Walter Besant

“ Every man thinks he will succeed till he finds out his own weakness; every woman thinks she is born for the best of this world's gifts—to happiness, to be lapped in warmth and comfort, to be clothed with the love of husband and children as with a garment. Some women get it. Agatha had not received this great happiness. A short two years of colourless wedded life with a man old enough to be her father, and twenty years of widowhood. It was not the lot she might have chosen; not the lot she wished for Phillis. And then she thought of Jack Dunquerque. ”

“ Jack was the great-hearted lion who was to bear her safely through the wistful growls of the meaner beasts. The lion is not clever like the fox or the beaver, but one always conceives of him as a gentleman, and therefore fit to be entrusted with such a beautiful maiden as Una or Phillis. And if Jack was quietly allowed to carry off his treasure it was Agatha L'Estrange who was chiefly to blame; and she, falling in love with Jack herself, quite in a motherly way, allowed the wooing to go on under her very nose. "A bad, bad woman," as Lawrence Colquhoun called her. ”

“ Victoria Cassilis was not, as they charitably thought, running after Colquhoun through the fancy of a wayward heart. Not at all. She was simply wondering where it had gone—that old power of hers, by which she once twisted him round her finger—and why it was gone. A woman cannot believe that she has lost her power over a man. It is an intolerable thought. Her power is born of her beauty and her grace; these may vanish, but the old attractiveness remains, she thinks, if only as a tradition. When she is no longer beautiful she loves to believe that her lovers are faithful still. ”

“ Why should not all the world love the Arcadian maid if they pleased?
Then they went out, Jack being rather silent.
"This is a great deal better than driving with Mrs. Cassilis, Jack," said the girl, as she made her first acquaintance with a hansom cab. "It is like sitting in a chair, while all the people move past. Look at the faces, Jack; how they stare straight before them! Is work so dear to them that they cannot find time to look at each other."
"Work is not dear to them at all, I think," said Jack. "If I were a clergyman I should talk nonsense and say that it is the race for gold. ”

“ I have heard them talk and never understood till now. Poor girls! I wish they had their—their own Jack, not my Jack."
Her lover had no words to reply.
"Poor boy! And you went about with your secret so long. Tell me how long, Jack?"
"Since the very first day I saw you in Carnarvon Square, Phil."
"All that time? Did you love me on that day—not the first day of all, Jack? Oh, surely not the very first day?"
"Yes; not as I love you now—now that I know you so well, my Phillis—mine—but only then because you were so pretty."
"Do men always fall in love with a girl because she is pretty?" ”

“ Nothing so beautiful as the civilisation of the period. Half a mile from Agatha L'Estrange and Phillis Fleming were these cottages. Almost within earshot of a house where vice was unknown, or only dimly seen like a ghost at twilight, stood the hovels where virtue was impossible, and goodness a dream of an unknown land. What notion do they have of the gentle life, these dwellers in misery and squalor? What fond ideas of wealth's power to procure unlimited gratification for the throat do they conceive, these men and women whose only pleasure is to drink beer till they drop? ”

“ He was perfectly serious in an unbounded love for Phillis. Day by day the sweet beauty of the girl, her grace, her simple faith, her child-like affection, sank into his heart and softened him. Day after day, as he rowed along the meadows of the Thames, or lazied under the hanging willows by the shore, or sat with her in the garden, or rode along the leafy roads by her side, the sincerity of her nature, as clear and cloudless as the blue depths of heaven; its purity, like the bright water that leaps and bubbles and flows beneath the shade of Lebanon ”

“ Much more, then, would you wonder at the sight."
"I like her, my dear Lawrence," Agatha wrote, a fortnight after Phillis's arrival. "I like her not only a great deal better than I expected, but more than any girl I have ever learned to know. She is innocent, but then innocence is very easily lost; she is fresh, but freshness is very often a kind of electro-plating, which rubs off and shows the base metal beneath. Still Phillis's nature is pure gold; of that I am quite certain; and with sincere people one always feels at ease. ”

“ But he left the girl to her own thoughts.
"It is all like a dream to me, this river," said Phillis, in a low voice. "It comes from some unknown place, and goes to some unknown place."
"It is like life, Phil."
"Yes; we come like the river, trailing long glories behind us—you know what Wordsworth says—but we do not go to be swallowed up in the ocean, and we are not alone. We have those that love us to be with us, and prevent us from getting sad with thought. I have you, Jack." ”

