Charles James Lever

“ Trafford filling my pocket with real havannahs, giving me a taste for luxuries I ought never to have known of.”
“Know everything, sir, go everywhere, see all that the world can show you; the wider a man's experiences the larger his nature and the more open his heart,” said Foss-brooke, boldly.
“I like the theory,” said Trafford to Miss Lendrick; “do you?”
“Sir Brook never meant it for women, I fancy,” said she, in a low tone; but the old man overheard her, and said: “You are right. The guide ought to know every part of the mountain; the traveller need only know the path.” ”

“ I said to myself, So sure as we settle down to work,—to work like men who have no thought but how to earn their bread,—some lavender-gloved fellow, with a dressing-case and three hat-boxes, will drop down to disgust us alike with our own hardships and his foppery.”
“He'll not come,” said Sir Brook, calmly; “and if he should, he will be welcome.”
“Oh! as to that,” stammered out Tom, somewhat ashamed of his late warmth, “Trafford is perhaps the one exception to the sort of thing I am afraid of. He is a fine, manly, candid fellow, with no affectations nor any pretensions.” ”

“ He well knew that if by any mischance he had incurred such a loss as a thousand pounds, it would have been a most serious embarrassment—by what right, then, had he won it? Now, although feelings of this sort were about the very last to find entrance into Sewell's heart, he well knew that there were men who were liable to them, just as there were people who were exposed to plague or yellow fever, and other maladies from which he lived remote. It was, then, with a sort of selfish delight that he saw Cave's awkward hesitating manner, and read the marks of the shame that was overwhelming him. ”

“ Sewell had by this time taken off her bonnet and shawl, and, pushing back her luxuriant hair from her forehead, looked as though suffering from headache, for her brows were contracted, and the orbits around her eyes dark and purple-looking.
“You are not quite well to-day,” said Lucy, as she sat down on the sofa beside her, and took her hand.
“About as well as I ever am,” said she, sighing; and then, as if suddenly recollecting herself, added, “India makes such an inroad on health and strength! No buoyancy of temperament ever resisted that fatal climate. ”

“ Sewell bowed low: he knew how to make his bow a very deep acknowledgment of gratitude; he knew the exact measure of deference and trustfulness and thankfulness to throw into his expression as he bent his head, while he seemed too much overpowered to speak.
“Yes, sir, you shall be cared for,” said the old man. “And if this person, this Sir Brook Fossbrooke, return here, it is with me he will have to deal,—not you.”
“My Lord, I entreat you never to admit him; neither see nor correspond with him. The man is a desperado, and holds his own life too cheap to care for another's.” ”

“ Poor Lendrick's was a case in point. He was about to leave his country,—to tear himself from a home he had embellished,—to separate from his children that he loved so dearly, to face a new life in a new land, friendless and alone; and with all these cares on his heart, he had creditors to satisfy, debts to insure payment of by security, and, not least of his troubles, his house to relet. Now, the value the world sets on that which is not for sale is very unlike its estimate for the same commodity when brought to market. ”

“ All was still and silent within; no human being was to be seen, nor was there a sign of life about the place; for it was the only dwelling on the eastern shore of the island, and that island was Maddalena, off Sardinia.
In a little nook among the rocks, close to the sea, sat Tom and Lucy Lendrick. They held hands, but were silent; for they had come down into the darkness to muse and ponder, and drink in the delicious tranquillity of that calm hour. Lucy had now been above a week on the island, and every day Tom made progress towards recovery. ”

“ You cannot plead want of experience of life, or want of converse with men, to excuse this audacity. I must regard your intrusion, therefore, as a settled project to insult me. I accept no apologies, sir,” said the old man, with a haughty wave of his hand, while his eyes glittered with passion. “I only ask, and I hope I ask as a right, that I may not be outraged under my own roof. Take your next opportunity to offend me when I may not be hampered by the character of your host. Come down into the open arena, and see how proud you will feel at the issue of the encounter.” ”

“ Had a mere stranger been a guest on that Sunday when the Chief Baron entertained at dinner Lady Lendrick, the Sewells, and his old schoolfellow Haire, he might have gone away under the impression that he had passed an evening in the midst of a happy and united family.
Nothing could be more perfect than the blending of courtesy and familiarity. The old Chief himself was in his best of humors, which means that, with the high polish of a past age, its deference, and its homage, he combined all the readiness and epigrammatic smartness of a later period. ”

