Ellen Buckingham Mathews

“ Oh, Wattie, Wattie!" I say, with a shuddering, long-drawn sob, as Simpkins goes away, "could I bear to lose you, my flower, my angel?"
But his face gives me no answer. The black lashes lie heavy and shadowy on the smooth, fair cheeks: he looks as healthy and strong and vigorous as ever he did in his life before, but somehow, somehow, I seem to see the outstretched hand waiting to touch him. . . . In my agony I clasp him so tightly that he awakes, and opens sleepy, misty eyes that, when they fall on me, smile in concert with his lips. ”

“ With the same instinct that has sent all the animals to their hiding-places, I go in, leaving Silvia pacing up and down, with clasped hands, and an intent look of listening upon her face. I am not ashamed to confess it, I am horribly, terribly afraid of a thunderstorm; the dread crack of the awful, invisible hosts above always makes me shiver, and through my eyelids the lightning seems to strike and blind me. After all, I must be a coward, for Jack does not mind it at all; he opens his eyes wide, and never puts his fingers in his ears. ”

“ No wonder Paul found it in his heart to pity her just now.
"Do you know," she says, opening her eyes, "that it is you who should ask forgiveness of me, not I of you? Paul was mine first, do not forget that, and he might have been mine again, if you had not bewitched him; if I stole him from you last, you stole him from me first. How did you make him love you so well?" she cries, with a low wail: "whether with you or away from you, it was always the same—you were the very apple of his eye. Men are not usually so faithful to the absent, or so cold to a beautiful woman who loves them. ”

“ He draws my hand across his lips. How hot they are! how they quiver!
The church bells ring out sweet and cheerful across the fields; the peal rises and falls gaily. Can any sound be sweeter than Christmas bells when one is happy?
"Paul," I say in a whisper, "did you see that wicked paper? I might have known you would not believe it."
"It is cold here," he says; and I lift my head suddenly, and look into his face.
Is this my Paul—gaunt and worn, and pale as death, with deep burning eyes? He looks like a man just risen from a bed of illness. ”

“ But oh! is not that far away, uprising shadowy, and vague, to the fleshly, eager eyes that would see and know? Here are the flowers, we cry, but where are they? And we fold our empty arms closely above our ravening hearts, that will never be satisfied on this side Jordan's wave. Never, ah! never!
What man or woman mourns his dead in the bitter, ice-bound winter as they do in the tender, warm, passionate spring, when every flower and bud and leaf and bird is quick and living, rioting in life, and praising God each after his kind? All things seem to remember. ”

“ The reverent, simple voice ceases for a moment. "And now," he says, drawing my hands gently away from my eyes with one hand, while he gathers me to him with the other, "I have my reward; have I not, my darling?"
Ay! he has his reward, as I recoil from his embrace, slip away out of his arms, and stand looking at him with a measureless suffering in my eyes, with a deadly pallor on lips and cheek. A faint dread comes into his face, and dashes the surpassing brightness out, a terrible suspicion grows in his eyes, and dwells there. ”

“ I feel not so much a miserable, passionate, struggling speck of humanity, as a disembodied spirit that is wandering abroad, searching after, crying after, Paul, my darling—who will never be my lover any more.
All night long I lie awake, hearing ghostly steps coming up the carriage-drive, hearing ghostly hands beating against my window-pane—ghostly voices that whisper in my ear. My ears are strained to the faintest echo of sound in the world without. Shall I not hear him towards the morning coming lightly over the snow to tell me he has returned? ”

“ Had an angel dropped from heaven to tend me, or was my unknown consoler some earthly creature, like myself, who could care for so heart-bare, desolate a man as I? And some touch of the hand, some tone in the whispering voice, by-and-by informed me that this woman, who could lay aside all pride and thought of self, to come to me in my hour of agony, was Silvia, to whom I had dealt out such bitter mercy, and who, it now appeared, had loved me through it all, aye! ”

“ Walks are the plagues of our lives and the terror of our existence. I do not mean those nondescript leisurely rambles that Jack and I are partial to taking, or the saunters that Alice and Milly affect; I mean a three or four-mile race over hill and dale at the governor's heels, that leaves us with aching, blown bodies, sore hearts, and angry souls. We resort to various cowardly and sneaking devices to get out of these excursions, but altogether in vain; severe illness even and a prompt retirement to bed, avail us nothing. ”

“ I cry while yet I am a little way off, "Silvia!" But she never stirs, never lifts her head, or unclasps her hands, or seems to know my voice, while all about her lie the wreck and ruin of the wild hurricane; and a few yards away, an oak struck with lightning stands bare and ghastly, stripped of its bark. I am stepping towards her, when—oh, my God!—the heavens above us open; a great light shines upon our faces, and, cleaving the air, there rushes towards us a great crimson ball of flame. ”

