Charles Reade

“ She was almost impenetrable to mere personal beauty, and inclined to despise early youth in the other sex; and six months spent with Alfred in a quiet country house would probably have left her reasonably indifferent to him. But the first day she saw him in Silverton House he broke through her guard, and pierced at once to her depths; first he terrified her by darting through the window to escape: and terror is a passion. So is pity; and never in her life had she overflowed with it as when she saw him drawn out of the tank and laid on the grass. ”

“ Edward Dodd has told me he loves you. He is a fine noble fellow; you shall marry him: I wish it. Now, for his sake, summon all your resolution, and make up your mind to live. Why, at your age, it needs but to say, 'I will live, I will, I will;' and when all the prospect is so smiling, when love awaits you at the altar, and on every side! If you could leave your poor doting father, do not leave your lover: and here he is with his mother crying for you. ”

“ Archbold. You are saying things you will blush for the next moment.”
“I blush now, but cannot hush; I have gone too far. And your happiness as well as mine is at stake. No young girl can understand or value such a man as you are: but I, like you, have suffered; I, like you, am constant; I, like you, am warm and tender; at my age a woman's love is bliss to him who can gain it; and I love you with all my soul, Alfred. I worship the ground you walk on, my sweet, sweet boy. ”

“ High-minded, and deeply impressed with his own wrongs, he could not conceive a respectable man, paid fifteen hundred a year to spy out wrongs, being so heartless hard as to write this single comment during the earnest recital of a wrong so gigantic as his. Poor Alfred learned this to his cost, that to put small men into great places is to create monsters. When he had realised the bitter truth, he put the stony-hearted paper in his pocket, crept into the yard, and sat down, and, for all he could do, scalding tears ran down his cheeks. ”

“ Well, he is alive, at all events: really my good, kind, interfering, pragmatical friend Sampson, with his placards, made me feel uneasy, more uneasy than I would own to you, Jenny.”
“Unhappy Alfred!” cried Jane, with the tears in her eyes; “and poor papa!”
“Oh, never mind me,” said Mr. Hardie; “now that I know no harm has come to him, I really don't care a straw: I have got one child that loves me, and that I love.” ”

“ The pirate, on whose side luck had been from the first, got half a broadside to bear at long musket-shot, killed a midshipman by Dodd's side, cut away two of the Agra's mizen shrouds, wounded the gaff, and cut the jib-stay. Down fell that powerful sail into the water, and dragged across the ship's forefoot, stopping her way to the open sea she panted for. The mates groaned; the crew cheered stoutly, as British tars do in any great disaster: the pirates yelled with ferocious triumph, like the devils they looked.
But most human events, even calamities, have two sides. ”

“ All I could get from her,” added he, turning suddenly from gratitude to revenge, “was that he was no greater a puppy than yourself, doctor.”
“Oh, Alfred, no; I only said no vainer,” cried Julia in dismay.
“Well, it is true,” said Sampson contentedly, and proceeded to dissect himself just as he would a stranger. “I am a vain man; a remarkably vain man. But then I'm a man of great mirit.”
“All vain people are that,” suggested Alfred dryly.
“Who should know better than you, young Oxford? Y' have got a hidache.” ”

“ Hardie, Alfred's grandfather, was drawn into the vortex. Now, to excuse him and appreciate the precocious Richard, you must try and realise that these bubbles, when they rise, are as alluring and reasonable as they are ridiculous and incredible when one looks back on them; even soap bubbles, you know, have rainbow hues till they burst: and, indeed, the blind avarice of men does but resemble the blind vanity of women: look at our grandmothers' hoops, and our mothers' short waists and monstrous heads! Yet in their day what woman did not glory in these insanities? ”

“ He never loved you; marry another.' The shallow plotter forgets that whoever she does marry I'll kill. How many unsuspicious girls have these double-faced mothers deluded so? They do it in half the novels, especially in those written by women; and why? because these know the perfidy and mendacity of their sex better than we do; they see them nearer, and with their souls undrest. War, Mrs. Dodd! war to the death! From this moment I am alone in the world with her. I have no friend but Alfred Hardie: and my bitterest enemies are my cold-blooded father and her cold-blooded mother. ”

