Grant Allen

“ John drew his hand across his forehead slowly. "Ethie darling," he said, "you are wandering, I'm afraid. You have a bad fever. I don't know what you mean."
"Then you didn't tear them up, and wear a Fantee dress, and dance with a tom-tom down the street? Oh, John!"
"Oh, Ethel! No. What a terrible delirium you must have had!"
"It is all well," she said. "I don't mind if I die now." And she sank back exhausted into a sort of feverish sleep.
"John Creedy," said the black catechist's wife solemnly, in Fantee, "you will have to answer for that lie to a dying woman with your soul!" ”

“ The men of the future mustn't all be cast in one unvarying stereotyped mould; we must have a little of all good types combined, in order to make a perfect phalanstery."
Olive sighed again. "I don't know," she said pensively. "I don't feel sure. I hope I am doing right. In my aspirations every evening I have desired light on this matter, and have earnestly hoped that I was not being misled by my own feelings; for, oh, Clarence, I do love you so dearly, so truly, so absorbingly, that I half fear my love may be taking me unwittingly astray. ”

“ Our conscience in this matter isn't yet fully formed. We feel that it's right, of course; oh yes, we know the phalanstery has ordered everything for the best; but we can't help grieving over it; the human heart within us is too unregenerate still to acquiesce without a struggle in the dictates of right and reason."
Olive again said nothing, but fixed her eyes silently upon the grave, earnest portrait of the Founder over the carved oak mantelpiece, and let the hot tears stream their own way over her cold, white, pallid, bloodless cheek without reproof for many minutes. ”

“ Still, Don Pedro took heart once more. "Revolution enthroned her," he muttered between his teeth, "and counter-revolution shall disenthrone her yet. These silly people will smirk and bow while she pretends to be in love with every one of them from day to day; but when once the young Guatemalan has carried off the prize they will regret their folly, and turn to the Chancellor, whose heart has always been fixed upon the welfare of Andorra." ”

“ I gave my consent for pretty gentle little Olive's sake! Heaven grant I was not too much moved by her prettiness and her delicacy, for I love her, Eustace, I love her like a daughter."
"So we all love all the children of the phalanstery Cyriac, we who are elder brothers," said the physiologist gravely, half smiling to himself nevertheless at this quaint expression of old-world feeling on the part even of the very hierarch, whose bounden duty it was to advise and persuade a higher rule of conduct and thought than such antique phraseology implied. ”

“ Chung, I have money of my own. What can I do? Help me, tell [Pg 61] me. I can't let a fellow-creature die for a mere prejudice of race and colour. If I were your wife it would be yours. Isn't it my duty?"
"No," said Chung. "It is more sacrifice than any woman ought to make for any man. You like me, but that is all."
"If I shut my eyes and only heard you, I think I could love you."
"Miss Effie," said Chung suddenly, "this is wrong, very wrong of me. I have let my weakness overcome me. I won't stop any longer. ”

“ For Annie was a Professor's wife: and the dignity of a Professor's wife is almost as serious a matter as that of a Senior Proctor himself.
Imagine my horror, then, when Ida answered, with her frank smile and sunny voice, "Your sister! I didn't know you had a sister. And anyhow, I haven't come to see your sister, but yourself. And I'd better go to the Randolph straight, I'm sure, because I shall feel more at home there. You can come round and see me whenever you like, there; and I mean you to show me all Oxford, now I've come here, that's certain." ”

“ Gladys replied quietly, "and till I do know them, I shall remain of my own opinion still. If you wish me not to see so much of Mr. Vardon, I shall try to do as you say; but if I happen to like any particular person, whether he's a peer or a ploughboy, I can't help liking him, so there's an end of it." And Gladys kissed her mother demurely on the forehead, and walked with a stately sweep out of the room.
"It's perfectly clear," said Lady Surrey to herself, "that that girl's in love with Mr. Vardon, and what on earth I'm to do about it is to me a mystery." ”

“ Poor, dear, good little countess; from my heart I pity you. Miss Martindale! why, she had never even thought of her. A mere governess, a nobody; and Harry Vardon, with his magnificent intellect and splendid prospects, was going to throw himself away on that girl! She could hardly control herself to answer him, but with a great effort she gulped down her feelings, and remarked that Ethel Martindale was a very good girl, and would doubtless make an admirable wife. ”

“ Walter was a man of too much delicacy of feeling even to think of it to himself as a fraud or a forgery. Then, again, the vicar was not a very old man after all; he might live for an indefinite period, and Christina and himself might lose all the best years of their life waiting for a useless person's natural removal. What a pity that threescore was not the utmost limit of human life! For his own part, like the Psalmist, Walter had no desire to outlive his own highest tastes and powers of enjoyment. Ah, well, well, man's prerogative is to better and improve upon nature. ”

