Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

“ It was a better thing for Alice to love Edgar than it had ever been to love Paul, because Edgar was suited to her and Paul was not. A woman can always adapt herself to the man she loves, and be—for as long as she chooses—the sort of woman that he approves; but, though it is not difficult for a woman to be somebody else instead of herself for a time, it becomes fatiguing if kept up for too long. After a while it feels like walking in boots which are a shade too short, or biting crusts when one has the toothache. ”

“ Paul smiled scornfully. "Not the men who have loved you as I love you," he said.
"Other men love me as much as you do," persisted Isabel.
"Then let them love you, and let me go," replied Paul roughly. "I may be poor and obscure, and a nobody in your world, but I'm a man all the same, and I'll let no fine lady make a plaything of me."
"You are very unkind!"
"I am very unhappy."
Isabel pouted. "It is your own fault if you are. I'm sure I am nice enough to you to please the most exacting man."
"But I don't thank you for mere niceness. Can't you understand? ”

“ I know that if a man breaks the laws of Society he will find neither remission nor mercy, for there is no forgiveness in Society; but I believe that if a man breaks the law of God his transgression can be taken away as though it had never been, for 'there is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared'."
"It is a grand gospel that you preach, father, and seems almost too good to be true."
"Nothing is too good to be true; the truth is the best of everything."
"I believe that," said Paul, "but I did not always." ”

“ You seem to think that feelings are a sign of exquisite refinement peculiar to yourself, and you are so busy seeing that everybody fulfils their duty to you, that you have no time to think of your duty to other people."
"We have had enough of this," said Paul, rising from his seat.
"More than enough, I should say."
"Still I have one question to ask. Did you mean it when you said that I only cared for you as a stepping-stone to my own success?"
Isabel tossed her head. "Of course I meant it; you never care for anything or anybody that does not minister to your own pride." ”

“ Feelings that last, take a good deal out of you I have discovered; the really delicious sort are those that you think will last for ever and that you know won't," said Isabel.
"I am afraid, my dear girl, that you are becoming an epicure in emotions," remarked Paul, who had just come in.
"I know I am; an election, supervening on a love-affair, is enough to intoxicate any woman, especially when the beloved object and the candidate are one. You can't think what glorious thrills I have all down my back when the crowds applaud you. ”

“ Isabel did not answer, and Joanna continued: "When people come to where I am now, they look at life so differently from how they used to look when the end of the road was not in sight; and they see that the things which once seemed important are trivial, and the things which once seemed trivial are the only things that matter. When you stand where I am standing, you won't care a scrap whether your pride and your self-respect received their due; but you will care infinitely whether you and Paul are together, or whether you will have to go down into the dark valley all alone." ”

“ Paul went on: "He so strains his moral eyesight with splitting hairs, that he is incapable of taking in a large general effect; and he is apt to confuse prejudices with principles, and crotchets with creeds. He is not content with conforming to the spirit of the law; he will obey it in the letter as well."
"I do not think you are just to Edgar," said Isabel.
"Possibly not. I am so much impressed by the necessity of attaining what is good, and the impossibility of rising to what is perfect, that it irritates me to see men neglecting an obvious duty for the sake of an impracticable dream." ”

“ It was in the following winter that Paul Seaton's great book, Some Better Thing, took the literary world by storm, and carried its author at one bound from mere notoriety to abiding fame. Everybody read the book, and everybody who read it was the better for reading it. It was a novel with a purpose, and its purpose was to show that it is only by righteousness that men and nations prevail; also, that there is much that is humorous in life as well as much that is holy, and that healing virtue lies in laughter as well as in prayers and tears. ”

“ If any one had treated me as you have treated Paul Seaton, I think it is in me to write quite as bitter a book as Shams and Shadows, and probably I should have done so."
"But Paul was different."
Lady Farley smiled. "Different from me, you mean! My dear, you must remember that he was your lover and I am only your aunt, and you look at us through differently tinted spectacles. But human nature is pretty much the same in everybody, and when human nature is hit too hard, human nature hits back, either at its fellows, or at Providence, or at both. ”

“ Isabel laughed with delight. "I know exactly. And another evil and bitter thing is helping oneself to strawberries."
"When they are in a pyramid, you mean?" said Paul.
"Yes; and the strawberry at the apex of the pyramid suffers from suicidal tendencies; and is prone to hurl itself from its giddy height to perdition, if you so much as breathe."
Paul laughed.
"And its path to destruction," added Miss Carnaby, "leaves a lurid, crimson stain right across the hostess's tablecloth." ”

