Sybil, Or, The Two Nations by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli (10 best novels of all time txt) 📕
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“Ah! not now for the first time, but for ever; from the moment I first beheld you in the starlit arch of Marney has your spirit ruled my being and softened every spring of my affections. I followed you to your home, and lived for a time content in the silent worship of your nature. When I came the last morning to the cottage, it was to tell, and to ask, all. Since then for a moment your image has never been absent from my consciousness; your picture consecrates my hearth and your approval has been the spur of my career. Do not reject my love; it is deep as your nature, and fervent as my own. Banish those prejudices that have embittered your existence, and if persisted in may wither mine. Deign to retain this hand! If I be a noble I have none of the accidents of nobility: I cannot offer you wealth, splendour, or power; but I can offer you the devotion of an entranced being—aspirations that you shall guide—an ambition that you shall govern!”
“These words are mystical and wild,” said Sybil with an amazed air; “they come upon me with convulsive suddenness.” And she paused for an instant, collecting as it were her mind with an expression almost of pain upon her countenance. “These changes of life are so strange and rapid that it seems to me I can scarcely meet them. You are Lord Marney’s brother; it was but yesterday—only but yesterday—I learnt it. I thought then I had lost your friendship, and now you speak of—love!
“Love of me! Retain your hand and share your life and fortunes! You forget what I am. But though I learnt only yesterday what you are, I will not be so remiss. Once you wrote upon a page you were my faithful friend: and I have pondered over that line with kindness often. I will be your faithful friend; I will recall you to yourself. I will at least not bring you shame and degradation.”
“O! Sybil, beloved, beautiful Sybil—not such bitter words; no, no!”
“No bitterness to you! that would indeed be harsh,” and she covered with her hand her streaming eyes.
“Why what is this?” after a pause and with an effort she exclaimed. “An union between the child and brother of nobles and a daughter of the people! Estrangement from your family, and with cause, their hopes destroyed, their pride outraged; alienation from your order, and justly, all their prejudices insulted. You will forfeit every source of worldly content and cast off every spring of social success. Society for you will become a great confederation to deprive you of self-complacency. And rightly. Will you not be a traitor to the cause? No, no, kind friend, for such I’ll call you. Your opinion of me, too good and great as I feel it, touches me deeply. I am not used to such passages in life; I have read of such. Pardon me, feel for me, if I receive them with some disorder. They sound to me for the first time—and for the last. Perhaps they ought never to have reached my ear. No matter now—I have a life of penitence before me, and I trust I shall be pardoned.” And she wept.
“You have indeed punished me for the fatal accident of birth, if it deprives me of you.”
“Not so,” she added weeping; “I shall never be the bride of earth; and but for one whose claims though earthly are to me irresistible, I should have ere this forgotten my hereditary sorrows in the cloister.”
All this time Egremont had retained her hand, which she had not attempted to withdraw. He had bent his head over it as she spoke—it was touched with his tears. For some moments there was silence; then looking up and in a smothered voice Egremont made one more effort to induce Sybil to consider his suit. He combated her views as to the importance to him of the sympathies of his family and of society; he detailed to her his hopes and plans for their future welfare; he dwelt with passionate eloquence on his abounding love. But with a solemn sweetness, and as it were a tender inflexibility, the tears trickling down her beautiful cheek, and pressing his hand in both of hers, she subdued and put aside all his efforts.
“Believe me,” she said, “the gulf is impassable.”
END OF THE FOURTH BOOK
BOOK V
Book 5 Chapter 1
“Terrible news from Birmingham,” said Mr Egerton at Brookes’. “They have massacred the police, beat off the military, and sacked the town. News just arrived.”
“I have known it these two hours,” said a grey-headed gentleman, speaking without taking his eyes off the newspaper. “There is a cabinet sitting now.”
“Well I always said so,” said Mr Egerton, “our fellows ought to have put down that Convention.”
“It is deuced lucky,” said Mr Berners, “that the Bedchamber business is over, and we are all right. This affair in the midst of the Jamaica hitch would have been fatal to us.”
“These chartists evidently act upon a system,” said Mr Egerton. “You see they were perfectly quiet till the National Petition was presented and debated; and now, almost simultaneously with our refusing to consider their petition, we have news of this outbreak.”
“I hope they will not spread,” said the grey-headed gentleman. “There are not troops enough in the country if there be anything like a general movement. I hear they have sent the guards down by a special train, and a hundred more of the police. London is not over-garrisoned.”
“They are always ready for a riot at Birmingham,” said a Warwickshire peer. “Trade is very bad there and they suffer a good deal. But I should think it would not go farther.”
“I am told,” said the grey-headed gentleman, “that business is getting slack in all the districts.”
“It might be better,” said Mr Egerton, “but they have got work.” Here several gentlemen entered, enquiring whether the evening papers were in and what was the news from Birmingham.
“I am told,” said one of them, “that the police were regularly smashed.”
“Is it true that the military were really beat off?”
“Quite untrue: the fact is there were no proper preparations; the town was taken by surprise, the magistrates lost their heads; the people were masters of the place; and when the police did act, they were met by a triumphant populace, who two hours before would have fled before them. They say they have burnt down above forty houses.”
“It is a bad thing—this beating the police,” said the grey-headed gentleman.
“But what is the present state of affairs?” enquired Mr Berners. “Are the rioters put down?”
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