Mrs. George Corbett

“ The blood of William Trace would, of a surety, have run cold if he could have seen the baleful look in the eye which was now peering down at him as he unconsciously betrayed his dual identity by divesting himself of the thick wig and beard, which he found hot and uncomfortable.
Chancing, as he vaulted into his bunk, to glance at his means of inspecting the next berth, he noticed, to his horror, that the card-board disc was not in its place. To repair the omission was the work of a moment. But he could not so soon recover from the shock which his blunder had caused him. ”

“ I came out here as Madame Kominski’s companion. Thanks to her goodness, I had as many social advantages given me as if I had been a sprig of nobility, instead of being merely the daughter of a poor country curate, who had found it necessary to leave home to earn a livelihood. How kind fate has been to me! I was scarcely here before I won the love of the man who is now my husband. I have surely all that woman can desire. I love and am beloved, and I revel in unlimited wealth and comfort. ”

“ Now Alice certainly loved her father very much. But she is not exactly a girl to sacrifice herself without knowing the reason why. Her character is by no means as superficial and yielding as Mrs Wemysson imagines, and she vows that if she may not marry me, she will marry nobody, least of all this Mr Jackson, who is elderly, thin, bald, waspish-looking, and of altogether forbidding exterior. His face is also so indicative of craft one instinctively distrusts him. ”

“ Fancy going through a city, anywhere in Europe, in our own days, without seeing either a beggar or a poverty stricken individual of any sort. Dirt, squalor, drunkenness, profane language, sickness, rags, and a thousand other miseries, meet us at every turn in the poorer quarters of our big cities. But not one of these things did I note in New Amazonia. Purity, peace, health, harmony, and comfort reigned in their stead, and presented a picture such as I had never hoped to gaze upon in this world. ”

“ His defence was considered feeble, his guilt indisputable, and he was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.
Five years’ penal servitude! Is any pen powerful enough to picture all that it means to a man like Harley Riddell? One day on the summit of bliss, and the next in the abyss of degradation and despair! One day revelling in love and happiness; the next loaded with misery, desperation, and isolation from all his beloved ones! It is terrible for those who are guilty of crime. But for those who are innocent—God help them! ”

“ I used to imagine myself an ardent lover of nature. During this voyage I sometimes wondered if I had turned Goth or Vandal. For I no longer took the all-absorbing delight in my surroundings that had hitherto accompanied me when among fresh and unconventional scenery. The ever-changing panorama of views of first one country and then another, alternated by the numerous islands which are dotted about the Baltic, would have aroused my enthusiasm at any other time. That they did not do so on this occasion must be laid to Count Sergius Volkhoffsky’s charge. ”

“ VII. Madame Duchesne’s Garden Party
“It cost more than two hundred pounds, Miss Bell. But that is not the worst of the matter. My aunt stipulated that I should always wear it as a perpetual reminder of her past kindness and her future good intentions, and if she misses it I shall lose favour with her altogether. To lose Miss Mainwaring’s favour means to lose the splendid fortune which is hers to bequeath, so you see how very serious the matter is for me. It is, indeed, little short of life and death, for poverty would kill me now. For God’s sake do your best for me.” ”

“ Our women have proved their capacity to govern wisely and well. Our Constitution has found imitators, proof positive that others regard our system with approval. Yet nowhere do we meet with such health and prosperity as in our country, for man’s political influence has in all ages proved corruptive and retrogressive. Our health is perfect, and we know that it is to the beneficent rule of our women that we owe our strength of mind and body. It would be suicidal on our part to wish to revert to a state of things which insured us nothing so much as sickly bodies. ”

“ Neither have I forgotten a speech that his brother Hilton uttered last night. He said:—‘Heaven helping me, I will leave no stone unturned to run the author of all this misery to earth. He may be very cunning, but I defy him to elude my watchfulness, when once I have set eyes upon him. The mystery is not so great as it perhaps seems to some. The onus of criminality rests between very few people, and I have good reasons for believing that my suspicions are centring themselves round the right man. ”

“ You see, Miss Alice Wemysson and I have known each other since we were children, and I can hardly remember the time when I did not dream of love in a cottage with Alice. Yes, it was really to be love in a cottage at first, for a more ambitious prospect did not disclose itself to us until lately. My father has too many claims upon his purse to be able to give his sons more towards a start in life than a good education. And, until he died, no one dreamed that Mr Wemysson possessed more than a modest competence. ”

“ Of course I urged my own unfitness for the honor of becoming his wife. But my feeble remonstrances were so vigorously combated that at last I was able to believe myself to be as truly beloved as the most beautiful and perfect woman could wish.
There was now only one possible hindrance to my perfect happiness. Belle’s secret must not be divulged in its entirety. But I could not accept an honorable man without warning him that possible disgrace—deserved disgrace—threatened my family. Disgrace, moreover, of so deadly a nature that a nation would recoil in horror from the contemplation of it. ”

