John Oliver Hobbes

“ There were days, no doubt, and weeks when Orange found every counsel, a mockery, and every law, a paradox. The strife between the flesh and the spirit went on in his life as it does in all lives, but he was one who held, that, whatever the issue of it all might be, a man must be a man while he may—losing himself neither in the whirl of passion nor in the enervating worlds of reverie, but accepting the fulness of existence—its pains, vanities, pleasures, cares, sorrows,—with a fighter's courage and the fortitude of an immortal soul. ”

“ It seemed to the half-crazed man a Presence—a host of Presences swarming in at the windows, down the chimney, and gathering round him.
"I do not fear you," he said; "there is no worse torment than living. Where you are, Hell must be, and you are everywhere. Pain is nothing; everything is nothing ; You are nothing. But—damn you—I will believe in you if you can wake"—he pointed to the empty bed—"if you can wake one of us."
"I cannot," said a sorrowful voice. Jenyns rubbed his eyes, and burst out laughing. ”

“ Danby, tartly.
"If I was a woman," murmured Spalding, in a weak voice, "the man doesn't live that I would sacrifice my peace of mind for. Men are not worth so much thought. The devotion of women is something awful to think of."
"It is," sighed Luffy, whose wife had a jealous temperament, "it is."
"I can say this much," said Mrs. Danby: "when Miss Warcop marries she will not choose a conceited, self-seeking, cold-hearted, unfeeling half-a-man like Sir Ventry! I would not look at him—no, not if he draped me in diamonds from head to foot! Mr. Wiche is the man for her." ”

“ A great flame, successive flames, of terror swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How would Robert bear it? That he would act a noble and true part she could not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in anticipation, the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. ”

“ I am beginning to agree with many of your views on the soul, and death, and marriage, and things of that order!"
"Ah! never trust a man's opinion on any subject until he has been in love," said Wiche. "Love is the only thing which can make life as clear as noon-day."
"Then I suppose you still find it dark and perplexing! Dear me! how idly I talk. I meant to say— but would it be impertinent? I was only thinking that a day, an hour, perhaps a few words might make all the difference in your ideas!" "If I told you," said Wiche, "that sleeping and waking I heard but one voice, saw but one face." ”

“ He does not love the other woman."
"My dear Cynthia, you forget. You are the other woman—she is his wife."
"I don't believe that God thinks she is his wife!"
"People are so fond of quoting God, when the Law is inconvenient! And when God is inconvenient, they quote the Law."
"There is no law, either of God or man, to forbid my loving Godfrey. You may cut off your hand or pluck out your eye: but love is the very soul of you—you can't touch it."
"Dear! dear!" said Lady Theodosia; "if women once begin to talk about their souls they're done for. ”

“ Women like Lady Mallinger have to die young in order to be understood: then—and then not always—some onlooker more discerning than the others will see in the cold body some trace of a fiery spirit too ardent and too restless for mortality. Alas! poor soul. Seeking the highest, best, most beautiful, and purest—and finding a Saville Rookes.
The modern is always an unwilling slave to sentiment [7] : if he find himself captivated by a romantic love or a sublime ideal he accepts his state in the shamefaced and hopeless certainty that his common-sense will one day come to the rescue. ”

“ Provence sat with his face half in shadow—there was something which reminded her of a portrait by Velasquez in the pose of his head and the light on his features. What she chose to call the artistic craving in her nature was satisfied. She could call him picturesque. Picturesque, and with a Future! She drew a sigh of relief, and under pretence of steadying a rose which was half-falling from its vase on a table close by him (for with her, even impulse was well-tempered with a sense of the effective) sat down by his side. ”

“ Wiche was uncertain how to reply, when she herself, brushing the tears from her cheeks, asked him a question.
"Why?" she said, "why are you not going to marry Lady Mallinger?"
"I want to tell you about that," he said. "I am afraid there is not time to tell the whole story now. But Lady Mallinger discovered that she had made a mistake, she loved some one else, and I—I have been such a fool, Teresa, such a fool! I do not know whether I love you or not. I only know that I hate my life when you are not near me!" ”

