G. J. Whyte-Melville

“ One of us cannot see a woman fitting on her gloves without a pang. To another there is a memory and a sorrow in the flirt of a fan, the rustle of a dress, the grinding of a barrel-organ, or the slang of a street song. The stinging-nettle crops up in every bed of flowers we raise; the bitter tonic flavours all we eat and drink. I dare say Werther could not munch his bread-and-butter for years in common comfort because of Charlotte. Would it not be wiser for us to ignore the Charlottes of life altogether, and stick to the bread-and-butter? ”

“ As like Maud Bruce in form and feature, as though she had been her twin sister, Nina Algernon possessed the same pale, delicate features, the same graceful form, the same dark, pleading eyes and glossy raven hair; but Mr. Bruce's elder and unacknowledged daughter had this advantage over the younger, that about her there was a sweetness, a freshness, a quiet gaiety, and a bonhomie such as spring only from kindliness of disposition and pure unselfishness of heart. Had she been an ugly girl, though she might have lacked admirers, she could not have long remained without a lover. ”

“ Truth to tell, she is tired to death of it--tired of the room, the palette, the easel, the queen, the rhymer, the little dusky imp in the corner, whose wings are changing into scales and a tail, almost tired of dear Simon Perkins himself; who is working contentedly on (how can he?) as if life contained nothing more than effect and colouring--as if the reality were not better than the representation after all.
"A quarter of an inch more this way," says the preoccupied artist. "There is a touch wanting in that shadow under the eye--thanks, dear Nina. ”

“ That is!" said Jim, sitting on the box of the cab, and peering into the darkness, through which a gas-lamp glimmered with dull, uncertain rays, blurred by the autumn fog. "You'd like to be master, you would, I dare say, all through the job, and for me to be man! You'd best look sharp about it. I'll have that blessed life of yours afore the sun's up to-morrow, and see who'll be master then. Ay, and missis too! Hooray! for the cruel eyes, and the touch-me-not airs. The proud, pale-faced devil! as thought Jim wasn't quite the equals of the dirt beneath her feet. ”

“ I wonder if I'm a fool. No; nothing's impossible; it's only difficult. What! London already? Ah! there's no place like town."
The familiar gas-lamps, the roll of the cabs, the bustle in the streets, dispelled whatever shadows of mistrust in his own merits remained from Tom's reflections in the railway carriage; and long before he reached his uncle's house, he had made up his mind to "go in," as he called it, for Miss Bruce, morally confident of winning, yet troubled with certain chilling misgivings, as fearing that this time he had really fallen in love. ”

“ Damn me, sir!" turning full round upon Tom Ryfe, "I won't permit it! I can detect the smell of chloroform in those lozenges. Smell, sir, I've the smell of a bloodhound. I could hunt a scamp all over England by nose--by nose, I tell you, sir, and worry him to death when I ran into him; and I would too. Now, sir, if you choose to be chloroformed, I don't. I'm not anxious to be taken out of this compartment as stupid as an owl, and as cold as a cabbage, with a pain in my eyes, a singing in my ears, and a scoundrel's hands in my waistcoat-pockets. ”

“ That evening his aunts thought Simon in better spirits than usual. Nina, though she went to bed before the rest, had never found him kinder, more cheerful, more considerate. He spoke playfully, good-humouredly, on various subjects, and kissed the girl's forehead gravely, almost reverently, when she wished him good-night. It was such a caress as a man lays on the dead face that shall never look in his own again. The painter slept but little--perhaps not at all. And who shall tell how hard he wrestled with his great sorrow during those long hours of darkness, "even to the breaking of the day"? ”

“ Everything spoke of hope and happiness and vitality. Bruce opened his window, drew in long breaths of the keen, reviving air, and stole to listen at Nina's door.
How his heart went up in gratitude to heaven! Mother and child were sleeping--so peacefully, so soundly. Mother and child! At that early period the dearest, the sweetest, the holiest link of human love--the gold without the dross, the flower without the insect, the wine without the headache, the full fruition of the feelings without the wear and tear of the heart. ”

“ When he met Miss Bruce at Lady Goldthred's, no doubt he admired her beauty and approved of her manner, but it was neither beauty nor manner, nor could he have explained what it was, that caused the pulses within him to stir, as they stirred long ago--that brought back a certain flavour of the old draught he had quaffed so eagerly, to find it so bitter at the dregs. Another meeting with Maud, a dance or two, a whisper on a crowded staircase, and Lord Bearwarden told himself that the deep wound had healed at last; that the grass was growing fresh and fair over the grave of a dead love ”

“ It gave him, indeed, a sharp and cruel pang to think that it had come to this--that the face he had so worshipped he must now fly from like a culprit--that for his own sake, in sheer self-defence, he must avoid her presence, as if he had committed against her some deadly injury--against her, for whom, even now, he would willingly have laid down his life! Poor Dick! He little knew, but it was the last pang he was destined to feel from his untoward attachment, and it punished him far more severely than he deserved. ”