“ Sometimes we hear of some woman who, driven either by lack of education, or by circumstances, has committed some outrage upon society which calls for terrible punishment. Perhaps she has been unfaithful to a wicked incarnation of lust and cruelty, who has for years indulged in liaisons of which all the world has been cognisant. She has had to put up with incredible slights and indignities, but as her husband has been cunning enough to refrain from beating and starving her, the law, as made and administered by men, allows her no escape from her irksome marital bonds. ”

“ Hilton is dead, and Harley’s last hope is gone.”
“Hilton has been murdered,” said Annie. “But Harley’s last hope has not gone. I still count for something, and I will never rest until I have tracked and denounced the man to whom we owe all our misery.”
“Hilton has been murdered,” said Mr. Cory. “But the world is not so very big after all, and I swear that his murder shall not go unavenged.” ”

“ A few minutes later the hut had changed occupants, and May Morris, hot and excited after a victorious game, was pouring tea for the tennis players out of an urn which a servant had placed on the table, while the young men were handing the bread and butter plates round, amid a chorus of laughter and merry rapartee. I alone sat unobserved, lonely, and now once more thoroughly miserable, heedless of aught else save my own bitter reflections, and feeling as incapable of moving as I had done during the conversation between Lady Smythe and Miss Grindle. ”

“ I would impress upon all young women the folly of permitting my sex to arrogate to itself the right to be the first to speak of matters amorous or matrimonial. I would scout the idea of women being paid less wages than men, when the work done by both is identically the same in quality and quantity. I would insist not merely upon woman’s electoral rights, but upon woman’s equal right with man to govern her country. ”

“ So the great steamer forged ahead, leaving the stranger in its wake, and it was already well astern, when suddenly a long, mournful howl was heard, thrilling every soul on board with a feeling of horror. Once more eyes and glasses were brought into requisition, and then it was seen that a large dog, or, rather, the emaciated skeleton of one, was tottering to and fro on the poop of the dismasted wreck, and howling forth a pitiful appeal for succour to the possible saviours whom, in the semi-obliviousness of exhaustion and starvation, he had failed to see when nearer. ”

“ It grinds the people into nothingness as remorselessly as the millstones crush the wheat with which they are fed. But the day will come when even that mighty thing of evil will be numbered among the curses of the past, and when wealth and happiness are no longer all absorbed by the thin crust of society, while all beneath it is one mass of rotten, seething corruption and misery. ”

“ This time I was about to attempt a reply, when I was struck dumb with awe and astonishment, and my companion, who had found his own eyes sufficiently powerful to take in my appearance, hastily fixed a single eyeglass into position, and gazed in open-mouthed wonder at an apparition which approached us.
And he might well gaze, for of a surety the creature which we saw was something worth looking at, and a specimen of a race the like of which we had never seen before. “It is a woman,” I thought. “A goddess!” the masher declared, and for a time I could not feel sure that he was mistaken. ”

“ It is but a question of time, for, if there is a God in Heaven, the guilty coward who really stole those diamonds shall be brought to justice!’ Annie, when I heard the fervour with which those words were uttered, and marked the deliberate determination of Hilton Riddell’s mien, I shared his confidence in the future, and resolved to afford him every facility for achieving his purpose. He will need money, for without money very little can be done. For your sake, my darling, I will give all I can to prove your lover’s innocence. ”

“ Madame Kominski spoke in a low voice, but with a painful concentration of purpose and a nervous clasping and unclasping of her hands which could only be the result of extreme agitation and dread.
“Listen,” she said once more. “I belong to a family which has given many martyrs to the cause of freedom, and from my earliest youth I was taught to hate that merciless Juggernaut, the Russian autocracy, with all its vile ramifications of pillage and murder. Pah! Curse it! What does government do for us? It revels in luxury and splendors drained from the life-blood of millions of groaning victims. ”

“ Could anything be more idiotic or paradoxical? And is it to be wondered at that it became necessary for men to prove their vaunted superiority? And that they were gradually impelled, from sheer fear of the future, to grant the demands of the sex which was rapidly learning to estimate itself at its true value?
No struggle recorded in history can compare with the fight against oppression which was now carried on by the brave and noble ancestresses of whom we have such good reason to be proud. ”

“ And so it will go on, until the rights of an oppressed people win the recognition that is demanded. You feel horrified at the idea of one man being turned over to avenging justice. How can you put his life in the scale against the lives and souls of the thousands who are the daily victims of governmental oppression and official cruelty? ‘Vox Populi, vox Dei’ is our watchword, and God and the People shall not always lift up their voice in vain!”
Oh, how noble my husband looked as he thus eloquently vindicated the right of the people to insist upon justice! ”

