Walter Besant

“ Molly had been taught that Art ought to despise wealth; she had not been taught to despise the things artistic that money can buy. The rich man chuckled to think how much money can be spent upon a girl who despises it. He was pleased to make the girl happy by heaping unaccustomed treasures on her gratified shoulders. It was pleasant to be generous to a bright, happy, smiling girl, who kept him alive, and made him forget the burden of his riches. And as he thought of these things he fell into his third manner—that of the gardener—and his eyes went off into space. ”

“ If one is born in a theatre, one belongs to a theatre. I would rather be born in a theatre than in a West End square. Humphrey, you make me sorry that I ever listened to you."
"Well, go and listen to that fiddler fellow who calls you Molly. Curse his impudence!"
"Oh, if you had been only born differently! You belong to the people who are all alike. You sit in the stalls in a row, as if you were made after the same pattern; you expect the same jokes; you take the same too much champagne; you are like the pebbles of the seashore, all rounded alike." ”

“ You cannot, of course, be ignorant of the fact that more than the loss of my child is concerned; there is the loss of my good name, because you would have the world to believe that a woman, born of most honourable and God-fearing parents; married to a man of the highest reputation, herself of good reputation, should stoop so low—one can hardly write it—as to buy a baby of a woman she had never seen, of a poor woman, of a woman of whom she knew nothing except that she was the deserted wife of a strolling actor; and to pass this child off upon her husband and the world as her own. ”

“ To them there comes no dream of gleaming arms—no imagined magic of voice and eyes and face. There is no such thing as a Prodigal daughter; the humble rôle of the Prodigal Girl is to minister, as with the white arms and the castanets, to the service of the Prodigal Son; for which she, too, has to go out presently to sit with the swine, and to maintain a precarious existence on the husks.
Molly had no such vision: yet by the mere power of her voice she could awaken this vision in the mind of a listener. It is a power which makes an actress; makes a queen; makes a lady of authority ”

“ A gentleman does not travel on foot, carrying a violin. Besides, his face was not the kind of face which comes out of Eton and Trinity. It was a humorous face; there was a twinkle, or the fag end of a smile, upon it. Such a girl as Hilarie would not at first take readily to such a face. However, he looked quiet, and he looked good-natured; his eyes, realizing the oddness of the situation, were luminous with suppressed laughter.
"Molly," he said, "please tell this lady—your friend—who I am."
"Hilarie, this is Dick Woodroffe. I suppose you have never heard of him. ”

“ The publicity will fall upon the fashionable physician, the great man of science, the head of his profession, who will have to acknowledge that he found a child and bought it for a certain unknown person—a noble way for a young physician to earn a fee! The publicity will also fall upon the now notorious lady who has got up in the world since she sold her only child for fifty pounds, to keep it and herself out of the workhouse. No injurious publicity will fall upon me, other than the discovery of some woman who once took my name. ”

“ On the table lay the bundle of baby-clothes recovered by the true mother. It was untied. The little flannels, the little frock, the little woollen socks, the little cap—a touching little bundle to one who had memories of the things. And near the table, as if guarding the spoil she had carried off, Alice lay upon the sofa, slowly recovering from the excitement of the afternoon.
"Not like it, Dick?" Molly asked. "Why?"
Alice laid her hand upon the things. "I want no other proof," she said. "I made these things; I made them all. What more would you have?"
"What more can we desire?" asked Molly. ”

“ Nothing else, nothing else—no clue, no suggestion, or hint, or opening anywhere, except resemblance. The strange likeness of this young man Humphrey to himself haunted Dick; he looked at himself in the glass. Any one could see that his features, his hair, his eyes, were those of Humphrey. Differences there were—in stature, in expression, in carriage. Dick was as elastic and springy as the other was measured and slow of gait. As for that other resemblance, said by Alice to be even more marked—that between Humphrey and Anthony Woodroffe, the actor, John Anthony—it was even more remarkable. ”

“ But the pale lady's delicate, nun-like face would have looked better without them. With her came Molly, now her daily companion. The girl was dressed, for the first time in her life, as in a dream—a dream of paradise; she wore such a frock, with such trimmings, as makes a maiden, if by happy chance she sees it in a window, gasp and yearn for the unattainable, yet go home thankful for having seen it; and humbled by the sense of personal unworthiness. Yet, what says the poet?
"Ah! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Else what's a heaven for?" ”

“ What did she know about Humphrey? However, Lady Woodroffe went on, still bland and gracious—
"Do not delude yourself any longer, madam. For the sake of your own peace and quiet, put it away from you. Oh, this dreadful delusion will possess you more and more! You will yearn more and more for the possession of the son you have lost. Your mind will become so filled with this delusion that you will be able to think about nothing else. It will drive you to some desperate act; it will poison your daily life; it will turn your wealth into a heavy burden. ”

“ However, I have refused concealment. Meantime a most romantic and wonderful discovery is going to be disclosed. I must not set it down on paper, even for your eyes, Hilarie. It is a discovery of which Humphrey knows nothing as yet. He will learn it, I believe, in a few days. When he does learn it, it will necessitate a complete change in all his views of life; it will open the world for him; it will take him out of his narrow grooves; it will try him and prove him. Now, dear Hilarie, am I right to wait—without his knowing why? ”

“ Dick threw the door open with a gesture of command.
Humphrey obeyed, with an effort at preserving some appearance of dignity. To be found out under such circumstances, to be exposed in such a manner, to be ordered off the premises so contemptuously, would make the proudest of men leave the room with the appearance of ignominy.
"Molly, my dear," said Hilarie, "when you think of the man and what he is, you will never regret him."
She laid her head upon Hilarie's shoulder with a deep, deep sigh.
"One doesn't like a man making love to somebody else at the same time. ”