“ A strange, double sensation of delight and forgetfulness surged in them both. All knowledge of disturbing human influences, of the fret, and discord, and inquietude of common existence seemed trivial and even false. They looked with confidence into each other's eyes, as though they were the sole inhabitants of some brilliant, inaccessible star set far above the earth and its evil. They were to remain there a month—one month at least—and after that would trials, or labour, or sorrow deluge in bitterness the sweet, eternal recollection of such days? ”

“ Jane had a longing to be thought pretty. Her ideal was the sweet portrait of a young lady (on porcelain) which hung in a photographer's window she knew of, and which represented a divine creature with blue eyes, pink cheeks, and blonde hair, waved and parted Madonna-wise. If she might only look like that! She had a fatal admiration for the conventional type angelic, being neither old enough nor experienced enough to know, that holiness occasionally treads the human countenance on crow's feet. ”

“ But as you are not his wife, your influence is only—can only be—dangerous. I don't pretend to be a good woman: you are much better, much stronger than I am really, and I want you to be always better. I—once—had an influence; I did not use it well. When I thought I was most proving my love, I was most thinking of myself."
Cynthia coloured painfully and began to tremble.
"Sometimes," said Lady Theodosia, "a woman can best show her love for a man by leaving him. In some cases it is the only thing she can do. Be brave, Cynthia." ”

“ I am sure that the supreme happiness of a woman's life is to devote herself to the man who loves her: to be his friend, his ideal, his good angel!"
Teresa smiled bitterly. "And the supreme difficulty of a woman's life," she said, "is to find the man who desires such devotion, who has an ideal, who wants a good angel! The best of men only ask us to be for ever young and for ever pretty: let your conscience go to the dogs but keep your freshness. Virtue never yet atoned for wrinkles!"
"There I cannot agree with you," said Lady Mallinger. ”

“ In those last sharp moments of introspection she had gained such a knowledge of suffering that a fire seemed to have consumed her vision of life, reducing it to a frightful desert of eternal woe and unavailing sacrifice. Partially stunned, and partially blinded by misery, she felt the awful helplessness and pain of what is sometimes called the second birth, a crisis in all human development when the first true realisation comes that the soul is a stranger, a rebel, strong as eternity, weak as the flesh, free as the illimitable air. ”

“ Sara, in black velvet and sable, with ostrich plumes and golden beads, with flashing eyes and a gipsy's flush, with all the self-command of a woman trained for society, living for it and in it, with all the self-assurance of a woman in an unassailable position, handsome, rich, flattered, spoiled, domineering, and unscrupulous, with all the insolence of an egoism which no human force could humiliate and no human antagonist terrify, Sara seemed the one who was destined to succeed superbly in the war of life. ”

“ A woman who is really living an immoral life always feels, like a condemned criminal, that the verdict is, if hard to bear, certainly just. But to Sophia, conscious of her innocence and only too proud to be the wife of the man she loved and honoured above all others, the mud pellets aimed at her reputation, stuck like knives in her heart. That she was suffering for an absurd reason has nothing to do with it: death in grotesque circumstances is none the less death, and the martyr to a fool's cause is still a martyr. ”

“ Ah, my dear Orange, watch the sky and you will learn the hearts of men. Observe the changing light, the clouds driven by the wind, the glimpses of pure blue, the sudden blackness, the startling brilliancy, and then—the monotonous grey. They seem too hard for me, at times. The clash between ideas and interests makes our inheritance a grim battlefield, and there are moments of mortification when one may feel tempted to sell it—not for a mess of pottage, but for the promise of a mess of pottage. Tempted, I said. There is always a course left, if you have the courage to face it. ”

“ He smiled, and was evidently fully alive to what the world called the cussedness of the divine Sophia: only he did not call it cussedness; it was to him the last magnificent touch to her colossal spirit.
"But when do you try her patience?" said Lady Hyde-Bassett. "If every woman of genius had such a husband! I do not wonder that she worships the ground you walk on: that is a secret which she cannot keep. Oh, when a man is unselfish, no woman—not even the best——can compare with him. Splendid! splendid! I have only known one man like you, and that was Sir Benjamin." ”

