Adeline Sergeant

“ He began to display a very real and strong affection for Nan. She had found the way to his heart—though she little suspected it—through his very weaknesses: she had conquered the man she loved by means of his selfishness. The worldly advantages she conferred took his nature by storm. It was not a high-minded way of contracting an engagement for life; but, as a fragrant flower may easily grow upon a very unpleasant dunghill, so the sweet flower of a true, pure love began to flourish on the heap of refuse with which the good in Sydney's nature had been overlaid. ”

“ Neither was it money that he wished them to acquire, save as an adjunct; no man had more aristocratic prejudices against trade and pride of purse than Mr. Campion; but he wanted them—and especially he wanted Sydney—to show intellectual superiority to the rest of the world, and by that superiority to gain the good things of life. And of all these good things, the best was fame—the fame that means success.
Thus, from the very beginning of Sydney's life, his father sedulously cultivated ambition in his soul, and taught him that failure meant disgrace. ”

“ Hartley, unknown to her, kept her in ignorance of things which she ought to have known. She had refused to face it, pressed it out of her heart, made believe to herself that the chapter of her life which had been written in London was closed and forgotten—and how nearly she had succeeded! But she had not quite succeeded. It was there still—the memory, the hope, the pity, the sacrifice.
She must not cheat herself any longer, if she would be an honest and honorable woman. She would face the truth and not palter with it, now that the crisis had really come. What was Alan Walcott to her? ”

“ No!—there is one, at least, who does not believe you guilty of this crime!"
"Lettice, darling!"
"I hear no voice but that of Alan, calling to me from his prison cell." She sprang to her feet and stood as if listening to a far-off call.
"Lettice, for Heaven's sake, do not give way to delusions. Think of those who love you best, who will be in despair if ill should befall you."
"Yes, I will think of those who love me best! I must go to him. Dear Mrs. Hartley, I am not losing my senses, but the feeling is so strong upon me that I have no power to resist it. I must go to Alan." ”

“ But when such a man, gradually and with difficulty, has found a pearl among women, gentle and true, intellectual yet tenderly human, with whom his instinct tells him he might spend the rest of his life in honor and peace, he is ready in the truest sense to go and sell all that he has in order to secure the prize. Nothing has any further value for him in comparison with her, and all the roots of his nature lay firm hold upon her. Alas for this man if his mature love is given in vain, or if, like Alan Walcott, he is debarred from happiness by self-imposed fetters which no effort can shake off! ”

“ For the man with whom she had gone away from Lettice's house she was willing to lay down her life if he would but accept the gift. And when he seemed loath to accept it, Milly became conscious of a heart-sick shame and pain which had already often brought tears that were not unworthy to her pretty childish eyes. The strength of her own feelings frightened her sometimes: she did not know how to resist the surging tide of passion and longing and regret that rose and fell within her breast, as uncontrollable by her weak will as the waves by the Danish king of history. ”

“ Alan will live down this horrible accusation and punishment—he will not give way, but will keep his self-respect, and will do infinitely better work for all the torture he has gone through. And our hope must be this—that when the world sees him stronger than ever, stronger in every way, and doing stronger work in his vocation, it will come to believe in him, one by one, beginning with us, until his vindication is brought about, not by legal proof, which is impossible, but by the same feeling and conviction which to-day only draw two weak women to the side of an unhappy and discredited man. ”

“ Why had her heart grown cold when she heard that Alan Walcott's wife was still alive? Why had her thought been so bitter when she told herself that she had no right to give the man her sympathy? Why had the light and warmth and color of life departed as soon as she knew that the woman whom he had married, however unworthy she might be, was the only one who could claim his fidelity? Alas, the answer to her questions was only too apparent. The pain which it cost her to awake from her brief summer's dream was her first admonition that she had dreamed at all. ”

“ She was a puzzle to her sister-in-law, who had been used to find in Nan a never-failing spring of brightness and gentle mirth. Lady Pynsent began to see signs of something more than a physical ailment. She said one day, more seriously than usual,
"I hope, Nan, you have not quarreled with your husband."
"Oh no, no," said Nan, starting and flushing guilty; "I never quarrel with Sydney."
"I fancied there was something amiss. Take my advice, Nan, and don't stand on your dignity with your husband. A man is ready enough to console himself with somebody else if his wife isn't nice to him. ”

