Anthony Trollope

“ To such men, to men who think as you think, who are to sit on the same benches with yourself, and go into the same lobby and be seen at the same club, it is your duty to be civil both for your own sake and for that of the cause. It is for the hermits of society to indulge in personal dislikings,—for men who have never been active and never mean to be active. I had been telling Mr. Kennedy how much I thought of you,—as a good Liberal."
"And I came in and spoilt it all."
"Yes, you did. You knocked down my little house, and I must build it all up again."
"Don't trouble yourself, Lady Laura." ”

“ Kennedy's wife may think. Your opinion is all in all to me,—only that I know you are too kind to me."
"He would not be too kind to you. He is never too kind to any one. He is justice itself."
Phineas, as he heard the tones of her voice, could not but feel that there was in Lady Laura's words something of an accusation against her husband.
"I hate justice," said Phineas. "I know that justice would condemn me. But love and friendship know nothing of justice. The value of love is that it overlooks faults, and forgives even crimes." ”

“ Phineas, at the moment, was thinking how far all these things which he saw, the mountains stretching everywhere around him, the castle, the lake, the river, the wealth of it all, and, more than the wealth, the nobility of the beauty, might act as temptations to Lady Laura Standish. If a woman were asked to have the half of all this, would it be possible that she should prefer to take the half of his nothing? He thought it might be possible for a girl who would confess, or seem to confess, that love should be everything. ”

“ Would the honourable gentleman who sat lowest on the Treasury bench,—who at this moment was in sweet confidential intercourse with the right honourable gentleman now President of the Board of Trade, who had once been a friend of the people,—would the young Lord of the Treasury get up in his place and tell them that no peer of Parliament had at present a voice in sending a member to their House of Commons,—that no peer would have a voice if this bill, as proposed by the Government, were passed in its present useless, ineffectual, conservative, and most dishonest form? ”

“ Few Englishmen fight duels in these days. They who do so are always reckoned to be fools. And a duel between him and Lord Brentford's son must, as he thought, separate him from Violet, from Lady Laura, from Lord Brentford, and from his borough. But yet how could he refuse? "What have you to think of, sir, when such an offer as that is made to you?" said the fiery-red lord.
"I have to think whether I have courage enough to refuse to make myself an ass."
"You say that you do not wish to have a riot. That is your way to escape what you call—a riot."
"You want to bully me, Chiltern." ”

“ Of course he loved Violet Effingham; and they who talk best of love protest that no man or woman can be in love with two persons at once. Phineas was not in love with Mary Flood Jones; but he would have liked to take her in his arms and kiss her;—he would have liked to gratify her by swearing that she was dearer to him than all the world; he would have liked to have an episode,—and did, at the moment, think that it might be possible to have one life in London and another life altogether different at Killaloe. ”

“ How does Laura get on with her husband?"
"Very happily, I should say."
"I don't believe it," said Lord Chiltern. "Her temper is too much like mine to allow her to be happy with such a log of wood as Robert Kennedy. It is such men as he who drive me out of the pale of decent life. If that is decency, I'd sooner be indecent. You mark my words. They'll come to grief. She'll never be able to stand it."
"I should think she had her own way in everything," said Phineas.
"No, no. Though he's a prig, he's a man; and she will not find it easy to drive him." ”

“ Lady Laura said to her friend in her anger, when they discussed the matter immediately on Lord Chiltern's departure.
"You have no right to say that, Laura."
"I have a right to my belief, and I do believe it. I think you love him, and that you lack the courage to risk yourself in trying to save him."
"Is a woman bound to marry a man if she love him?"
"Yes, she is," replied Lady Laura impetuously, without thinking of what she was saying; "that is, if she be convinced that she also is loved." ”

“ A man desires to win a virgin heart, and is happy to know,—or at least to believe,—that he has won it. With a woman every former rival is an added victim to the wheels of the triumphant chariot in which she is sitting. "All these has he known and loved, culling sweets from each of them. But now he has come to me, and I am the sweetest of them all." And so Mary was taught to believe of Laura and of Violet and of Madame Goesler,—that though they had had charms to please, her lover had never been so charmed as he was now while she was hanging to his breast. ”

