Anthony Adverse

“ I say—I wish that van-driver could see me now—the one I told you about last night."
"The butcher gave me the kitten, Anthony."
"Of course he did; any man would give you all he had. What were you singing when I came in?"
"How should I know? I know a thousand bits of song and a thousand stories, and they march in and out of my head. Our dinner is spoiling, Mr. Adriance."
"I love you!"
"I dislike you!" she mocked him.
There was no one in New York who would have quite recognized either Anthony or Elsie Adriance in these two children at play together. ”

“ She said in a low voice, but with an immense amount of facial gesticulation to take the place of sound, "Albertson told me you had an interview. What did you find out?"
For the first time Anthony realized that he had been an hour in the company of the false Miss Exeter without having even asked her true name. He might at least have done that. A weak man would have answered irritably that what between stray dogs drowning and Edna's children interrupting he had not had an opportunity to ask the woman anything. But he was not weak. He simply told her the truth. ”

“ Adriance could not divide Anthony and his wife without their consent, but he could make it bitterly hard for them to live together. Anthony had known of men who had incurred his father's enmity, and the memory was not reassuring. Before his interview with Masterson, he would have ridiculed the idea of such a situation between his father and himself ”

“ For such a purpose Mr Apjohn, no doubt, would be the proper person, but there was no one of whom he stood so much in dread as of Mr Apjohn. Were he to carry the book and the paper to the lawyer and attempt to tell his story, the real truth would be drawn out from him in the first minute of their interview. The man's eyes looking at him, the man's brow bent against him, would extract from him instantly the one truth which it was his purpose to hold within his own keeping. He would find no thankfulness, no mercy, not even justice in the lawyer. ”

“ Iver, keen at a bargain, hard in business hours (had not Mina Zabriska discovered that?) , confident that nobody would care to incur his enmity—he was powerful—by forestalling him, had refused Masters his price; the old gentleman would have to come down. But some young men stepped in, with the rashness of their youth, and acquired an option of purchase from Masters. Iver smiled in a vexed fashion, but was not dismayed. He let it be known that anybody who advanced money to the young men—Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney was the firm—would be his enemies; then he waited for the young men to approach him. ”

“ But it is not for his reputation as the great author of Cato and The Campaign, or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tattler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. ”

“ But the Wharton lawyer by use of reckless telegrams had certified himself that the infant was a girl, and Everett was the hero of the day. He found himself to be possessed of a thousand graces, even in his father's eyesight. It seemed to be taken as a mark of his special good fortune that he had not clung to any business. To have been a banker immersed in the making of money, or even a lawyer attached to his circuit and his court, would have lessened his fitness, or at any rate his readiness, for the duties which he would have to perform. ”

“ During Anthony's time at Harvard he had been considered the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant, the most original—smart, quiet and among the saved.
This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to admit to himself, envies. ”

“ If you see Arthur give him our love. Of course a member of Parliament is too busy to write letters. But I don't think Arthur ever was good at writing. Everett says that men never ought to write letters. Give my love to Mr. Wharton.
I am, dearest Emily,
Your most affectionate Cousin,
Mary Wharton.
"Everett is a fool," said Mr. Wharton as soon as he had read the letter.
"Why is he a fool, papa?"
"Because he will quarrel with Sir Alured about politics before he knows where he is. What business has a young fellow like that to have an opinion either one side or the other, before his betters?" ”

“ Andy knew that he was no match for her. For any advantage he could ever win from her, he must thank chance or surprise.
"Don't be so terribly strict, Mr. Hayes. If you were engaged, would you like every word—absolutely every word—you said to another girl to be repeated to your fiancée?"
Andy, always honest, considered. "Perhaps I shouldn't—and a few pretty speeches hurt nobody."
"Why, really you're becoming quite human! You encourage me to confess that Mr. Harry has made one or two to me—and I've not repeated them to Vivien. I'm relieved to find you don't think me a terrible sinner." ”

“ Yet Addison was the pride of Oxford, and his work in defence of orthodoxy was received with applause, while the heresy of Collins was scouted. Bentley succeeded by attacking the illustrations and avoiding the question at issue. He exposed the inferior scholarship of his adversary, and made out that his bad Greek was the outcome of a wicked heart. “Inquire closely into their lives and you will find why they declaim against religion.” ”

“ We do know that Lord Aberdeen was weak,{153} doing his best to stave off war if he could do so. And we know also that Palmerston was strong, anxious from the beginning to act in accordance with the English Ambassador at Constantinople. But we doubt whether there be reason to suppose that he had lent himself to the wishes of the Emperor of the French, or desired to go beyond his own Ambassador.
Looking back at the whole character of the man through a long life, we find that his fault has been that of confident,—almost that of self-opinionated audacity. ”

“ When the old tenant had sternly told him that he should go like a man into the witness-box and tell his own story on his oath, that had been hard to bear. But there came worse than that,—a power more difficult to resist. On the following morning Mr Apjohn arrived at Llanfeare, having driven himself over from Carmarthen, and was at once shown into the book-room. The lawyer was a man who, by his friends and by his clients in general, was considered to be a pleasant fellow as well as a cautious man of business. He was good at a dinner-table, serviceable with a gun, and always happy on horseback. ”