“ Isabel opened her blue eyes very wide. "You don't have to make love to him for three hours and more at a stretch, or you would not talk about him in that careless and happy way. I confess that the excellent man's wealth and rank and virtue are unequalled—save, perhaps, by his dulness; but, believe me, there is only one thing on earth more fatiguing than talking to Wrexham, and that is listening to him. Take this as a wrinkle from one who knows."
"You should adapt yourself to him, my dear; it does not do for a man to know that a woman is cleverer than he is." ”

“ I have offended him past all forgiveness. Please don't think I have broken off my engagement with you because I am going to marry my old lover. I shall not marry anybody, but shall count as one of society's failures; and people will pity me as they see me growing old all by myself. Yet I shall not be altogether hard and bitter, because I have tasted what love is like; and having once tasted it (even though I dashed the cup from my lips with my own hands) I can never drink of any other. But, oh! Wrexham, how can I ever forgive myself for having hurt you? ”

“ You talk as if they were schoolboys, and you really are old enough to know better."
"But do you mean to say, Edgar," asked Joanna, "that you would let any woman make a plaything or a door-mat of you?"
"By all means, if I loved her and she was so minded. If I really cared for her, you see, I should think it the greatest honour to be elevated to the uses of her playthings and her door-mats, and I should count myself unworthy to be adapted to such purposes."
"I call that unmanly," remarked Paul. "Even if a man does love a woman, he owes a duty to himself as well as to her." ”

“ As she sat beside Paul in Chayford Chapel that Sunday morning she was at her best. Her love for him stimulated the religious, and stifled the worldly, side of her character. Herein lay the fundamental difference between herself and Joanna: Joanna was a good woman because she loved God; Isabel was a good woman because she loved a good man—a lower type, perhaps, from a spiritual point of view, but one none the less to be considered, since the vessels in a great house are not all of equal honour, and the stars in the firmament are not all of the same glory. ”

“ Lady Esdaile sighed. "Yes, you are. And then, again, you hate us for getting old, and you laugh at us for trying to keep young. You really are tiresome creatures!"
Paul was amused. "I own we are hard upon you when you tell fibs about your ages, because such fibbing seems so foolish to us. When will women learn to be as proud of being old as they are now of being young?"
"When men admire old women as much as young ones, and not a moment before," replied Isabel smartly. ”

“ Paul nodded, and Edgar continued: "If we had ever loved that person, I do not think we should like to feel that they—through us—had wrought lasting evil; this conviction would be a source of endless remorse to us, for the old love's sake, even long after that love was a thing of the past. We might be content to bear the consequences of our own share of ill-doing; but we could not endure the idea that we ourselves had increased the responsibility of any one who had once been dear to us, however thoroughly they might have forfeited our affection. ”

“ Great was the excitement all over England, and Chayford was no exception to the rule. For three weeks Paul made several speeches per day, and was treated as if he were a combination of Juggernaut and a popular preacher, with a flavour of Royalty thrown in.
Everybody in the town, including even the babies and the cats, wore colours, if it were nothing better than a scrap of tea paper; and there was all that delicious love of fighting in the air which makes an election like a glorious war with no death or danger in it.
"Isn't it fun?" exclaimed Isabel one day. "I adore every minute of it. ”

“ He saw that she saw how Paul's face softened at the sight of Isabel; and he realized that every sign of affection shown towards Isabel by Paul was a fresh thorn in Alice's path. Edgar argued that if he lost Alice, no other woman could comfort him; and that therefore, Alice having lost Paul, no other man could comfort her. He forgot that love to a man is like health—he can exist after a fashion without it, though he cannot attain to a high standard of happiness; but that love to a woman is like life—she must have it, in some form or another, or else she will die. ”

“ Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "I think it rather lies in the fact that in drinking the draught of life we soon get through the white froth on the top and come to the small beer underneath."
"Well, I like Sunday evenings and hymns and things in that line," persisted Lord Bobby. "I even go to the length of liking Christmas Day."
"A man who can like Christmas Day will drink sweet champagne and enjoy it," remarked Madderley.
Lord Bobby shook his head. "Oh! I won't go that far."
"Now I, on the contrary," said Isabel, "cannot bear Christmas Day; it is neither one thing nor another." ”

