All the Year Round

“ Speech may be silvern, silence golden, but action is, after all, a diamond. Going in this night to the roulette table, I see an unusual crowd, and faces showing that stupid interest and admiration which is about as sincere as that of the crowd who stand gaping at the foolhardy Blondin, or the reckless Leotard. Fifty per cent of that crowd has a lingering and secret aspiration, that it might, if a catastrophe were to be, be only present to see it. ”

“ There is very little doubt that at the general election, which will come off in a few months, we shall be stronger by far than we ever expected, and shall cut the combs of some of those aristocrats and plutocrats very close indeed. ”

“ for though when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their market-faces all the year round were glowing little fires. ”

“ New Year's day then, or the day after, he may go round again visiting house by house, and wish happy New Year; and the people give him according to their means and according to their inclination a gift, smaller or larger, and these gifts belong to his service earnings; it is no begging either, for the stipulation is made at the time he is put in office. With true gladness of heart now in the New Year's night he sings under all the windows in the village; and as he does this, he seems to himself just the same as a priest of God; his office seems to him a right holy one. ”

“ Not since he had been in London, had Walter Joyce been so light of heart as when he closed Mr. Byrne's door behind him. Something to do at last! He felt inclined to cry out for joy; he longed for some one to whom he could impart his good fortune.
His good fortune! As he sat upon his wretched bed in his tiny lodging, luxurious words rang in his ears. "And the chance of achieving fame and fortune, keep that in the foreground!" Fame and fortune! ”

“ The thought of this, and the knowledge that she would be able to take her mother with her to share her new home, would give Marian the greatest pleasure. He pictured her in that new home, bright, sunny, and cheerful; the look of care and anxiety, the two deep brow-lines which her face had worn during the last year of their residence at Helmingham, quite obliterated; the old, cheerful, ringing tone restored to her voice, and the earnest, steadfast, loving gaze in her quiet eyes, and the thought almost unmanned him. ”

“ Gould and Teesdale, the meeting gave itself up to harmony of a lugubrious character, and dismal ditties, mixed with fierce denunciations of democrats and reformers, were borne away on the still night air. ”

“ Ashurst had always been a small-framed, delicate-featured woman, but in these last few months she seemed to have shrunk away almost to nothing. The light steel frame of her spectacles looked disproportionately heavy on her thin nose, and her sunk pallid face, with the complexion of that dead white colour so often seen in old women, was almost lost in the plaits and frills of her neat cap. Though the day was fine and bright outside, the old lady evidently felt the cold; she wore a thick twilled woollen shawl thrown over her shoulders, and her cosy arm-chair was in the full view of the fire. ”

“ But, in any case, you should think seriously of entering on a political career. Your constant cry has been on a matter on which we have always quarrelled, and a reference to which on your part very nearly sent me off just now, you will harp upon the difference of social position; now distinction in politics levels all ranks. The two leaders of political parties in the present day, who really have pas and precedence over the highest in the land, who are the dispensers of patronage, and the cynosures of the world, are men sprung from the people. ”

“ It is time, however, my dear Marian, that we should each shake ourselves free from any little affectations or delusions which have hitherto possessed us, and make up our minds to look our position resolutely in the face. I say both of us, because I am perfectly conscious of having permitted myself to start in life as the victim of a delusion of a very different kind to yours. ”

“ Nor new-mown hay, crisp scent of yellow sheaves,
Nor any scent that Spring-time can amass
And Summer squander, such a magic has
As scent of fresh wet earth and fallen leaves.
For sometimes lovers in November days,
When earth is grieving for the vanished sun,
Have trod dead leaves in chill and wintry ways,
And kissed and dreamed eternal Summer won ”

“ It is common talk."
"You were down in Helmingham the other day? Ah, of course! However, suppose I had come to you to say——" and she paused.
Joyce looked at her with great composure. "To say!" he repeated.
"I must go through with it," she muttered beneath her breath. "To say that the memory of old days is always rising in my mind, the sound of old words always ringing in my ears, the remembrance of old looks almost driving me mad! Suppose I had come to say all this; and this besides, share that fortune with me!" ”