“ The result of great self-delusion for so long a period was a condition of mind in which she was practically unable to distinguish between candour and disingenuousness. Any appearance of deceit—which she regarded as wrong in itself—always excited her scorn, but desperation now urged a step which might lead, she thought, to much good or much evil. That it could lead to more evil than a loveless marriage was not, however, to be feared. She started from the house with feverish cheeks, a beating pulse, and a new strange consciousness of power—power over herself, her fate, the world. ”

“ You may tell me that love is stronger than death—than destruction—than the world. You will soon see that it is not stronger than scandal. Your love will bring him nothing but evil. You will be his stumbling-block."
"If I thought that, I would kill myself," said Cynthia.
Lady Theodosia waved her hand impatiently. " I thought you prided yourself on your courage. Meet your folly and conquer it. You will tell me that Godfrey is a man not easily influenced; that he of his own free will loved you, and always will love you; that he never has loved and never will love any one else. ”

“ The bitter pleasures of a conscience which caresses its worst burden were the only real ones of her daily existence. When she could say, at the end of the day, “I have fooled them all: they think I am happy, I am not: they think Reckage amuses me, he doesn't. They think I delight in these dull dinners and balls, I hate them,” a sort of exultation—the pride of a spirit singing under torture—would fill her whole being. All youth that is strong and thoughtful has much of this instinct of dissimulation. ”

“ Provence rose from his chair and began to pace the floor.
"If I could tell you what I meant by happiness," he said, "I should not want it. I have no pretty talent for definitions. There are some men, I know, who can analyze their first love and wonder with Hume if their passion is the appetite for generation sandwiched between the appreciation for beauty and a generous kindness. They can reduce their God to a diagram and their emotions to a system. If that is philosophy, I have not the first makings of a philosopher. But I know this: I cannot be happy merely because I am not unhappy. ”

“ Parflete would not waver or seem less exquisite under this discipline. Their dream of love would become unparadised. It would gain a sadness, a melancholy, a note of despair hard to endure and most difficult to repress. Reckage had no transcendentalism in his own philosophy: he divided men into two classes—those who read, and those who could not stand, Dante. He included himself among the latter with a frankness at once astonishing and welcome even to numbers who thought him, in most matters, a hypocrite. The hold of the world was growing daily stronger upon him. ”

“ It is the music of the world."
"It is a pity that it goes so often out of tune!" said Lilian. "Oh," she added suddenly, "our life is on so small a scale: everything seems so petty. Are women only born to fall in love with men like Saville Rookes? Why do we do these things?"
"Because there is nothing else for us to do, I suppose," said Felicia.
"But think of all these clever women who paint pictures, and make speeches, and write for the papers, and sing, and act, and play. Ah, how grand it must be to have something serious to think of!" ”

“ She knew that Reckage had never shown so much feeling. Yet had she not given her word to Reckage? Was it not irrevocable? Was Rennes behaving well in speaking out—too late? Was it too late? A torrent of questions poured into her mind. She dragged off her gloves, and spread out her hands, which were slim and white, and stared at her sapphire engagement ring.
“A weak man submits to destiny,” said Rennes, “a strong one makes his own. It is what we think of ourselves which determines our fate. If I regard myself as a poor creature, I shall, no doubt, act the part of a poor creature. ”

“ Wiche laughed.⁠"She has seen a great deal of the world," he said, " and I have often been struck by her extraordinary, almost terrible common-sense. She may have a certain amount of sentimentalism in her brain, but at heart she is cold and critical. This ache to be amused, this longing to hear music in the air, to see beauty on all sides, to find life one ever-new, yet ever-abiding pleasure, these are the fierce, never-gratified desires of those who love only themselves. ”

“ You are so human, Sara. I would far sooner kill you than write poetry to you. You are life—not literature. That little thing with shining hair and a porcelain face is for dreams. Of course, he will always love her—after a fashion. He might even compare you with her and find her your [271] superior in every way—except as a woman. We may be at moments poets, at moments saints, but the greater part of the time, a man is a man. And you are no friend for a man. Pensée Fitz Rewes might answer well enough; she has had sorrow, she has two children, she has a gentle, maternal air. ”