Humphry Ward

“ You have been starting a new religion, I see. A new religion! Humph!’
‘You are hardly the man to deny,’ he said, undisturbed, ‘that the old ones laissent à désirer.’
‘Because there are old abuses, is that any reason why you should go and set up a brand-new one—an ugly anachronism besides?’ retorted the Squire. ‘However, you and I have no common ground—never had. I say know, you say feel. Where is the difference, after all, between you and any charlatan of the lot? Well, how is Madame de Netteville?’
‘I have not seen her for six months,’ Robert replied, with equal abruptness. ”

“ He had never loved her more passionately—but as he stood there looking at her, something broke within him, the first prescience of the inevitable dawned.
"You," she said again, walking stormily to and fro, and catching at her breath—"You, in this house, with this life—to talk of justice—the justice that comes of slaying a man like Hurd! And I must go back to that cottage, to that woman, and tell her there is no hope—none! Because you must follow your conscience—you who have everything! Oh! I would not have your conscience—I wish you a heart—rather! ”

“ Cliffe. I can't wait for Lord Hubert any more, I'm so hungry!"
"Enchanted!" said Cliffe, the color leaping into his tanned face as he looked down upon the goddess. "But I came to find—"
"Miss Lyster? Oh, she is gone in with Mr. Darrell. Come with me. I have a ticket for the reserved tent. We shall have a delicious corner to ourselves."
And she took from her glove the little coveted paste-board, which—handed about in secret to a few intimates of the house—gave access to the sanctum sanctorum of the evening. ”

“ The Wardlaws, who in general never went into society, were asked to a quiet dinner in Bedford Square, and came. Then, of course, it appeared that Robert, with the idealist's blindness, had forgotten a hundred small differences of temperament and training which must make it impossible for Catherine, in a state of tension, to see the hero in James Wardlaw. It was an unlucky dinner. James Wardlaw, with all his heroisms and virtues, had long ago dropped most of those delicate intuitions and divinations, which make the charm of life in society, along the rough paths of a strenuous philanthropy. ”

“ I find your house as thronged as ever, in the old way. I see half the most distinguished people in London in your drawing-room. It is sad that you can no longer receive them as you used to do: but here you sit like a queen, and people fight for their turn with you."
Lady Henry did not smile. She laid one of her wrinkled hands upon his arm.
"Is there any one else within hearing?" she said, in a quick undertone. Sir Wilfrid was touched by the vague helplessness of her gesture, as she looked round her. ”

“ Ah!" Lady Henry's interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid's gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We talked for two hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the others out to the gardens. She stayed with me. The new French books, the theatre, poems, plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or, rather--for, mark you, that's her gift--she made me talk. It seemed to me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball. ”

“ His contempt for Hubert was of many years' standing. Laura lifted her eyebrows.
"That was sharp, for the last word. I don't think you should stick pins when you're dying—dying!"—she repeated the word with a passionate energy—"going quite away—for ever." Then, with a sudden change of tone—"Can I have the cart to-morrow, Daffady?"
Daffady, who had been piling the fire with fresh peat, paused and looked down upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, his great, twisted hand were all of the same colour—the colour of wintry grass and lichened rock. ”

“ As she raised herself from the ground, and paused a moment looking towards the house, but evidently quite unconscious of any spectators, Gertrude could not take her eyes from the vision she made. If radiant beauty, if grace, and flawless youth can "lift a mortal to the skies," Delia stood like a young goddess under the winter sun. ”

“ Aloud he said:
"It is not a question of thoughts and feelings, I understand, but of actions."
"Like the visit to the Duncombes'?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, impatiently. "Oh, I quite admit it--that's only one of several instances Lady Henry might have brought forward. You see, she led me to make these friendships; and now, because they annoy her, I am to break them. But she forgets. Friends are too--too new in my life, too precious--"
Again the voice wavered. How it thrilled and penetrated! Sir Wilfrid found himself listening for every word. ”

“ Colwood surveyed him from time to time with sympathy and pleasure. Her round child-like eyes under their long lashes told her everything that as a woman she wanted to know. What an improvement in looks and manner--what indefinable gains in significance and self-possession! Danger, command, responsibility, those great tutors of men, had come in upon the solid yet malleable stuff of which the character was made, moulding and polishing, striking away defects, disengaging and accenting qualities. Who could ever have foreseen that Hugh might some day be described as "a man of the world"? ”

“ Meanwhile, Diana herself was wrestling with her own fate.
When Marsham rode away from her, and she had watched his tall figure disappear into the dusk, she turned back toward the house, and saw it and the world round it with new eyes. The moon shone on the old front, mellowing it to a brownish ivory; the shadows of the trees lay clear on the whitened grass; and in the luminous air colors of sunrise and of moonrise blended, tints of pearl, of gold, and purple. A consecrating beauty lay on all visible things, and spoke to the girl's tender and passionate heart. ”

“ H e was not a great talker, it was his wont rather to stimulate good talk than to dominate it; but he could hold his own in any company, and could make a point of turn an epigram with the best, By a wide circle of his friends hi death will be mourned as of one who added to his gifts of wide and catholic culture the crowning grace of a tender and generous heart.
Mr. Humphry Ward leaves one son Arnold Sandwith Ward, who had a brilliant career at Eton and Oxford, and was formerly M.P. for West Herts, and two daughters, Mrs. ”

“ Nature may well despise and trample on us; there is no reason in us—no dignity! Oh, why are we here—why am I here—to ache like this—to hate good people like Charles Harden and Mary—to refuse all I could give—to madden myself over pain I can never help? I cannot help it, yet I cannot forsake it; it drives, it clings to me!"
She sat over the fire, Willie's hand clasped in hers. He alone in this forlorn household loved her. Mrs. Hurd and the other children feared and depended on her. ”

