Julian Hawthorne

“ There is no intimacy like this intimacy, Philip. A husband and wife represent the world: but we—what do we represent?”
“Then let us make a new beginning here, and build a wall between us and the past. We are no longer what we have been: why should we recall the deeds and thoughts of persons who were not what we are?”
“We have only one thing to be afraid of,” said the Marquise, looking at him thoughtfully, “and that is fear! Unless you can take your courage in your hands, mon ami, the time will come when you will need it, and find it wanting. ”

“ Such rage is deadly. Had Fillmore been present, his fiancée would have attempted his life. And yet it was not he that could enrage her: nothing that he could have done could have affected one pulsation of her heart. She had passed into a region of emotion almost infinitely more intense than any with which he could be connected. But, as sometimes a woman will kiss a child or a dog, thinking “this kiss is for my lover!” so might Perdita have driven a dagger to Fillmore’s heart, and said, “Be Philip and die!” ”

“ It gives range and breathing room to the spirits; it has endless comely charm, but it is not inspiring. It is redolent of the humdrum flatness of respectable and prosperous mediocrity. The trees look like smug green cauliflowers; and the blue of the distance seems artificial.
“I am sure there can be nothing so lovely as that in India, Mr. Grant,” said Mrs. Lockhart.
“A bare rock would be lovelier than India to me if it bore the name of England,” he replied. “I thank God that I shall die, after all, within hail of so sweet a plain as that.”
“No!” said Marion, in a low, disturbed voice. ”

“ Fillmore shook his head.
“I might make a good lawyer,” Perdita continued, “but I should make a very bad lawyer’s wife.”
“I am a man, as well as a lawyer,” said Fillmore, bending a strong look upon her.
“And a gentleman, as well as a man,” she added with a gracious smile. “In fact, sir, if you were less agreeable, I might love you; but as it is, I like you and enjoy your society much too well for that. I would rather hate you than love you: and as for marrying you—pardon me for being the first to speak the word, but widows have privileges—I would rather love you and have you jilt me!” ”

“ She touched his shoulder lightly with her hand as he sat down, with an air and smile as if she were conferring upon him a well-earned knighthood.
“This is the hardest part, you know,” she said. “Men who do great things are always beset by little people, with their discordant little adulations. It is like what you see on the stage; when Kean or Kemble has given a great passage, and your ears are ringing with it, there comes a flat racket of hand-clapping. That is the world’s applause!”
“We must take the deed for the will,” said Philip laughing, “and be glad to get it.” ”

“ To Philip she contented herself with saying: “Young gentleman, I used to know your grand-uncle. He was not so handsome a man as you. ’Tis a dangerous thing, sir, to be handsome and to write poetry. People who see you will expect your poetry to be as well as you are, and, if they find it is not, they’ll call you both humbugs. I haven’t read your poem, Mr. Lancaster, but now that I have seen you I mean to, and then I shall tell you just what I think of it! Mrs. Lancaster, I like you better than your husband; he’s not good enough for you, though he’ll try and make you believe the contrary. ”

“ But then Marion fell to thinking about the months that had since elapsed, and the significance of their story. And the more she meditated, the more clearly did it appear to her that she, and not Philip, had been to blame. For why had she refused the legacy? From jealousy of Philip. But was her jealousy just? It had been a fancy merely, a vague suspicion, founded upon hints half understood and whimsically exaggerated. A woman who is loved has no right to say, “Because another woman is more beautiful or brilliant than I, therefore my husband will care more for her than he does for me.” ”

“ Sir Francis changed color and countenance at that word, as if it were a spell that threatened his life. “You don’t mean ... I don’t know....” he began.
“Come, uncle, we are people of the world, are we not?” said the marquise, with a rather comical smile. “We have all made our little mistakes; I don’t mean to annihilate you; but I happen to know all about Raffett’s, and have a fancy to make you pay my dowry; not that I need the money, but because I dote upon abstract justice. Let us be good friends. ‘Birds in their little nests agree;’ and so should uncle and niece. ”

“ And when you are gone, prudence is no matter.”
“I would agree with you, my dear, were it possible for us to know love when we see him. I fear there is a great deal of evidence that we do not do that. And though it takes only one person to make that mistake, not all the world can set it right again.”
“That is like Humpty Dumpty,” said Marion, with a laugh. “But I don’t think there can be any mistake about the love we feel. ’Tis like being in the sunshine; we don’t mistake sunshine for moonlight, or starlight, or for all the lamps and candles that ever burned.” ”

“ You have seen the world, my friend, and studied the human heart; and I congratulate you on having found the woman best suited to make you happy.”
“I’m not so difficult as you seem to think,” returned Philip; “but if I were ten times more so than I am, I should be more than content.”
“I am sure of that,” said Perdita, smiling again; “if all men were as fortunate as you, mon ami, the world would be the happier. Marion is a poet’s wife. She comprehends you. She reverences your genius even more than you do, and she will do more than your genius to make you illustrious. ”

