Mrs. Humphry Ward

“ Day after day he walked or rode about the muddy lanes of the estate, doing the work that seemed to him to be his, as best he could, yet never very certain of its value; rather, spending his thoughts more and more, with regard to his own place and function in the world, on a sort of mental apologetic which was far from stimulating; sorely conscious the while of the unmatched charm and effectiveness with which his grandfather had gone about the same business; and as lonely at heart as a man can well be—the wound of love unhealed, the wound of friendship still deep and unconsoled. ”

“ She felt his spell, as she had always done. The woman in her thrilled at last to the mere name and neighbourhood of love. The heart in her cried out that pain and loss could only be deadened so—the past could only be silenced by filling the present with movement and warm life.
Yet what tremors of conscience—what radical distrust of herself and him! And the first articulate words she found to say to him were very much what she had said to Aldous so long ago—only filled with a bitterer and more realised content.
"After all, what do we know of each other! You don't know me—not as I am. ”

“ Can I through the Clarion—and through influence outside the House—coerce the men in the House? If so, we can do something, and Lady Cradock will no longer throw me her smiles. If not the game is up, both for me and for them. They have no cohesion, no common information, no real power. Without leaders they are a mere set of half-educated firebrands whom the trained mind of the country humours because it must, and so far as they have brute force behind them. Without leadership, I am a mere unit of the weakest group in the House. ”

“ On a clear night Aldous felt himself stifled by blinds and curtains, and would often sit late, reading and writing, with a lamp so screened that it threw light upon his book or paper, while not interfering with the full range of his eye over the night-world without. He secretly believed that human beings see far too little of the night, and so lose a host of august or beautiful impressions, which might be honestly theirs if they pleased, without borrowing or stealing from anybody, poet or painter. ”

“ But what had originally sprung from the impulse to retain a hold over a woman, became in the end the instrument of a new and quite other situation. Wharton had no sooner entered the House of Commons than he felt himself strangely at home there. He had the instinct for debate, the instinct for management, together with a sensitive and contriving ambition. He found himself possessed for the moment of powers of nervous endurance that astonished him—a patience of boredom besides, a capacity for drudgery, and for making the best of dull men. ”

“ He had never loved her more passionately—but as he stood there looking at her, something broke within him, the first prescience of the inevitable dawned.
"You," she said again, walking stormily to and fro, and catching at her breath—"You, in this house, with this life—to talk of justice—the justice that comes of slaying a man like Hurd! And I must go back to that cottage, to that woman, and tell her there is no hope—none! Because you must follow your conscience—you who have everything! Oh! I would not have your conscience—I wish you a heart—rather! ”

“ She was conscious of a quickening in the blood, a momentary blurring of the vision. A whirlwind of fancies swept across her. She thought of herself as the young peeress—Lord Maxwell after all was over seventy—her own white neck blazing with diamonds, the historic jewels of a great family—her will making law in this splendid house—in the great domain surrounding it. What power—what a position—what a romance! She, the out-at-elbows Marcella, the Socialist, the friend of the people. What new lines of social action and endeavour she might strike out! Miss Raeburn should not stop her. ”

“ Aldous Raeburn was a man to feel these things. He had seldom stood on this high point, in such an evening calm, without the expansion in him of all that was most manly, most English, most strenuous. If it had not been so, indeed, he must have been singularly dull of soul. For the great view had an interest for him personally it could hardly have possessed to the same degree for any other man. On his left hand Maxwell Court rose among its woods on the brow of the hill—a splendid pile which some day would be his. ”

“ Boyce's anger grew.
"Of course you know what everybody said?"
She stooped over her work again, and did not reply.
"It's no good being sullen over it," he said in exasperation; "I'm your father, and I'm dying. I have a right to question you. It's my duty to see something settled, if I can, before I go. Is it true that all the time you were attacking Raeburn about politics and the reprieve, and what not, you were really behaving as you never ought to have behaved, with Harry Wharton?"
He gave out the words with sharp emphasis, and, bending towards her, he laid an emaciated hand upon her arm. ”

“ Under Wharton's Socratic method, she was conscious at times of the most wild and womanish desires, worthy of her childhood—to cry, to go into a passion!—and when they came to the village, and every human creature, old and young, dropped its obsequious curtsey as they passed, she could first have beaten them for so degrading her, and the next moment felt a feverish pleasure in thus parading her petty power before a man who in his doctrinaire pedantry had no sense of poetry, or of the dear old natural relations of country life. ”

“ She pulled herself together by a strong effort, reminding herself in a flash of all that divided them:—of womanly pride—of Betty Macdonald's presence at the Court—of that vain confidence to Hallin, of which her inmost being must have been ashamed, but that something calming and sacred stole upon her whenever she thought of Hallin, lifting everything concerned with him into a category of its own.
No; let her selfish weakness make no fettering claim upon the man before her. Let her be content with the friendship she had, after all, achieved, that was now doing its kindly best for her. ”

“ If you are a leader of the people, why don't you educate them? My father says that bringing feeling into politics is like making rhymes in one's account book."
"Well, when you have taught the masses how not to feel," said Wharton, laughing, "we will follow your advice. Meanwhile it is our brains and their feelings that do the trick. And by the way, Lady Selina, are you always so cool? If you saw the Revolution coming to-morrow into the garden of Alresford House, would you go to the balcony and argue?" ”

“ At any rate I can't hate them—they seem to have a function—when I am moving about Drury Lane!" she added with a smile.
"But how can one help being ashamed?" said Lady Winterbourne, as her eyes wandered over her pretty room, and she felt herself driven somehow into playing devil's advocate.
"No! No!" said Marcella, eagerly, "don't be ashamed! As to the people who make beauty more beautiful—who share it and give it—I often feel as if I could say to them on my knees, Never, never be ashamed merely of being rich—of living with beautiful things, and having time to enjoy them! ”