F. F. Montrésor

“ And Meg surprised, flung both arms round her neck.
"Oh Laura, you do like me just a little then, don't you?" she cried. "And you don't really believe all you've been saying? I do hate it so! I would rather be unhappy all my life, than think that nobody ever gets anything but half-loaves and makeshifts. It is better to be miserable than satisfied like that."
"Oh Lord!" said Laura, who had a trick of strong language. "This comes of trying to put a modicum of common-sense into your head. Go your own way and be miserable, then. Some people do prefer it, I believe!" ”

“ You are getting much too old for dolls, Margaret. Miss Cripps shouldn't allow you to be such a baby—why, how old are you?"
Meg crimsoned up to the very roots of her hair, clasped her doll more tightly, her eyes growing round and dilated, and remained speechless.
"The child's a fool! How—old—are—you?" with exaggerated clearness, and a full stop between each word.
"Twelve," murmured Meg; and then began to cry from sheer nervousness. There are some natures whom tears aggravate beyond endurance; Aunt Russelthorpe lost patience and shook her niece, and the doll fell to the ground. ”

“ Is there any place, short of the grave, where men have never made love?
"Hush!" said Meg. "We have met life, not death, to-day."
The last occupant of this place had been hanged, the next poor wretch would be waiting execution. The thought struck coldly on her.
"Oh, Barnabas! I have never feared death before," she cried; "for I did not understand what life means." And the preacher, looking at her, knew she spoke truth. This vivifying passion had sent a stronger tide through her veins. ”

“ Was it all a mistake? The waters were going over him.
"I wish you'd light a match. There's one hidden under the rug," said Jack; "and put it between your teeth and lift me a bit; I want to see you."
"That 'ull do ye no good," said Barnabas; but he did as he was asked. The match flickered up between the dying man's face and his own; the loneliness that pressed on his soul, as the thick darkness on his eyeballs, seemed momentarily lightened; then the flame went out.
"Thank 'ee—that will do," said Jack. "It makes a man feel queer to know he's going out, and lonesome like." ”

“ The doctor eyed him inquiringly. "What on earth shall you find to say to some one in a condemned cell?" he asked.
"That God's mercy is greater than man's. That we can kill, but He can make alive," said Barnabas. The doctor slid something into the gaoler's hand as the key turned. "Now, good luck to the sermon; but it mustn't be long," said he.
But the preacher, with a cry, held out his arms.
A woman! no terrified criminal driven to a so-called "repentance" by the approach of death—a woman, with love, not fear, in her eyes, turned quickly to him!
"Margaret! Margaret!" he cried. ”

“ Don't you wait for impossibilities, Meg. I am sure you believe in an impossible sort of lover, if ever you condescend to think of one at all; half a knight and half a saint; some one who has never loved any other woman, and never will, and yet isn't a milksop; who drinks nothing but water, and doesn't care what he eats, but is as strong as Goliath; who is full of high-flown ideas, and yet madly in love; who is handsome as Adonis, and does not know it. ”

“ Happiness, new-born, was in her face, and the fresh wonder at that everlasting miracle which changes our water into wine.
"All the world seems new!" cried Margaret. "But other people have to die. And some of them never know what this means; and some, knowing, leave it all behind. Barnabas, to-morrow you will be free, and I shall be by your side, and all the happiness that is ours shall make us strong to help. I will help as I never did before!—Oh, I am so sorry for them."
"Ay, sweetheart; ye may well be that," he said. ”

“ Scepticism was unnatural to Meg; it meant blank despair to her. The horrors "granny" had poured into her ears, mingled with her own sense of impotence and failure, made her feel it better to risk anything, to force a verdict of damnation from an angry God, rather than to stay where He was not, where the heartless horror of mechanical laws reigned supreme.
Natural healthy love of life was never so strong as it should be in her: she would always rather fly to the ills she knew not, than bear the evils she knew, and face misery she could picture to herself. ”

“ You may laugh, and welcome; but it's the wrong side of your mouth you'll laugh with one day," she shouted hoarsely, though Meg was in truth little inclined to be merry. "You'll leave your finery behind you. You'll run out of the garden into the highway. And you'll repent it every day of your life! You'll be cold and hungry and foot-sore; and you'll wish you were in your grave, and your people will say, 'She had better not have been born'. They love their name better than they love you; for there's none so cold-hearted as gentlefolk, and so you'll find. ”

“ Sauls pick up her bundle! It was like him to take prompt advantage. While she sat in the dark, Meg clenched her hands with the wild desire to kill George Sauls. If Barnabas were hanged how could he be allowed to live? Then she crushed that mad anger down again; it was her fault. She had persuaded her husband to come to London. She had left him alone while she nursed her father, she—what had the doctor said? She had lost the last chance of saving him, but that had not been from want of love. In her soul she knew she had never loved him more than when she had told him he was right. ”

