Henry Kingsley

“ Think of ten thousand pounds. You might appear in the world as an English Roman Catholic of fortune. Good heavens! with your talent you might aspire to the cardinal's chair!"
"No, no, no!" said Mackworth, fiercely. "I did hesitate, and I have lied to you; but I hesitate no longer. I won't have the subject mentioned to me again, sir. What sort of a gentleman are you to come to men's rooms in the dead of night, with your father lying dead in the house, and tempt men to felony? I will not."
"God knows," said Cuthbert, as he passed out, "whether I have lost heaven in trying to save him." ”

“ Charles had come over one once, after midnight. He wished he had never seen the cursed place. He remembered a fluttering figure which had come and begged a halfpenny of him to pay the toll and get home. He had given her money, and then, by a sudden impulse, followed her till she was safe off the bridge. Ugly thoughts, Charles! ugly thoughts! Will the dawn never come? Why, the night is not half over yet.
God in His mercy sets a limit to human misery in many ways. I do not believe that the condemned man, waiting through the weary night for the gallows, thinks all night through of his fate. ”

“ Ah, ah! my Lord Saltire, I have you there! I should like to see that old man's face when I play my last card. It will be a finer sight than Charles's. You'll make him your heir, will you, my lord? Will you make him your groom?"
He went to his desk, took out an envelope, and looked at it. He looked at it long, and then put it back. "It will never do to tempt him with it. If he were to refuse his offer of this morning, I should be ruined. Much better to wait and play out the ace boldly. I can keep my hold over him: and William is mine, body and soul, if he dies." ”

“ I would, for your sake, Charles, have committed an act of villainy which would have entailed a life's remorse, and have robbed William, my own brother, of his succession. You see what a poor weak rogue I am, and what a criminal I might become with a little temptation. Father Mackworth did his duty and refused me. I tell you this to show you that he is, at all events, sincere enough in his conviction of the truth of this."
"You acted like yourself, Cuthbert. Like one who would risk body and soul for one you loved." ”

“ A fine brave-looking old lady at all times, but just now, Charles thought, with that sweet look of pity showing itself principally about the corners of the gentle old mouth, more noble-looking than ever!
"May I come in, Lady Ascot?" said Charles.
"My dearest own boy! You must come in and sit down. You must be very quiet over it. Try not to make a scene, my dear. I am not strong enough. It has shaken me so terribly. I heard you had come, and were with Ascot. And I have been trembling in every limb. Not from terror so much of you in your anger, as because my conscience is not clear. ”

“ Carriage after carriage went blazing past the end of the mews, along this street, like figures across the disk of a magic lanthorn. Some had scarlet breeches, and some blue; and there were pink bonnets, and yellow bonnets, and Magenta bonnets; and Charles sat on the wheelbarrow by the dunghill, and looked at it all, perfectly contented.
A stray dog lounged in out of the street. It was a cur dog—that any one might see. It was a dog which had bit its rope and run away, for the rope was round its neck now; and it was a thirsty dog, for it went up to the pump and licked the stones. ”

“ Charles stood in one of the windows, and Father Tiernay beside him. He leant his head on his arm, and looked forth eastward and northward, over the rolling woods, the cliffs, and the bright blue sea.
The music began with a movement soft, low, melodious, beyond expression, and yet strong, firm, and regular as of a thousand armed men marching to victory. It grew into volume and power till it was irresistible, yet still harmonious and perfect. Charles understood it. It was the life of a just man growing towards perfection and honour. ”

“ If Father Mackworth had had the slightest inkling of the state of mind of his worthy patron towards him, it is very certain that he would not have chosen that very moment to rap at the door. The most acute of us make a mistake sometimes; and he, haunted with vague suspicions since the conversation he had overheard in the drawing-room before the birth of Cuthbert, grew impatient, and determined to solve his doubts at once, and, as we have seen, selected the singularly happy moment when poor passionate Densil was cursing him to his heart's content. ”