“ He loved this harmless companion of his cell, his danger, and his flight; loved him for Julia's sake, loved him for his own. Youth and vanity whispered, “I know more about madness than the doctors; I have seen it closer.” It struck him David's longing for blue water was one of those unerring instincts that sometimes guide the sick to their cure. And then as the law permits the forcible recapture of a patient—without a fresh order or certificates—within fourteen days of his escape from an asylum, he did not think it prudent to show himself in London till that time should have elapsed. ”

“ At this Hardie senior took up the newspaper with imperturbable coldness, and wore a slight curl of the lip. All this was hardly genuine, for he was not altogether unmoved; but he was a man of rare self-command, and chose to impress on Alfred that he was no more to be broken or melted than a mere rock.
It is always precarious to act a part; and this cynicism was rather able than wise: Alfred looked up and watched him keenly as he read the monetary article with tranquil interest; and then, for the first time in his life, it flashed into the young man's mind that his father was not a father. ”

“ Edith Archbold knew the game, and at the word morphia, Pity and Passion rose in her bosom irresistible. She smiled in Dr. Wolf's face, and hated him; and secretly girt herself up to baffle him, and protect Alfred's reason, and win his heart through his gratitude.
She received him as I have related, to throw dust in Dr. Wolf's eyes: but she acted so admirably that some went into Alfred's. “Ah,” thought he, “she is angry with herself for her amorous folly; and, with the justice of her sex, she means to spite poor me for it.” He sighed; for he felt her hostility would be fatal to him. ”

“ AILEEN AROON.—I do DISTRUST APPEARANCES. But if you ever loved me explain them at once. I have something for you from your dear sister.
“Poor simple girl,” said Mrs. Dodd, “not to see that, if he could explain at all, he would explain, not go advertising an enigma after acting a mystification. And to think of my innocent dove putting in that she had something for him from his sister; a mighty temptation for such a wretch!”
“It was wonderfully silly,” said Edward; “and such a clever girl, too; but you ladies can't stick to one thing at a time; begging your pardon, mamma.” ”

“ Then Alfred began, not in his old imperative voice, but scarce above a whisper; and oh the words such as none but himself in the wide world would have spoken—I love him better than ever; I pity him; I adore him; he is a scholar; he is a chevalier; he is the soul of honour; he is the most unfortunate and proudest gentleman beneath the sun ”

“ All the hearers, even Sampson, were thrilled, astonished, spell-bound: so can one wave of immortal music and immortal verse (alas! how seldom they meet!) heave the inner man when genius interprets. Judge, then, what it was to Alfred, to whom, with these great words and thrilling tones of her rich, swelling, ringing voice, the darling of his own heart vowed constancy, while her inspired face beamed on him like an angel's. ”

“ This noble and rare passage of the silvery Thames was the Henley racecourse. The starting-place was down at the island, and the goal was up at a point in the river below the bridge, but above the bend where Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat, unruffled by the racing, and enjoying luxuriously the glorious stream, the mellow bridge crowded with carriages—whose fair occupants stretched a broad band of bright colour above the dark figures clustering on the battlements—and the green meadows opposite with the motley crowd streaming up and down. ”

“ Hardie, and said, “Papa! dear papa!”
There was great joy: silent on the part of Mrs. Dodd and Julia; but Mr. Hardie, who saw in this a good omen, Heaven recognising his penitence, burst out: “She knows me; she speaks; she will live. How good God is! Yes, my darling child, it is your own father. You will be brave and get well, for my sake.”
Jane did not seem to pay much heed to these words: she looked straight before her like one occupied with her own thought, and said distinctly and solemnly, “Papa—send for Alfred.” ”

“ This gave those on board a hope of life. Dodd bustled and had the hawser carefully payed out by two men, while he himself secured the other end in the mizen top: he had left that mast standing on purpose.
There was no fog here; but great heavy black clouds flying about with amazing swiftness extinguished the moon at intervals: at others she glimmered through a dull mist in which she was veiled, and gave the poor souls on the Agra a dim peep of the frail and narrow bridge they must pass to live. ”

