Marcelle

“ The watchers turned to the entranced woman as though involuntarily expecting a reply through her from that mysterious region where her soul was in touch with the long-past tragedy she had revealed. She still wept silently in that awful sleep which was no sleep. But no word passed her lips. Only the clock she held upon her lap struck one silvery note, marking the half-hour.
At the sound the doctor turned from the fireplace and took up the clock. He gazed, with a passionate intensity, upon the inscription on the back.
“Marcelle!” he murmured. “Our love ceases not when time itself shall cease! ”

“ She felt in him the old life and daring, the old imperious claim to confidence, to intimacy—on the other hand a new atmosphere, a new gravity, which suggested growing responsibilities, the difficulties of power, a great position—everything fitted to touch such an imagination as Marcella's, which, whatever its faults, was noble, both in quality and range. The brow beneath the bright chestnut curls had gained lines that pleased her—lines that a woman marks, because she thinks they mean experience an I mastery. ”

“ I shall give you beauty for ashes, Marcella. You and I together, we can go marching on in seven-league boots! There's a kingliness about you. Listen to the things I say to you unconsciously! I can't say the pretty, graceful, soft things we say to women! There's a kingliness, Marcella—not only about you, but about me too. We're not the common ruck. ”

“ Warmly grateful as both she and the Rector had been from the beginning to Marcella for the passionate interest she took in the place and the people, the sister was sometimes now a trifle jealous—divinely jealous—for her brother. Marcella's unbounded confidence in her own power and right over Mellor, her growing tendency to ignore anybody else's right or power, sometimes set Mary aflame, for Charles's sake, heartily and humbly as she admired her beautiful friend. ”

“ But then the mere snowy whiteness of the muslin and freshness of the ribbons, and the burning curiosity to see herself decked therein, overcame a nature which, in the midst of its penury, had been always really possessed by a more than common hunger for sensuous beauty and seemliness. Marcella wore it, was stormily happy in it, and kissed Mademoiselle Rénier for it at night with an effusion, nay, some tears, which no one at Cliff House had ever witnessed in her before except with the accompaniments of rage and fury. ”

“ Marcella went up to her quickly and kissed her, then she said, still holding her—
"I know you think I ought to be very happy, Mary!"
"I should think I do!" said Mary, with astonished emphasis, when the voice paused—"I should think I do!"
"I am happy—and I want to make him happy. But there are so many things, so many different aims and motives, that complicate life, that puzzle one. One doesn't know how much to give of one's self, to each—"
She stood with her hand on Mary's shoulder, looking away towards the window and the snowy garden, her brow frowning and distressed. ”

“ Aldous, taking off his hat, closed the door behind him and stood with his hand on Marcella's arm, looking at the huddled woman on the settle, at the pale children. There was a solemnity in his expression, a mixture of judgment and pity which showed that the emotion of other scenes also—scenes through which he had just passed—was entering into it.
"Poor unhappy souls," he said slowly, under his breath. "You say that you have got some one to see after her. She looks as though it might kill her, too." ”

“ Jellison had this small belief in the powers of the new mistress of Mellor over matters which, according to her, had been settled generations ago by "the Lord and natur'," Marcella certainly was in no mood to contradict her. She walked through the village on her return scanning everything about her—the slatternly girls plaiting on the doorsteps, the children in the lane, the loungers round the various "publics," the labourers, old and young, who touched their caps to her—with a moody and passionate eye. ”

“ Just emerged, as she was, from the long gloom of nursing, she already wished to throw it all behind her—to travel, to read, to make acquaintances—she who had lived as a recluse for twenty years! There was in it a last clutch at youth, at life. And she had no desire to enter upon this new existence—in comradeship with Marcella. They were independent and very different human beings. ”

“ A tall slender woman with brown, grey-besprinkled hair falling in light curls after the fashion of our grandmothers on either cheek, and braided into a classic knot behind—the face of a saint, an enthusiast—eyes overflowing with feeling above a thin firm mouth—the mouth of the obstinate saint, yet sweet also: this delicate significant picture was stamped on Marcella's heart. ”