“ Campion was in no way surprised at his success.
From that time forward none of the Campions ever dreamed of failure in connection with Sydney's efforts. He certainly did not dream of failure for himself. He had that sublime confidence which swells the heart of every young man in the flush of his first victory. We laugh in the middle age at the ambitions which we nursed at twenty; but we did not laugh when the divine breath was in us, and when our faith removed mountains of difficulty from our path.
Sydney's career at Cambridge was one long triumph. ”

“ I should like to live in a cottage and be quite poor and bake the bread, and work hard all day, and sleep soundly all night——"
"Yes, if it were for the sake of those you loved," said Sydney, venturing to look at her significantly.
Nan nodded, and a faint smile curved her lips: her eyes grew tender and soft.
"Can you not imagine another kind of life? where you spent yourself equally for those whom you loved and who loved you, but in happier circumstances? a life where two congenial souls met and worked together? Could you not be happy almost anywhere with the one—the man—you loved?" ”

“ Dombey," said Nan, with a faint, cheerless smile.
"He is afraid," Sydney went on, with the air of one who repeats a lesson, "that you are drifting into a state of hopeless invalidism, which you might still avoid. Once in that state you would not die, Nan, as you might like to do: you would live for years in helpless, useless, suffering. Nan, my dear, it is very hard for me to say this to you"—his voice quivering—"but I promised Burrows, for your own sake, that I would. Such a life, Nan, would be torture to you; and you have still within your power—you can prevent it if you chose." ”

“ She was tempted by the balmy night, and went out.
"He loves you like his own soul!" Was not that how she loved him, and was she not here in England to tell him so?
The question startled her, as though some one else had put it to her, and was waiting for an answer. That, surely, was not her object; and yet, if not, what was? From the hour when she read Sydney's letter at Florence she seemed to have had a new motive power within her. She had acted hitherto from instinct, or from mere feeling; she could scarcely recall a single argument which she had held with herself during the past ten days. ”

“ The art of living, if you are afraid of the passing of your secret from the few who know to the many who welcome a new scandal, is to go on walking with the light and confident step of youth, never so much as quailing in your own mind at the thought that the ground may crumble beneath you—that you may go home some fine day, or to your club, or to Lady Jane's five o'clock tea, and be confronted by the grinning skeleton on whom you had so carefully turned your keys and shot your bolts. ”

“ If she could only be weak in spite of her resolution to be strong, if she could only take to herself at once the one consolation and partnership which would satisfy her soul, how instantly would her depression pass away! How easily with one word could she change the whole current and complexion of life for the man who was bending over her! He was still only half-redeemed from ruin; he might fall a prey to despair again, if she shrank in the supreme moment from the sacrifice demanded of her.
Alan did not know how her heart was pleading for him. ”

“ What a happy place the old Rectory might be if her father's mind were set at rest again, and Sydney would come down and stay with them from time to time!
The train was at the platform before Lettice had decided what to do. Sydney looked rather surprised to see her, but gave her his cheek to kiss, and hurried her off to the cab stand.
"What brought you here?" he said. "How cold you are! All well at home?"
"Yes, they are well. But, oh, Sydney, they are growing old?"
"Growing old, child? Why, of course they are. We must expect it. Do you mean they look older than they are?" ”

“ For there had been a strain of meanness and cruelty in Sydney's behavior to the girl whom he had ruined which cut his wife to the heart. She had been taught, and she had tried—with some misgiving—to believe that she ought to be prepared to condone a certain amount of levity, of "wildness," even, in her husband's past; but here she saw deliberate treachery, cold-blooded selfishness, which startled her from her dream of happiness. Nan was a little too logical for her own peace of mind. She could not look at an action as an isolated fact in a man's life: it was an outcome of character. ”

“ The amount of the debt, which lay heavily on his conscience, was comparatively a trivial thing to her. But when he had told her all, she looked at him with eyes which, although very loving, were full of wonder and dismay.
"Poor Sydney!" she said caressingly. "My poor boy! As if you could give your mind properly to anything with this heavy burden on it! To-morrow we can get the money, and pay off all these people. Then you will be able to work without any disturbance."
"Thanks to you, Nan," said her husband, with bowed head. She could not understand why he did not look more relieved. ”

“ Sydney made no answer. He was beginning to find this state of things intolerable. After all, he asked himself, what had he done that his wife should be almost killed by the shock of finding out that he had behaved—as other men behaved? But that sort of reasoning would not do. His behavior to Milly had been, as he knew, singularly heartless; and he had happened to marry a girl whose greatest charm to him had been her tenderness of heart, her innocent candor, and that purity of mind which comes of hatred—not ignorance—of sin. A worldlier woman would not have been so shocked ”