W. B. Maxwell

“ Marsden walked swiftly across the parched grass, moving with strong light tread, and gazing here and there with clear keen vision. As he moved thus lightly and swiftly, looking so strong and yet so agile, he seemed a personification of masculine youth and vigour, the coarse male animal in its pride of brutal health. Or, if one merely noticed the catlike tread, so springy and easy in its muscular power, he might suggest the graceful yet fierce beast of prey who paces through failing sunlight and falling shadows in search of the inoffensive creature that he will surely destroy. ”

“ Just as Thompson's represented all that was good and stable in the trade of Mallingbridge, Bence's stood for everything bad and evanescent. A horrid catch-penny shop, increasing its business rapidly, practising the odious modern methods of remorseless rivalry, Bence's was almost universally hated. They outraged the feelings of old established tradesmen by taking up lines which cut into one cruelly: they burst out into books, into trunks, into ironmongery; at Christmas, in what they called their grand annual bazaar, they had a cut at the trade of every shop throughout the length of High Street. ”

“ Nothing less than a miracle can bring back the wasted past.
She did not sleep; but with the return of day she grew calmer. Thoughts of Enid helped her. A second marriage—even what the world would call a wise and fitting alliance—was utterly out of the question. It would be the death of her daughter's love; it would render the story of her own life meaningless; it would destroy all the results of twenty-two years' maternal devotion. Enid had been all in all to her: Enid must remain what she had always been. ”

“ The genial May sunshine flashed gaily, lighting up the whole street, making both ladies blink their eyes as the carriage rolled away.
"What a crowd there is outside Bence's," said Miss Enid. "How mean it is of him not to close!"
The first shop they passed was Bence's drapery stores, and Mrs. Thompson glanced carelessly at the thronged pavement in front of these improperly open windows.
"Mr. Bence's motto," said Mrs. Thompson, "is cheap and nasty," and she laughed with an amused scorn for so mean a trade rival. "His method of doing business is like the trumpery he offers to the public. ”

“ Mears said all the women in the shop had submitted to the spell—but not the silliest, most feather-headed slut of them all had fallen into such idiotic depths as those in which their proud and stately chief lay weeping.
She dried her eyes, got out of bed and drank water, stood at the open window, turned on the light, turned off the light, lay down again and tried desperately to sleep.
In a moment her cheeks were burning.—She could feel the hot kisses; she could hear the hurried words. "A face made to be kissed—setting one's blood on fire.... You are a woman all through—you are ripe for love." ”

“ Miss Thompson, in her fawn-coloured coat and skirt, feathered hat and spotted veil, was a tall, slim, graceful figure, ready now to adorn the hired landau from Mr. Young's livery stables. Her hair was dark and her complexion naturally pallid; with a long straight nose in a narrow face, she resembled her dead father, but what was sheep-like and stupid in him was rather pretty in the girl;—altogether, a decent-looking, fairly attractive young woman of twenty-two, but not likely to obtain from the world at large the gaze of admiring satisfaction with which an adoring mother regarded her. ”

“ Marsden only shook her head, while Mr. Prentice continued to entreat her to act on his advice.
"Suppose you always have to go on paying him half of all you can make by your industry? Never mind. What does it matter? You'll pay it to him at a distance—you'll never have to see him—you will have swept him out of your life. My dear, the years will roll off your back; you'll be able to breathe, to live—you'll feel that you are your own self again." ”

“ Throughout the length of High Street there were too many of such signs of the vulgar times: the ever-changing trade, old shops giving place to new ones—an American boot-shop, a branch of the famous cash tobacconists, the nasty cheap restaurant opened by the great London caterers, Parisian jewellery absorbing one window of the historic clocksmiths,—everywhere indications of that love of tawdriness and glitter which slowly atrophies the sense of solid worth, of genuineness and durability. ”

“ Marsden had now gone from it—no sound of a friendly voice to welcome her as she came through the door of communication; no solace after the exhausting day; a strange face to meet her, unfamiliar, clumsy hands to wait upon her at the lonely supper.
She never really learned to know the faces of her new servants. They changed so often. No servant would stop with them for long. The work was heavier than it used to be; after Yates had gone the mistress could not afford to keep a maid-housekeeper; in these hard times a cook and a housemaid must suffice for the establishment. ”

“ The town and its suburbs had rolled out in all directions, burying green meadows beneath warehouses and factories, stifling the copses with red-brick villas, planting the flowery slopes with tram-lines and iron standards. To-day the light was bad; the sun only here and there could pierce the drab clouds of smoke that rose from countless chimneys, and drifted and hung over the central part of the town; but the three big towers showed plainly enough—the square tower of St. Saviour's, the steeple of Holy Trinity, and the pinnacled monument of Bence's clock. ”

“ Mears himself hated the idea. He thought the bazaar a brainless plagiarism of Bence's, and altogether unworthy of Thompson's. It would be exactly like Bence's, but on a much larger scale—beneath the good respectable shop, a cheap and nasty shop, in which catchpenny travesties of decent articles would be the only wares; fancy stationery, sham jewellery, spurious metals; horrid little clocks that won't go, knives and scissors that won't cut, collar-boxes more flimsy than the collars they are intended to hold—everything beastly that crumples, bends, or breaks before you can get home with it. ”

“ Yesterday there had been a lawn meet—whether at Widmore Towers or somewhere else, Mrs. Marsden did not gather. Mrs. Bulford's horse was there; but as yet Mrs. Bulford had not shown herself. Charles was there, dismounted for the moment, walking about among the gentlemen in front of the house, taking nips of cherry brandy and nibbling biscuits offered by the footmen with the trays. All was jollity and animation—promise of fine sport; dull sky, gentle westerly breeze, dew-sprinkled earth; kindly nature seemed to proclaim a good scenting day. ”

