M. E. Braddon

“ Why do you not strive to continue your education? Self-culture is the highest form of improvement. My books are at your disposal."
"Dear Miss Skipwith, your books are all theological," said Vixen wearily, "and I don't care for theology. As for my education, I am not utterly neglecting it. I read Schiller till my eyes ache."
"One shallow German poet is not the beginning and end of education," replied Miss Skipwith. "I should like you to take larger views of woman's work in the world."
"My work in the world is to live quietly, and not to trouble anyone," said Vixen, with a sigh. ”

“ Again Vixen urged that Miss Skipwith would be wondering, and this time with such insistence, that Rorie was obliged to turn back and ascend the hill.
"How cruel it is of you to snatch a soul out of Elysium," he remonstrated. "I felt as if I was lost in some happy dream—wandering down this path, which leads I know not where, into a dim wooded vale, such as the fairies love to inhabit?"
"The road leads down to the inn at Le Tac, where Cockney excursionists go to eat lobsters, and play skittles," said Vixen, laughing at her lover. ”

“ Could she come back to see Roderick Vawdrey happy with his wife? Assuredly not. Could she school herself to endure life under the roof that sheltered Conrad Winstanley? A thousand times no. Coming home was something to be dreamt about when she lay asleep in a distant land; but it was a dream that never could be realised. She must make herself a new life, somehow, among new people. The old life died to-day.
She sat and sipped her tea, and listened while her mother talked cheerfully of the future, and even pretended to agree; but her heart was heavy as lead. ”

“ The family name and the family pride will die with me. There was a time when a Skipwith owned a third of the island. Our estate has dwindled to the garden and meadows that surround this old house; our family has shrunk into one old woman; but if I can make the name of Skipwith famous before I go down to my grave, I shall not have lived and laboured in vain."
Vixen felt a thrill of pity as she listened to this brief confession of a self-deluded solitary soul, which had built its house upon sand, as hopefully as if the foundations were solidest rock. ”

“ If you only knew, Pamela, how useless this expensive finery is, how little it adds to your social status, how little it enhances your beauty! Why, the finest gown this Madame Theodore ever made cannot hide one of your wrinkles."
"My wrinkles!" cried Pamela, sorely wounded. "That is the first time I ever heard of them. To think that my husband should be the first to tell me I am getting an old woman! But I forgot, you are younger than I, and I daresay in your eyes I seem quite old."
"My dear Pamela, be reasonable. Can a woman's forehead at forty be quite as smooth as it was at twenty? ”

“ The red light grew and glowed redder in the east, and then the yellow sun shone through gray drifting clouds, and the new day was born. Slumber and Violet had parted company for the last week. Her mind had been too full of images; the curtain of sleep would not hide them. Frame and mind were both alike worn out, as she lay in the broadening light, lonely, forsaken, unpitied, bearing her great sorrow, just as she must have borne the toothache, or any other corporal pain.
She rose at seven, feeling unspeakably tired, dressed herself slowly and dawdlingly, thinking of Lady Mabel. ”

“ They all tried—husband, daughter, and friends—to delude her with false hopes, thinking thus to fan the flame of life and keep the brief candle burning a little longer. She was not deceived. She felt herself gradually, painlessly sinking. She complained but little; much less than in the days when her ailments had been in some part fanciful; but she knew very surely that her day was done.
"It is very sweet to have you with me, Violet," she said. "Your goodness, and Conrad's loving attentions, make me very happy. I feel almost as if I should like to live a few years longer." ”

“ Sometimes she lay staring idly at the stars, shining so serenely in that calm summer sky. She wondered what life was like, yonder, in those remote worlds. Was humanity's portion as sad, fate as adverse, there as here? Then she thought of Egypt, and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra—that story of a wild, undisciplined love, grand in its lawless passion—its awful doom. To have loved thus, and died thus, seemed a higher destiny than to do right, and patiently conquer sorrow, and live on somehow to the dismal end of the dull blameless chapter. ”

“ Rorie, the lost, the surrendered, was her own true lover after all!
"Yes, dear, I obeyed you. You were hard and cruel to me that night in the fir plantation; but I knew in my heart of hearts that you were wise, and honest, and true; and I made up my mind that I would keep the engagement entered upon beside my mother's death-bed. Loving or unloving I would marry Mabel Ashbourne, and do my duty to her, and go down to my grave with the character of a good and faithful husband, as many a man has done who never loved his wife. ”