“ They were too well bred to make a noise; but there was a subdued babbling sound of laughter in that carriage, which was better music than that of a little impish German who, catching Charles's eye, played the accordion and waltzed before him, as did Salome before Herod, but with a different effect.
The carriage beyond that was a very handsome one, and in it sat a lady most beautifully dressed, alone. By the step of the carriage were a crowd of men—Hornby, Hornby's brother-officers, Sir Robert Ferrers, and even little Dick Ferrers. ”

“ CHAPTER LI. IN WHICH CHARLES COMES TO LIFE AGAIN.
Ha! This was a life again. Better this than dawdling about at the heels of a dandy, or sitting on a wheelbarrow in a mews! There is a scent here sweeter than that of the dunghill, or the dandy's essences—what is it? The smell of tar, and bilge water, and red herrings. There is a fresh whiff of air up this narrow street, which moves your hair, and makes your pulse quicken. It is the free wind of the sea. At the end of the street are ships, from which comes the clinking of cranes; pleasanter music sometimes than the song of nightingales. ”

“ At this moment Miss Ophelia Flanigan appeared from the door of No. 8—the very house that poor Charles was so anxious to get to—and slowly and majestically advanced towards the rostrum in front of her own door, and ascending the steps, folded her arms and looked about her.
She was an uncommonly powerful, red-faced Irishwoman; her arms were bare, and she had them akimbo, and was scratching her elbows.
Every schoolboy knows that the lion has a claw at the end of his tail with which he lashes himself into fury. When the experienced hunter sees him doing that, he, so to speak, "hooks it." ”

“ Men will talk nonsense to their dogs and friends when they are in love; and such nonsense is but poor reading at any time. To us who know what had happened, and how worthless and false Adelaide was, it would be merely painful and humiliating to hear any more of it. I only gave you so much to show you how completely Charles was in the dark, poor fool, with regard to Adelaide's character, and to render less surprising the folly of his behaviour after he heard the news at Ranford. ”

“ But both the burglars and the valet missed the tide, and the latter regrets it to this day.
At eleven o'clock that night, Lady Welter was lolling leisurely on her drawing-room sofa, quite bored to death. When Lord Welter, and Hornby, and Sir Robert Ferrers, and some Dragoons came in, she was yawning, as if life was really too much of a plague to be endured. Would she play loo? Oh, yes; anything after such a wretched, lonely evening. That was the game where you had three cards, wasn't it, and you needn't go on unless you liked. Would Welter or some one lend her some money. ”

“ In the long watches of the winter night, when one has awoke from some evil dream, and lies sleepless and terrified with the solemn pall of darkness around one—on one of those deadly, still dark nights, when the window only shows a murky patch of positive gloom in contrast with the nothingness of the walls, when the howling of a tempest round chimney and roof would be welcomed as a boisterous companion—in such still dead times only, lying as in the silence of the tomb, one realises that some day we shall lie in that bed and not think at all: that the time will come soon when we must die. ”

“ I think I have been very careful to impress on you that Charles was not wise. At all events, if I have softened matters so far hitherto as to leave you in doubt, his actions, which we shall have to chronicle immediately, will leave not the slightest doubt of it. I love the man. I love his very faults in a way. He is a reality to me, though I may not have the art to make him so to you. His mad, impulsive way of forming a resolution, and his honourable obstinacy in sticking to that resolution afterwards, even to the death, are very great faults ”

“ On this occasion Lord Saltire was cross. He never was cross to any one but Lady Ascot, Lord Hainault, and Marston. He knew they liked it.
"Good Ged, Hainault," he began, "don't stand grinning there, and looking so abominably healthy and happy, or I will drive away again and go on to London. Nothing can be in worse taste than to look like that at a man whom you see is tired, and cold, and peevish. You have been out shooting, too. Don't deny it; you smell of gunpowder." ”

“ And, when I call Hornby an honourable man, I mean what I say, as you will see.
This was the state of things when the Derby crash came. At half-past five on that day, the Viscountess Welter dashed up to her elegant residence in St. John's Wood, in a splendid barouche, drawn by four horses, and, when "her people" came and opened the door and let down the steps, lazily descended, and followed by her footman bearing her fal-lals, lounged up the steps as if life were really too ennuyant to be borne any longer. ”