“ Thompson decisively.
"Oh, yes, ma'am, and I offer an apology for my mistake."
"Mr. Marsden," said Mrs. Thompson, with dignity, "there is not the slightest occasion for an apology. Please don't make mountains out of molehills."
"No—but I am in earnest. It is your own great kindness that led me to forget. And I confess that I did for a moment forget the immense difference of social station that lies between us. A shopman should never speak to his employer—much less his employer's relatives—in a tone implying the least friendliness or equality." ”

“ Naked branches of high trees, broad eaves and nestling windows, weak sunlight upon latticed glass, and pale smoke rising from clustered chimneys—that was all she saw. A few dead leaves pretended to be live things, scampered beside the long wall; a few dead thoughts revived in her mind, and swiftly she recalled her old fancies, the dream of the future, Enid and herself living together so quietly beneath the grey roof;—and then the pretty house with its pretty grounds had been left far behind. ”

“ Marsden again shook her head, and once more fell back upon the vagueness that baffles argument if it cannot refute it.
"No—dear Mr. Prentice, I feel that I couldn't make any move now. Life is so complicated—there are difficulties on all sides—my hands are tied.... Perhaps I will ask you for your aid—but not now—and not for a divorce."
"But if you wait, no one will be able to aid you. The hour for aid will have passed forever." And Mr. Prentice brought out all his eloquence in vain. "Try to recover your old attitude of mind. Consider the thing as a business woman. ”

“ When the luncheon was over she was glad to notice that he tipped the waiter liberally. It would have been irksome to her, as a prodigious tipper, to observe any economy—but Marsden gave almost as much as if she herself had taken the money out of the purse. She used to hand him her purse as they went into the restaurant, and he gave it back to her as they came out again.
Serving-girls at the fashionable London shops were inclined to smile while they waited upon Mrs. Thompson choosing her nuptial finery. ”

“ The hostess called her "Mamie," and even "Mamie dear"; but Mrs. Marsden surmised that Enid did not really like her, and had not wanted her for a godmother.
Old Mr. Kenion—the vicar of Chapel Norton—was white-haired, thin, and fragile; and Mrs. Marsden thought he seemed to be a good, weak, over-burdened man. His manner was mild, courteous, kindly. Mrs. Kenion was shabbily pretentious, with faded airs of fashion and dull echoes of distinguished voices. They had brought one of their daughters with them—a spinster of uncertain age in a tailor-made gown and a masculine collar. ”

“ No, the rascal Charles Kenion, when disposed of, will still enjoy his life interest. The money that should come back now to the hand that gave it is gone. Enid will not have more than she wants for herself and her child.
He could not sleep. The thought of Mrs. Marsden's pride made him shiver. No prouder woman ever lived: famine and cold would not break her pride. He had thought of her in the workhouse, or an almshouse, finishing her days on the bread of charity. But no—great Heaven!—she would never consent to do that. She would rather sell matches in the street. ”

“ Marsden to London and she and Yates were driving through the streets in a four-wheeled cab, she studied the appearance of the great metropolitan shops, and mentally compared them with what she had left behind her at Mallingbridge. Once, when the dusk of an autumn day was falling and she chanced to pass the most world-famous of all emporiums, she told the cabman to let his horse walk; then, as they crawled by the endless frontage, she measured the glare of the electric lamps, counted the big commissionaires, estimated the volume of the crowd outside the glittering windows ”

“ It is appalling to think about; but it cannot be blinked or evaded. The fiery chain of life must have its new link of flame: Jane must carry the torch, and give it safely to the small hands that are waiting somewhere in immeasurable darkness to grasp it and bear it still onward.
Once when Enid lightly hinted at this terrifying matter, Jane caught the hint that was not intended for her ears, and replied very shrewdly. ”

“ Thompson march by with a company of false Mrs. Thompsons stretching in perfect line from the right—innumerable Mrs. Thompsons shown by the glasses; some looking bigger, some looking slighter; but all the glasses showing a large-bosomed, broad-hipped woman of forty-five, with florid colouring and robust deportment; a valiant solid creature seeming, as indeed she was, well able to carry the burden of the whole shop on her firm shoulders. ”

“ She was thinking of what Dick Marsden had said to her in the dusk by the river. "I could not pose as the pensioner of a rich wife." It seemed to her a natural and yet a noble sentiment; and she contrasted the proper manly frame of mind that found expression in such an utterance with the mean-spirited readiness to depend on others that Mr. Kenion confessed so shamelessly. Marsden was perhaps not a gentleman in the snobbish, conventional sense, but how much more a man than this Kenion! ”

“ Soon a soft greyness would rise from the horizon; indistinctness, vagueness, mystery would creep over the town and the fields, blotting out the ugly gas-works, hiding the common works of men, giving the world back to nature; but there would be no real night. In these, the longest days of the year, the light never quite died.
The colour of her blue dress and of the pink roses in her toque was clearly visible, as Mrs. Thompson and the young man walked on side by side. ”

“ Enid was self-absorbed, busy with her own little affairs, taking lessons from the new riding-master at Young's school, spending long hours away from the house. She seemed like a person who really has no intuitive sympathy to offer: a person locking up her life against intruders, keeping close guard over secret emotions, and neither willing to share her own hopes and fears nor to comprehend those of others.
Perhaps Enid's coldness—so often felt, but never till now admitted in the mother's thoughts—added to the hidden trouble of Mrs. Thompson. ”