Mary Cholmondeley

“ The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probably seldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws which light the faggots round it.
The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowing whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough.
"I cannot live without him," she sobbed to herself. "This is not just a common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life! It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always have been! ”

“ Why had he ever believed in Fay and Michael? Had he not tacitly distrusted men and women always from his youth up? Had he not gauged life and love and friendship at their true value years ago? Why had he made an exception of this particular man and woman? They were no worse than the rest.
What was any man or woman worth? They were all false to the core. What was Fay? A pretty piece of pink and white, a sensual lure like other women, not better and not worse. And what was Michael but a man like other men, ready to forget honour, morality, everything, if once his passions were aroused. ”

“ Love is not any guide to happiness. Remember that, Magdalen. We were both weak. He was weak and domineering. I was weak and yielding. I don't know which is the worst."
As the shadows deepened all the tacit unforgiveness of a weak, down-trodden nature which has been vanquished by life whispered from the brink of the grave.
"I have never been loved. I have given everything, and I have had nothing back. Nothing. Nothing. Don't marry, Magdalen. Men are all like that. Lots of women say the same. They take everything and they give nothing. It is our own fault. We rear them to it from their cradles. ”

“ What is there, what can there be in the first yellow crocus peering against the brown earth, that can reach with instant healing, like a child's "soft absolving touch," the inflamed, aching, unrest of the spirit? It does not seek to comfort us. Then how does comfort reach through with the crocus; as if the whole under-world were peace and joy, and were breaking through the thin sod to enfold us?
Fay looked at the flame-pure, upturned face of the little forerunner, absently at first, and then with growing absorption, until two large tears slowly welled up into her eyes and blotted it out. ”

“ Poor little soul in prison, weeping behind the bars of her cell, that only her own hands could open!
Were not Fay and Michael both prisoners, fast bound: she in misery, he only in iron.
The door opened gently and Magdalen came in in a long white wrapper, with a candle in her hand.
She put down the candle and came towards Fay. She did not speak. Her face quivered a little. She bent over the huddled figure in the window seat, and with a great tenderness drew it into her arms. For a moment Fay yielded to the comfort of the close encircling arms, and leaned her head against Magdalen's breast. ”

“ We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the world what only Love may safely know concerning us?
Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. ”

“ In the days that followed the Bishop's visit Michael's mind showed signs of reasserting itself. He was as quickly exhausted as ever, and with fatigue came the old apathy and helpless confusion of ideas. But his languid intelligence had intervals of increasing clearness. His face took on at these times a strained expression, as if he dimly saw something with which he felt powerless to cope. We see such a look sometimes, very piteous in its impotence, in the faces of the old, when an echo reaches them of the anguish of the world in which they once lived, which they have well nigh forgotten. ”

“ They seem inhuman because they are not human—as yet. They seem variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's body and brain must so seem. They are not sane—as yet.
And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth and beauty and tenderness may not come forth—as yet.
We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes. ”

“ She deserted Michael because her eyes were holden. Now you can make the balance even if you will. But will you? You can repay cruelty with cruelty. You can desert her with inhumanity even greater than hers, because you do it with your eyes open. But will you? Is it to be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth? She loves you and is at your mercy, even as Michael was once at hers. You can crush her if you will. But will you?"
"Wentworth!" said Fay, and she fell at his feet, clasping his knees. ”

“ But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour. Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might wake. ”

“ Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate. We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love. Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking and faithful God?
Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us?
The duke's words came back to Michael. ”

“ Fay shivered.
"That resistance is what some people call sin. It is unendurable, the only real anguish in the world. You see we are not meant to bear it. And it is no manner of use to resist Him, for God is stronger than we are, and He loves us too much ever to lose heart with us, ever to blame us, ever to leave us to ourselves. He sees we don't understand that He can't do without us, and that we can't do without Him. And at last, when we feel God's need of us, then it becomes possible"—the Bishop paused—"to say the difficult word, to do the difficult deed." ”

“ Evidently there was no justice anywhere, only a blind chance. "The truth will out," Fay had said to herself over and over again. She had tried to have faith. But the truth had not come out. She was being pushed, pushed over the edge of the precipice. Oh, why had Michael fallen in love with her when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgust those early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time of primroses. It had brought her to this—to this horrible place of tears and shame and shuddering—to these wretched days and hideous nights. ”

“ The small service he had rendered Fay linked itself to a wish to do something more for her—he did not know exactly what—but something larger than to-day. Any fool, any bucolic squireen, could have given her a lift home on a cob. He would like to do something which another person could not do, something which would cheer her, console her, and at the same time place him in a magnanimous light.
We all long for an opportunity to act with generosity and tenderness to the one we love. ”

“ Wentworth, too, had reached the conviction that he and Fay were made for each other. He might have starved out the deeper love, the truth and tenderness of a sincerer nature, if it had been drawn towards him. He had often imagined himself as being the recipient of the lavished devotion of a woman beautiful, humble, exquisite and noble, whose truth was truth itself, and had vaguely wondered why she had not come into his life. ”

“ A few minutes had been enough on the subject of the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour. Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines of our self-revelations. ”