“ Mr. Beck asked eagerly. "Will the young lady's guardian refuse the best man in the world because he is poor? No, Mrs. L'Estrange, there's only one way out of this muss, and perhaps you will take that way for me."
"What is it, Mr. Beck?"
"I can't say myself to Mr. Dunquerque, 'What is mine is yours.' And I can't say to Mr. Colquhoun—not with the delicacy that you would put into it—that Mr. Dunquerque shall have all I've got to make him happy. I want you to say that for me. Tell him there is no two ways about it—that Jack Dunquerque must marry Miss Fleming. Lord, Lord! ”

“ O Jack, Jack, we shall be so happy, so happy! He loves me, Lawrence, as much as I love him."
The listeners in the greenhouse and the hall craned their necks, but they could hear little, because the girl spoke low.
"Does he love you as much as you love him, Phillis? Does he love you a thousand times better than you can understand? Why, child, you do not know what love means. Perhaps women never do quite realise what it means. Only go on believing that he loves you, and love him in return, and all will be well with you." ”

“ The world, largely as it had unfolded itself to Phillis, consisted as yet to her wholly of the easy classes. That there were poor people in the country was a matter of hearsay. That is, she had caught a glimpse during a certain walk with Cæsar of a class whose ways were clearly not her ways, nor their manner of thought hers. She had now to learn—as a step to that wider sympathy first awakened by the butter-woman's baby—that there is a kind of folk who are more dangerous than picturesque, to be pitied rather than to be painted, to be schooled and disciplined rather than to be looked at. ”

“ Such a woman may feel the passion of jealousy; she may rejoice in the admiration which gratifies her vanity; but she is far too cold and selfish for love. It is an artful fable of the ancients which makes Narcissus pine away and die for the loss of his own image, for thereby they teach the great lesson that he who loves himself destroys himself.
The carriage wheels crunched over the gravel, and Gabriel Cassilis raised a pale and trembling face—a face with so much desolation and horror, such a piteous gaze of questioning reproach at Colquhoun, that the man's heart melted within him. ”

“ The first speaker was a young man of four and twenty—the age which is to my sex what eighteen is to the other, because at four and twenty youth and manhood meet. He of four and twenty is yet a youth, inasmuch as women are still angels; every dinner is a feast, every man of higher rank is a demigod, and every book is true. He is a man, inasmuch as he has the firm step of manhood, he has passed through his calf-love, he knows what claret means, and his heart is set upon the things for which boys care nothing. ”

“ Strange that Joseph should so far forget his usual habits as not to go straight to his own room. The two bosoms which heaved in a continual harmony with each other felt a simultaneous pang of jealousy for which there was no occasion. Joseph was only thinking of the Coping stone.
"Did I not feel it strange driving through the streets?" Phillis was saying. "It is all so strange that I am bewildered—so strange and so wonderful. I used to dream of what it was like; my maid told me something about it; but I never guessed the reality. There are a hundred things more than I can ever draw." ”

“ And, to be sure, Joseph had worked all his life, while his brothers never did a stroke. They were born to consume the fruits which Joseph was born to cultivate.
Outside the house the poet heaved a heavy sigh, as if the weight of the epic was for the moment off his mind. The artist looked round with a critical eye on the lights and shadows of the great commonplace square.
"Even in London," he murmured, "Nature is too strong for man. Did you ever, my dear Cornelius, catch a more brilliant effect of sunshine than that upon the lilac yonder?" ”

“ Would that very day give him a chance of finding out the secret between Lawrence Colquhoun and his wife?
He put up his glasses and read the letter—the last of a long series, every one of which had been a fresh arrow in his heart—again and again.
Then he sat down and burst into tears.
A young man's tears may be forced from him by many a passing sorrow, but an old man's only by the reality of a sorrow which cannot be put aside. The deaths of those who are dear to the old man fall on him as so many reminders that his own time will soon arrive ”