“ Who shall say what is best; or what characteristic constitutes excellence in a member of Parliament? If the gentleman means excellence in general wisdom, or in statecraft, or in skill in talking, or in private character, or even excellence in patriotism, then I say that he is utterly wrong, and has never touched with his intellect the true theory of representation. One only excellence may be acknowledged, and that is the excellence of likeness. As a portrait should be like the person portrayed, so should a representative House be like the people whom it represents. ”

“ Phineas had met Lady Baldock at some house which he frequented, and had been quite surprised to find himself graciously received by the old woman. She had said not a word of Violet, but had spoken of Lord Chiltern,—mentioning his name in bitter wrath. "But he is a friend of mine," said Phineas, smiling. "A friend indeed! Mr. Finn. I know what sort of a friend. I don't believe that you are his friend. I am afraid he is not worthy of having any friend." ”

“ And then Phineas prepared to go.
"One word, Mr. Finn," said Lady Laura, hardly looking him in the face and yet making an effort to do so. "I wish you to forget what I said to you at Loughlinter."
"It shall be as though it were forgotten," said Phineas.
"Let it be absolutely forgotten. In such a case a man is bound to do all that a woman asks him, and no man has a truer spirit of chivalry than yourself. That is all. Look in when you can. I will not ask you to dine here as yet, because we are so frightfully dull. Do your best on Tuesday, and then let us see you on Wednesday. Good-bye." ”

“ A mentor ought to be very old, you know, and I am infinitely older than you are."
"I should have thought it was the reverse;—indeed, I may say that I know that it is," said Phineas.
"I am not talking of years. Years have very little to do with the comparative ages of men and women. A woman at forty is quite old, whereas a man at forty is young." Phineas, remembering that he had put down Mr. Kennedy's age as forty in his own mind, frowned when he heard this, and walked about the room in displeasure. "And therefore," continued Lady Laura, "I talk to you as though I were a kind of grandmother." ”

“ Bunce had called him Mr. Phineas. He had always been Phineas to everybody at Killaloe. But still he was quite sure that Lady Laura had never so called him before. Nor would she have done so now in her husband's presence. He was sure of that also.
"You mean that you are unhappy?" he said, still looking away from her towards the lake.
"Yes, I do mean that. Though I do not know why I should come and tell you so,—except that I am still blundering and stumbling, and have fallen into a way of hurting myself at every step."
"You can tell no one who is more anxious for your happiness," said Phineas. ”

“ Finn does not understand it as well, but she will do so. She complains mostly for my sake, and when I tell her that I will wait twenty years if it is necessary, she tells me I do not know what waiting means. But I will,—and will be happy, and will never really think myself a Mariana. Dear, dear, dear Phineas, indeed I won't. The girls are half sad and half proud. But I am wholly proud, and know that you are doing just what you ought to do. I shall think more of you as a man who might have been a Prime Minister than if you were really sitting in the Cabinet like Lord Cantrip. ”

“ Miss Effingham, you will not be angry with me if I say that when I heard it was so, something of a hope,—no, I must not call it a hope,—something that longed to form itself into hope returned to my breast, and from that hour to this has been the only subject on which I have cared to think."
"Lord Chiltern is your friend, Mr. Finn?"
"He is so, and I do not think that I have ever been untrue to my friendship for him."
"He says that no man has ever had a truer friend. He will swear to that in all companies. ”

“ Phineas said that he would not, and then there was no further discourse about money. It need hardly be said that he told his father nothing of that bill which he had endorsed for Laurence Fitzgibbon.
At last came the time which called him again to London and the glories of London life,—to lobbies, and the clubs, and the gossip of men in office, and the chance of promotion for himself; to the glare of the gas-lamps, the mock anger of rival debaters, and the prospect of the Speaker's wig. ”