“ Welter, Welter! you yourself might have been loved as he is, once; but that time is gone by for ever. I should have made you a better wife than Adelaide. I might have loved you myself once, but I fell more through anger and vanity than through love.
"My brother, he whom we call Charles Ravenshoe, is in this weary world somewhere. I have an idea that you will meet him. You used to love one another. Don't let him quarrel with you for such a worthless straw as I am. Tell him I always loved him as a brother. It is better that we should not meet yet. ”

“ You are leading a life which can only end in misery, as even the teachers of the false and corrupt religion which you profess would tell you. If you were systematically to lead the life you do now, it were better almost that there were no future. You are not angry, Charles?"
There was such a spice of truth in what Cuthbert said that it would have made nine men in ten angry. I am pleased to record of my favourite Charles that he was not; he kept his head bent down, and groaned.
"Don't be hard on our boy, Cuthbert," said Densil; "he is a good boy, though he is not like you. ”

“ The world had just found out that it was hungry, and was beginning to tear about in wheeled vehicles to its neighbours' houses to dinner. As the carriages passed Charles, he could catch glimpses of handsome girls, all a mass of white muslin, swan's-down fans, and fal-lals, going to begin their night's work; of stiff dandies, in white ties, yawning already; of old ladies in jewels, and old gentlemen buttoned up across the chest, going, as one might say, to see fair play among the young people. ”

“ God bless you, Hainault. You are a good fellow."
When the old man was left alone, he rose and looked out of the window. The bucks were feeding together close under the windows; and, farther off, under the shadow of the mighty cedars, the does and fawns were standing and lying about lazily, shaking their broad ears and stamping their feet. Out from the great rhododendron thickets, right and left of the house, the pheasants were coming to spend the pleasant evening-tide in running to and fro, and scratching at the ant-hills. ”

“ Said Charles, "Put the punt ashore, will you?" And they did. And Charles, with his nose in the air, and his chest out, walked beside William across the spring meadows, through the lengthening grass, through the calthas, and the orchises, and the ladies' slippers, and the cowslips, and the fritillaries, through the budding flower garden which one finds in spring among the English meadows, a hale, strong man. ”

“ There are crises so terrible that people of all creeds and shades of political opinion must combine against a common enemy. This was one. When this dreadful old woman made her totally unexpected entrance, and when Lady Ascot showed herself so entirely without discretion as to exclaim aloud in the way she did, young Lady Hainault and Adelaide were so horrified, so suddenly quickened to a sense of impending danger, that they began talking loudly and somewhat affectionately to one another. ”

“ The nose was delicately aquiline, and the mouth receded slightly, while the chin was as slightly prominent; the eyes were brilliant, and were concentrated on their object in a moment; and the eyebrows surmounted them in a delicately but distinctly marked curve. A beauty she was, such as one seldom sees; and Charles, looking on her, felt that he loved her more madly than ever, and that he would die sooner than let her know it.
"Well, Charles," she said, "you don't seem overjoyed to see me."
"A man can't look joyous with broken shins, my dear Adelaide. Aunt, I've got some bad news for you. ”

“ This is the morning of the great University race, about which every member of the two great Universities, and a very large section of the general public, have been fidgeting and talking for a month or so.
The bridge is black, the lawns are black, every balcony and window in the town is black; the steamers are black with a swarming, eager multitude, come to see the picked youths of the upper class try their strength against one another. There are two friends of ours nearly concerned in the great event of the day. Charles is rowing three in the Oxford boat, and Marston is steering. ”

“ Allow me to tell you, that I think your manner towards me would not be quite so cordial if you knew everything; there is a great deal that you don't know, and which I don't mean to tell you."
It is sometimes quite impossible, even for a writer of fiction, a man with carte blanche in the way of invention, to give the cause, for a man's actions. I have thought and thought, and I cannot for the life of me tell you why Lord Welter answered Lord Saltire like that, whether it was from deep cunning or merely from recklessness. ”

“ The poor heart was not a hard one to win; and, the day they buried poor Father Clifford in the mausoleum, it was with a mixture of pride at his own talents, and contemptuous pity for his dupe, that Mackworth listened to Densil as he told him that he was now his only friend, and besought him not to leave him—which thing Mackworth promised, with the deepest sincerity, he would not do. ”

