Richard Dowling

“ Grace should sit in her easy chair at one side of the window in summer, and Edith at the other, while the girl read an evening paper aloud until the light failed or the old woman fell asleep.
It was eight o'clock, and still the unwearying light pursued and enveloped the hours pertinaciously. The great reflux of men had long since set in and died down low. Now and then a brisk footstep passed the window with sharp beating sound; now and then a long and echoing footfall lingered from end to end of the opposite flagway; now and then an empty four-wheeled cab lumbered sleepily by. ”

“ Ashton was an ardent politician, her husband none at all. For a politician to enter upon his public career with a young wife opposed to him would be most unwise, the beginning of disagreement at home. At first, when he met Dora, he was attracted towards her by the enthusiasm of her spirit. He had never before met so young a woman, a mere girl, with such settled faith. At that time he was not very sure how he himself thought on many of the questions which divided men. She knew no doubt or hesitancy, and she was very lovely and bright and fresh. ”

“ She yearned to pass her life by the side of a man who could force the world to listen to his words, and fill the one pedestal in her earthly temple. She wanted him to be a hero and a conqueror in the face of the world, and she wanted to give him the whole loyal worship of her woman's heart, that she might live always in the only attitude which rests a woman's spirit, the attitude of giving service of the hand and largess of the heart, and homage of the soul. ”

“ Mr. Timmons' forehead wrinkled upwards as he recognised the visitor to Tunbridge Street. He smiled, displaying an imperfect line of long discoloured teeth.
"Good afternoon," said John Timmons in a deep vibrating voice that sounded as though it had effected its escape from the cellar through a drum.
"Afternoon," said the woman entering the store without pausing. Then nodding her head back in the direction whence she had come she asked: "Anyone?"
"No," answered Timmons, after a long and careful scrutiny of the eastern half of Tunbridge Street. "Not a soul." ”

“ I designed my clock to be a companion, a friend, a confidant, a solace, a triumph; it is becoming a tyrant and a scourge. It is cruel that my mother should grow old. Why should not things stop as they are now? But we are all on our way to death. We are all on our way out of the world to make room for those who are coming in. No sooner do we grow to full years and strive to form our hearts than we discover we are only lodgers in this world and that those we like are leaving our neighbourhood very soon, and that while we cannot go with them we cannot remain either. ”

“ The lowest creature of all is the sensualist, who not only eats potatoes and turnips and carrots but the very pigs that root for things nature has had the decency to hide away from the sight of the eyes of angels and of men. Can you conceive anything lower in the scale of sensual joy or more delicious than pork and onions? I tell you, Sir Julius, if this humpbacked dwarf only had money, a handsome wife and courage, he could popularize sausages being served before the soup. He is the only man since Napoleon the Great who has the manner of power sufficient for such a reform. ”

“ To his sensitive and highly-wrought mind, base blood of even four or five generations back would have forbidden him any part in public life, and, worse than that a thousand times, have destroyed his personal interest and pride in himself for ever.
"I would rather," he moaned, when his mind became more orderly, "carry the hump upon the withered, distorted legs of that man, Oscar Leigh, than a bend sinister. A noble woman may fall, but no noble woman who has fallen would take money for her sin. ”

“ Hanbury, I shall let you into a secret. I don't care for people who aren't nice. I prefer nice people. I like people like my wife and Dora, and your mother and yourself."
"I am sure, sir, you are very good to include me in your list."
"And I don't care at all for people who aren't nice, you know. I don't care at all for the poor. When they aren't objectionable they are an awful bore. For the life of me I can't make out what reasonable men and women see in the people. ”

“ A nice thing surely for a creature to ask a man to call on business at his private residence with valuable property at midnight and then slam the door in his face and coolly ask him to go out for a walk! It was a downright insult, but a man couldn't resent an insult from such a creature. That was the worst of it.
"I have been in telegraphic communication with Birmingham since I saw you," said Leigh, stopping under a lamp-post, pouring out a few drops of eau-de-cologne into his palm and inhaling the spirit noisily.
"Oh?" said Timmons interrogatively, as he looked contemptuously at the dwarf. ”

“ Her school-fellows said Edith Grace would be perfect, simply perfect, if she only had a heart.
But, alas! the girl had a heart, and what is worse still, a heart very hard to possess in seeming peace in a young breast confronted with a decaying fortunes.
Her school-fellows said she ought to be a queen. By this they meant that she was, by her appearance and manners, suited to statelinesses, and splendours, and pageants. They conceived a queen to be above the common nature of our kind. To be free from the aches and pains of feeling. To be superior to the bemeaning littlenesses of life. ”

“ I thought you might like them for your tea."
By this time a man with a cart turned into the street, and, it just then striking six, the door of a factory poured out a living turbid stream of bedraggled, frowsy girls, some of whom went up and some down the street, noisily talking and laughing.
"Yes, There is nothing I am so fond of for my tea as red herrings," he said, with his face half turned to the store, half to the street. "And I shall like them particularly to-night."
"Eh! Particularly to-night? Are you alone? Are you going to have company at tea, Mr. Timmons?" ”