“ But then Lady Laura had been in love with him,—was perhaps almost in love with him still. "I'm afraid he is a mule," said Lady Cantrip to her husband. "He's a good mule up a hill with a load on his back," said his lordship. "But with a mule there always comes a time when you can't manage him," said Lady Cantrip. But Lady Cantrip had never been in love with Phineas.
Phineas found a moment, before he left Lord Brentford's house, to say a word to Lady Laura as to the commission that had been given to him. "It can never be," said Lady Laura, shuddering;—"never, never, never!" ”

“ Phineas blushed as he heard all this; but there was the impediment, not to be got rid of for the nonce, and Phineas made the best of his attendant. "It's one of those points," said he, "as to which a man never quite makes up his mind. If you bring a fellow, you wish you hadn't brought him; and if you don't, you wish you had." "I'm a great deal more decided in my ways that that," said Mr. Ratler.
Loughlinter, as they approached it, seemed to Phineas to be a much finer place than Saulsby. And so it was, except that Loughlinter wanted that graceful beauty of age which Saulsby possessed. ”

“ There was no woman then in London better able to talk to a dozen people on a dozen subjects; and then, moreover, she was still in the flush of her beauty and the bloom of her youth. Lady Laura was there;—by what means divided from her husband Phineas could not imagine; but Lady Glencora was good at such divisions. Lady Cantrip had been allowed to come with her lord;—but, as was well understood, Lord Cantrip was not so manifestly a husband as was Mr. Kennedy. There are men who cannot guard themselves from the assertion of marital rights at most inappropriate moments. ”

“ You stand before the world as a rising man, and I stand before the world as a man—damned. You have been chosen by my father to sit for our family borough, while I am an outcast from his house. You have Cabinet Ministers for your friends, while I have hardly a decent associate left to me in the world. But I can say of myself that I have never done anything unworthy of a gentleman, while this thing that you are doing is unworthy of the lowest man."
"I have done nothing unworthy," said Phineas. ”

“ Bonteen.
"And never had a shilling in his pocket in his life," said her husband.
"I regard him as simply a madman," said Lord Fawn.
"I do so wish I knew him," said Madame Max Goesler. "I am fond of madmen, and men who haven't shillings, and who are a little wild, Could you not bring him here, Mr. Finn?"
Phineas did not know what to say, or how to open his mouth without showing his deep concern. "I shall be happy to ask him if you wish it," he replied, as though the question had been put to him in earnest; "but I do not see so much of Lord Chiltern as I used to do." ”

“ I like a fast man, but I know that I must not dare to marry the sort of man that I like."
"To be one of us, then,—the very first among us;—would that be the wrong side?"
"You mean that to be Lady Chiltern in the present tense, and Lady Brentford in the future, would be promotion for Violet Effingham in the past?"
"How hard you are, Violet!"
"Fancy,—that it should come to this,—that you should call me hard, Laura. I should like to be your sister. I should like well enough to be your father's daughter. I should like well enough to be Chiltern's friend. I am his friend. ”

“ Phineas had replied.
"If there ever was an angel on earth, it is Mary," said Barbara Finn.
"I know that she is as good as gold," said Phineas.
"Gold!" replied Barbara,—"gold indeed! She is more precious than refined gold. But, Phineas, perhaps you had better not single her out for any special attention. She has thought it wisest to meet you."
"Of course," said Phineas. "Why not?"
"That is all, Phineas. I have nothing more to say. Men of course are different from girls." ”

“ Lord Chiltern is quite changed, is he not?"
"Changed,—in what way?"
"They used to say that he was—unsteady you know."
"I think he is changed. But Chiltern is at heart a Bohemian. It is impossible not to see that at once. He hates the decencies of life."
"I suppose he does," said Violet. "He ought to marry. If he were married, that would all be cured;—don't you think so?"
"I cannot fancy him with a wife," said Phineas, "There is a savagery about him which would make him an uncomfortable companion for a woman." ”

“ Bunce would do it if she knew how, but sympathy from Mrs. Bunce would hardly avail. There was but one person in the world to whom he could tell his own humiliation with any hope of comfort, and that person was Lady Laura Kennedy. Sympathy from any man would have been distasteful to him. He had thought for a moment of flinging himself at Mr. Monk's feet and telling all his weakness;—but he could not have endured pity even from Mr. Monk. It was not to be endured from any man. ”