George Meredith

“ The thought that there was something wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once in the less tangible belief that a harm had come to Emilia—not was coming, but had come. Passion thinks wilfully when it thinks at all. That night he lay in a deep anguish, revolving the means by which he might help and protect her. There seemed no way open, save by making her his own; and did he belong to himself?. What bound him to Lady Charlotte? ”

“ A marriage without love is dishonour."
Sentiment enjoys its splendid moods. Wilfrid having had the figure of his beloved given to him under nuptial benediction, cloaked, even as he wished it to be, could afford now to commiserate his sister, and he admired her at the same time. "I'll take care you are not made a sacrifice of when the event is fixed," he said—as if it had never been in contemplation.
"Oh! I have not known happiness for years, till this hour," Cornelia whispered to him bashfully; and set him wondering why she should be happy when she had nothing but his sanction to reject a man. ”

“ A wife superior to her husband makes him ridiculous wilfully, if the wretch is to be laughed at; but a mistress thus ill-matched cannot fail to cast the absurdest light on her monstrous dwarf-custodian. Wilfrid had the sagacity to perceive, and the keen apprehension of ridicule to shrink from, the picture. Besides, he was beginning to love Emilia. His struggle now was to pluck his passion from his heart; and such was already his plight that he saw no other way of attempting it than by taking horse and riding furiously in the direction of Besworth. ”

“ Lady Charlotte echoed, with curious eyes fixed on the puzzle beside her.
"Tell me you will not believe him," Emilia continued. "He is mine; I shall never give him up. It is useless for you or any one else to love him. I know what love is now. Stop while you can. I can be sorry for you, but I will not let him go from me. He is my lover."
Emilia closed her lips abruptly. She produced more effect than was visible. Lady Charlotte drew out a letter, saying, "Perhaps this will satisfy you." ”

“ Cornelia coloured. Her pride supported her, and she violated fine shades painfully in her response: "Mr. Barrett left me there. Is that your meaning?"
Adela was too much shocked to note the courageousness of the reply. "Well! if all we do is to come into broad daylight!" was her horrified mental ejaculation.
The veil of life was about to be lifted for these ladies. They found Arabella in her room, crying like an unchastened school-girl; and their first idea was one of intense condemnation—fresh offences on the part of Mrs. Chump being conjectured. ”

“ If we conceive a timorous little body of finely-strung nerves, inclined to be gay, and shrewdly apprehensive, but depending for her opinion of herself upon those about her, we shall see that Mrs. Lupin's life was one of sorrow and scourges in the atmosphere of the 'ideal.' Never did nun of the cloister fight such a fight with the flesh, as this poor little woman, that she might not give offence to the Tribunal of the Nice Feelings which leads us to ask, "Is sentimentalism in our modern days taking the place of monasticism to mortify our poor humanity?" ”

“ Powys wishes to send you to Italy?"
"I do," said Emilia.
"When are you going?"
"I am not going?"
"Why?"
Emilia's bosom rose. She cried "Dear lady!" on the fall of it, and was scarce audible—adding, "Do you love Wilfrid?"
"Well, you have brought me to the point quickly," Lady Charlotte remarked. "I don't commonly beat the bush long myself. Love him! You might as well ask me my age. The indiscretion would be equal, and the result the same. Love! I have a proper fear of the word. When two play at love they spoil the game. It's enough that he says he loves me." ”

“ Pole jumped from his chair. "Going and playing with an unprotected girl. I can pardon a young man's folly, but this is infamous. My dear child," he turned to Emilia, "if you've got any notion about my son Wilfrid, you must root it up as quick as you can. If he's been behaving like a villain, leave him to me. I detest, I hate, I loathe, I would kick, a young man who deceives a girl. ”

“ It was a breach of implied contract, she thought, that Cornelia should, as she did only yesterday, tell her that she had seen Edward Buxley in the woods, and that she was of opinion that the air of the woods was bad for her. Not to see would have been the sisterly obligation, in Adela's idea— especially when seeing embraced things that no loving sister should believe.
Bear in mind that we are sentimentalists. The eye is our servant, not our master; and—so are the senses generally. We are not bound to accept more than we choose from them. ”

“ Chump the counter-remarks of the ladies, she provoked utterances that almost killed her. A sadder life is not to be imagined. The perpetual irritation of a desire to indulge in her mortal weakness, and listening to the sleepless conscience that kept watch over it; her certainty that it would be better for her to laugh right out, and yet her incapacity to contest the justice of her nieces' rebuke ”

“ I love, I will love, no one but her"—with sundry caressing ejaculations that spring a thirst for kisses, and a tender 'putting of the case,' now and then.
So much for Adela's part in the conflict. Edward was unaware that the secret of her mastering him was, that she was now talking common-sense in the tone of sentiment. He, on the contrary, talked sentiment in the tone of common-sense. Of course he was beaten: and O, you young lovers, when you hear the dear lips setting what you call the world's harsh language to this music, know that an hour has struck for you! It is a fatal sound to hear. ”

“ When the brain, and especially the fine brain of a woman, first begins to act for itself, the work is of heavy labour; she finds herself plunging abroad on infinite seas, and runs speedily into the anchorage of dogmas, obfuscatory saws, and what she calls principles. Here she is safe; but if her thinking was not originally the mere action of lively blood upon that battery of intelligence, she will by-and-by reflect that it is not well for a live thing to be tied to a dead, and that long clinging to safety confesses too much. Merthyr waited for Georgians patiently. ”