“ Would you turn Catholic if I were to marry you?"
God forgive poor Hornby! He said, "Yes." What will not men say at such times?
"Did I not say you were a madman? Do you think I would ruin you in the next world, as well as in this? Go away, sir; and, when your children are round you, humbly bless God's mercy for saving you, body and soul, this night."
"I shall see you again?"
"Come here the day after to-morrow; but come without hope."
She passed through the door, and left him standing alone. Charles rose from his lair, and, coming up to him, laid his hand on his shoulder. ”

“ On my soul, Charles, I don't know; I believe I dare do anything. But I tell you one thing—of all the men who walk this earth, you are the last I would willingly wrong. When I went off with Adelaide, I knew she did not care sixpence for you. I knew she would have made you wretched. I knew better than you, because I never was in love with her, and you were, what a heartless ambitious jade it was! She sold herself to me for the title I gave her, as she had tried to sell herself to that solemn prig Hainault, before. ”

“ John's Wood," said he. "Do steal away, and come and see her. Grandma, I was very sorry to hear of poor Charles's death—I was indeed. You know what it has done for me; but, by Gad, I was very sorry."
"Dear Welter—dear Ascot," said Lady Ascot, "I am sure you were sorry. Oh! if you would repent, my own dear. If you would think of the love that Christ bore you when He died for you. Oh, Ascot, Ascot! will nothing save you from the terrible hereafter?"
"I am afraid not, grandma," said Lord Ascot. "It is getting too cold for you to stay out. Ravenshoe, my dear fellow, take her in." ”

“ Charles said no more, but was well pleased enough. If Hornby had only given him a little more of his confidence!
"I suppose," said Hornby, "if Haphazard don't win to-morrow, Lord Ascot will be a beggar."
"They say," said Charles, "that he has backed his own horse through thick and thin, sir. It is inconceivable folly; but things could not be worse at Ranford, and he stands to win some sum on the horse, as they say, which would put everything right; and the horse is a favourite."
"Favourites never win," said Hornby; "and I don't think that Lord Ascot has so much on him as they say." ”

“ The devil was pretty busy with poor Charles in his despair, you see. This was all he had left after three and twenty years of careless idleness and luxury. His creed had been, "I am a Ravenshoe," and lo! one morning, he was a Ravenshoe no longer. A poor crow, that had been fancying himself an eagle. A crow! "by heavens," he thought, "he was not even that." A nonentity, turned into the world to find his own value! What were honour, honesty, virtue to him? Why, nothing—words! He must truckle and pander for his living. Why not go back and truckle to Father Mackworth? ”

“ I wish you would be cross, Hainault. It is wretched manners not to be cross when you see a man is trying to put you out of temper."
"And how are you, my dear lad?" continued Lord Saltire, when he had got hold of his arm. "How is Lady Ascot? and whom have you got here?"
"We are all very well," said Lord Hainault; "and we have got nobody." ”

“ You are over-stepping the bounds of decorum, sir. Mr. Ravenshoe, I beg you to forgive me for inadvertently spoiling your sport."
"Not at all, my dear Father," said Densil, thinking it best, from the scared look of old James, to enter into no further explanations; "we have killed one hare, and now I think it is time to come home to lunch."
"Don't eat it all before I come; I must run up to the Tor; I have dropped my whip there," said Charles. "James, ride my horse home; you look tired. I shall be there on foot in half the time." ”

“ Perhaps even Lord Welter might have started when he heard Charles's voice, and felt his hand on his shoulder; but he had had one instant—only one instant—of preparation. When he heard the key turn in the door, he had looked in a pier-glass opposite to him, and seen who and what was coming, and then gone on with his employment. Even allowing for this moment's preparation, we must give him credit for the nerve of one man in ten thousand; for the apparition of Charles Ravenshoe was as unlooked-for as that of any one of Charles Ravenshoe's remote ancestors. ”

“ In the dampest, darkest walk of them all, in a far-off path, hedged with holly and yew, they found a bent and grey old man walking with a toothless, grey old hound for his silent companion. And, as Charles moved forward with rapid elastic step, the old man looked up, and tottered to meet him, showing as he did so the face of Densil Ravenshoe.
"Now the Virgin be praised," he said, "for putting it in your head to come so quick, my darling. Whenever you go away now, I am in terror lest I should die and never see you again. I might be struck with paralysis, and not know you, my boy. ”

