Archibald Marshall

“ It was only when he discovered that he thrilled to Nancy's touch and voice, and not to Joan's, that he accepted his fate; and, ever since, he had been tormented with doubts as to whether an avowal of his new feeling would bring him a response, or only destroy the frank confidence with which he still loved to be treated. The poor man sometimes imagined Nancy regarding him in the light of a fun-producing uncle, and felt that it would be sacrilege to her innocence to reveal himself as a lover. If he risked all, he might lose all, and be for ever disgraced in her eyes. ”

“ Why does father want to bring Bobby Trench worrying me, of all the people in the world?"
"Dearest Joan, you are making too much of it. You talk as if you were going to be forced into something you don't like."
"That is just what I feel is happening. It isn't like Kencote; not like anything I have known. Oh, I wish I were a little girl again."
"My dear, put it like this; somebody is bound to want you, sooner or later. I suppose somebody wants you now. He moves mountains to get at you, and find out whether you want him. ”

“ You are a rich man, and you can do it. You allowed money to be paid before, to hush up this scandal; you offered a very large sum of money to free yourself of a mere disagreeable feeling of indebtedness, and took some risk in doing it too—I give you that much justice. I am glad Lord Sedbergh refused that money. Now you can lend it to me—I will pay you back some day—and a few thousands more. Let me have ten thousand pounds, Mr. Clinton. You can ease your conscience of the wrong you have done me, and save your innocents at the same time—yourself, who are not innocent, into the bargain. ”

“ The rich springing growth of early summer in this quiet country village spoke of life and of hope; and the black line of mourners moving slowly along was not incongruous with it, if the poor clay they were escorting was really only the husk from which new life had already sprung.
The Squire, sobered to becoming gravity by the sight of the coffin, yet felt his thoughts tuned to the beauty of the sky and the familiar surroundings. It was he who had planned this walking escort. There would be carriages, and a state suitable to the occasion on the morrow. ”

“ The talk will die down. No one will blame her—can blame her—even now, when it is at its loudest. We must wait in patience for what will come. Dear Joan will be all the happier when her trial is over, and the stronger. She is bearing it bravely. I am proud of my girl."
The Squire lay for a long time silent. Then he said, "Well, we have thought it out together, my dear. I can face what must come now. We face it together. We live on quietly here, as we have always lived. I ask no one, from now, to stand and deliver. ”

“ This was to be a home-coming, a token of his forgiveness of her for the trouble she had caused him, a sort of last taste of the everyday life of Kencote, into the intimacy of which she was finally to be received as a daughter of the house. It appealed also to that sense of common human life, which is the fine flower of squiredom. Death levels all; he had no feeling that the cottagers standing at their garden gates were intruding their curiosity, as was felt by Susan's mother for one, who thought this public tramp between a station and a church an outrage on her nobility. ”

“ If Nancy was about to leave him, as to his great surprise he had recently heard was likely to happen, and to take just the kind of husband whom he had always desired for his daughters, could he not make up his mind to forego for a few years the advantages held out to Joan, who had always been a little closer to the centre of his heart? Was it so very important that she should marry a man of rank, if he took the form of Bobby Trench, when there were men like John Spence—good, honest, well-born, wealthy country gentlemen, men after his own heart—who were ready to come forward in due time? ”

“ I think he is very much in love with Nancy. It has become plain even to my obtuse old Dick now. But he might so easily have been very much in love with you, instead, that it troubles his dear simple candid old soul to think you have so changed. As far as he is concerned, he would like nothing better than to be on the old terms with you. He wouldn't like you any the less because he likes Nancy more."
"It is Nancy I am thinking of," said Joan after a pause. "She always has been just a little hard, and she is hard without a doubt now. ”

“ Humphrey was still young. He could travel for a time, if he wanted to, or, perhaps better still, stay quietly at Kencote, until he had got over his loss; and then he could take up his life as before. When time had healed his wound he might even marry again. But that was to look too far ahead, with poor Susan not yet under the ground, and the Squire checked the thought at once. If she had lived he would certainly have had a very difficult time with her. A high resolve is one thing; the power to carry it out, day by day, when the exaltation in which it was made has faded away, is another. ”

“ These affairs move too quickly for me in my old age. The young woman whom I now have the honour to call daughter-in-law is all that could be wished from the point of view of health and high spirits, and I have nothing against her. But I do not feel impelled to hang an extra seven thousand pounds' worth of pearls round her neck. If that is a criticism on her, so be it. But she is not Joan. She is very far from being Joan.
I have much news for you, my dear Edward, which only my inveterate habit of procrastination has caused to be left till now. ”

“ Oh, everything ought to be different between us just now."
"Yes, it ought," said Virginia. "Dear Joan, you and Nancy mustn't go on like this. I don't think Nancy is hard; I am sure she isn't in this case. She must be feeling it—not to be able to talk to you."
"If I thought that!"
"Darling, you know her so well—almost as well as you know yourself. Can't you see that it must be so? Can't you make it easy for her to talk to you? It would do away with your own unhappiness. It is that that you are really unhappy about. Life is changing all about you. ”