“ An enemy's presence has a finely bracing effect on a woman's nerves; yet, perhaps, at that moment, Meg's wrongs were avenged, even better than the avenger knew.
Mrs. Russelthorpe's love for her brother might be selfish, but at least it was intense; and to lose his was like losing the very life of her soul, for it was the only love she knew. She could not look at Charles, though she felt him look eagerly and questioningly at her, or speak to him, though her silence was an admission. But she met Mr. Sauls' stare with haughty composure; if he must guess she suffered, at least he shouldn't see it. ”

“ His voice sounded so dispirited that Meg, with an unusual impulse, put her arm through his as they stood together, and moved closer to him.
It had been dawning on her of late that this man's love for her gave her a power to help or hinder him, such as no one else, not even Tom, possessed; and that, occasionally, for all his strength, he needed help. It was an idea slow to take root, an idea she was half afraid of, which, once accepted, might work strange wonders.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"It's a fearful thing to hate a man!" said the preacher. ”

“ Then, while Meg, who had been sitting with dilated eyes staring at him, covered her face with her hands, his voice melted into entreaty.
"Perhaps it is so," he said. "But the Master is full of pity. Still He says 'Come'. He knows our backslidings. He bears wi' us again and again, as a mother wi' a bairn who stumbles running to her. His feet bear the bruises o' the stones by the way," cried Barnabas. And again, as on the beach, his blue eyes had the expression of eyes that see that of which they speak. "An' ye shall not be afeard o' th' path they trod! ”

“ Tom suddenly asked his sister-in-law. "Isn't the food to your liking, or aren't you hungry?"
"Yes, thank you, quite—I mean it's very nice," stammered Meg; but some fascination made her look at the creature by her side, who was contorting his face into sudden, hideous grimaces whenever he could catch her eyes unobserved by his host.
"What's the good o' telling lies?" said Tom. "It's plain ye can't eat that; and we all know ye've not been used to fare like us. Here, Timothy, make yourself useful, and fetch an egg from the barn; happen she'll relish it better." ”

“ Alas! though human love first teaches the divine, the failure of "the brother whom we have seen" shakes our belief in a Divinity we have not seen, as nothing else can. Then a smile touched her lips.
"But I daresay you will see all your sins and failures dead at your feet," she said. "I think you would win through anything; it is the very sure people who do; and you will be quite triumphant and happy one day!"
"But I'd have no content," said Barnabas, "nor wish to have, without ye had it too. No, not in heaven—it 'ud be hell an' I lost ye, Margaret!"
"Hush!" cried Meg, amazed. ”

“ Do you think that Barnabas would have let me come here to ask favours of you? I think he would rather have been hanged. He shall never know this. I am begging nothing for him. Death must mean gain for him—but for me! Ah, think of it, think of it! for I hardly dare to. Will you leave me desolate, whom you say you love? I could face death; but life without him is so terrible. If I must bear it, I must," said Meg drawing herself up. "Other women have seen their husbands die, and have lived, and so can I—but——" and her voice broke. ”

“ As for Meg, she turned her face towards the farm again, and of that journey back she never liked to think so long as she lived.
There are griefs we outlive, whose dead faces we can bear to look on, recognising that they are dead; but there are some hours of pain we can never look at overmuch, even through the merciful veil of many years, as there are some joys which we know will be ours always, so long as we are ourselves, those sharpest pains and joys which touch the eternal in us, and make us realise what is meant by the "doing away of time". ”

“ Meg's fineness and slenderness touched the big fish-wife. Meg's sweet smile, the manner that was her father's, and her pretty voice, when she sat singing the whole of one morning to the little cripple lad whose life Barnabas Thorpe had once saved, were all part of the witchery. During the whole of her chequered life there were always some people (and generally people of a very opposite type to her own) who were inclined to give her that peculiarly warm and instinctive service that has something of the romance of loyalty in it ”

“ Giles would go to hear him sometimes; a disreputable, slouching old figure, in a rough fur cap; a figure with loose thick lips and stubbled chin and kindly merry black eyes.
"Lord bless you, I always knew Barnabas had something queer inside him!" he would say; "but I didn't reckon it would take this shape. To think of him turning Methody! But he was bound to be something. If he hadn't turned saint, he'd have swung from the gallows by now; he's the sort who serves any master hard, whether it's God, or the devil! Let's drink to his being made archbishop! He'd wake them all up a bit." ”

“ Deane's life was ebbing slowly away in Bryanston Square, George Sauls was making a good fight for his at the farm.
Tom Thorpe had found him on the afternoon of the preacher's departure, the sun shining down pitilessly on the upturned face, the arms spread wide.
Lifting him up, Tom found the wound at the back of the head, made with a bill-hook or hatchet. Whoever had done that, had also turned his victim over to rifle the pockets; for a man hit from behind would naturally fall on his face, and, moreover, the pockets were empty. ”