patted
it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face,—and
parted.”
“Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough, but, instead of
turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me
to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage
before I caught her.
“‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.
“‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.
“‘And didn’t _you_ know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her,
but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a
baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.”
“Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and
most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved me
dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s
dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last
grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both choking me, I broke down
as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had
was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her
humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on
her.”
“And, having carried her point, she tapped the doctor’s hand several
times with her fan (which she kissed first), and returned triumphantly to
her former station.”
“Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech (which, I need
not say, she had not at all expected or led up to) that she could only
tell the doctor it was like himself, and go several times through that
operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and then tapping his hand
with it.”
“She put her hand—its touch was like no other hand—upon my arm for a
moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted that I could not help
moving it to my lips and gratefully kissing it.”
“Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented
her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair-powder,
to Dora to be kissed. Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and marched us in
to breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.”
“I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary
extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it, and she let me.
I kissed Miss Mills’s hand, and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go
straight up to the seventh heaven.”
“‘But I haven’t got any strength at all,’ said Dora, shaking her curls.
‘Have I, Jip?’ (the dog.) ‘Oh, do kiss Jip and be agreeable!’
“It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for
that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing form
as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be performed
symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade me, rewarding
myself afterwards for my obedience, and she charmed me out of my graver
character for I don’t know how long.”
“At length her eyes were lifted up to mine, and she stood on tiptoe to
give me, more thoughtfully than usual, that precious little kiss—once,
twice, three times—and went out of the room.”
“My pretty little Dora’s face would fall, and she would make her mouth
into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a
kiss.”
“And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and
affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude that he well
deserved.”
The remainder of our selections will be found in “Our Mutual Friend:”
“‘If I get by degrees to be a high-flyer at fashion, then Mrs. Boffin
will by degrees come for’arder. If Mrs. Boffin should ever be less of a
dab at fashion than she is at the present time, then Mrs. Boffin’s carpet
would go back’arder. If we should both continny as we are, why then
_here_ we are, and give us a kiss, old lady.’
“Mrs. Boffin, who, perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn her
plump arm through her lord’s, most willingly complied. Fashion, in the
form of her black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it, but got
deservedly crushed in the endeavor.”
“‘This,’ said Mrs. Wilfer, presenting a cheek to be kissed as sympathetic
and responsive as the back of the bowl of a spoon, ‘is quite an honor.’”
“Arrived at Mr. Boffin’s door, she set him with his back against it,
tenderly took him by the ears as convenient handles for her purpose, and
kissed him until he knocked muffled double knocks at the door with the
back of his head. That done, she once more reminded him of their compact,
and gaily parted from him.”
“She girded herself with a white apron, and busily with knots and pins
contrived a bib to it, coming close and tight under her chin, as if it
had caught her round the neck to kiss her. Over this bib her dimples
looked delightful, and under it her pretty figure not less so.”
“Bella put her arms round his neck and tenderly kissed him on the
high-road, passionately telling him he was the best of fathers and the
best of friends, and that on her wedding morning she would go down on
her knees to him and beg his pardon for having ever teased him or seemed
insensible to the worth of such a patient, sympathetic, genial, fresh,
young heart. At every one of her adjectives she redoubled her kisses, and
finally kissed his hat off, and then laughed immoderately when the wind
took it and he ran after it.”
“With a parting kiss of her fingers to it (the room), she softly closed
the door, and went with a light foot down the great staircase, pausing
and listening as she went, that she might meet none of the household. No
one chanced to be about, and she got down to the hall in quiet. The door
of the late secretary’s room stood open. She peeped in as she passed,
and divined from the emptiness of his table and the general appearance
of things that he was already gone. Softly opening the great hall-door
and softly closing it upon herself, she turned and kissed it on the
outside—insensible old combination of wood and iron that it was—before
she ran away from the house at a swift pace.”
“The good little fellow had become alarmingly limp, and his senses seemed
to be rapidly escaping, from the knees upward. Bella sprinkled him with
kisses instead of milk, but gave him a little of that article to drink,
and he gradually revived under her caressing care.”
“Bella tucked her arm in his, with a merry, noiseless laugh, and they
went down to the kitchen on tiptoe, she stopping on every separate stair
to put the tip of her forefinger on her rosy lips, and then lay it on his
lips, according to her favorite petting way of kissing pa.”
“The purity with which in these words she expressed something of her own
love and her own suffering made a deep impression on him for the passing
time. He held her, almost, as if she were sanctified to him by death, and
kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed the dead.”
* * * * *
Some of our best writers of fiction have successfully tried their
descriptive power upon the “torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion”
which maybe concentrated in a burning kiss, but none of them surpass
Victor Hugo in graphic vigor. Take the following passages, for example,
from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” In the exciting scene between
Esmeralda, the gipsy, and Captain Phœbus, the unfortunate girl proceeds:
“‘Look at me! look on her who came to seek you. My soul, life, body, all
are yours. Let us not marry, if it displeases you,—and then, what am I? a
wretched stroller, while you, my Phœbus, are a gentleman. A pretty thing,
truly, for a dancing-girl to wed an officer! I was out of my mind. No,
Phœbus, I will be your toy, your plaything, a slave to you. I am made for
that; sullied, scorned, dishonored, but loved! I will be the proudest
and gladdest of women. And when I shall be old, Phœbus, when my days for
loving you are over, you will, won’t you, still allow me to serve you?