“ Boyce, just catching the words from where she sat with her work, at the further side of the room, looked up with a double wonder—wonder at Marcella's folly, wonder still more at the deference with which men like Aldous Raeburn and Hallin treated her. It was inevitable, of course—youth and beauty rule the world. ”

“ One might as well be ashamed of being strong rather than a cripple, or having two eyes rather than one!"
"Oh, but, my dear!" cried Lady Winterbourne, piteous and bewildered, "when one has all the beauty and the freedom—and other people must die without any—"
"Oh, I know, I know!" said Marcella, with a quick gesture of despair; "that's what makes the world the world. ”

“ She chatted about Marcella's trousseau gowns, detailing her own contrivances for economy; about the probable day of the wedding, the latest gossip of the election, and so on. He sat shading his eyes from the firelight, and now and then throwing in a word or two. The inmost soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread—the dread of dying. The woman beside him held him in the hollow of her hand. In the long wrestle between her nature and his, she had conquered. ”

“ Marcella looked at her mother indignantly. It seemed to her often that she said the most heartless things imaginable.
"Cheerful!" she said—"in a village like this—with all the young men drifting off to London, and all the well-to-do people dissenters—no one to stand by him—no money and no helpers—the people always ill—wages eleven and twelve shillings a week—and only the old wrecks of men left to do the work! He might, I think, expect the people in this house to back him up a little. ”

“ She was conscious of a quickening in the blood, a momentary blurring of the vision. A whirlwind of fancies swept across her. She thought of herself as the young peeress—Lord Maxwell after all was over seventy—her own white neck blazing with diamonds, the historic jewels of a great family—her will making law in this splendid house—in the great domain surrounding it. What power—what a position—what a romance! She, the out-at-elbows Marcella, the Socialist, the friend of the people. What new lines of social action and endeavour she might strike out! Miss Raeburn should not stop her. ”

“ Marcella's eyes danced with amusement, but she looked away from him to the fire, and would not answer.
"You don't help me out. You don't console me. It's unkind of-you. Don't you think it a melancholy fate to be always admiring the people who detest you?"
"Don't admire them!" she said merrily.
His eyebrows lifted. "That," he said drily, "is disloyal. I call—I call your ancestor over the mantelpiece"—he waved his hand towards a blackened portrait in front of him—"to witness, that I am all for admiring Mr. Raeburn, and you discourage it. ”

“ Marcella was lashing herself up by thoughts of the deformed man in his cell, looking forward after the wretched, unsatisfied life, which was all society had allowed him, to the violent death by which society would get rid of him—of the wife yearning her heart away—of the boy, whom other human beings, under the name of law, were about to separate from his father for ever. ”

“ They laughed, and then Aldous looked round with a start—"Ah, here is my grandfather!"
Then he stood back, watching the look with which Lord Maxwell, after greeting Lady Winterbourne, approached Miss Boyce. He saw the old man's somewhat formal approach, the sudden kindle in the blue eyes which marked the first effect of Marcella's form and presence, the bow, the stately shake of the hand. The lover hearing his own heart beat, realised that his beautiful lady had so far done well. ”

“ Under all these growing and palpable evidences of Marcella's future wealth and position, Mrs. Boyce had shown her usual restless and ironic spirit. But of late, and especially to-day, restlessness had become oppression. While Marcella was so speedily to become the rich and independent woman, they themselves, Marcella's mother and father, were very poor, in difficulties even, and likely to remain so. She gathered from her husband's grumbling that the provision of a suitable trousseau for Marcella would tax his resources to their utmost. ”

“ Bygones of his youth had come back to him.
"Oh, I know! I know!" cried Marcella, with an accent half of indignation, half of despair. "It's the whole wretched system. It spoils those who've got, and those who haven't got. And there'll be no mending it till the people get the land back again, and till the rights on it are common to all."
"My! she do speak up, don't she?" said Mrs. Jellison, grinning again at her companions. Then, stooping forward with one of her wild movements, she caught Marcella's arm—"I'd like to hear yer tell that to Lord Maxwell, miss. I likes a roompus, I do." ”