“ We create our own sorrows."
"Yes, we are wretched creatures!" cried Vixen passionately, "the poorest examples of machinery in all this varied universe. Look at that cow in your orchard, her dull placid life, inoffensive, useful, asking nothing but a fertile meadow and a sunny day to fill her cup of happiness. Why did the great Creator make the lower animals exempt from sorrow, and give us such an infinite capacity for grief and pain? It seems hardly fair."
"My dear, our Creator gave us minds, and the power of working out our own salvation," replied Miss Skipwith. ”

“ All Rorie's tiresome ways, all Vixen's mischievous tricks, were remembered.
"I think I led you a life in those days, didn't I, Rorie?" asked Vixen, leaving the teatray, and stealing softly behind her lover's chair to lean over his shoulder caressingly, and pull his thick brown beard. "There is nothing so delightful as to torment the person one loves best in the world. Oh, Rorie, I mean to lead you a life by-and-by!" ”

“ She was gazing at the open volume on her knee, with fixed and dreamy eyes that saw not the page; and as Lord Mallow came very near, with steps that made no sound on the fallen pine-needles, he saw that there were tears upon her drooping eyelids.
There are moments in every man's life when impulse is stronger than discretion. Lord Mallow gave the reins to impulse now, and seated himself by Lady Mabel's side, and took her hand in his, with an air of sympathy so real that the lady forgot to be offended. ”

“ Staying at home to-day would not ward off to-morrow's doom. So she took her place in the cushioned valley by Violet's side, and sat calm and still, while the ponies, warranted quiet to drive in single or double harness, stood up on end and made as if they had a fixed intention of scaling the rhododendron bank.
"They'll settle down directly I've taken the freshness out of them," said Vixen, blandly, as she administered a reproachful touch of the whip.
"I hope they will," replied Miss McCroke; "but don't you think Bates ought to have seen the freshness taken out of them before we started?" ”

“ When the first frosts had seared the beeches to a fiery red, and the berries were bright on the hawthorns, and the latest bloom of the heather had faded on hill and plain, and the happy pigs had devoured all the beech-nuts, Mr. Vawdrey and his wife came back from their exploration of Alpine snows and peaceful Swiss villages, to the good old Abbey House. Their six months' honeymoon had been all gladness. They were the veriest boy and girl husband and wife who had ever trodden those beaten tracks. ”

“ It is the fate of genius to be lonely. And now I suppose I am to lose you, Violet?"
"I am summoned home to poor mamma," said Vixen.
"And after poor mamma has recovered, as I hope she speedily may, Violet will be wanted by her poor husband," said Rorie. "You must come across the sea and dance at our wedding, Miss Skipwith."
"Ah," sighed Miss Skipwith, "if you could but have waited for the establishment of my universal church, what a grand ceremonial your marriage might have been!" ”

“ Lord Mallow was coming to Ashbourne for the fortnight before the wedding. He had made himself wondrously agreeable to the Duke, and the Duke had invited him. The House would be up by that time. It was a delightful season for the Forest. The heather would be in bloom on all the open heights, the glades of Mark Ash would be a solemn world of greenery and shadow, a delicious place for picnics, flirtation, and gipsy tea-drinkings. Lord Mallow had only seen the Forest in the winter. ”

“ She must live out her life, in isolation almost as complete as Miss Skipwith's, without the innocent delusions which gave substance and colour to that lonely lady's existence.
"If I could only have a craze," she thought hopelessly, "some harmless monomania which would fill my mind! The maniacs in Bedlam, who fancy themselves popes or queens, are happy in their foolish way. If I could only imagine myself something which I am not—anything except poor useless Violet Tempest, who has no place in the world!" ”

“ She felt that the only security for her peace would be to live on a desert island with the husband she had chosen. She was of too weak a mind to hide these growing doubts and ever-augmenting suspicions. The miserable truth oozed out of her in foolish little speeches; those continual droppings that wear the hardest stone, and which wore even the adamantine surface of the Captain's tranquil temper. There was a homoeopathic admixture of this jealous poison in all the food he ate. He could rarely get through a tête-à-tête breakfast or dinner undisturbed by some invidious remark. ”