Let others broider your scarfs; I, the servant, may take care of them,
and your sword and your spurs. You will grant me this, Phœbus? So, take
me! we gipsies only are made for the free air and to love.’
“She had flung her arms around the officer’s neck, supplicating him with
a smile shining through her tears. Her delicate throat was scratched by
the rough lace. The intoxicated captain glued his burning lips on the
rounded Moorish shoulders. The young girl, kneeling, her eyes looking
upward, her head thrown back, quivered under the kiss. All at once, above
the stooping head of Phœbus, she beheld another head, with a livid,
convulsed face, wearing the look of a damned soul; near it was a hand
armed with a dagger. It was the face and hand of the priest; he had burst
through the door, and was there. Phœbus could not perceive him. The girl
was frozen stiff and mute by the fear-inspiring apparition,—like a dove
raising its head as the osprey stares over its nest with its round,
unwinking eyes. She could not even utter a scream. She saw the poniard
fall on Phœbus and rise smoking.
“‘Malediction!’ groaned the captain, and he fell.
“She swooned.
“As her eyes closed, as feeling vanished from her, she fancied she felt
impressed on her lips a print of fire, a kiss more burning than the
executioner’s red-hot branding-iron.
“When she came to herself, she was surrounded by the soldiers of the
watch. They carried away the captain, bathed in his blood; the priest had
disappeared (the window at the end of the room, looking on the river,
was wide open); a cloak was picked up which they supposed belonged to
the officer, and she heard it said around her, ‘She is a witch that has
stabbed a captain.’”
The thrilling narrative proceeds with the imprisonment of the poor girl,
the false confession of murder and witchcraft extorted by the terrible
torture of rack and screw and pincer, the visit of the archdeacon, and
his extraordinary confession of maddening love. In the course of his long
and fervid and impetuous appeal for her favor, he says:
“‘Oh, I had not foreseen the torture! Listen: I followed thee into that
chamber of agony; I looked upon thy rough treatment by the torturer’s
infamous hands. I saw thy foot, which to kiss and die at I would give an
empire, I saw it crushed by the horrible irons which have made of living
limbs raw flesh and a pool of blood. While I beheld this, I wielded under
my gown a dagger, with which I furrowed my breast. At the scream thou
gavest, I buried it in my flesh; look, it still bleeds.’”
“‘Oh, to love a woman, to be a priest, to be hated! to love her with
all the fury of one’s soul, to be willing to give for the least of her
smiles one’s blood, salvation, immortality and eternity, this life and
the other; to regret not being a king, genius, emperor, archangel, that a
greater slave might be at her feet; to have her mingling day and night in
one’s thoughts and dreams; and to see her enamored of a soldier’s livery,
and only have to offer her a priest’s coarse gown which is frightful
to and detested by her! To be present with rage and jealousy while she
lavishes on a despicable, empty-brained dog her treasures of love and
beauty! To see that body whose sight makes you burn, that bosom so
peerless, that satin flesh redden under another’s kisses! Oh, to love her
arms and neck, to think of her blue veins visible through her brown skin,
almost to writhe whole nights through on the pavement of one’s cell, and
see all the caresses dreamed of end with the torture!’”
The priest’s nightly dreams, we are told, were dreadful. Writhing on his
bed, “his delirious fancy represented Esmeralda in all the attitudes
that could make blood boil in one’s veins. He saw her as when he had
stabbed the captain, her white throat spotted with the blood of Phœbus,
when the archdeacon had impressed on her shoulders that kiss which,
though half dying then, she had felt scorch her.” One night he became so
inflamed with his uncontrollable passion that he sought relief by a visit
to the gipsy’s cell, to which he had access. His entrance awakened and
bewildered her.
“‘Oh, the priest,’ said she, in a faint voice.
“Her misfortunes came back to her in a flash. She fell back chilled.
The next moment, she felt the priest’s arms enclasp her. She would have
screamed, but could not.
“‘Away, monster, assassin, begone!’ gasped she, in a voice low and
tremulous from rage and fear.
“‘Mercy, mercy!’ muttered the priest, kissing her shoulders.
“She caught his bald head, with both her hands entwined in the rest of
his hair, and forced it away as if his kisses were bites.”
His utmost efforts to win her regard and sympathy were ineffectual. He
was baffled at every step in his desperate advances, and repelled with
immeasurable scorn upon the repetition of his visits. He offered her the
alternative of the gibbet or escape and life; he humbled himself before
her to an incredible degree. In his passionate entreaties, he says:
“‘Why, here am I who would kiss thy feet,—no, no, not thy feet, thou
wouldst not permit that,—but the very ground under thy feet. I weep like
a very child; I tear from my breast, not words, but my heart and my
vitals, to tell thee that I love thee; all is in vain, all! And yet in
thy spirit thou hast naught but tenderness and clemency, thou art radiant
with gentleness; thou art good, kind, merciful as charming. Woe is me!
thou hast not cruelty save for me. Oh, what fatality!’”
