5
" O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.'
'Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' (“The Bogey Man”) "
― A.E. Coppard , Dusky Ruth: And Other Stories
13
" I am Shiloh, whose box you stole. Your godmother's sickness lies in your own keeping, you can heal her in a moment. Make me your slave, and I must do your will.'
'You can do this,' Sheila said, 'without my taking a gift from you; you are wise and skilled. O do it, sir, and I will bless your name for ever.'
'Pooh! what is the good of that?' said he. 'No, I serve a master, the King of Kings, but we are emptiness itself without your mortal alloy. Do as I bid and I will serve you like a queen. And if you fear me you have only to put me to sleep and I shall sleep for seven hundred years.'
'No,' said the tempted girl slowly, 'not even for godmother can I do this; you are full of evil. Lies, lies! Why do you lie so?'
'O,' Shiloh said, 'because I am weary, and dissimulation is stimulation.'
'I don't understand that.'
'Well, it is so.' He yawned and yawned. 'Besides, I am the Other Side of things. All you think good may be bad, all you think bad may be good.'
'And I don't understand that.'
Shiloh replied: 'Strong meat for men and lily buds for maids; did Ajax feed on apples?'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Sheila. "
― A.E. Coppard , Dusky Ruth: And Other Stories
14
" Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.
'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.'
So you see the man really loved her.
("The Tiger") "
― A.E. Coppard , Dusky Ruth: And Other Stories
17
" A high upland common was this moor, two miles from end to end, and full of furze and bracken. There were no trees and not a house, nothing but a line of telegraph poles following the road, sweeping with rigidity from north to south; nailed upon one of them a small scarlet notice to stonethrowers was prominent as a wound. On so high and wide a region as Shag Moor the wind always blew, or if it did not quite blow there was a cool activity in the air. The furze was always green and growing, and, taking no account of seasons, often golden. Here in summer solitude lounged and snoozed; at other times, as now, it shivered and looked sinister. ("The Higgler") "
― A.E. Coppard , Dusky Ruth: And Other Stories