“ Chump had raised the hubbub about her loss, Cornelia's thoughts had been troubled by some haunting spectral relationship with money. It had helped to make her reckless in granting interviews to Purcell Barrett. "If we are poor, I am free;" and that she might then give herself to whomever she pleased, was her logical deduction. The exposure at Besworth, and the partial confirmation of her suspicions, were not without their secret comfort to her. In the carriage, coming home, Wilfrid had touched her hand by chance, and pressed it with good heart. ”

“ You are not."
"It seems that we are dignifying my gentleman remarkably," said Lady Charlotte. "When two women fight for a man, that is almost a meal for his vanity. Now, listen. I am not, as they phrase it, in love. I am an experienced person—what is called a woman of the world. I should not make a marriage unless I had come to the conclusion that I could help my husband, or he me. Do me the favour to read this letter."
Emilia took it and opened it slowly. It was a letter in the tone of the gallant paying homage with some fervour. Emilia searched every sentence for the one word. ”

“ The baronet was thinking: "For your sister exposed, you display more agitation than for yourself insulted."
Adela found Arabella in so fresh a mood that she was sure good news had been heard. It proved that Mrs. Chump had sent a few lines in a letter carried by Braintop, to this effect: "My dears all! I found your father on his back in bed, and he discharged me out of the room; and the sight of me put him on his legs, and you will soon see him. Be civil to Mr. Braintop, who is a faithful young man, of great merit, and show your gratitude to—Martha Chump." ”

“ Among ladies pretending to dignity of life, the horror of acrid complaints alternating with public offers of love from a gross woman, may be pictured in the mind's eye. The absence of Mr. Pole and Wilfrid, which caused Mrs. Chump to chafe at the restraint imposed by the presence of males to whom she might not speak endearingly, and deprived the ladies of proper counsel, and what good may be at times in masculine authority, led to one fierce battle, wherein the great shot was fired on both sides. ”

“ There were probably a dozen very young men in the room waiting to rise with their partners at a signal for dancing; and these could not be calculated upon to take an initiative, or follow one—as ladies, poor slaves! will do when the electric hostess rustles. The men present were non-conductors. Arabella knew that she could carry off the women, but such a proceeding would leave her father at the mercy of the wine; and, moreover, the probability was that Mrs. Chump would remain by him, and, sole in a company of males, explode her sex with ridicule, Brookfield in the bargain. ”

“ I am half-dead with the smell of cabs. Oh! if ever I am poor it will kill me. That damp hay and close musty life are too intolerable! Yes! You see I care for what I eat. I seem to be growing an animal. And Wilfrid is going to drag me over the same course to-morrow, if you don't prevent him. I would not mind, only it is absolutely necessary that I should see Sir Twickenham."
She gave a reason why, which appeared to Arabella so cogent that she said at once: "If Cornelia does not take your place I will."
The kiss of thanks given by Adela was accompanied by a request for tea. ”

“ Lupin was one of the victims of the modern feminine 'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman; devout and charitable, as her nieces admitted; but radically—what? They did not like to think, or to say, what;—repugnant, seemed to be the word. A woman who consented to perceive the double-meaning, who acknowledged its suggestions of a violation of decency laughable, and who could not restrain laughter, was, in their judgement, righteously a victim. After signal efforts to lift her up, the verdict was that their Aunt Lupin did no credit to her sex. ”

“ Even if the ladies had been disposed to pardon her vulgarity, they could not by any effort summon a charitable sentiment toward one of their sex who degraded it by a public petition for a husband. This was not to be excused; and, moreover, they entertained the sentimentalist's abhorrence of the second marriage of a woman; regarding the act as simply execrable; being treason to the ideal of the sex—treason to Woman's purity—treason to the mysterious sentiment which places Woman so high, that when a woman slips there is no help for it but she must be smashed. ”

“ Pericles bellowed, "Allegro." Two minutes after Braintop felt a touch on his shoulder; and Wilfrid, speaking in a tone of friend to friend, begged him to go to town by the last train and remove Miss Belloni to an hotel, which he named. "Certainly," said Braintop; "but if I meet her father..?" Wilfrid summoned champagne for him; whereupon Mrs. Chump cried out, "Ye're kind to wait upon the young man, Mr. Wilfrid; and that Mr. Braintop's an invalu'ble young man. And what do ye want with the hotel, when we've left it, Mr. Paricles?"
The Greek raised his head from Mr. Pole, shrugging at her openly. ”

“ Wilfrid was trying his yacht, the ladies were preparing for the great pleasure-gathering on Besworth lawn, and shaping astute designs to exclude the presence of Mrs. Chump, for which they partly condemned themselves; but, as they said, "Only hear her!" The excitable woman was swelling from conjecture to certainty on a continuous public cry of, "'Pon my hon'r!—d'ye think little Belloni's gone and marrud Pole?"
Emilia's supposed flight had deeply grieved the ladies, when alarm and suspicion had subsided. ”

“ Pericles still lay at provoking full length. Her panting was ominous of a further explosion.
"Innocent child!" in the mockery of a foreign accent, commenced it; while Wilfrid thought how unjustly and coldly critically he had accused his little Emilia of vulgarity, now that he had this feminine display of it swarming about him.
"Innocent child, indeed! Be as deaf as you like, you shall hear. And sofas are not made for men's dirty boots, in this country. I believe they're all pigs abroad—the men; and the women—cats! ”