At their last meeting he closes a strain of fervid supplication the
rejection of which settles the girl’s fate:
“‘I entreat thee by all that is holy, do not delay until I am of stone
like this scaffold thou choosest in my stead. Think that I hold our two
destinies in my palm, that I am mad, that I can make yawn betwixt us a
bottomless pit, thou unfortunate! wherein my lost soul will pursue thine
through all eternity! One word of kindness! say one word! nothing more
than a word.’
“She parted her lips to answer him. He rushed and fell on his knees
before her to receive with adoration the word—perhaps affectionate—which
was about to leave her lips.
“‘You are an assassin,’ was what she said.
“The priest threw his arms furiously around her, and laughed a devil’s
laugh. ‘Assassin—be it so!’ said he, ‘I will be thine. Thou wouldst not
have me as a slave,—thou shalt have me as master. I have a place to
which I’ll drag thee. Thou shalt go with me; I will make thee go. Thou
art to die, fair one, or be mine! be the priest’s, the apostate’s, the
assassin’s! To-night, dost hear? The grave or my bed!’
“The girl fought in his arms while he covered her with kisses.
“‘Do not bite me, monster!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, the hateful, infectious
monk! leave me! I will tear out that vile gray hair of yours.’
“He reddened, turned white, then released her, and regarded her moodily.
She thought herself victorious, and went on: ‘I tell you I am for
Phœbus; that it is Phœbus I love, because he is handsome. You, priest,
are old and ugly. Begone.”
The unalterable and final decision was made. It sent Esmeralda to
execution in the Place de Grève, and as the archdeacon watched the
tragedy,—the judicial murder of an innocent creature for his own
crime,—the revengeful hunchback pushed him violently from the tower of
Notre Dame to meet a horrible death upon the pavement below.
* * * * *
Charles Reade deals with the kiss in the sturdy and energetic manner
which usually characterizes his writings. In “Put Yourself in his Place,”
the bursting of Ouseley Reservoir gives him one of his best opportunities
for the display of vivid descriptive power and the production of
startling effects and situations. One of the most exciting incidents
attending the avalanche of water occasioned by the rupture of the
embankment was the rescue of Grace Carden from the flood by her lover,
Henry Little:
“He set his knee against the horizontal projection of the window, and
that freed his left hand; he suddenly seized her arm with it, and,
clutching it violently, ground his teeth together, and, throwing himself
backward with a jerk, tore her out of the water by an effort almost
superhuman. Such was the force exerted by the torrent on one side, and
the desperate lover on the other, that not her shoes only, but her
stockings, though gartered, were torn off her in that fierce struggle.
“He had her in his arms, and cried aloud, and sobbed over her, and kissed
her wet cheeks, her lank hair, and her wet clothes, in a wild rapture.
He went on kissing her and sobbing over her so wildly and so long, that
Coventry, who had at first exulted with him at her rescue, began to rage
with jealousy.
“‘Please remember she is my wife,’ he shrieked; ‘don’t take advantage of
her condition, villain!’
“‘Your wife, you scoundrel! You stole her from me once; now come and take
her from me again. Why didn’t you save her? She was near to you. You
let her die; she lives by me and for me, and I for her.’ With this he
kissed her again and held her to his bosom. ‘D’ye see that? liar! coward!
villain!’
“Even across that tremendous body of rushing death, from which neither
was really safe, both rivals’ eyes gleamed hate at each other.”
After a series of miraculous escapes, they descend from the roof of the
house whither they had finally sought protection from the raging waters,
and, staggering among the _débris_, they finally reach rising ground,
where they discover a horse, upon which Henry seats the barefooted Grace.
Their conversation eventually takes this turn:
“‘Let us talk of ourselves,’ said Grace, lovingly. ‘My darling, let no
harsh thought mar the joy of this hour. You have saved my life again.
Well, then it is doubly yours. Here, looking on that death we have just
escaped, I devote myself to you. You don’t know how I love you, but you
shall. I adore you.’
“‘I love you better still.’
“‘You do not; you can’t. It is the one thing I can beat you at, and I
will.’
“‘Try. When will you be mine?’
“‘I am yours. But if you mean when will I marry you, why, whenever you
please. We have suffered too cruelly and loved too dearly for me to put
you off a single day for affectations and vanities. When you please, my
own.’
“At this Henry kissed her little white feet with rapture, and kept
kissing them at intervals all the rest of the way; and the horrors of the
night ended to these two in unutterable rapture, as they paced slowly
along to Woodbine Villa with hearts full of wonder, gratitude, and joy.”
These pleasant passages are from Reade’s “Very Hard Cash:”
“The young man, ardent as herself, and not, in reality, half so timorous,
caught fire, and, seeing a white, eloquent hand rather near him, caught
it and pressed his warm lips on it in mute adoration and gratitude.