Charles James Lever

“ He could not say that he was the best possible companion for a young lady, though he felt, honestly felt, that he was not a bad one. He had never trifled with her feelings, nor sought to influence her in his favor. Of all flirtation, such as he would have adventured with Polly Dill, for instance, he was guiltless. He respected her youth and ignorance of life too deeply to take advantage of either. He thought, perhaps, how ungenerous it would have been for a man of the world like himself to entrap the affections of a young, artless creature, almost a child in her innocence. ”

“ Then Walcheren was positively odious to her. Some little solace she felt at the thought that the expedition was a failure and inglorious; but when she listened to the fiftieth time-told tale of fever and ague, she would sigh, not for those who suffered, but over the one that escaped. It is a great blessing to men of uneventful lives and scant imagination when there is any one incident to which memory can refer unceasingly. Like some bold headland last seen at sea, it lives in the mind throughout the voyage. Such was this ill-starred expedition to the Major. ”

“ At breakfast, one is too fresh; at dinner, too formal; but luncheon, like an opening manhood, is full of its own bright projects. The plans of the day have already reached a certain maturity, and fixtures have been made for riding-parties, or phaeton drives, or flirtations in the garden. The very strangers who looked coldly at each other over their morning papers have shaken into a semi-intimacy, and little traits of character and temperament, which would have been studiously shrouded in the more solemn festivals of the day, are now displayed with a frank and fearless confidence. ”

“ While poor Tom Dill, just entering upon life, went forth in gloom and disappointment to his first venture, old Peter Barrington, broken by years and many a sorrow, set out on his journey with a high heart and a spirit well disposed to see everything in its best light and be pleased with all around him. Much of this is, doubtless, matter of temperament; but I suspect, too, that all of us have more in our power in this way than we practise. ”

“ We are very humble people, Mr. Conyers, with a village for our world; and we contemplate a far-away country—India, for instance—pretty much as we should do Mars or the Pole-star.”
“As to that, Bengal is more come-at-able than the Great Bear,” said he, laughing.
“For you, perhaps, not for us. There is nothing more common in people's mouths than go to New Zealand or Swan River, or some far-away island in the Pacific, and make your fortune!—just as if every new and barbarous land was a sort of Aladdin's cave, where each might fill his pockets with gems and come out rich for life. ”

“ Old Peter's sympathies went with all things human, and he loved to watch the village life and catch what he could of its ways and instincts. His sister, to whom the love of scenery was a passion, never wearied of the picturesque land they travelled; and as for Josephine, she was no longer the demure pensionnaire of the convent,—thoughtful and reserved, even to secrecy,—but a happy child, revelling in a thousand senses of enjoyment, and actually exulting in the beauty of all she saw around her. ”

“ I ask you, now, am I reckoning too much on one who could do that, and for a mere child too?”
“That was nobly done,” said she, with enthusiasm; and though Conyers went on, with warmth, to tell more of his father's generous nature, she seemed less to listen than to follow out some thread of her own reflections. Was it some speculation as to the temperament the son of such a father might possess? or was it some pleasurable revery regarding one who might do any extravagance and yet be forgiven? ”

“ He tried to think of a dozen things: he imagined, for instance, what a picturesque thing a boat-race would be in such a spot; he fancied he saw a swift gig sweep round the point and head up the stream; he caught sight of a little open in the trees with a background of dark rock, and he thought what a place for a cottage. But whether it was the “match” or the “chalet” that occupied him, Polly Dill was a figure in the picture; and he muttered unconsciously, “How pretty she is, what a deal of expression those gray-blue eyes possess! She's as active as a fawn, and to the full as graceful. ”

“ Little wonder need there be if in feeding such extravagance a vast estate melted away, and acre followed acre, till all that remained of a property that ranked next to the Ormonds' was the little cottage over whose door the tin-trout dangled, and the few roods of land around it: sorry remnant of a princely fortune!
But Barrington himself had a passion, which, inordinately indulged, has brought many to their ruin. He was intensely fond of law. It was to him all that gambling is to other men. ”

“ The Colonel would have gone a hundred miles to meet a man like yourself, so fond of the field and such a thorough sportsman.”
“Yes, I was so once,” sighed Barrington, for already had come a sort of reaction to the late excitement.
“Isn't the Colonel a fine fellow?” said the young man, as eager to relieve the awkwardness of a sad theme as to praise one he loved. “Don't you like him?”
“That I do!” said Barrington, heartily. “His fine genial spirit has put me in better temper with myself than I fancied was in my nature to be. ”