“ Her voice thrills me almost to pain, and to see my mother's quiet tears when Maud plays to her in the dim evening, is to feel that the power of producing such salutary, healing emotion is priceless indeed. What a pity it is I am not a good musician! Loving music as you love it, dearest Walter, it will be a privation to you—if ever that time we talked of comes, when we should have a decent home to share—that I shall not be able to make sweet music for you. ”

“ Ashurst, who sat propped up by pillows in a large easy-chair in her sitting-room, gazing out of the window, looking at nothing, but enjoying everything with the tranquil serenity of old age. For several years past there had not been much life in the old lady, and there was very little now; her vital powers, never very strong, had been decaying slowly but surely, and Dr. Osborne knew that the time was not far distant, when the widow of his old friend would be called away to rejoin the husband she had so dearly loved, in the Silent Land. ”

“ The day is sultry hot, but not so sultry as the furnaces inside here at my heart. The engine is working furiously, and will not let me rest a moment in one spot. I must go out, and out again, into the sun, into the raging sun. This morning is like a dull long night, and I seem to be tossing on a pillow. Go on, go on, move on! But there is stolid oppressive monotony about it. It is an hour yet from noon, when this gambling begins. ”

“ Look back into the past, man—think of the woman who was your trusted helpmate in the old days of your poverty and struggle!—think of her big heart, her indomitable courage, her loving womanly nature, beaming ever more brightly when the dark shadows gathered round your lives!—think of her, man, compare her with this one, and see the difference! ”

“ But I look round and try to make out Grainger. I wander from one table to the other. Certainly on this night of excitement there can be no such study as these human faces and expressions, especially at the moment the cards are being dealt. Not at chapel or church, if the Doctor Seraphicus himself were preaching, could we find five seconds of such absorbed expectancy and attention. The heart, soul, all, are in the faces. Suddenly, as the verdict sounds—light, positive light, drifts over some, and a positive shadow over others ”

“ I'm without friends, without work, I've lost hope——"
"No, no, my boy! not lost, only mislaid it. We never lose hope so long as we're good for anything! Sometimes, when I've been most depressed and down, about the only thing in life that has any interest for me now—and you've no idea what that is, have you, Joyce, eh?" ”

“ If I sit for a few minutes, flutter, flutter, begins every nerve in my whole system. My heart throbs as if from machinery, and the only thing, it seems, that can save me, is to leap up and walk—walk furiously, in any direction. Passing by objects swiftly,—trees, men, and women—that gives me a relief, that headlong motion disturbs the beat of the pendulum, and whirling wheels. ”

“ Whom have you spared? Did you spare those girls, the nieces of the kindly old man whom you married, or, because they were in your way, did not have them turned out of his house, their natural home? Did you spare the old man himself, when you saw him fretting against the step which you had compelled him to take? Whom have you spared, whom have you not over-ridden, in your reckless career of avarice and ambition? ”

“ If I had but time I could develop the whole into a science, whose certainty and accuracy would be assured. But your pedant, even if he knew its rules, would infallibly break down; because, like the skilful general, there are moments when you must fling away rule and trust to instinct—a glorious instinct, quite as infallible. I felt it all to-day, and scarcely ever was at fault. The strangest "power" I see is that of Zero, and there is one man present, who I admit, has some of this instinct with a true knowledge of the laws and seasons that relate to this Zero. ”

“ Now, there are certain farmers, holding land in oonnexion with the charity under which the school was founded—there is no intended harm in my use of the word, for my father was paid out of it as well as you, remember—farmers who, holding the charity land, look to the master of the school, with an odd kind of loyalty, as their head, and, in such matters as an election, would, I imagine, come to him for advice how to act. ”