“ We should never have any money—Dick gives away all he gets. He will not put by. 'If I am ill,' he says, 'take me to the hospital.' 'If I die,' he says, 'bury me in the hedge, like the gipsy folk.' He never wants money, and I should sometimes go on tramp with him, and we should sit in the woods, and march along the roads, and hear the skylark sing, and yearn for the unattainable, and go on crying for we know not what, like the little children. Oh, delightful! And Dick is always sweet and always good—except, perhaps, when he speaks of Humphrey, who has angered him by cold and superior airs. ”

“ I believe I ought to hand you over at once to my lawyers, to be dealt with for conspiracy."
Richard Woodroffe smiled. "I wish you would," he said. "I should like nothing better than the publicity of an action."
"Oh," she groaned, "the pertinacity of the black-mailer!"
"I shall not be insulted, whatever you say. I am here to tell you that the proofs have now closed round you so completely, that there is not left, I verily believe, a single loophole of escape."
Lady Woodroffe rose with dignity. "You talk to me, sir—to me?—of escape and loophole. Go, sir—go to my solicitors." ”

“ And, well, your sort, I take it, is always wanting money; you never make any, and you are always spending. Make her happy, and you shall have as much as any young man can want in reason or out of reason. I know your manner of life, sir, and it's an expensive manner of life. You are in debt again; Lady Woodroffe has already paid your debts once or twice; champagne and cards and painted Jezebels—you shall have them all—all; I don't care what you want, you shall have everything, if you only behave properly to your mother."
Humphrey heard these words with real and breathless astonishment. ”

“ Acting, as you know, my poor Molly, makes real emotion difficult for us, because we are always connecting emotion with its theatrical gesture. When we ought to weep, we begin to think of how we weep."
"You talk like a book sometimes, Dick. Where do you get all your wisdom?"
"Not from books. Come on tramp with me, and you shall learn where I get it, Molly. All the thoughts worth having come to a man as he walks along the road, especially by night. Books can't tell him anything. I say that we can't help connecting emotion with the stage way of expressing it. ”

“ She had on another lovely frock with the same pearl necklace.
"It means, Dick," she replied, with much dignity, "that Alice—Mrs. Haveril—is my father's first cousin, and is therefore my own cousin. It also means, which you will hardly credit, that she is very fond of me."
"That is, indeed, difficult of belief. And you are a good deal with them? And this other frock, too, this thing—is it cloth of gold or samite?—was given to you by your cousin. Molly, Molly, have a care! The love of gold creeps upon one as a thief in the night." ”

“ All the world desires wealth. It is only at such places as the entrance-hall of a great hotel that the impecunious can really see with their own eyes, and properly understand, what great riches can actually do for their possessor. What can confer happiness more solid, more satisfying, more abiding, than to buy your wife a costume for two hundred guineas, and to live in such a hotel as this, with the whole treasures of London lying at your feet, and waiting for your choice? ”

“ That so humble a person as myself should be elevated without any warning, so to speak, to this position—his mother is a great leader in the philanthropic part of society—is a curious freak of fortune. It is like a story-book. As for the man—well, for my own feeling about him, it is certainly quite true that I could very well live without him. I certainly should not droop and languish if he were to go somewhere else; yet—you know him, Hilarie. He is clever in a way. He thinks he has ideas about Art—he paints smudges, puts together chords, and writes lines that rhyme. ”

“ Humphrey stood listening. To this young man, perhaps to others, the effect of Molly's singing, as of her presence and of her voice and of her eyes, was to fill his mind with visions. They came to him in the shape of dancing-girls with tambourines and castanets. When a girl is endowed with the real faculty of singing, she may create in the minds of those who hear, those visions which best fit their inclinations and their natures. ”

“ At least you never knew that there is not—there has never been—the least touch of your nobility in the gutter child. He is mean; he is selfish. He has never done a kind action, or said a generous word. He has no friends, only companions. He has already all the vices, but is never carried away; he will become a sensualist, a cold and heartless sensualist. I am sorry, Humphrey, truly sorry, my most noble and honourable husband, that I have given you so unworthy a successor. Yet he is careful; he will cause no scandal. So far, my husband, your name is safe. ”

“ You owe it to him that since he was brought up as Sir Humphrey's son, you must make him Sir Humphrey's heir. In other words, whatever happens, you must not let him suffer in fortune."
Lady Woodroffe was silent.
"Do you understand what I mean? You adopted him. He is yours. It is not his fault that he is yours. He may be robbed of his father by this discovery; he cannot be robbed of his education and of the ideas which belong to your position; he may have to recognize for his father a most unworthy, shameful man instead of a most honourable man. ”

“ Now, dear Hilarie, here is my temptation. My cousin Alice wants me to go back to America with her and her husband. He would like it, too. They are enormously rich; they could make me an heiress. The husband, John Haveril, is as honest and kindly a man as you could wish to find. He is a man who has made his own way; he has not the manners of society; but he is not vulgar; he is well bred by instinct. ”

“ A chap is poor because he's foolish or lazy. Either he can't see the way or he won't stir himself. You can't help a blind man—nor you can't help a lazy man. If you give either of them what he wants, he spends it all, and then holds out his hand and asks for more." The bankrupt dropped his head, and sank into a chair. The champagne helped him to apply this maxim to his own case. "The best thing that can be done for any one is to dump him down in a new country where he'll sink or swim. You, sir," he pointed a minatory finger to Cousin Charles, "you would like more capital, would you?" ”