“ Well, I suppose I ought to wish the sunshine to last till after Rorie's wedding; but I don't, I don't, I don't! If the heavens were to darken, and forked lightnings to cleave the black vault, I should dance for joy. I should hail the storm, and cry, 'This is sympathy!'"
And then she flung herself face downwards on the grass and sobbed, as she had sobbed on her pillow that morning.
"It rends my heart to know we are parted for ever," she said. "Oh why did I not say Yes that night in the fir plantation? The chance of lifelong bliss was in my hand, and I let it go. ”

“ There was a meadow-path which lessened the distance between Les Tourelles and Mount Orgueil. Vixen had just left the road and entered the meadow when Argus set up a joyous bark, and ran back to salute a passing vehicle. It was a St. Helier's fly, driving at a tremendous pace in the direction from which she had come. A young man lay back in the carriage, smoking a cigar, with his hat slouched over his eyes. Vixen could just see the strong sunburnt hand flung up above his head. It was a foolish fancy, doubtless, but that broad brown hand reminded her of Rorie's. ”

“ Anon dim feelings of jealousy began to gnaw Pamela's heart. She grew watchful of her husband's attentions to other women, suspicious of looks and words that meant no more than a man's desire to please. Society no longer made her happy. Her Tuesday afternoons lost their charm. There was poison in everything. Lady Ellangowan's flirting ways, which had once only amused her, now tortured her. Captain Winstanley's devotion to this lively matron, which had heretofore seemed only the commoner's tribute of respect to the peeress, now struck his wife as a too obvious infatuation for the woman. ”

“ But I don't believe it is the tea you really care for. It is the gossip you all like. Darwin has found out that the male sex is the vain sex: but I don't think he has gone so far as to discover another great truth. It is the superior sex for whom scandal has the keenest charm."
"I have never heard the faintest hiss of the serpent slander at the Duchess's tea-table," said Lord Mallow.
"No; we are dreadfully behind the age," assented Lady Mabel. "We continue to exist without thinking ill of our neighbours." ”

“ If I were to die, no one would be sorry. I have no place in the world. No one would miss me."
"My dear, it is absolutely wicked to talk in this strain; just as you are developing new powers, an intellect which may make you a pillar and a landmark in your age."
"I don't want to be a pillar or a landmark," said Vixen impatiently. "I don't want to have my name associated with 'movements,' or to write letters to The Times. I should like to have been happy my own way."
She turned her back upon Miss Skipwith, and lay so still that the excellent lady supposed she was dropping off to sleep. ”

“ The feeble and fading woman seemed to lean on the strong bright girl, to gain a reflected strength from her fulness of life and vigour. It was as if Vixen, with her shining hair and fair young face, brought healthful breezes into the sickly perfumed atmosphere of the invalid's rooms.
Roderick Vawdrey had a hard time of it during these days of sadness and suspense. He could not deny the right of his betrothed to devote all her time and thought to a dying mother ”

“ Many a time in after days did Violet Tempest remember those last serious words of hers. The rest of her conversation with her mother was about trifles, the trunks and bonnet-boxes she was to carry with her—the dresses she was to wear in her exile.
"Of course in a retired old house in Jersey, with an elderly maiden lady, you will not see much society," said Mrs. Winstanley; "but Miss Skipwith must know people—no doubt the best people in the island—and I should not like you to be shabby. Are you really positive that you have dresses enough to carry you over next winter?" ”

“ That feeling of poverty, too, was a new sensation to the mistress of the Abbey House, and a very unpleasant one. Married very young to a man of ample means, who adored her, and never set the slightest restriction upon her expenditure, extravagance had become her second nature. To have to study every outlay, to ask herself whether she could not do without a thing, was a hard trial; but it had become so painful to her to ask the Captain for money that she preferred the novel pain of self-denial to that humiliation. ”

“ The line of demarcation between such fanaticism as Miss Skipwith's and the hallucination of an old lady in Bedlam, who fancies herself Queen Victoria, seemed to Vixen but a hair's breadth. But, after all, if the old lady and Miss Skipwith were both happy in their harmless self-deceptions, why should one pity them? The creature to be pitied is the man or woman who keenly sees and feels the hard realities of life, and cannot take pleasure in phantoms. ”

“ Life without purpose is a life hardly worth living. If girls of your age could only find that out, and seek their vocation early, how much grander and nobler would be woman's place in the universe. But, alas! my dear, the common aim of girlhood seems to be to look pretty and to get married."
"I have made up my mind never to marry," said Violet, with a smile that was half sad half cynical; "so there at least you may approve of me, Miss Skipwith." ”