Mrs. Calverley

“ But in George Gurwood's days, and since her marriage with her second husband, Mrs. Calverley had made no friends, and even those whose interest it was to stand well with her had found it impossible to break through the barriers of icy reserve with which she surrounded herself. They did not approach her in the proper manner perhaps, they did not go to work in the right way. Commonly bred and ill-educated people as they were, they imagined that the direct road to Jane Calverley's favour lay in pitying her and speaking against her husband, with whom she was plainly at strife. ”

“ Calverley does herself injustice in saying any such thing," said Pauline, interposing; "the interests of the husband are the interests of the wife, and, when it is permitted, of the wife's friends; and we have all been distressed beyond measure to hear of the sad fate which has befallen your trusted agent."
"Eh," said John Calverley, looking at her blankly, "my trusted agent? I don't understand you."
"These celebrated Swartmoor Ironworks are not beyond the reach of the post-office, I presume?" said Mrs. Calverley, with a vicious chuckle. ”

“ Calverley's only comment is a repetition of "Dear me!" He is a middle-sized, pleasant-looking man, with fair hair slightly sprinkled with gray, gray whiskers, light-blue eyes, and marvellous pink-and-white complexion like a doll: a gentlemanly-looking man in his plain black frock-coat and waistcoat, gray trousers, black-silk cravat and pearl pin, and neat buttoned boots. He looks rather nervously to his wife, and edges his way towards her round the table. ”

“ Calverley's bony fingers were busily engaged depicting the story of Jael, with a very rugged profile, and Sisera, the death-glare in whose eyes was represented by a couple of steel beads. John Calverley, furtively wiping his lips after the Madeira, shambled awkwardly into the room, and could scarcely repress a groan at the ghastliness of its appearance. But the generous wine which he had drunk helped to cheer him a little; and after wandering to and fro in a purposeless manner, he approached his wife, and said: "Won't you play something, dear?" ”

“ But the most charitable surmise was, that he was the offspring of the unhallowed love of some dame or damsel who had reared him in privacy, and had destined him for the church; and that either upon the death of his protectress, or through some fault, he had been expelled from his home. Calverley had a distant authoritative manner towards his equals and inferiors, which, despite every effort, checked inquisitiveness; and all the information he ever gave was, that he was the son of a respectable artizan of the city of London, whom his father's death had left friendless. ”

“ And yet he needs must pause a while to think of the dear comrade he had lost—of that loved boy, his pattern in the time of their common youthfulness which gleamed in memory as bright and misty as a legend, and of the perfect chevalier who had been like a touchstone to Robert Calverley a bare half-hour ago. He knelt, touched lightly the fallen jaw, and lightly kissed the cheek of this poor wreckage; and was aware that the caress was given with more tenderness than Robert Calverley had shown in the same act a bare half-hour ago. ”

“ There's no law, I imagine, to compel me to swallow it whole, even though my son, a clergyman of the Church of England, sits by and nods his head in confirmation of his friend. And don't imagine, please, that I am at all surprised at what I hear about Mr. Calverley! I hear it now for the first time, but I always imagined him to be a bad and wicked man, given up to selfishness and debauchery, and quite without the power of appreciating the blessings of a well-ordered home. The young woman needn't start! ”

“ A faint flush of pleasure glowed on Mrs. Calverley's pale cheeks. 'There is something in that,' she said; 'it was a sensible remark. My trouble has been lifelong, I have been schooled in it from my youth; but this poor person is only just beginning to know the miseries of the world. Well, Palmyre, what did you say then?'
'I felt, dear friend, that, as you say, the argument was strong, the appeal almost irresistible ”

“ A miniature portrait on ivory of an old gray-haired woman in a lace cap with long falling lappets, and a black silk dress; a folded piece of paper containing a long lock of silky white hair, and a written memorandum, 'Died April 13th, 1858;' two newspaper cuttings, one announcing the death of Mrs. Calverley, of Colebrook-row, Islington, at the date just mentioned; the other the marriage of John Calverley, Esq., with Jane, widow of the late George Gurwood, Esq., and only daughter of John Lorraine, Esq., of Mincing-lane and Brunswick-square. ”

“ This masquerade won quick applause. Persons of ton guffawed like ploughboys over the discomfiture of an old hunks thus divertingly stripped of his bride, all his betrothal gifts, and of the very clothes he wore. An anonymous scribbler had detected in the occurrence a denouement suited to the stage and had constructed a comedy around it, which, when produced by the Duke's company, had won acclaim from hilarious auditors.
So Calverley laughed heartily. "Gad, what a jest that was! This Umfraville comes to marry Honoria. And highwaymen attack his coach! ”

“ Lord Ufford took a tiny vial from his pocket and emptied its contents into the glass which stood the nearer to Mr. Calverley.
"This is Florence water. We dabblers in science are experimenting with it at Gresham College. A taste of it means death—a painless, quick and honorable death. You will have died of a heart seizure. Come, Robin, let us drink to the honor of the Calverleys."
The poet-earl paused for a little while. Now he was like some seer of supernal things.
"For look you," said Lord Ufford, "we come of honorable blood. We two are gentlemen. ”

“ You are my cousin and my successor. Yes, very soon you, too, will be a peer of England and as safe from molestation as is Lord Pevensey. I am the first to tender my congratulations. Now I make certain that they are not premature."
The poet laughed at this moment as a man may laugh in hell. He reeled. His lean face momentarily contorted, and afterward the poet died.
"I am Lord Ufford," said Calverley aloud. "The person of a peer is inviolable——" He presently looked downward from rapt gazing at his wife. ”

