Mrs. Humphry Ward

“ The semi-transparent folds of the black brought out the brilliance of the white neck and shoulders, the pale carnations of the face, the beautiful hair, following closely the contours of the white brow. Even through all his pain and preoccupation, Buntingford admired; was instantly conscious of the sheer pleasure of her beauty. But it was the pleasure of an artist, an elder brother—a father even. Her mother was in his mind, and the strong affection he had begun to feel for his ward was shot through and through by the older tenderness. ”

“ I want to have my life to myself a bit. I'm like the miners and the railway men. I'm full of unrest! I can't and won't settle down just yet. I want to look at things—the world's like a great cinema show just now—everything passing so quick you can hardly take breath. I want to sample it where I please. I want to dance—and talk—and make experiments."
"Well—marrying me would be an experiment," said Peter stoutly. "I vow you'd never regret it, Helena!"
"But I can't vow that you wouldn't! Let me alone, Peter. I suppose some time I shall quiet down. It doesn't matter if I break my own heart. ”

“ Every evening he would ride over from Dansworth station to the cottage, put up his horse, and spend the long summer twilights in carrying his son about the garden or the park, or watching Miss Denison at her work. The boy was physically very frail, and soon tired. But his look was now placid; the furrows in the white brow were smoothed away; his general nutrition was much better; his delicate cheeks had filled out a little; and his ghostly beauty fascinated Philip's artistic sense, while his helplessness appealed to the tenderest instinct of a strong man. ”

“ Lucy had let Helena go out alone, of set purpose. For she knew, or guessed, what Nature and Earth had done for Helena during the month they had passed together in this mountain-land, since that night at Beechmark. Helena had made no moan—revealed nothing. Only a certain paleness in her bright cheek, a certain dreamy habit that Lucy had not before noticed in her; a restlessness at night which the thin partitions of the old inn sometimes made audible, betrayed that the youth in her was fighting its first suffering, and fighting to win. Lucy had never dared to speak—still less to pity. ”

“ Helena Pitstone meanwhile walked away by herself to a distant part of the room and turned over photographs, with what seemed to Mrs. Friend a stormy hand. And as she did so, everyone in the room was aware of her, of the brilliance and power of the girl's beauty, and of the energy that like an aura seemed to envelop her personality. Lady Cynthia made several attempts to capture her, but in vain. Helena would only answer in monosyllables, and if approached, retreated further into the dim room, ostensibly in search of a book on a distant shelf, really in flight. ”

“ It was a beautiful night, and they were to walk home through the park.
"Shall I bring you any news there is to-morrow?" said Horne from the doorstep—"Geoffrey has asked me to stay till the evening. Everybody else of course is going early. It will be some time, won't it,"—he lowered his voice—"before we shall see the bearing of all this?"
Cynthia assented, rather coldly; and when she and her sister were walking through the moonlit path leading to the cottage, her silence was still marked, whereas Georgina in her grim way was excited and eager to talk. ”

“ And when a War Office mission, just before the Armistice, had taken him to some munition factories in the north, he had been scarcely less seized by the comeliness of the girl-workers:—the long lines of them in their blue overalls, and the blue caps that could scarcely restrain the beauty and wealth of pale yellow or red-gold hair beneath. Is there something in the rush and flame of war that quickens old powers and dormant virtues in a race? Better feeding and better wages among the working-classes—one may mark them down perhaps as factors in this product of a heightened beauty. ”

“ After having been immured for some three years in close attendance on an invalided woman shut up in two rooms, she was like a person walking along a dark road and suddenly caught in the glare of motor lamps. Brought into contact with such a personality as Helena Pitstone promised to be, she felt helpless and half blind. A survival, too; for this world into which she had now stepped was one quite new to her. Yet when she had first shut herself up in Lancaster Gate she had never been conscious of any great difference between herself and other women or girls. ”

“ London was dancing night after night; money was being spent like water; and yet every man and woman of sense knew that the only hope for Britain lay in work and saving. Buntingford's habitual frown—the frown not of temper but of oppression—had grown deeper; and on their long rides together he had shown a great deal of his mind to Helena—the mind of a patriot full of fear for his country.
A man came across the lawn. Lucy Friend was glad to recognize Geoffrey
French, who was a great favourite with her. ”

“ Helena sat down to wait for Peter, who would be sure to find her wherever she hid herself. This spot was dear to her, as those places where life has consciously grown to a nobler stature are dear to men and women. It was here that within twenty-four hours of her last words with Philip Buntingford, she had sat wrestling with something which threatened vital forces in her that her will consciously, desperately, set itself to maintain. ”

“ Lady Georgina shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, of course there must have been something to bait the hook! But when a man marries out of his own class, unless the woman dies, the man goes to pieces."
"Philip has not gone to pieces!" cried Cynthia indignantly.
"Because she removed herself. For practical purposes that was as good as dying. He has much to be grateful for. Suppose she had come home with him! She would have ruined him socially and morally."
"And if she doesn't die," said Cynthia slowly, "what will Philip do then?" ”

“ From the beginning she formed the conclusion that the pitiable little fellow entrusted to her was to a great extent educable; but that he would not live to maturity. This latter conclusion was carefully hidden from Buntingford, though it was known to Cynthia; and Philip knew, for a time, all the happiness, the excitement even of each day's slight advance, combined with a boundless hope for the future. He spent his evenings absorbed in the voluminous literature dealing with the deaf-mute, which has grown up since the days of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. ”

“ Nightingales were rare at Beechmark; and Buntingford would normally have hailed the enchanted flute-notes with a boyish delight. But this evening they fell on deaf ears, and when the garish sunlight gave place to gloom, and drops of rain began to patter on the new leaf, the gathering storm, and the dark silence of the wood, after the nightingale had given her last trill, were welcome to a man struggling with a recurrent and desperate oppression.
Must he always tamely submit to the fetters which bound him? Could he do nothing to free himself? Could the law do nothing? ”

“ Friend faintly.
"Colour is Passion, Beauty, Freedom!" said Helena, her cheek glowing. "It is just the opposite of dulness—and routine—and make-believe. It's what makes life worth while. And it is the young who feel it—the young who hear it calling—the young who obey it! And then when they are old, they have it to remember. Now, do you understand?"
Lucy Friend did not answer. But involuntarily, two shining tears stood in her eyes. There was something extraordinarily moving in the girl's ardour. ”

“ Helena's look kindled. She looked handsomer and more maenad-like than ever, as she stood leaning against Buntingford's writing-table, her arms folded, one slim foot crossed over the other.
"The gist of them is," she said eagerly, "that we—the women of the present day—are not going to accept our principles—moral—or political—or economic—on anybody's authority. You seem, Cousin Philip, in my case at any rate, to divide the world into two sets of people, moral and immoral, good and bad—desirable and undesirable—that kind of thing! ”

“ There were lights within it, and he pictured Helena at her glass, about to slip into some bright dress or other, which would make her doubly fair. Meanwhile from the rose of the sunset, rosy lights were stealing over the water and faintly glorifying the old house and its spreading gardens. An overpowering sense of youth—of the beauty of the world—of the mystery of the future, beat through his pulses. The coming dance became a rite of Aphrodite, towards which all his being strained. ”

“ She was not strong enough for war work, the doctor said, and so she had let the doors of Lancaster Gate close upon her, only looking for something quiet and settled—even if it were a settled slavery.
After which, suddenly, just about the time of the Armistice, she had become aware that nothing was the same; that the women and the girls—so many of them in uniform!—that she met in the streets when she took her daily walk—were new creatures; not attractive to her as a whole, but surprising and formidable, because of the sheer life there was in them. And she herself began to get restive ”