“ George is in love with me, I am in love with Paul, Paul is in love with somebody else: now if she would only come to Silverbridge and fall in love with George, we should be the most amusing partie carrée of lovers that the world ever saw, and our united sighs would form a high wind wherever we went. In time of drought we might go out in a body and water the land, and at all the funerals in the neighbourhood our looks would be far more grief-inspiring than any amount of well-fed, sober-faced mutes. ”

“ My room is vast, and wide, and cool; it looks over garden and pleasaunce, hill and dale, fashioned after nature's rarest and most lovely pattern; and away to the left glitters my splendid old friend, the sea, upon whose face I have not looked for many a long day. I have removed my travelling dress and am drinking tea, when Alice comes in with a rush.
"How delighted I am to see you!" she says; and we fly towards each other and kiss heartily.
"You disgraceful young woman!" I say, holding her at arm's length; "so you have actually got another baby, have you!" ”

“ The 10th of December has come, and the hour of Paul's departure—a black and bitter day—and I am bidding him farewell; not in the old school-room, or by a warm fireside, but out here in the cold, raw winter's day, with the wind blowing wildly, dismally in our faces, with the dead leaves whirling about our feet like a host of restless spirits, with a dull, hard, cold sky above, and a desolate sweep of barren landscape stretching out before us. ”

“ The train comes snorting in—how sickeningly hot it looks!—and somehow I am bundled into it. As it is starting, I lean out of the window, and, regardless of porters and his own disgust, I hug Jack round the neck with despairing energy and a splashing shower of tears. "Good-bye!" I cry, waving my wet rag and scarlet nose out of the window as long as he is in sight; then I tumble back into the carriage, plump into the arms of a nervous, spindle-shanked, elderly gentleman, who shoots me off his knees with such vigour that I take an involuntary seat on the opposite side. ”

“ Skipworth closes his book and we all rise, I look across the church and we meet each other's eyes fully and fairly, face to face at last. The dawning look of triumph wavers and dies before the cold steady scorn of mine. Ay, Madam Silvia! though you stand there, his wife, and I stand here lonely, forsaken—though your words have come true and you have got your heart's desire—you are a cheat, an interloper: it is I who am conqueror, not you. You stole Paul's body and name from me: but his heart, his love, his life are mine, and you know it. ”

“ Talk of the proud contempt of spirits risen! it is the living who have the best of it, and despise the dead. If I had died to-day, the women who hate me would have said, 'Poor creature!' he would have said, 'Poor Silvia.' I should have been poor Silvia, a weak loving fool to all eternity to him. I will live!—live to punish the scorn and coldness that has dared repay such love as mine—live to make him rue the day he made Silvia Fleming stoop to pray in vain. ”

“ I am sorry that I shall never grow any more—never measure my back against the school-room wall to see if my head is any nearer the notch that marks Jack's height—never look anxiously in the glass to see if time brings me less ugliness as she brings more inches (for at eighteen one is able to form a pretty tolerable estimate of what one is going to be like for the rest of one's days) —never go donkey riding, or pig-nut hunting, or shrimp getting, any more—never love bull's-eyes, blackberries, and treacle tarts with the exceeding love that I knew for them of yore. ”

“ The calm that lay on me, heavy as the snow on the once throbbing earth at my feet, has broken up now, and a wild fever of agony possesses me—a breathless longing to touch his hand, to speak one word of love and comfort to him—and I may not, dare not, though we are young, loving, together, though not a yard of space lies between us. ”

“ Have you ever lived in a house, reader, where the merest chance sound, the bang of a door, the sound of a loud voice, or a distant noise makes you start up, your nerves tingling, your heart beating, your body trembling, while an instantaneous photograph of falling chairs, flying crockery, broken bell-ropes, and dancing china, with a dervish dancing in the midst of the confusion, presents itself vividly to your eyes. ”

“ This first of September has come upon us in kingly state, with mantle of azure and broad level sunbeams, with soft wooing breath and dew-spangled grass and leaf, and as I lean out of my window in the still early freshness of the morning, and look abroad at the beauty of hill and valley, land and sea, I marvel to myself whether the pretty brown birds are up and about, preening themselves in the sunshine, tasting of the gleaming dew, as happy and careless and ignorant to-day as they have been all through their short, merry, pleasant young lives. ”

“ These valleys are strangely cool and deep and silent; not a sound breaks the stillness save the fretting of the water against the stones, or the infrequent song of the birds—clearer, sweeter here, I always think, than anywhere else. To me these valleys always seem to have remained just as they left God's hand at the creation of the world, they are so fresh, so pure, so untrodden with their vernal shades and dim, cool alleys. A deep peace broods ever over them, and the weary, struggling, sinful world seems very far away. ”