“ Calverley's favourite reading. The butler declared that she read nothing at all; that though these books were brought from Mudie's on the back seat of the carriage, and were afterwards displayed on the drawing-room table, one at a time occupying the post of honour on his mistress's lap, she never so much as glanced at them, but sat staring with her steely blue eyes straight in front of her ”

“ John Calverley had listened to this recital with great attention, and when Pauline ceased speaking, he said to her with a half-grave smile:
"The remainder of your days, madam, is likely, I hope, to be a tolerably long period; for you are evidently quite a young woman. ”

“ When Jane Calverley first entered the room and saw a lady gossipping with her husband, she thought she had discovered the means of bringing him to shame, and making his life a burden to him. Now in his visitor she saw, as she thought, a woman possessing qualities such as she admired, but for which she never gave her husband credit, and one who might render her efficient aid in her life's campaign against him. Even if what had been told her were false, and that this woman were an old friend of his, as a visitor in Great Walpole-street Mrs. ”

“ A murmur ran through the hall as the steward spoke; and Holgrave, exerting a momentary energy, stept forward, and, looking scornfully at his enemy—
"Lead me back to prison!" said he; "no man shall be answerable for me."
But Calverley, without appearing to heed his address, resumed—
"You are all now publicly warned; and it will behove you, at your peril, to look to that bondman!" and then, without deigning farther parley, he left the hall. ”

“ When, heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can.
Sweet to haste, a licensed lover, to Miss Pinkerton the glover,
Having managed to discover what is dear Neæra’s “size”:
p. 10P’raps to touch that wrist so slender, as your tiny gift you tender,
And to read you’re no offender, in those laughing hazel eyes.
Then to hear her call you “Harry,” when she makes you fetch and carry—
O young men about to marry, what a blessed thing it is!
To be photograph’d—together—cased in pretty Russia leather—
Hear her gravely doubting whether they have spoilt your honest phiz! ”

“ To sit, happy married lovers; Phillis trifling with a plover’s
Egg, while Corydon uncovers with a grace the Sally Lunn,
p. 12Or dissects the lucky pheasant—that, I think, were passing pleasant;
As I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun. ”

“ For you embody all that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count Emmerick’s third sister, but, instead, that ageless lovable and loving woman long worshiped and sought everywhere in vain by all poets.” ”

“ “Nevertheless, I consider the saga of no lord of the Silver Stallion to be worth squabbling over. Your sagas in the end must all be perverted and engulfed by the great legend about Manuel. No matter how you may strive against that legend, it will conquer: no matter what you may do and suffer, my doomed Guivric, your saga will be recast until it conforms in everything to the legend begotten by the terrified imaginings of a lost child. For men dare not face the universe with no better backing than their own resources; ”

“ But between the busy heads and over-reaching arms he could see Charley and Sylvia, sitting close together, talking and listening more than eating. She was in a new strange state of happiness not to be reasoned about, or accounted for, but in a state of more exquisite feeling than she had ever experienced before; ”

“ "Whom are you going to dance with?" asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment, and then replied, "With you, if you will ask me."
"Will you?" said he, offering his hand.
"Indeed I will. You have shewn that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper."
"Brother and sister! no, indeed." ”

“ I never change.
mrs. cheveley [Elevating her eyebrows.] Then life has taught you nothing?
lady chiltern. It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonourable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.
mrs. cheveley. Would you apply that rule to every one?
lady chiltern. Yes, to every one, without exception.
mrs. cheveley. Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you. ”

“ Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell’s artistic aims, it is not easy to escape the fact that in Figures of Earth he undertook the staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity’s sacred books, just as in Jurgen he gave us a stupendous analogue of the ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and motives. ”

“ Sir John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding. ”

“ One of Edward’s Mistresses was Jane Shore, who has had a play written about her, but it is a tragedy and therefore not worth reading. ”

“ I never nursed a dear Gazelle, to glad me with its soft black eye, but when it came to know me well, and love me, it was sure to marry a market-gardener.’
Overpowered by these reflections, Mr Swiveller stopped short at the clients’ chair, and flung himself into its open arms. ”

“ Their country-place, Styles Court, had been purchased by Mr. Cavendish early in their married life. He had been completely under his wife’s ascendancy, so much so that, on dying, he left the place to her for her lifetime, as well as the larger part of his income; an arrangement that was distinctly unfair to his two sons. ”

“ You understand most things, Nathaniel, but I am not sure that you understand women—not, at any rate, such a woman as her."
It went against the grain with Mr. Sowerby, this seeking of pecuniary assistance from the very woman whose hand he had attempted to gain about a fortnight since; ”

“ "You and I, Sir John," said Mrs. Jennings, "should not stand upon such ceremony."
"Then you would be very ill-bred," cried Mr. Palmer.
"My love you contradict every body," said his wife with her usual laugh. "Do you know that you are quite rude?"
"I did not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother ill-bred." ”

“ Is it not a pity, Guivric, that this Kalki will not come in our day, and that we shall not ever behold his complete glory? I cry a lament for that Kalki who will some day bring back to their appointed places high faith and very ardent loves and hatreds; and who will see to it that human passions are never in a poor way to find expression with adequate speech and action. Ohé, I cry a loud lament for Kalki! The little silver effigies which his postulants fashion and adore are well enough: but Kalki is a horse of another color.” ”