“ The Duchess of Chudleigh may intrigue and tell lies, if she pleases. I am not giving her a hundred a year."
There was a pause.
"Why, if I may ask," said Sir Wilfrid, at the end of it, "did you quarrel with Jacob? I understand there was a separate cause:"
Lady Henry hesitated.
"He paid me a debt," she said, at last, and a sudden flush rose in her old, blanched cheek.
"And that annoyed you? You have the oddest code!"
Lady Henry bit her lip.
"One does not like one's money thrown in one's face."
"Most unreasonable of women!"
"Never mind, Wilfrid. We all have our feelings." ”

“ She promised herself to write a "character" of General Hobson in her next letter to an intimate friend, which should be a masterpiece. Then, having led him successfully through the rôle of the comic Englishman abroad, she repaid him with information. She told him, not without some secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs. Verrier. She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and brilliant career; and here let it be said that the précieuse in her gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling. ”

“ Ward received a good deal of sympathy and encouragement from those to whom she sent her leaflet, and dreamt, in her indomitable way, of summoning a meeting later on if the response were sufficient. But she knew in her heart that her own strength would no longer suffice to lead such a crusade, and she appealed with a certain wistfulness to the young “to pour into it their life, their courage and their love.” ”

“ The light was fast going, but the deep glow of the western sky answered the paler gold of the new-made stubble and the ranged stooks, while between rose the dark and splendid masses of the woods.
Rachel stood looking at the scene, possessed by a pleasure which in her was always an ardour. She felt nothing by halves. The pulse of life beat in her still with an energy, a passion, that astonished herself. She was full of eagerness for her new work and for success in it, full of desires, too, for vague, half-seen things, things she had missed so Far—her own fault. ”

“ He found a quiet spot, remote from nursery-maids and children, and there he wandered to and fro, indefinitely, his hands behind his back. All the anxieties for which he had scolded his cousin possessed him, only sharpened tenfold; he was in torture, and he was helpless.
However, when at last he emerged from his solitude, and took a hansom to the Chudleigh estate office in Spring Gardens, he resolutely shook off the thoughts which had been weighing upon him. He took his usual interest in his work, and did it with his usual capacity. ”

“ Then he took the telegram out of his pocket which had been put into his hands as he reached the hotel, his mouth quivering again with the exultation which he had felt when he had received it. It recalled to his ranging memory all the details of his hurried interview with the little Widrington solicitor, who had already scented a job in the matter of Hurd's defence. This man—needy, shrewd, and well equipped with local knowledge—had done work for Wharton and the party, and asked nothing better than to stand well with the future member for the division. ”

“ The tangled garden, slowly yielding its splendours to the morning light, the walls of the old house, springing sheer from the grass like the native rock itself—for the first time he feels a gulf between himself and them. ”

“ Oh! to be through them all and away, away amid Alpine scents and silences. He stood a moment beside the gray, slowly-moving river, half bidden beneath the rank flower-growth, the tensy and willow-herb, the luxuriant elder and trailing brambles of its August banks—and thought with hungry passion of the clean-swept Alpine pasture, the fir-woods, and the tameless mountain streams. In three weeks or less he and Catherine should be climbing the Jaman or the Dent du Midi. And till then he would want all his time for men and women. Books should hold him no more. ”

“ General Hobson, contemplating his nephew, and mollified, as we have said, by his splendid appearance, kept saying to himself: "He hasn't a farthing but what poor Laura allows him; he has the tastes of forty thousand a year; a very indifferent education; and what the deuce is he going to do?" ”

“ Laura's cool grey eyes followed the youth with a constant critical wonder. In any other circumstances she would not have thought him worth an instant's attention. She had all the supercilious impatience of the pretty girl accustomed to choose her company. But this odd fact of kinship held and harassed her. She wanted to understand these Masons—her father's folk.
"Now he is really talking quite nicely," she said to herself on one occasion, when Hubert had found in the gifts and accomplishments of his friend Castle, the organist, a subject that untied his tongue and made him almost agreeable. ”

“ Never once during those hours did Elsmere’s hand fail to perform its needed service to the faint sleeper beside him, and yet that night was one long dream and strangeness to him, nothing real anywhere but consciousness, and God its source; the soul attacked every now and then by phantom stabs of doubt, of bitter, brief misgiving, as the barriers of sense between it and the eternal enigma grew more and more transparent, wrestling a while, and then prevailing. And each golden moment of certainty, of conquering faith, seemed to Robert in some sort a gift from Catherine’s hand. ”

“ How does she relish the kind of life?’
‘Oh, by all accounts,’ said the Rector with a shrug, ‘she is as little like other people as himself. A queer elfish little creature, they say, as fond of solitude down here as the Squire, and full of hobbies. In her youth she was about the Court. Then she married a Canon of Warham, one of the popular preachers, I believe, of the day. There is a bright little cousin of hers, a certain Lady Helen Varley, who lives near here, and tells one stories of her. She must be the most whimsical little aristocrat imaginable. ”

“ For nearly an hour afterwards Elsmere wandered blindly and aimlessly through the darkness and silence of the park.
The sensitive optimist nature was all unhinged, felt itself wrestling in the grip of dark implacable things, upheld by a single thread above that moral abyss which yawns beneath us all, into which the individual life sinks so easily to ruin and nothingness. At such moments a man realises within himself, within the circle of consciousness, the germs of all things hideous and vile. ”