“ But Lawrence Colquhoun wanted nothing for himself.
"My dear Agatha, it is very good of you. You will find the most splendid material to work upon, better than you ever had. The girl is different from any other girl you have ever known. She talks and thinks like a boy. She is as strong and active as a young athlete. I believe she would outrun Atalanta; and yet I think she is a thorough woman at heart."
"I should not at all wonder at her being a thorough woman at heart. Most of us are. But, Lawrence, you must not fall in love with your own ward." ”

“ Is the story of the Golden Butterfly a true story, or is it made up out of some man's brain?"
"It is real, Mr. Beck," said Phillis, softly putting her hand in his. "It is real. No one could have invented such a story. See, dear Mr. Beck, you that we all love so much, there is you in it, and I am in it—and—and the Twins. Why, if people saw us all in a book they would say it was impossible. I am the only girl in all the civilised world who can neither read nor write—and Jack doesn't mind it—and you are the only man who ever found the Golden Butterfly. Indeed it is all real." ”

“ He was not altered in the least—his eyes as clear from crows-feet, his beard as silky, and his face as cheerful as ever. Some men's faces have got no sun in them; they only light up with secret joy at a friend's misfortunes; but this is an artificial fire, so to speak; it burns with a baleful and lurid light. There are others whose faces are like the weather in May, being uncertain and generally disagreeable. But Lawrence Colquhoun's face always had a cheerful brightness. It came from an easy temper, a good digestion, a comfortable income, and a kindly heart. ”

“ Victoria—Mrs. Cassilis, rouse yourself. Think of what you are—what you have made yourself."
"I do think. I think every day."
"You have a husband and a child; you have your position in the world. Mrs. Cassilis, you have your honour."
"My honour!" she echoed. "What honour? And if all were known! Lawrence, don't you even pity me?"
"What is the good of pity?" he asked rudely. "Pity cannot alter things. Pity cannot make things which are as if they are not. ”

“ Phillis perceived dislike in the tones of her visitor's voice, in her eyes, in her manner. Did Mrs. Cassilis dislike her for her fresh and unsophisticated nature, or for her beauty, or for the attractiveness which breathed from every untaught look and gesture of the girl? Swedenborg taught that the lower nature cannot love the nobler; that the highest heavens are open to all who like to go there, but the atmosphere is found congenial to very few. ”

“ And they looked so exactly like a pair of triumphant cocks that Phillis almost expected them to crow.
"Au revoir," said Cornelius, taking off his hat, with a whole wreath of smiles, for a final parting at the gate.
"Sans dire adieu," said Humphrey, doing the same, with a light in his eyes which played upon his beard like sunshine.
"Phillis, my dear," said Agatha, "they really are the most wonderful pair I ever saw."
"They are so funny," said Phillis, laughing. "They sleep all day, and when they wake up they pretend to have been working. And they sit up all night. And, O Agatha! ”

“ In these days of clubs, what man is going to get up after dinner and find his melancholy way from Pall Mall to Kensington Palace Gardens, in order to stand about a drawing-room for two hours and listen to "general" talk? It wants a Phillis, and a personal, if hopeless, devotion to a Phillis, to tear the freshest lion from his club, after dinner, even if it be to an altar of adulation. The evening begins properly with dinner: and where men dine they love to stay.
"Jack Dunquerque came to see me to-day," Phillis told Joseph. "You remember Mr. Dunquerque. He was at Mrs. Cassilis's last night. ”

“ Cassilis rose as he spoke and drew himself up to his full height. Then he began to walk backwards and forwards, turning occasionally to jerk a word straight in the face of his client, who was now leaning against the window with an unlighted cigar between his lips, listening gravely.
"Foolish people think it a game of gambling. So it is—for them. What is it to us? It is the forecasting of events. It is the pitting of our experience, our sagacity, against what some outsiders call chance and some Providence. We anticipate events; we read the future by the light of the present." ”

“ He looked from under his umbrella and saw them. "Youth and beauty!" he sighed.
"I like to feel the river," said Phillis, softly. "It is pleasant on the bank, but it is so much sweeter here. Can there be anything in the world," she murmured half to herself, "more pleasant than to be rowed along the river on such a day as this?"
There was no one on the river except themselves and the old angler. Jack rowed up stream for half a mile or so, and then turned her head and let her drift gently down with the current, occasionally dipping the oars to keep way on. ”