“ At length, in the second act, when the prima donna entered, crown on head and robes of state trained behind, in the official costume of the Grand-Duchess of Gerolstein, Don Pedro raised himself from his seat and cried in a loud voice, "Long live Nora, Empress of Andorra and of the Holy Roman Empire!"
The whole audience rose as one man. "Long live the Empress," re-echoed from every side of the building. Handkerchiefs waved ecstatically; women sobbed with emotion; old men wept tears of joy that they had lived to behold the Renovation of the Romans. ”

“ I exclaimed in surprise; "why, he's as white as you and I are, every bit as white, Harry."
"So he may be, to look at," answered my cousin; "but a brown man's a brown man, all the same, however much white blood he may have in him; you can never breed the nigger out. Confound his impudence, asking you to dance four times with him in a single evening! You, too, of all girls in the island! Confound his impudence! Why, his mother was a slave girl once on Palmettos estate!" ”

“ He allowed no one to help him or come near him—not even his fellow-Christians, the catechist and his wife: Ethel was too holy a thing for their African hands to touch. Next he put on his white surplice, and for the first and only time in his life he read, without a quaver in his voice, the Church of England burial service over the open grave. And when he had finished he went back to his desolate hut, and cried with a loud voice of utter despair, "The one thing that bound me to civilization is gone. Henceforth I shall never speak another word of English. I go to my own people." ”

“ And indeed Lady Surrey's position was by no means an easy one. On the one hand, she felt that whatever she herself, who was a person of mature years, might happen to do, it would be positively wicked in her to allow a young girl like Gladys to throw herself away on a man in Harry Vardon's position. Without any shadow of an arrière pensée, that was her genuine feeling as a mother and a member of society. But then, on the other hand, how could she oppose it, if she really ever thought herself, even conditionally, of marrying Harry Vardon? ”

“ What a blessing it is to think you were born in a phalansteric land, where the dear child will be happily and painlessly rid of its poor little unconscious existence, before it has reached the age when it might begin to know its own incurable and inevitable misfortune. Oh, Olive, what a blessing that is, and how thankful we ought all to be that we live in a world where the sweet pet will be saved so much humiliation, and mortification, and misery! ”

“ I come on one side from the oldest and greatest among civilized races, the Jews; and on the other side from many energetic English, French, and Dutch families whose blood I am vain enough to prize as a precious inheritance even though it came to me through the veins of an octaroon girl. I have lately arrived at the conclusion that it is not well for me to remain in Jamaica. I cannot bear to live in a society which will not receive my dear mother on the same terms as it receives me, and will not receive either of us on the same terms as it receives other people. ”

“ Olive was there already, pale and trembling, with little Rosebud sleeping peacefully in the hollow of her lap. What a picture she looked, the wee dear thing, with the hothouse flowers from the conservatory that Clarence had brought to adorn her, fastened neatly on to her fine flannel robe! The physiologist took out a little phial from his pocket, and began to open a sort of inhaler of white muslin. At the same moment, the grave, kind old hierarch stretched out his hands to take the sleeping baby from its mother's arms. Olive shrank back in terror, and clasped the child softly to her heart. ”

“ I sometimes feel—forgive me, Clarence—but I sometimes feel as if I were allowing my own heart and my own wishes to guide me too exclusively in this solemn question: thinking too much about you and me, about ourselves (which is only an enlarged form of selfishness, after all) , and too little about the future good of the community and—and—" blushing a little, for women will be women even in a phalanstery—"and of the precious lives we may be the means of adding to it. ”

“ Well, I should tell you, my dear sir, that I had contracted an engagement about the year 1779 with a young lady of most remarkable beauty and attractive mental gifts, a Miss Amelia Spragg, daughter of the well-known General Sir Thomas Spragg, with whose achievements you are doubtless familiar. Pardon me, my friend of another age, pardon me, I beg of you, if I cannot allude to this subject without emotion after a lapse of time which to you doubtless seems like a century, but is to me a matter of some few months only at the utmost. ”

“ When Paul Owen returned to Peckham for the long vacation, it was with a heavy heart that he ventured back slowly to his father's cottage. Margaret Owen had put everything straight and neat in the little living room, as she always did, to welcome home her son who had grown into a gentleman; and honest John stood at the threshold beaming with pleasure to wring Paul's hand in his firm grip, just back unwashed from his day's labour. After the first kissings and greetings were over, John Owen said rather solemnly, "I have bad news for you, Paul. The Apostle is sick, even unto death." ”