“ Who is this antique figure who now walks beside her, to whose formal and laborious gait she endeavors to accommodate her own: this gray-haired man of more than thrice her age, with his habits, his prejudices, his limitations, his ailments? Is this her husband?—the lord and master of that brilliant, buoyant creature? Ah, Perdita, are you his wife? Do you love him, honor him, obey him? Are he and his possessions the final embodiment and satisfaction of your ambitious dreams? Can you do without love—you, who have never tried what love is? ”

“ You cannot punish me so much as the anguish I have endured has already punished me! I thought I could not bear not to have you love me: but now, that seems a delight in comparison with the misery of thinking that you had given yourself to him.”
“Well, there seems to have been a contagion of error,” said Perdita, with a queer smile. “Now that so much has been corrected, perhaps you may even come to your senses with regard to me! You are certainly a persistent man: ’tis a pity I am not a yielding woman.”
“I can never give you up!” Fillmore said again. ”

“ If his mourners were few, few men have been more tenderly mourned; and to Marion especially was his memory dear and reverend, by reason of the cloud that had overhung so large a portion of his life. That cloud, to her apprehension, had now become all illuminated with heavenly gold; and she felt as little need to confirm her faith by an examination of the packet left in her care, as to ask Philip for proof of her love for him. Marion was enthusiastic and imperious in her faiths even more than in her scepticisms. ”

“ WHEN Philip Lancaster and Mr. Grant reached the landing at the head of the stairs, they faced each other for a moment; and then, by mutual impulse as it were, Grant tacitly extended, and Philip as tacitly accepted, an invitation to enter the former’s room. The mind resembles the heart in this, that it sometimes feels an instinctive and unexplained desire for the society of another mind. Cold and self-sufficient though the intellect is, it cannot always endure solitude and the corrosion of its unimparted thoughts. ”

“ Love is life, and is capable of imparting force to the sternest as well as to the tenderest thoughts and deeds.
Marion now led the way down stairs, and Philip followed her, treading lightly and wondering at what moment his strength and valor would be called upon. Marion opened the outer door, and when it closed behind them the strange blackness of the night pressed upon their eyes like a material substance. At the gate, however, appeared a small light, seemingly proceeding from a lantern, but it had very little power to disperse its rays. ”

“ And yet to do nothing was intolerable to Perdita: she could have borne anything else better. Inaction gnawed her heart and made her existence bitter. But what could she do? Should she kill him? No: life could hardly be so dear to him as to make that worth while. Should she kill herself? That, indeed, was as likely as anything else to put an end to her unrest: but should she allow Philip to imagine that she had died for love of him? She laughed, and shook her head. It was while she was in this mood that Fillmore’s letter came, mentioning Bendibow’s death. ”

“ My darling, you may throw the money into the Thames, as far as I’m concerned. If you wish to be rid of it, ’tis right you should be. If it were left to me, I should probably resign myself to keeping it; as it is, ’tis better out of the way. I’ll see if I can’t write you a greater fortune than that. Meanwhile, you must kiss me!”
Philip had no cause, on that day at least, to regret his surrender. “You see, sir,” said Marion mischievously, after some such fathomless spell of happiness as only lovers can feel, “if I had kept the twenty thousand pounds, you could not have had this!” ”

“ Death seems like a violence, a robbery, a wrong; and all the more wrongful a robbery, because we are powerless to resist it or to punish it. The mother who mourns her infant, the lover who looks on the dead face of his mistress, the child who feels a dim horror at the unresponsive coldness of the hand whose every touch was love, the friend who sees the horizon of his own life darken and his pathway narrow at the grave of his friend—to these it seems that an injury has been inflicted upon them, the traces of which no compensation can remove. ”

“ You are a fool! You are timid! You have neither the genius, the steadiness, nor the daring to manage and to multiply a great fortune. Were you like myself, Jacob, you or your children might have a hand in controlling the destinies of England, and thus of the world. You have behaved like a pettifogger and a coward, Jacob. I do not ask you to be honest. No man is honest when he is sure that dishonesty will enrich him. But, whatever you are, I ask you to be that thing with all your soul. Be great, or be nothing! Only fools and cowards patter about morality! ”

“ He looked up, at last, with a slow and heavy movement, as if his eyelids were weighted, and met his wife’s gaze gloomily.
“If I do know,” he said, “it was for something very worthless.”
“Have you ... anything to tell me?” asked Marion, just audibly.
“Perdita was honest and noble: she died pure. There is nothing to tell. A priest would absolve me; I can never absolve myself. Many a man who has sinned is worthier to be your husband than one who has avoided sin as I have.”
There followed a deep silence. Then Marion moved a step nearer to him, and said, “Do you love me, Philip?” ”