“ His courtesy, his smartness, his anecdotes, his reminiscences were all Boredom. He was only endurable when by the excess of his conceit he made himself ridiculous. Then alone did Sewell relish his company; for he belonged to that class of men, and it is a class, who feel their highest enjoyment whenever they witness any trait in human nature that serves to disparage its dignity or tarnish its lustre.
That a man of unquestionable ability and power like the Chief Baron should render himself absurd through his vanity, was a great compensation to such a person as Sewell. ”

“ They protested, in a mass, against her going. “We cannot lock the door, Lucy, de facto,” said Sir Brook, “but we do it figuratively.”
“And in that case I make my escape by the window,” said she, springing through an old lancet-shaped orifice in the Abbey wall.
“There goes down the sun and leaves us but a gray twilight,” said Sir Brook, mournfully, as he looked after her. “If there were only enough beauty on earth, I verily believe we might dispense with parsons.”
“Push me over the bird's-eye, and let me nourish myself till your millennium comes,” said the vicar. ”

“ Trinity College and the Four Courts will tell you if I speak in vanity; and here am I; and the only question about me is, when I intend to vacate the bench, when it will be my good pleasure to resign—they are not particular which—my judgeship or my life. But, sir, I mean not to do either; I mean to live and protest against the inferiority of the men around me, and the ingratitude of the country that does not know how to appreciate the one man of eminence it possesses.' I assure you, Tom, vain and insolent as the speech was, as I listened I thought it was neither. ”

“ I heard, in the few hours I spent there, scores of stories of my poor father's eccentricity,—his forgetfulness, his absence, and what not,—but never a syllable of his noble liberality, his self-sacrifice, or his gentleness.”
“My dear Tom,” said the old man, solemnly, “when you have lived to one-half my age, you will discover that the world is not so much cursed with ill-nature as with levity, and that when men talk disparagingly of their fellows, they do so rather to seem witty than to be just. ”

“ I may have tired you with this long tirade, my dear Lucy, but I am pouring out to you my thoughts as they come,—come, too, out of the fulness of much reflection. Remember, too, my sweet child, that I have often told you, 'It is just some half-dozen people with whom we are intimate who make or mar our fate in life.' Big as the world is, we play a very small game in one corner of the board, and it behoves us to look well to those with whom we are to play it. ”

“ It was in this mood he got back to the little lodging in a humble suburb called Cullen's Wood, where Sir Brook awaited him. It is not impossible that the disparities of temperament in this world are just as beneficial, just as grateful, as are the boundless variety and change we find in nature. To Tom Lendrick's depression, almost disgust with life, Sir Brook brought that bright, hopeful, happy spirit which knew how to throw sunlight on every path to be travelled. ”

“ It is no small tribute to the character of filial affection when one can say, and say truthfully, that scarcely any severity on a parent's part effaces the love that was imbibed in infancy, and that struck root in the heart before it could know what unkindness was! Over and over again in life have I witnessed this deep devotion. Over and over again have I seen a clinging affection to a memory which nothing short of a hallowed tie could have made so dear,—a memory that retained whatever could comfort and sustain, and held nothing that recalled shame or sorrow. ”

“ With almost any other man in the world, Sewell would have relied on his personal qualities to carry him through a passage of difficulty. He could assume a temper of complete imperturbability; he could put on calm, coldness, deference, if needed, to any extent; he could have acted his part—it would have been mere acting—as man of honor and man of courage to the life, with any other to confront him but Sir Brook. ”

“ Though Lendrick was well disposed towards Fossbrooke, and fully sensible of his manly honesty and frankness, he could not help seeing that he was one of those impulsive sanguine natures that gain nothing from experience beyond the gift of companionship. They acquire all that can make them delightful in society,—boons they are,—and especially to those whose more prudent temperament inclines them to employ their gifts more profitably. Scores of these self-made men, rich to overflowing with all that wealth could buy around them, would say, What a happy fellow was Fossbrooke! ”

“ With much shame do I recall how often I have rallied these poor sufferers on the vast space that separated them from real sorrow. There is no unreality, dearest Lucy, in whatever so overcomes the brain that thought is all but madness, and so pains the heart that the whole wish is for death. There are subtler influences in our nature than those that work by the brain or the blood, and the maladies of these have but one physician. ”

“ It was somewhat trying to young Tom Lendrick, who had gone down to the Nest to fetch away some remnants of fishing-tackle he had left there, to hear these glowing anticipations of the new-comer, so evidently placed in contrast with the quiet and inexpensive life his father had led. How unlike were his father and this “acquisition to any neighborhood,” was impressed upon him at any moment! How could a life of unobtrusive kindness, of those daily ministerings to poor men's wants, compete with the glitter and display which were to adorn a neighborhood? ”