“ To care for a bad woman is to be dragged down to her level, inch by inch, till the intellect itself becomes sapped in a daily degradation of the heart. From such slavery emancipation is cheap under any suffering, at any sacrifice. The lopping of a limb is a painful process, but above a gangrened wound experienced surgeons amputate without scruple or remorse.
On the other hand, a true woman's affection is of all earthly influences the noblest and most elevating. It encourages the highest and gentlest qualities of man's nature--his enterprise, courage, patience, sympathy, above all, his trust. ”

“ After much wavering and hesitation, Miss Bruce resolved at last to pawn her diamonds. So dearly do women love their trinkets, that I believe, though he never knew it, Tom Ryfe was more than once within an ace of gaining the prize he longed for, simply from Maud's disinclination to part with her jewels. How little he dreamt that the very packet which had helped to cement into intimacy his first acquaintance with her should prove the means of dashing his cherished hopes to the ground, and raising yet another obstacle to shut him out from his lovely client! ”

“ Dick seemed as if he thought his lordship had gone mad. Nina stared helplessly at the group. Another gasp and a fainter groan came from the body lying underneath the cab.
"We must look to this man; he is dying," said Simon Perkins, on his knees by the prostrate form, now motionless and insensible.
"My house is round the corner," answered Lord Bearwarden, stooping over the fallen ruffian. "Let us take him in. All the doctors in the world won't save him," he added, in a tone of grave pity. "He's bleeding to death inside." ”

“ In the meantime, while Dick Stanmore is hugging himself in the warm atmosphere of hope, while Lord Bearwarden hovers on the brink of a stream in which he narrowly escaped drowning long ago, while Tom Ryfe is plunged in depths of anxiety, jealousy, and humiliation that scorch like liquid fire, Miss Bruce's dark eyes, and winning, wilful ways, have kindled the torch of mistrust and discord between two people of whom she has rarely seen the one and never heard of the other. ”

“ Ah, Tom! an old head, you know, is worth a many pair of hands. When you're well enough, in a week or so, my lad, I shall like to show you how I've kept everything going, though I was so anxious, terribly anxious, all the time. The only matter that's been left what you call in statu quo is that business of Miss Bruce's, which I had nothing to do with. It will last you a good while yet, Tom, though it's of less importance to her now, poor thing!--don't you move, Tom--I'll hand you the barley-water--because she's Miss Bruce no longer. ”

“ They asked him, indeed, to remain for dinner, and, notwithstanding their hospitable inclinations, were no doubt relieved when he declined. He had gained some experience, you see, from his previous worship of Miss Bruce, which now stood him in good stead, for in affairs of love, as of honour, a man conducts his second with more skill and savoir faire than his first.
The world seemed to have changed by magic while he went back to London. It felt like the breaking up of a frost, when all is warmth and softness and vitality once more. ”

“ The heavens are not too high, the sea too deep, nor the desert too wide to afford him a lesson; and the human countenance, with its endless variety of feature and expression, is a book he never wearies of learning by heart. When his professional interest in beauty is enhanced by warmer feelings, it may be imagined that vanity could require no fuller tribute of admiration than the worship of one whose special gift it is to decide on the symmetry of outward form.
As a painter, Simon Perkins approved of Nina Algernon--as a man he loved her. ”

“ I have said that Simon Perkins was a painter to the tips of his fingers. Just as a carpenter cannot help looking at a piece of wood with a professional glance it is impossible to mistake--a glance that seems to embrace at once its length, depth, thickness, toughness, and general capabilities--so a painter views every object in nature, animate or inanimate, as a subject for imitation and study of his art. ”

“ You will think I was very unhappy--so I was."
"But why?" asked Maud, shrewdly guessing, and at the same time dreading the answer.
"Because I was a fool, my lady," replied her husband--"a fool of the very highest calibre. You have, no doubt, discovered that in this world folly is punished far more severely than villainy. Deceive others, and you prosper well enough; allow yourself to be deceived, and you're pitched into as if you were the greatest rogue unhung. ”

“ Behold them, then, wedged into a front seat, Dorothea's bonnet hanging over the rail, Jim's gaudy handkerchief bulging with oranges, both spectators too absorbed in the action of the piece to realise its improbabilities, and the woman thoroughly identifying herself with the character and fortunes of its heroine.
The theatre is small, but the audience if not select are enthusiastic; the stage is narrow, but affords room for a deal of strutting and striding about on the part of an overpowering actor in the inevitable belt and boots of the melodramatic highwayman. ”

“ It is only when his suit has prospered that a man feels utterly idiotic and moonstruck in the presence of the woman he adores. Why, when life is scarce endurable but at her side, he should become a bore in her presence, is only another intricacy in the many puzzles that constitute the labyrinth of love. So long as he flutters unsinged about its flame, the moth is all the happier for the warmth of the candle, all the livelier for the inspiration of its rays. Dick Stanmore, turning into the Kensington Road, was the insect basking in those bright, alluring beams ”

“ It was lucky his letter to the colonel had not been sent. In such sorrows as these a soldier learns how his regiment is his real home, how his comrades are the staunchest, the least obtrusive, and the sincerest of friends.
Patting his charger's neck at the very next field-day, Bearwarden told himself there was much to live for still; that it would be unsoldierlike, unmanly, childish, to neglect duty, to wince from pleasure, to turn his back on all the world had to offer, only because a woman followed her nature and changed her mind. ”