“ The moment she saw Clarence, she guessed at once with a woman's instinct that something serious had happened: and she didn't rest till she had found out from him all about it. Rhoda brought her the poor wee mite, carefully wrapped after the phalansteric fashion in a long strip of fine flannel, and Olive unrolled the piece until she came at last upon the small crippled feet, that looked so soft and tender and dainty and waxen in their very deformity. The young mother leant over the child a moment in speechless misery. ”

“ Yet, in spite of the measureless gulf that parts us, I felt I could not return to China without having told you. Will you forgive me?"
"I am glad you did," said Effie; "it will relieve you."
She stood a minute irresolute, and then she began again: "Mr. Chung, I am too horrified to know what I ought to do. I can't grasp it and take it all in so quickly. If you had money of your own, would you be able to run away and live somehow?"
"I might possibly," Chung answered, "but not probably. A Chinaman, even if he wears European clothing, is too marked a person ever to escape. ”

“ Olive said at last with a little sigh, releasing her hand from his, and gathering up the folds of her stole from the marble flooring of the seat; "if only the phalanstery will give its consent! but I have my doubts about it. Is it quite right? Have we chosen quite wisely? Will the hierarch and the elder brothers think I am strong enough and fit enough for the duties of the task? It is no light matter, we know, to enter into bonds with one another for the responsibilities of fatherhood and motherhood. ”

“ Let me hold her myself." It was contrary to all fixed rules; but neither the hierarch nor any one else there present had the heart to refuse that beseeching voice on so supreme and spirit-rending an occasion.
Brother Eustace poured the chloroform solemnly and quietly on to the muslin inhaler. "By resolution of the phalanstery," he said, in a voice husky with emotion, "I release you, Rosebud, from a life for which you are naturally unfitted. In pity for your hard fate, we save you from the misfortune you have never known, and will never now experience." ”

“ Any one who finds so much beauty in the world as you do can hardly think life poor or meagre. You seem to catch the loveliest points in everything you look at, and to throw a little literary or artistic reflection over them which makes them even lovelier than they are in themselves."
"Well, no doubt one can increase one's possibilities of enjoyment by carefully cultivating one's own faculties of admiration and appreciation," said the curate thoughtfully; "but, after all, life has only a few chapters that are thoroughly interesting and enthralling in all its history. ”

“ When I get to England, I intend to go to Cambridge, and take a degree there, so as to put myself on an equality with other educated people. Now, Miss Hazleden, I am going to ask you something which is so great a thing to ask that it makes my heart tremble to ask it. I know no man on earth, least of all myself, dare think himself fit for you, or dare plead his own cause before you without feeling his own unworthiness and pettiness of soul beside you. ”

“ But, dearest, I think your fears are greater than they need be: you must recollect that humanity requires for its higher development tenderness, and truth, and love, and all the softer qualities, as well as strength and manliness; and if you are a trifle less strong than most of our sisters here, you seem to me at least (and I really believe to the hierarch and to the elder brothers too) to make up for it, and more than make up for it, in your sweet and lovable inner nature. ”

“ Annie behaved like a brick, as soon as the first chill was over; for though she is married to a professor of dry bones (Comparative Osteology sounds very well, but means no more than that, when you come to think of it) , she is a woman at heart in spite of it all. Ida had the most winning, charming, confiding manner; and she was so pleased with Oxford, with the colleges, the libraries, the gardens, the river, the boats, the mediæval air, the whole place, that she quite gained Annie over to her side. ”

“ She thought that men in society were generally dreadfully empty-headed and horribly vain. She thought that the importance of disparity in age had, as a rule, been immensely overrated. She thought that rank was after all much less valuable than she used to think it when first she married poor dear Surrey, who was really the kindest of men, and a thorough gentleman, but certainly not at all brilliant. She thought that a young man of Harry's talent might, if well connected, get into Parliament and rise, like Beaconsfield, to any position. ”

“ Yes, instinct had gained the day over civilization; the savage in John Creedy had broken out; he had torn up his English clothes and, in West African parlance, "had gone Fantee." Ethel gazed at him, white with horror—stood still and gazed, and never cried nor fainted, nor said a word. The crowd of negroes divided to right and left, and John Creedy [Pg 15] saw his wife standing there like a marble figure. With one awful cry he came to himself again, and rushed to her side. She did not repel him, as he expected; she did not speak; she was mute and cold like a corpse, not like a living woman. ”

“ Altogether, she was a perfect foil to Gladys, and it would have been difficult for almost any man as he sat at that table to say which of the three, mother, daughter, or governess, was really the prettiest. For my own part, I give my vote unreservedly for the countess, but then I am getting somewhat grizzled now and have long been bald; so my liking turns naturally towards ripe beauty. I hate your self-conscious chits of seventeen, who can only chat and giggle; I like a woman who has something to say for herself. ”