“ Paul is loyal even to his buried love. He does not say, "She is a coquette to the heart's core; she can never really care for any one." And I honour him as he holds his peace and says nothing.
It is a glorious afternoon. The hum of insects and birds is all about us; the ripe earth seems to hold the year's full perfection in her lap, like a gold flower that is wrought to its uttermost beauty. ”

“ The minute bell has almost done ringing as he begins to speak; it ceases and with the last stroke every joy and good and hope the world contains has died out to me for ever and ever . . . . and this is my white, merry Christmas morning!
Not a sound breaks the silence as we look in each other's deathly faces; then his mouth opens, and a terrible curse breaks from his lips and wanders out over the desolate stirless land; and my heart begins to move again, and sluggish life to creep into my body. ”

“ Vasher's face is so calm and still and indifferent as he leans over the gate, blowing a smoke wreath up into the clear blue azure above us, that I inly marvel whether he were not joking a while ago when he spoke as though the past had proved more bitter than sweet to him.
The sound of hoofs strikes sharply on my ears; looking up I see a horsewoman approaching at a foot pace, her head is bent, the reins are hanging loosely from her hand, her face is almost hidden. ”

“ We are eating strawberries, that, to my fancy, always smell and look so much more delicious than they taste. A jerk of papa's thumb presently dismisses us with our mouths half filled, and we walk decorously past his chair, but once outside the shut door, scamper away like the wind to vent the spirits that have been so tightly bottled up for the last two hours. We all go our different ways—Alice and Milly to stroll about the garden, Dolly and Alan to some mysterious haunt known only to themselves, Jack and I to our birds and beasts. ”

“ I have never written very much about mother, but she is as much the life of her children as the air they breathe; whoever or whatever we love we always place them "after mother." As I give her a hearty hug, I become aware of a pleased smile on her face, that not only lurks in every pretty corner, but covers it as with a garment in a most unequivocal manner. ”

“ Something has gone from you in my eyes that will never come back. Though I married you I should have no respect for you; in my eyes you would be no more than a beautiful toy. The old worship is dead, and it will never come back. And though you think you love me now, a woman who betrays one man will betray another; and it would not please me to see my wife's eyes roving among my friends in search of admiration. ”

“ They are neither very young, nor very old: they hover on that chilly neutral-grey border-land that divides the young maid from the old one; they look as if they had never had a lover, or a sorrow, or a joy, or a hope, or a disappointment. I wonder what it feels like to have a torpid existence like that? Even the poor flies get wakened up and warmed by the sun sometimes.
A stolid British matron sits on my right, with a red account-book in her hand filled with rows of figures that should make her eyes ache. ”

“ The night is very lovely, more like an August one than September, the air is so warm, and the perfume of the flowering myrtle wanders abroad so sweetly. Down yonder, by the trout stream, the great masses of foliage lie dark and stirless; there is not a puff of wind to rock the pigeon-cotes hung aloft in the boughs; there is no sound of insect, bird, or beast, to ruffle the silence, only the far-off swish of the sea as softly laps the shore. ”

“ To Alice's sisterly looks and asides of inquiry I turn blind eyes and a blank countenance, and presently, having guided the cherub's steps past the gold and silver fish, whose watery abode he evinces a rooted determination to share, I get away, and upstairs to my own room, and lock the door. As I kneel down by my bedside, and press my knees hard against the floor, I do not say to myself that an exquisite hope that has sprung up, at unawares, in my heart is dead, slain by a sharp, swift death that, maybe, is more merciful than a haltering, lingering one. ”

“ Out in the garden the grass is all silvered over with dew, and the flowers are opening their beautiful eyes one by one; all night they have stood pale and still, but now, with the first quivering beams of the sun, they have awakened, and stirred, and trembled, turning eagerly towards their king, who is rising in such pomp of amber glory out of the great eastern plains of translucent sea-green sky. ”

“ It is too hot for that, for Jack loves his ease as well as anybody else. I wonder if any apples have fallen from the quarantine tree? I turn my steps towards it and look about; there is not one on the grass. I cast my eyes upwards, and mark with approving eyes the rosy fruit hanging so stirlessly on the boughs. If only a breeze would spring up, and give those boughs a gentle shake, down would fall the apples at my feet, but the sky is one hard, fierce glare, and there is not the ghostliest shadow of a breeze abroad on the land. ”

“ We are standing by the old stile where we first met, and our faces are not gay and warm as they were then, but pale and cold, his with the sorriness of a man who hates to part with the thing he loves best on earth, I with the restless misery that only a woman's heart knows who sees her treasure go forth into the world, and knows not if it will come safely back to her. ”