Archibald Marshall

“ It came to him now, as he stood by the window with his daughter,—the beautiful spacious room which they would adapt to their happy life on one side of him, the peaceful sunlit bird-haunted charm of the garden on the other,—that this new setting would heighten and centralise the sweet intimacies of their home life. Abington Abbey would be much more to them than an increase of opportunities for enjoyment. It would be the warm nest of their love for one another, as no house in a city could be. ”

“ The road winds up through the limestone crags to a col from which there is a view even more magnificent than that from Les Baux to the south. The undulating plain, all silver and delicate green and indigo and deep purple, stretches away on either hand, and very far away rise the snow peaks of the Pyrenees, like mountains in a dream. The Rhône and the Durance are at about equal distances to the right and left, the Durance flowing on one side of the Alpilles to join her sister at Avignon, and both these together passing the other side on their way to the sea. ”

“ Here all life that one could see was so quiet and so contented that the train seemed to lose its character as it crept across the bright levels, and to be less a noisy determined machine of progress than a trail of white steam, floating out over the grazing cattle and the willows by the brookside, as much in keeping with the scene as the wisps of cloud that made delicate the blue of the fresh spring sky. ”

“ Cicely had thought a great deal since her visit to London and Muriel's wedding, and had arrived at this conclusion—that she was suffocating, and that her life was insupportable.
She raised her eyes and glanced at her father, wrapped in the pleasant slumber that overtakes healthy, out-of-door men when they are forced for a time into unwonted quiescence, and at her brother, calm and self-satisfied, dressed with a correct elaboration that was only unobtrusive because it was so expensively perfect. The men of the family—everything was done to bring them honour and gratification. ”

“ There is not a happier couple in all Bloomsbury than Peter and myself, and you know that in marrying him I have gained a son, which is a great joy to me, for I never had a child of my own. Lucius treats me with the greatest respect and affection, and I could not be fonder of him than if he were my own. I am as proud as anyone of his success to-day. Cambridge has not proved an unmixed source of pleasure to me, as you know, but I have seldom performed a more agreeable duty than when I arranged this light blue silk on the table this afternoon with my own hands. ”

“ He loved the sun, and Caroline knew that. She knew all his minor tastes, perhaps better than he knew them himself. He would have been contented with a sunny room and all his conveniences around him, or so he would have thought. But she had seen that he had much more than that. The old furniture which had struck him pleasantly on their first visit was there—the big bed with its chintz tester, the chintz-covered sofa, the great wardrobe of polished mahogany—everything that had given the room its air of solid old-fashioned comfort, and restful, rather faded charm. ”

“ Time had already softened the sorrow when Spring came treading its flowery way over the gardens of Hayslope and the country round them. If there were still tears shed at the Hall there was sometimes laughter too, from the young people whose life lay all before them, and on whom no burden of loss could rest forever. ”

“ A Teddy bear had made its appearance in the market-place with an enormous pole, and just as Peggy went out on to the balcony he was balancing it on his head. Then he balanced it on different parts of his body, as he knelt or lay or stooped on the ground. The crowd of dolls who still filled the market-place was absolutely delighted with his performance, and when he shouted out that he would climb up to the top of the pole and balance himself on his head, if somebody would hold it for him, all the gentlemen dolls in the market-place wanted to have the honour of holding the pole for him. ”

“ During the two days I had been at Avignon the spring seemed to have taken that little definite step forward which makes all the difference. In the south, where the sun gets hot long before the trees get green, and so many flowers come forth to greet it, this longed-for arrival of the true spring is apt to be discounted, and comes with less of a thrill than is felt in the north. But the thrill is there, if one's senses are open to it; and I felt it on that morning as I walked to Vaucluse. ”

“ This was to be a home-coming, a token of his forgiveness of her for the trouble she had caused him, a sort of last taste of the everyday life of Kencote, into the intimacy of which she was finally to be received as a daughter of the house. It appealed also to that sense of common human life, which is the fine flower of squiredom. Death levels all; he had no feeling that the cottagers standing at their garden gates were intruding their curiosity, as was felt by Susan's mother for one, who thought this public tramp between a station and a church an outrage on her nobility. ”

“ A cigarette-smoking, loose-tongued, kind-to-everybody creature of the stage! He would rather be at enmity with his son all his days, he would rather see him dead, than married to such a woman.
He walked his horse, not knowing where he was going to, except that he wanted to get as far as possible away from Lady George Dubec, to the outskirts of the crowd and beyond them, his mind in a ferment of disgust. He heard the creak of saddlery and the thud of a horse's hoofs on the hard turf behind him. ”

“ There was a more single-minded devotion in his attitude towards her than in Dick's towards Beatrix. All Dick's life and work would be sweetened by Beatrix's love, but they would be pursued, as the life and work of most men are pursued, for their own ends. Caroline would be the end and aim of Maurice's whole existence.
Grafton was soothed in his spirit by this whole-hearted homage paid to his girl. She was worth every bit of it, but a lover does not always honour his mistress for what she is; it is often enough for him if she is what he wants her to be. ”