“ By heaven, I wish I had really the chance I fancied I had of winning this superb creature. Fancy having a gambling-house, with a wife like that at the head of affairs! Why, there would be no end of a fortune to be made. But it is useless to think of it, if she is really Annie Cory. If! Why, there is a doubt yet, in spite of appearances. I can’t see what her motive in making love to me can be, after all. What could she gain by it, so long as I stayed in Spain? It strikes me that I had better not be too rash. I will watch and wait. If my suspicions are unfounded, so much the better. ”

“ It seems to me that your men must be insufferable cads, and your women nothing less than fools. Why do they permit such an anomalous state of things? Can they not see that this is only another of the countless meshes with which masculine egotism has woven the net of slavery and oppression? The man who can look upon a true woman’s love for himself with anything but respect and grateful sympathy is nothing better than a cur, who is himself unworthy of the esteem of all honourable people. ”

“ Having once seen and known Sergius Volkhoffsky, I could but marvel how I could ever have contemplated marrying a man old enough to be my grandfather. Having arrived at this state of mind, my recollections of my past disappointments lost all their bitterness, and I could but feel thankful that my passion for Sergius, vain as it seemed, was not of an unlawful nature, since I had as yet made vows of allegiance to no other man. ”

“ As we acquire knowledge of every kind, and learn more and more to fathom the secrets which nature has so long guarded with such jealousy, so much nearer shall we be towards the ultimate perfection of the spirit which assimilates most nearly to Life-giver herself, and constitutes our ideal of final bliss. After the death of our material form, we still strive to reach our desired goal, but our progress, when disembodied, is not so rapid as while still inhabiting our earthly casing, and our ultimate arrival at the zenith of wisdom, purity, and bliss ”

“ When you pick this up from your dressing-table, the man who murdered his own father to gratify your ambition and his own greed will be numbered among the dead. But for you, who could coolly plan a murder, and yet not be haunted by remorse, life still holds many possibilities. You are now the Countess of Greatlands. I have enabled you to gratify your ambition. In return, you can make expiation for your own guilt by devoting your gifts to the interests and benefit of others. This I pray you to do, repentant sinner that I am! This I implore you to do, madly-loving husband that I am! ”

“ It is on record that a judge, when a woman was being tried for the presumed murder of her husband, dwelt with such horror upon the most dreadful fact that she had been unfaithful to her husband, and proved so conclusively that a woman who could be unfaithful was capable of every crime under the sun, that the jury, remembering that their interests as husbands must be protected, sentenced the woman to be hanged, although medical witnesses showed that she could not be a murderess, seeing that the cause of her husband’s death was a drug of which he was proved to have been a systematic partaker. ”

“ When I remembered how truly artistic was my lover’s temperament, it seemed incredible to me that he could be perfectly contented with a wife whose chief function in society seemed to be to act as a foil to those women whom nature had endowed more liberally with outward charms. And if the time were to come when it would become incumbent upon me to recognize the conviction that Sergius had mistaken his sentiments for me, and that he regretted his precipitancy, how would I be able to bear my life? ”

“ When we reflect upon the enormous sums which are collected for poor rates in England, it is easy to conceive the vast social improvement the same amount of money and labour could produce, if spent in the education and fair start in life of our thousands of miserable and squalid gutter-birds, who, instead of being all their life-long a continual source of expense to the nation, would grow up respectable and respected units of society, abhorring the life of shame and degradation which they and only too many others look upon at present as their natural birthright. ”

“ Dora, you must take me to the Grange, and let me sleep with you one night. Then we’ll watch for the ghost, and perhaps we may solve the mystery of the treasure and become rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. And then I’ll write the ghost’s history. Mr. Stoach is great on ghosts lately, but our ghost tale will be much better and much more thrilling than any he has got hold of. I wonder if there are heaps of rubies and pearls and diamonds and sapphires among the treasure. It always is the case. Oh, won’t they be gorgeous! Dora, we must go not later than to-morrow night! ”

“ The new Earl of Greatlands, being tender and pitiful, would have established his father’s bride of an hour in the dower-house, surrounded by such comforts as she is capable of enjoying. But to this plan neither my father nor Lady Elizabeth were willing to consent, and she still lives at Courtney Grange, one of the saddest wrecks of humanity it is possible to meet with. Interest in her surroundings she takes none, but will sit and babble by the hour of the time when she was a little one, and had no greater trouble than to please an indulgent governess. ”

“ I would rather die at once.”
“My poor child! you speak out of the ignorance born of residence in a free and happy country,” said Sergius sadly. “Could you but faintly realize the horror and misery that oppress the subjects of the czar, you would pray with us for the abolition of such a monstrous anomaly as a fabulously wealthy ruler at the head of a nation that is ground down to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation. While incredible sums are exacted for the support of a prodigal court, each year sees a huge holocaust of the victims of starvation and oppression! ”