“ We wanted you to ourselves."
"Pets!" said Miss Bird affectionately.
"Ronald is here too, but I wouldn't let him come either," said Joan.
"What is he like tell me about him," said Miss Bird.
Joan cast a quick glance at Nancy, over the rather disordered bonnet. It was the look that had meant in their childhood, "Let's have her on."
"He is most awfully good," she said in rather an apologetic voice. "Starling dear, I wanted to say something to you before you saw him. You don't think—if you love anybody very much, and they are really good—it matters about their looks, do you?" ”

“ Oh, my dear good man, how can you be so foolish as to run the risk of it? Look here, Mr. Clinton, supposing I admit the theft of the star, and say that I have deserved what I got for that, do I really suffer nothing whatever by bearing the burden of Susan's far bigger theft all my life? Be honest now. Take it as a woman's weakness. Wouldn't it mean a good deal to me to be cleared of that? ”

“ Clinton," said Lord Cheviot, "I should not have done myself the honour of seeking an interview with you. Let us come to the point—as equals—and as men of honour. You have said that your name is being bandied about in a wicked way. I take that to mean that accusations are being made which have no truth in them."
"Many accusations are being made," said the Squire, "which have no word of truth in them. They will not be believed by anybody who knows me—who knows where I stand. ”

“ But she had not put a stop to them.
"You know, Nancy," she said guilelessly, "it's all very well to talk as they do in books about a man being able to make a girl like him if he keeps at her long enough; but I am quite sure Bobby Trench could never make me like him—in that way—if he tried for a hundred years. Still, it is rather nice to feel that one is grown up at last."
"The fact of the matter is, you have been flirting with Bobby Trench," said Nancy; "and you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
But Joan indignantly denied this. ”

“ It was the material link by which Kencote, standing as it had done through so many centuries remote and aside from the turmoil of life, had been drawn into the centre of troublous events. It had brought Joan home from her fateful visit to Brummels, Humphrey to tell his terrible story, Susan to her sad resting-place, Mrs. Amberley to demand satisfaction and threaten vengeance, and latterly the young lover whose coming had brought joy in place of sorrow. ”

“ And yet she knew that Nancy's happy fate was marching upon her, and reproached herself a thousand times for her inability to cross the gulf between them, and share her sister's doubts and sweet tremors. John Spence had danced with her three times—many times with Nancy—and his manner had been brotherly-kind and protecting, as if to soothe her soreness, which yet he did not seem to have divined. His thoughts had not been much with her, that had been plain—but his quietness and simplicity had comforted her a little, and she had not wanted to talk. ”

“ It's no good saying people won't believe them. They will believe them, if we don't defend ourselves. We may have to have her up for slander, after all."
"What can she get out of it all?" asked Virginia in a voice of pain. "It will be horrible. Every right-thinking person must abhor her."
"She will have a right to try and clear herself," said Mrs. Clinton. "It is true that she was accused of doing what Susan really did, and the accusation has never been cleared up."
"That is true," said Dick, "and if she confines herself to truth, we have no right to try and stop her. ”

“ What one may say is that some flower whose perfume one can distinguish should be produced of a plant so many centuries rooted; that twenty generations of men preserved from the struggle for existence, and having power over their fellows, should end in something easily distinguishable from a man of yesterday; that such old established gentility should have some feelings not shared by the common mass, some peculiar sense of honour, some quality not dependent upon wealth alone, some clear principle emerging from the mists of prejudice and the mere dislike of all change. ”

“ My old governor is almost as much in love with you as I am, and that's saying a good deal, though you won't let me say it. He's longing to have you, and there's nothing he won't do for us in the way of setting us up. Look here, Joan, I'll do every mortal thing I can to make you happy; and so will all of us. You'll be the chief performer in our little circus; and it won't be such a little one, either. We can give you anything, pretty well, that anybody could want, and will lay ourselves out to do it. You won't find me such a bad fellow to live with, Joan. ”

“ Clinton.
"Yes, my dear," he said. "You and I will be quiet together for the rest of our lives. We shall have our children with us often, and our grandchildren; but for the most of the time we shall just be by ourselves. We've had a long life together, my dear. We've had a great deal of happiness in it, and have been through some very deep trouble. But the skies are clear now, and, please God, they'll keep clear. Nina, my dear, we've got a great deal to thank Him for." ”

“ But I like the people who live regularly in the country, like you, and Dick, and Jim. I think it's much the best life for a man, and a girl too. I should like to live it always, myself."
"Yes, well, I hope you will—for a good part of the year, at any rate. Of course, you can't expect to live at home—here at Kencote, I mean—all your life. You're grown up, now, and when young fledglings feel their wings, you know, the parent birds must make up their minds to lose them out of the nest." ”