“ Why, he put his hand on Charles's shoulder, and he said, "Charles, Charles, my dear old boy, look up and speak to me in your dear old voice. Don't look wild like that. Think of Mary, my boy. She has been wooed by more than one, Charles; but I think that her heart is yours yet."
"John," said Charles, "that is what has made me hide from you all like this. I know that she loves me above all men. I dreamt of it the night I left Ravenshoe. I knew it the night I saw her at Lord Hainault's. ”

“ He said:
"I have seen Charles Ravenshoe."
"When?"
"To-night."
"Good God! Then it is almost a matter of time with us," said Adelaide. "I had a dim suspicion of this, Ascot. It is horrible. We are ruined."
"Not yet," said Lord Ascot.
"There is time—time. He is obstinate and mad. Lord Saltire might die——"
"Well?"
"Either of them," she hissed out. "Is there no——"
"No what?"
"There is half a million of money," said Adelaide.
"Well?"
"All sorts of things happen to people."
Lord Ascot looked at her for an instant, and snarled out a curse at her.
John Marston was perfectly right. ”

“ His attack was splendid; but he met the fate of the brave."
"You should not have done that, Welter," said Charles; "that was Mary's favourite bantam."
"I don't allow any cock-fighting at Ravenshoe, Welter," said Cuthbert.
"You don't allow it!" said Lord Welter, scornfully.
"No, by heaven," said Cuthbert, "I don't allow it!"
"Don't you?" said Welter; "you are not master here, nor ever will be. No Ravenshoe was ever master of his own house yet."
"I am absolute master here," said Cuthbert, with a rising colour. "There is no appeal against me here."
"Only to the priest," said Welter. ”

“ It would be Charles's duty not to see Lord Saltire again. With his present position in society, as a servant's son, there was nothing to prevent his asking Lord Saltire to provide for him, except—what was it? Pride? Well, hardly pride. He was humble enough, God knows; but he felt as if he had gained his goodwill, as it were, by false pretences, and that duty would forbid his presuming on that goodwill any longer. And would Lord Saltire be the same to a lady's-maid's son, as he would to the heir presumptive of Ravenshoe? No; there must be no humiliation before those stern grey eyes. ”

“ He had always been a man of less than average strength of will; and two or three disasters—terrible disasters they were, remember—had made him such as we see him, a helpless, drifting log upon the sea of chance. What Lord Welter had said was terribly true, "Charles Ravenshoe is broken-hearted." But to the very last he was a just, honourable, true, kind-hearted man. A man in ten thousand. Call him fool, if you will. ”

“ The hot street and, beyond, the square, the dusty lilacs and laburnums, and the crimson hawthorns. What a day for a bathe! outside the gentle surf, with the sunny headlands right and left, and the moor sleeping quietly in the afternoon sunlight, and Lundy, like a faint blue cloud on the Atlantic horizon, and the old house——He was away at Ravenshoe on a May afternoon.
They say poets are never sane; but are they ever mad? Never. Even old Cowper saved himself from actual madness by using his imagination. Charles was no poet ”

“ We have one great object in common—Charles; and that will bring us together. The time was, when I was a fool, that I thought of being a saint, without human affections. I am wiser now. People near death see many things which are hidden in health and youth."
"Near death, Cuthbert!" said William, calling him so for the first time. "I shall live, please God, to take your children on my knee."
"It is right that you should know, brother, that in a few short years you will be master of Ravenshoe. My heart is gone. ”

“ Father Mackworth saw soon that Ravenshoe was a comfortable home for him, but that his power was gone. Unless!
And yet he knew he could exercise a power little dreamt of. It is in the power, possibly, of a condemned man to burn the prison down, and possibly his interest; but he has compunctions. Mackworth tried to persuade himself that the reason he did not use his power was that it would not be advisable. He was a cipher in the house, and knew by instinct that he would never be more. But in reality, I believe, he let his power sleep for Cuthbert's sake. ”