“ Outside the window is a balcony, Venetian-like in its breadth, filled up with a whole garden of flowers, where there is a table, and where one can walk about. It recals an old and lost place in the country, before we were ruined, as they say. Overhead is an awning, and when the sun is less strong, I can go out, and walk up and down, and look into the street. If only Dora were here! No matter; one of these days she shall be, and better times will come; "one colour cannot always be turning up," as the maid said this morning. ”

“ It was Marian's wish that the marriage should be delayed for some little time, but Mr. Creswell was of the opposite advice, and thought it would be better to have the ceremony as soon as possible. "Life is very short, Marian," he said, "and I am too old to think of deferring my happiness. I am looking to you as my wife to brighten and soothe the rest of my days, and I am selfish enough to grudge every one of them until you are in that position! ”

“ Those who had seen her seldom, or only in one mood, would scarcely have recognised her in another. To the old man, lying stretched on his death-bed, she had been a fairy to be worshipped, a plaything to be for ever prized. In his presence the brown eyes were always bright, the small, sharp, white teeth gleamed between the ripe, red lips, and one could scarcely have traced the jaw, that occasionally rose rigid and hard as iron, in the soft expanse of the downy cheek. ”

“ A slight expression of scorn crossed her face for a moment at Walter's insisting on the necessity of their good faith towards each other, but the next instant it vanished, and the set rigidity returned—returned but to be equally fleeting, to be swept away in a storm of weeping, in a hurricane of tears, in a wild outburst of genuine womanly feeling, showing itself in heaving bosom, in tear-blistered face, in passionate rocking to and fro, in frenzied claspings of the hands and tossing of the head, and in low moaning cries of, "Oh, my love! ”

“ How thoroughly natural to be able to throw herself so entirely into the work before her, to take evident interest in what would be to others the driest detail, mere husk and draff of soulless business! He knew nothing of Marian Ashurst, less than nothing. That dry detail, and those soulless figures were to her more interesting than the finest fiction, the most soul-stirring poetry. For they meant something much better than fiction; they meant fact—wealth, position, everything. ”

“ A shy retiring lad, with an invincible dislike to society of any kind, even that of other boys; with a hatred of games, and fun; and an irrepressible tendency to hide away somewhere, anywhere, in an old lumber-room amid the disused trunks and broken clothes-horses, and general lumber, or under the wide-spreading branches of a tree, and then, extended prone on his stomach, to lie, with his head resting on his hands, and a book flat between his face-supporting arms. ”

“ His heart was in Marian Ashurst's keeping, his liege love, and in not one single pulsation should it be false to her. All this he had thought out before the interview with Lady Caroline, and his conduct then was exactly as he had prescribed to himself it should be. He took no credit to himself for his coldness and reserve, nor indeed did he deserve any, for he felt as calmly and coldly as he acted. There was but one person in the world with power to make his heart leap, his pulses fill, to rouse his energy with a look—to cloud his hopes with a word. ”

“ She has come out as the domestic, almost bereaved, lady, doing worsted knitting on a chair in a corner, but not alone; for to the delight of friends and lookers-on, she has entangled a grave, even mouldy, doctor of fifty, in large practice in London, one of those elderly dry "professional" men, who are about as fitted for going into love as for going on the stage. This is really a dismal business to watch, especially the stages in beautifying himself—one day a pair of canary kid gloves, brighter linen, and brighter boots. ”

“ Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out and cannoning one against another; and now and again, one falls and lies as he has fallen. ”

“ But for the want of money that sacred life had been suffered to pass away. Thoughts like these crowded on her brain and worked her up to a pitch of feverish excitement during the early part of the night. She had plenty of time for reflection, for she had become accustomed to the regular heavy breathing of the patient, and no one entered the room save Mr. Creswell, who would sit for an hour together by his boy's bedside, and then, watch in hand, get up and murmur piteously: "Will the night never go. Will the man never come!" ”