“ He was rather fond of imagining himself “a man of the world,” old soldier, and what not,—a delusion which somehow very rarely befalls any but very young men, and of which the experience of life from thirty to forty is the sovereign remedy. And so overwhelmed and confused and addled was he with a variety of sensations, he heard very little of what Miss Dinah said to him, though that worthy lady talked very fluently and very well, concluding at last with words which awoke Conyers from his half-trance with a sort of shock. ”

“ If Conyers was as impatient as Darby represented, he had, at least, surrounded himself with every appliance to allay the fervor of that spirit He had dined under a spreading sycamore-tree, and now sat with a table richly covered before him. Fruit, flowers, and wine abounded, with a profusion that might have satisfied several guests; for, as he understood that he was to consider himself at an inn, he resolved, by ordering the most costly things, to give the house all the advantage of his presence. ”

“ One needs not to be as old as Peter Barrington to have gone through this process and experienced all its pain. Unquestionably, every city of Europe has made within such a period as five-and-thirty or forty years immense strides of improvement. Wider and finer streets, more commodious thoroughfares, better bridges, lighter areas, more brilliant shops, strike one on every hand; while the more permanent monuments of architecture are more cleanly, more orderly, and more cared for than of old. ”

“ That George who shared his joys and perils, the comrade of his heart! No two men had ever lived in closer bonds of affection, and yet somehow of all that love he had never heard his father speak, nor of the terrible fate that befell his friend had one syllable escaped him. “Who knows if friendships ever survive early manhood?” said Fred, bitterly, as he sat himself down at the base of the monument: “and yet might not this same George Barrington, had he lived, been of priceless value to my father now? ”

“ And yet, amidst all these luxuries and delights, Bal-shazzar was discontented; his ankle pained him; he had been hobbling about on it all day, and increased the inflammation considerably; and, besides this, he was lonely; he had no one but Darby to talk to, and had grown to feel for that sapient functionary a perfect abhorrence,—his everlasting compliance, his eternal coincidence with everything, being a torment infinitely worse than the most dogged and mulish opposition. When, therefore, he heard at last the doctor's son had come with the leeches, he hailed him as a welcome guest. ”

“ In vain you try to recall the past impression; your memory will mourn over the lost, and refuse to be comforted. And so it is often in life: the momentary charm that came unexpectedly can become all in all to our imaginations, and its departure leave a blank, like a death, behind it.
Nor was he altogether satisfied with Miss Barrington. The “old woman”—alas! for his gallantry, it was so that he called her to himself—was needlessly severe. Why should a mere piece of harmless levity be so visited? ”

“ They smile compassionately at the eagerness of all around them; they look with bland pity at the race, and contemptuously ask, of what value the prize when it is won? They do their very best to be gloomy moralists, but they cannot. They might as well try to shiver when they sit in the sunshine. The vigorous beat of young hearts, and the full tide of young pulses, will tell against all the mock misanthropy that ever was fabricated! It would not be exactly fair to rank Conyers in this school, and yet he was not totally exempt from some of its teachings. ”

“ To have brought sorrow and mourning beneath the roof where you have been sheltered with kindness is sad enough, but far sadder is it to connect the calamity you have caused with one dearer to you than yourself, and whose innocence, while assured of, you cannot vindicate. “My father never wronged this man, for the simple reason that he has never been unjust to any one. It is a gross injustice to accuse him! If Colonel Barrington forfeited my father's friendship, who could doubt where the fault lay? ”

“ In that nothing-for-nothing world Major M'Cormick had so long lived in, and to whose practice and ways he had adapted all his thoughts, there was something puzzling in the fact of a dashing Captain of Hussars of “the Prince's Own,” seeking him out, to form his acquaintance and invite him to dinner. Now, though the selfishness of an unimaginative man is the most complete of all, it yet exposes him to fewer delusions than the same quality when found allied with a hopeful or fanciful temperament. ”

“ A very ingenious German writer has attempted to show that the sympathies of the humble classes with pursuits far above their own has always its origin in something of their daily life and habits, just as the sacristan of a cathedral comes to be occasionally a tolerable art critic from his continual reference to Rubens and Vandyck. It is possible that Darby may have illustrated the theory, and that his avocations as earth-stopper may have suggested what he assuredly possessed, a perfect passion for law. If a suit was a great game to Barrington, to Darby it was a hunt! ”

“ I told her, Peter, that by Thursday next, or Friday, she might expect us.”
“I hope so, with all my heart; for, beautiful as all this is, it wants the greatest charm,—it's not home! Then I want, besides, to see Fifine full of household cares.”
“Feeding the chickens instead of chasing the butterflies, Fifine. Totting up the house-bills, in lieu of sighing over 'Waverley.'”
“And, if I know Fifine, she will be able to do one without relinquishing the other,” said Peter, gravely. “Our daily life is all the more beautiful when it has its landscape reliefs of light and shadow.” ”