“ When men spoke to him he trembled; when men looked at him he turned away.
All his habits were inquired into. It was said of him that the Carmarthen Herald was the only paper that he saw, and declared of him that he spent hour after hour in spelling the terrible accusations which, if not absolutely made against him, were insinuated. It became clear to lawyers, to Mr Apjohn himself, that the man, if honest, should, on behalf of the old family and long-respected name, vindicate himself by prosecuting the owner of the paper for libel. ”

“ Think of the gratitude that I owe him,—think of all the love! What man has loved as he has done? Who has brought himself so to abandon to another the reward he had thought it worth his while to wish for? ”

“ At any rate she was—or sounded—sincere enough to make Andy hold out his hand for the letter.
"I'll take it and give it to him as you wish, Miss Vintry. I'm bound to say, though, that, if apologies are being made, I think Harry's the one to make them."
"We women are taught to think such things worse in ourselves than in men. Men get carried away; they're allowed to, now and then. We mustn't."
The appeal to his chivalry—another wrong to woman!—touched Andy. ”

“ But he had a sore grudge against Harry at that moment. Who at Halton had once talked about pearls and swine? And in what connection?
"That's why I'm different." She laughed softly. "If you'd so far honoured me, Mr. Hayes, and I had—responded, I might never have become different. I should just have relied on the—policeman."
"The Force is always ready to do its duty," said Andy.
"Take care; you're nearly flirting!" she admonished him merrily; and Andy, rather proud of himself for a gallant remark, laughed and blushed in answer. She went on more seriously, yet still with her serene smile. ”

“ Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely—taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. ”

“ And then most men would have gone home, leaving the woman triumphant, and have repented bitterly as they sat moody over their own fires, with their wine-bottles before them. But it was not so with Owen Fitzgerald. His heart was to him a reality. He had loved with all his power and strength, with all the vigour of his soul,—having chosen to love. But he would not now be enticed by pity into a bastard feeling, which would die away when the tenderness of the moment was no longer present to his eye and touch. His love for Clara had been such that he could not even say that he loved another. ”

“ Making love to her would have seemed to them a dangerous indiscretion, to me a rather odious taking advantage of one who was not a free agent, and a rather humiliating bit of pretence besides. We had all made up our minds that matters had better be left considerably below boiling-point. [Pg 259]
While things stood thus I received a letter from Varvilliers (who was at Forstadt) accepting my invitation to Artenberg. His acceptance signified, he went on:
"Of course all the town is full of you and your fiancée—her portrait is everywhere, your name and hers in every mouth. ”

“ He can send twenty couples in without a list! He never mixes them up, and always knows the right order."
The great Alfred came up. "You're all right," he said briefly to Lady Fanny and Arthur, and gave a reassuring nod to Lady Swarleigh herself. Then he looked at his watch, and from it, expectantly, towards the doors. On the instant they opened; dinner was ready. Alfred again nodded his head just perceptibly and put his watch back in his pocket. He turned to Lady Fanny. "You're at the pink table—on the far side." ”

“ Oh, doctor! To be left alone here, all alone!'
He said some few words trying to comfort her; but who can comfort a widow bereaved of her child? Who can console a heart that has lost all that it possessed? Sir Roger had not been to her a tender husband; but still he had been the husband of her love. Sir Louis had not been to her an affectionate son; but still he had been her child, her only child. Now they were both gone. Who can wonder that the world should be a blank to her?
Still the doctor spoke soothing words, and still he held her hand. ”

“ But she thought not only of Frank; dreamed not only of him. What had he not done for her, that uncle of hers, who had been more loving to her than any father! How was he, too, to be paid? Paid, indeed! Love can only be paid in its own coin: it knows of no other legal tender. Well, if her home was to be Greshamsbury, at any rate she would not be separated from him.
What the doctor dreamed of that, neither he or any one ever knew. "Why, uncle, I think you've been asleep," said Mary to him that evening as he moved for a moment uneasily on the sofa. ”

“ He mounted his horse that day at Boxall Hill—for he made all his journeys about the county on horseback—and rode slowly home to Greshamsbury, thinking not so much of the suggested marriage as of his own folly in thinking of it. How could he be such an ass at his time of life as to allow the even course of his way to be disturbed by any such idea? Of course he could not propose to himself such a wife as Miss Dunstable without having some thoughts as to her wealth, and it had been the pride of his life so to live that the world might know that he was indifferent about money. ”

“ Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. ”

“ Wait till you are tried. Wait till all your ambition is to be betrayed, every hope rolled in the dust, till all the honours you have won are to be soiled and degraded, till you are made a mark for general scorn and public pity,—and then tell me how you love the child by whom such evils are brought upon you!"
"I trust that I may never be so tried, Lady Lovel." ”

“ I have had no Gertrude with whom I have vacillated, whether for the sake of love or lucre. Whatever you may be,—whether mean or noble,—you are the only man with whom I can endure to live, for whom I would endure to die. ”