Anthony Hope

“ Death for love's sake was held up in poetry and romance as a thing in some sort noble and honorable; as a man might die because he could not save his country, so might he because he could not please his lady-love. In old days, Stafford, rigidly repressing his aesthetic delight in such literature, had condemned its teaching with half-angry contempt, and enough of his former estimate of things remained to him to prevent him regarding such a state of mind as it pictured as a romantic elevation rather than a hopeless degradation of a man's being. ”

“ Verily, love affairs do not always conduce to social enjoyment—more especially other people's love affairs. Still, Sir Roderick Ayre was entertained.
Meanwhile, Stafford sat in his room alone, save for the company of his own picture. He was like a man who has been groping his way through difficult paths in the dark—uneasy, it may be, and nervous, but with no serious alarm. On a sudden, a storm-flash may reveal to him that he is on the very edge of a precipice or already ankle-deep in some bottomless morass. ”

“ Where are you going, Miss Bernard?"
"Home."
"Then I must tell Eugene?"
"Tell him what you like." But she sat down again.
"You are engaged to Eugene?"
"Of course."
"You are also engaged to Spencer Haddington."
"It's untrue; you know it's untrue. Are you an old woman, to think a girl can't speak to a man without being engaged to him?"
"I must congratulate you on your liberality of view, Miss Bernard. I had hardly given you credit for it. But you know it isn't untrue. You are under a promise to give Haddington your hand in three months: not, mark you, a conditional promise—an absolute promise." ”

“ Leaving the other men, except the Bishop, who was already at rest, in the billiard-room, they strolled out together on to the terrace.
"Well, old man, how are you getting on?" asked Eugene.
"Capitally! stronger every day in body and happier in mind. I grumbled a great deal when I first broke down, but now I'm not sure a rest isn't good for me. You can stop and have a look where you are going to."
"And you think you can stand it?"
"Stand what, my dear fellow?"
"Why, the life you lead—a life studiously emptied of everything that makes life pleasant."
"Ah! you are like Lady Claudia!" ”

“ It's hard to believe and impossible to disbelieve."
Stafford listened intently. Memories came back to him of books he had read and put behind him; books wherein Ayre had found his creed, if the thing could be called a creed. Was that true? Was he rending his soul for nothing? A day earlier such a thought would have been to him at once a torture and a sin. Now he found a strange comfort in it. Why strive and cry, when none watched the effort or heard the agony? Why torture himself? Why torture others? If the world were good, why was he not to have his part? ”

“ Stafford walked to the open window and leant out, bending his tired head upon his hand. As he looked out he saw through the darkness Eugene and Ayre still sitting on the terrace. Ayre was talking.
"Yes," he was saying, "we are taught to think ourselves of a mighty deal of importance. How we fare and what we do is set before us as a thing about which angels rejoice or mourn. The state of our little minds, or souls, or whatever it is, is a matter of deep care to the Creator—the Life of the universe. ”

“ Supposing you, believing this, had given your life to God, and made your vow to him—had so proclaimed before men, had so lived and worked and striven! Supposing you thought a broken vow was death to your own soul and a trap to the souls of others—a baseness, a treason, a desertion—more cowardly than a soldier's flight—as base as a thief's purloining—meaning to you and those who had trusted you the death of good and the triumph of evil? ”

“ Kate knew that Haddington was already tried to the uttermost. She knew what he would say.
"You see I could—if you'll allow me the metaphor—blow you out of the water."
"You daren't confess how you got the knowledge."
"Oh, dear me, yes," said Ayre, smiling. "When you're opening a blind man's eyes he doesn't ask after your moral character. You must consider the situation on the hypothesis that I am shameless."
Kate was not strong enough to carry on the battle. ”

“ What do you say, Ayre?"
Sir Roderick was a little troubled. This exact following of, or anyhow coincidence with, his advice seemed to cast a responsibility upon him.
"Oh, I expect he's honest enough; and it's a splendid field for him," he answered, repeating the argument he had urged to Stafford himself.
"Ayre," said Morewood aggressively, "you've driven that young man to perdition."
"Bosh!" said Ayre. "He's not a sheep to be driven, and Rome isn't perdition. I did no more than give his thoughts a turn."
"I think I am glad," said Eugene; "it is much better in some ways. ”

“ Why must he try to breast it? If Ayre was right, what a tragical farce his struggle was, what a perverse delusion, what an aimless flinging away of the little joy his little life could offer! If this were so, then was he indeed alone in the world—except for Claudia. Was his choice in truth between this world and the next? He might throw one away and never find the other. ”

“ His nature was not of that sort, and he could not by a spasm of penitence nullify the events of the last few months. He must accept himself as altered by what he had gone through. Was there, then, any life left for the man he was now?
Undoubtedly, the easiest thing was to bid a quiet good-by to the life he had so mismanaged. He had never in old days been wedded to life. He had learnt always to regard it rather as a necessary evil than as a thing desirable in itself. Its momentary sweetness left it more bitter still. There would be a physical pang, inevitable to a strong man, full of health. ”

“ The prince of this world was now preparing a more subtle attack; and under the seeming compulsion of common prudence no less than of old friendship, he found himself flung into the very center of the sort of life he had with such pains avoided. It may be doubted whether he was not, like an unskillful swimmer, ignorant of his danger; but it is certain that, had he been able to search out his own heart with his former acuteness of self-judgment, he would have found the first germs of inclinations and feelings to which he had been up till now a stranger. ”