“ Here he was protected against even himself, for he could not make himself ridiculous or commit himself when alone. All trials of great agony spring from what we conceive to be our relations with others. Beyond physical pains and pleasures, which are few and unimportant in life, we owe all our joys and sorrows to what others think or say of us. Even in the most abstracted spiritual natures the anger of Heaven is more intolerable to anticipate than the torture of Hell.
John Hanbury's room was in the back of the house. Here, as in the dining-room, the window was wide open. ”

“ To make up for his deformities and deficiencies had powers and faculties denied to other men been given to him?
John Timmons did not believe in ghosts, but he did believe in devils, and he was not sure that devils might not even now assume human form, or that Oscar Leigh was not one of them, habilitated in flesh for evil purposes among men.
Stamer held no such faith. He did not believe in devils. He believed in man, and man was the only being he felt afraid of. He thought it no more than reasonable that Timmons should lie to him. ”

“ It was intolerable to have to speak of Dora Ashton, his Dora, his wife that was to be, to this mechanic, or mechanist, or mechanician, or whatever he happened to be. "Miss Ashton might have been taken off her guard."
"Bah, sir! You might have been surprised and taken off your guard by what I said, but not she! Hah!" He said this with a secret mocking laugh. "I am fairly astonished at a man of your intelligence, Mr. Hanbury, mistaking me for a fool. I never make mistakes about people. I never make wrong estimates of the men or women I meet. ”

“ Stamer had hinted that Leigh might try to murder Timmons for plunder, and now Timmons was almost in the humour to murder Leigh for rage.
Leigh made a gesture of gracious deprecation with his left hand and bowed. "This, Mr. Timmons, is a matter of business, and I never allow anything so odious as fiction to touch even the robe of sacred business." He lifted his hat, raised his eyes to the top of the spire of the church and then bowed low his uncovered head. "For, Mr. Timmons, business is the deity every one of our fellow-countrymen worship." ”

“ Mystery gold was a clumsy juggle that one found out in the fire. My gold is bonâ fide a miracle, and I have called it Miracle Gold. My gold will resist the acid, and the blow-pipe, and the crucible. As I live, if they provoke me, I will sell them not metal miracle gold, but perchloride of miracle gold. No one can doubt me then!"
"And will you be able, Mr. Leigh, to make not only enough for your figures but some for sale also?" ”

“ How on earth did that man Leigh become acquainted with that exquisite creature, Miss Grace? No wonder he called her miracle gold.
Well, it was time for him to be getting back to Curzon Street. There was to be no one at dinner but the family and himself. There would, therefore, neither before nor after be any politics. What a relief it was to forget the worry, and heat and dust of politics now and then for a while, for a little while even!
Grimsby Street was an awful place for a girl like Miss Grace to live in. Why did she live in such horrible street? Poverty, no doubt. Poverty. ”

“ A river is no more than human, after all. But what has soap been doing?"
"Nothing; and in the fact that it has been doing nothing lies one of my chief counts against it. Of old you judged a man by the club to which he belonged, the number of his quarterings, the tailor who made his clothes, the income he had, the wife he married, the horses he backed, or the wine he drank. Now we classify men according to the soap they use. There are more soaps now than patent medicines."
"Soaps are patent medicine for external use only," said Lady Forcar, touching her white plump wrist. ”

“ When Edith Grace saw Oscar Leigh, and arranged to go as companion to his mother, although she shrank naturally from his objectionable manner and unhappy appearance, she was better pleased than if he had belonged to the ordinary mould of man. His deformities made him seem a being proper to a new condition of life, a condition of life in which his very unusualness would enable her to preserve and even increase the feeling of reserve, and being apart from the world, cultivated by her with such success at Miss Graham's and at home. ”

“ But he was not inured to any society at all, and this saved him from vulgarities; and then he was much used to commune with himself, which gave him directness and simplicity of manner.
One of the things affording freshness and vitality to Leigh was that he did not feel the need of common-places. Common-places are the tribute which intelligence pays to stupidity. They are the inventions of a beneficent Satan in the interest of the self-respect of fools.
"Miss Ashton," said Leigh bowing without emphasis or a smile, "I have ventured to come to beg a cup of tea of you." ”

“ John Hanbury was not a handsome man, but when he smiled at his slender, grey-haired mother, and patted her delicate white thin hands with his own large and brown, there was more than physical beauty in his looks, there was a subjugating, an intoxicating radiance, and all-completed prostration of his soul before the mother he worshipped. ”

“ He might have meant that the kettle was for tea merely, and had nothing to do directly with the red herrings. He fastened the wicket-door very carefully, and then slowly examined the rear of the shutters one by one, and, holding his eye close to them here and there, tried if he could spy out, in order to ascertain if any one could spy in. Then he rested his shoulder against the middle shutter, leant his head against the panel and, having thrust his hands deeper than ever into his trousers' pockets, gave up his soul to listening. ”