“ One day in the summer in which Paul left Oxford, he and Joanna, with Edgar Ford and Alice Martin, went for a picnic to Chayford Wood. Edgar had ceased to make himself disagreeable to Alice, no man being able to perform the impossible for too long a time at a stretch; and Alice sunned herself in his reawakened smiles, not even her love for Paul having the power to stamp out her desire for universal popularity. ”

“ Eliza Ann is not one of the regretting sort. She does what she thinks right, and leaves Providence to take the consequences. The first time I saw her after her illness, 'My conscience alive, Eliza Ann,' says I, 'you are a figure of fun!' 'Martha,' says she, 'the Lord called me to nurse that poor, misguided young man; and was I going to let the thought of my vile body come between me and the Lord's work?' That was how Eliza Ann looked at the matter; and it was the sensible view to my thinking."
Joanna's eyes filled with tears; self-sacrifice—even in Eliza Anns—always touched her. ”

“ As you know, I never liked Paul Seaton; but I am a just woman, and in this matter I cannot help saying that I consider you are more culpable than he. I am not blaming you, my dear child, for I should probably have done the same thing at your age; but if you have your fling you must be content to pay the bill."
Isabel sighed, and her aunt continued: "You deliberately broke the young man's heart and destroyed all his ideals; yet you are surprised when, in return, he tries to prove to the world that love is a fable and idealism a folly. It is simply the natural outcome of your action." ”

“ And Paul, to his surprise, found himself telling Miss Carnaby all about his father and his mother and Joanna, and his life at Oxford, and his boating; and his struggle to get on, and his dreams of fame. And Isabel seemed to understand it all as thoroughly as he did himself.
Paul had never talked so well in his life before. He admired Miss Carnaby enough to desire above all things to make a good impression on her; and he was not yet sufficiently in love with her to be awkward and tongue-tied in her presence. When a man admires without loving, he is conversationally at his best. ”

“ She had not blotted out the sum of her old love—she had merely transferred it from Paul's account to Edgar's; which was a decidedly wiser plan, as thus no good material was wasted. All the dreams of her springtime and the romance of her early summer, now went to the making of a rich harvest of affection for Edgar Ford to reap. Alice was one of the women who cannot live without loving; the man that such a woman happens to love is a mere matter of detail.
To an artist his art is everything, and it is born in him ”

“ It is simply fiendish to throw a woman's nose in her teeth in that fashion."
"Poor Isabel!"
"I always envy the women with good noses more than I can express," continued Miss Carnaby, leaning back in her chair and gazing thoughtfully up to the ceiling; "eyes grow dim and teeth depart and figures increase, but a good nose is an abiding resting-place for your vanity. You know that it will last out your time, whatever happens; and that age cannot wither nor custom stale its satisfactory proportions."
"That is so," agreed Lady Farley, tenderly stroking her own perfect little aquiline. ”

“ Isabel was wrong when she said that her lover had no idea that he bored her. It may be easy for a woman to throw dust in the eyes of the men who only admire her; but the men who love her see too clearly to be blinded by any paltry artifice, and frequently suffer accordingly. Lord Wrexham knew that he bored Isabel, and the knowledge well-nigh broke his heart; but he could no more help boring her than he could help breathing. He made mistakes in his dealings with her, and frequently said the wrong thing; therefore Isabel was hard upon him. Friendship may pardon our misdeeds ”

“ No one understands better than I do the feelings which influenced you when you wrote it; but feelings pass away, and a man is not always the same man. The talent displayed in the pages of your book might have a decided influence for good if used in a right direction; and I want you so to use it, and to rise to higher things on the stepping-stone of the dead self that wrote Shams and Shadows."
Paul smoked in silence, and Edgar went on: "And there is another argument I would use, if I were sure you would forgive me for using it, and not think me interfering or impertinent." ”

“ Ford enjoyed this joke: he rode to hounds himself, and was a good horseman. "And they forget that cutting oneself off from one's own class does not attach one to a higher class; it merely leaves one without a class at all," he concluded.
"Exactly," agreed Paul, "between heaven and earth, like Mahomet's coffin. I don't of course deny that it is a good thing to be well-born and wealthy. I only say that it is a bad thing to pretend to be so when you are not. I don't deny that it is a good thing to be handsome; but a man had better have a snub nose of his own than an artificial aquiline." ”