“ Stafford was unpleasantly conscious of being human. The triumph of wickedness is a spectacle from which we may well avert our eyes. Suffice it to say that a quarter of an hour later Claudia returned Eugene's glance with a look of triumph and scorn.
Meanwhile, trouble had arisen between the Bishop and Mr. Morewood. Morewood was an artist of great ability, originality, and skill; and if he had not attained the honors of the Academy, it was perhaps more of his own fault than that of the exalted body in question, as he always treated it with an ostentatious contumely. ”

“ What did she know of his vow? Why should she dream of anything save the happy ending of the story that flits before the half-averted eyes of a girl when she is with her lover? Even if she had heard of his vow, would they not all tell her it was a conceit of youth, a spiritual affectation, a thing that a wise counselor would tell him and her quietly to set aside? Did it not all point to this? He was not only a perjurer toward Heaven, but his sin had brought woe and pain to her he loved. ”

“ A patient lover must be a most valuable safety-valve. And although Eugene was not the most patient of his kind, Claudia did not think that she had put more upon him than he was able to bear—certainly not more than he deserved to bear. She would have dearly loved the luxury of refusing him, and although she had not been able to make up her mind to this extreme measure, she had, at least, succeeded in infusing a spice of difficulty into his wooing. ”

“ The picture of a man giving up all he thought worth having, driven in misery by a force he could not resist to seek a remedy that he despaired of gaining—a remedy which, even if gained, would bring him nothing but fresh pain—this picture, over which Eugene was mourning in honest and perplexed friendship, never took form as a true presentment of himself to the man it was supposed to embody. If Eugene had known this, he would probably have felt less sympathy and more rivalry, and would have assented to Ayre's view of the situation rather than doubtingly maintained his own. ”

“ She must, no doubt, have seen that Stafford was greatly attracted to her, and probably she would have felt that the description of his state of mind as that of a man in love only erred to the extent that a general description must err when applied to a particular case. But she was both surprised and disturbed at hearing that Stafford intended to act upon his feelings, and the very fact of her power having overcome him did him evil service in her thoughts. The secret of his charm for her lay exactly in the attitude of renunciation that he was now abandoning. ”

“ They're engaged!"
"An engagement isn't a marriage. If I thought—"
"Yes?"
"But I can't think of that now. Good-by, Claudia. We may not meet again."
"Oh, you won't go away? You mustn't let me drive you away. Oh, please, Mr. Haddington! Think, if you go, it must all come out! I should be so very, very distressed."
"If you ask me, I will try to stay."
"Yes, yes, stay—but forget all this. And never think again of the other—about them, I mean. You will stay?"
"Yes, I will stay," said Haddington.
"Unless it makes you too unhappy to see Eugene's triumph in Kate's love?" ”

“ I speak in human metaphor, as one must speak. In truth, we are at once a fraction, a tiny fraction—oh! what a tiny fraction—of the picture, and the like little jot of what it exists for. And does what comes to us matter very much—whether we walk a little more or a little less cleanly—aim a little higher or lower, if there is a higher and lower? What matter? Ah, Eugene, our parents and our pastors teach us vanity! ”

“ Welman. She was delighted to see him, not only as a man of social repute, but also because the good lady was in no little distress of mind. The arrangement between Kate and Eugene was, as a family arrangement, above perfection. Mrs. Welman was not rich, and like people who are not rich, she highly esteemed riches; like most women, she looked with favor on Eugene; the fact of Kate having some money seemed to her, as it does to most people, a reason for her marrying somebody who had more, instead of aiding in the beneficent work of a more equal distribution of wealth. ”

“ Although suffering under a natural feeling of annoyance at discovering that he was not foremost in Claudia's heart, as he had led himself to suppose, he was yet keenly alive to the fact that the interview had its consolatory aspect. In the first place, there is a fiction that a lady who respects herself does not fall in love with a man whom she suspects to be in love with somebody else; and Haddington's mind, though of no mean order in some ways, was not of a sort to rise above fictions. ”

“ Man and woman created He them, and did it not make for good? And he sank back in his chair, with the picture of a life before him, blessed and giving blessings, and ending at last in an old age, when she would still be with him, when he should be the head and inspiration of a house wherein God's service was done, when he should see his son's sons following in his steps, and so, having borne his part, fall asleep, to wake again to an union wherein were no stain of earth and no shadow of parting. ”

“ It is easy to blame fair damsels for recklessness in the use of their dangerous weapons; and if they take the censure to heart—which is not usually the case—easy again to charge them with self-consciousness or self-conceit. We do not know their temptations and may not presume to judge them. And it may well be thought that Claudia would have been guilty of an excessive appreciation of herself had her conduct been influenced by the thought that such a man as Stafford was likely to fall in love with her. ”

“ Was there no distinguishing good and evil? Could every motive and every act change form and color as you looked at it, and be now the counsel of Heaven, and now the prompting of Satan? How, then, could a man choose his path? ”

“ The sun and the wind were playing about in Claudia's hair, her eyes were full of light, and her whole air, in spite of a genuine effort after demureness, conveyed to any self-respecting man an irresistible challenge to make himself agreeable if he could. Eugene's notions of making himself agreeable were, as may have been gathered, liberal; they certainly included more than can be considered strictly incumbent on young men in society. And, besides being polite, Eugene was also curious. It is one thing to silently suffer under a passion which a sense of duty forbids ”