“ I hear the world revolves some minutes quicker now.
“Now, Alfred,” said Mrs. Archbold, “I can't be everywhere, or know everything; so you come to me when anything grieves you, and let me be the agent of your humanity.”
She said this so charmingly he was surprised into kissing her fair hand; then blushed, and thanked her warmly. Thus she established a chain between them. When he let too long elapse without appealing to her, she would ask his advice about the welfare of this or that patient; and so she cajoled him by the two foibles she had discerned in him—his vanity and his humanity. ”

“ And David pointed at the very place where it was.
The dignified Mr. Hardie felt ready to sink with shame: a kind of shudder passed through him, and he was about to comply, heart-sick; but then wounded pride and the rage of disappointment stung him, and he turned in defiance. “You are impertinent, sir, and I shall not reward your curiosity and your insolence by showing you the contents of my safe.”
“My money! my money!” cried David fiercely: “no more words, for I shan't listen to them: I know you now for what you are—a thief! I saw you put it into that safe: a liar is always a thief. ”

“ Dodd said, “Well, wait a few minutes, and then, if he is not here, you two shall go. I dare hardly trust myself to meet my darling husband in the open street.”
Julia ran to Alfred: “If he does not come in ten minutes, you and I may go and meet him.”
“You are an angel,” murmured Alfred.
“You are another,” said Julia haughtily. “Oh, dear, I can't sit down, and I don't want flattery: I want papa. A waltz! a waltz! then one can go mad with joy without startling propriety. I can't answer for the consequences if I don't let off a little, little happiness.” ”

“ Dodd, at first receipt of your cruel letter, so kindly worded, I was broken-hearted; but now I am myself again: difficulties are made for ladies to yield to, and for men to conquer. Only for pity's sake do not you be my enemy; do not set her against me for my father's fault. Think, if you can, how my heart bleeds at closing this letter without one word to her I love better, a thousand times better, than my life—I am, dear Mrs. Dodd, yours sorrowfully, but not despairing,
“ALFRED HARDIE.”
Mrs. Dodd kept this letter to herself. ”

“ Oh, look into these things, sir, in pity to those whom Heaven has afflicted: to me they are but strokes with a feather. I am a sane man torn from love and happiness, and confined among the mad; discomfort is nothing to me; comfort is nothing; you can do nothing for me but restore me to my dignity as a man, my liberty as a Briton, and the rights as a citizen I have been swindled out of by a fraudulent bankrupt and his tools, two venal doctors, who never saw me but for one five minutes, but came to me ready bribed at a guinea apiece, and so signed away my wits behind my back. ”

“ But surely, Skinner, you agree with me it would be a sin and a shame to rob this honest captain of his money—for my creditors—curse them! Ah! you are not a father. How quickly he found that out! Well, I am, and he touched me to the quick. I love my little Jane as dearly as he loves his Julia, every bit: and I feel for him. And then he put me in mind of my own father, poor man. That seems strange, doesn't it? a sailor and a banker. Ah! it was because they were both honest men. ”

“ The keepers, to Alfred's surprise, did not interrupt.
“I am the victim of a conspiracy, sir; they pretend I am mad: and are taking me by force to a madhouse, a living tomb.”
“You certainly don't appear to be mad,” said the gentleman.
The head keeper instantly showed him the order and a copy of the certificates.
“Don't look at them, sir,” cried Alfred; “they are signed by men who were bribed to sign them. For pity's sake, sir, judge for yourself. Test my memory, my judgment, by any question you please. Use your own good sense; don't let those venal rogues judge for you.” ”

“ Ay, Death itself has no bitterness that forlorn cluster did not feel: only the insensibility that ends that bitterness was wanting.
Now the sea, you must know, was literally strewed with things out of the Agra; masts, rigging, furniture, tea-chests, bundles of canes, chairs, tables; but of all this jetsam, Dodd's eye had been for some little time fixed on one object: a live sailor drifting ashore on a great wooden case. ”