“ Boyce remained alone in the great fire-lit room. She put her hands on the mantelpiece, and dropped her head upon them, and so stood silent for long. There was no sound audible in the room, or from the house outside. And in the silence a proud and broken heart once more nerved itself to an endurance that brought it peace with neither man nor God.
* * * * *
"I shall go, for all our sakes," thought Marcella, as she stood late that night brushing her hair before her dimly-lighted and rickety dressing-table. "We have, it seems, no right to be proud." ”

“ Once set thinking of bygones by the stimulus of Mellor and its novelty, Marcella must needs think, too, of her London life, of all that it had opened to her, and meant for her. Fresh agitations!—fresh passions!—but this time impersonal, passions of the mind and sympathies. ”

“ To Wharton would belong not only the popular kudos of the matter, but much more, and above all, Marcella's gratitude.
Aldous pulled up his horse an instant, recognising that spot in the road, that downward stretching glade among the beeches, where he had asked Marcella to be his wife. The pale February sunlight was spreading from his left hand through the bare grey trunks, and over the distant shoulders of the woods, far into the white and purple of the chalk plain. Sounds of labour came from the distant fields; sounds of winter birds from the branches round him. ”

“ But are you so sure, Miss Boyce, you believe in your own creed? I thought I had observed—pardon me for saying it—on the two or three occasions we have met, some degenerate signs of individualism? You take pleasure in the old place, you say; you were delighted to come and live where your ancestors lived before you; you are full of desires to pull these poor people out of the mire in your own way. No! I don't feel that you are thorough-going!"
Marcella paused a frowning moment, then broke suddenly into a delightful laugh—a laugh of humorous confession, which changed her whole look and mood. ”

“ The eyes of both met—the mother's full of an indomitable fire which had for once wholly swept away her satiric calm of every day; the daughter's troubled and miserable.
"I want friends!" said Marcella, slowly. "There are so many things I want to do here, and one can do nothing if every one is against you. People would be friends with you and me—and with papa too,—through us. Some of them wish to be kind"—she added insistently, thinking of Aldous Raeburn's words and expression as he bent to her at the gate—"I know they do. ”

“ The habit of obedience to a "lady," established long ago in years of domestic service, held. The miserable wife submitted to be fed, looked with forlorn wonder at the children round the fire, and then sank back with a groan. In her tension of feeling Marcella for an impatient moment thought her a poor creature. Then with quick remorse she put her arms tenderly round her, raised the dishevelled grey-streaked head on her shoulder, and stooping, kissed the marred face, her own lips quivering.
"You are not alone," said the girl with her whole soul. "You shall never be alone while I live. ”

“ In our villages I find he is making way every week. The people think his manners perfect. ''Ee 'as a way wi' un,' said an old labourer to me last week. 'If 'ee wor to coe the wild birds, I do believe, Muster Raeburn, they'd coom to un!'"
"Yet you dislike him!" said Marcella, a daring smile dancing on the dark face she turned to him. "One can hear it in every word you say." ”

“ Something very winning, too, in his whole personality—in the loosely knit, nervous figure, the irregular charm of feature, the benignant eyes and brow—even in the suggestions of physical delicacy, cheerfully concealed, yet none the less evident. The whole balance of Marcella's temper changed in some sort as she talked to him. She found herself wanting to please, instead of wanting to conquer, to make an effect.
"You have just come from the village, I think?" said Hallin. "Aldous tells me you take a great interest in the people?" ”

“ During her home life she had been an average child of the quick and clever type, with average faults. But something in the bare, ugly rooms, the discipline, the teaching, the companionship of Miss Frederick's Cliff House School for Young Ladies, transformed little Marcella Boyce, for the time being, into a demon. ”