John Halifax, Gentleman

We always rose early at Longfield. It was lovely to see the morning sun climbing over One-Tree Hill, catching the larch-wood, and creeping down the broad slope of our field; the...

It was the year 1812. I had lived for ten years as a brother in my adopted brother's house, whither he had brought me on the day of my father's funeral; entreating that I should...

Father and son--a goodly sight, as they paced side by side up and down the gravel walk--(alas! the pretty field-path belonged to days that were!)--up and down the broad, sunshin...

Midnight though it was, I sat up until John and his wife came home. They said scarcely anything, but straightway retired. In the morning, all went on in the house as usual, and...

When I was young, and long after then, at intervals, I had the very useless, sometimes harmful, and invariably foolish habit of keeping a diary. To me, at least, it has been les...

For weeks after then, we went on in our usual way; Ursula March living within a stone's throw of us. She had left her cousin's, and come to reside with Dr. Jessop and his wife.

It was not many weeks after this departure of Lord Ravenel's--the pain of which was almost forgotten in the comfort of Guy's first long home letter, which came about this time--...

Longfield! happy Longfield! little nest of love, and joy, and peace--where the children grew up, and we grew old--where season after season brought some new change ripening in u...

Lord Ravenel knew--as all Paris did by this time--the whole story. Though, as he truly said, he had not seen Guy. The lad was hurried off immediately, for fear of justice: but h...

It was to me a long, dreary season, worse even than my winters inevitably were. I never stirred from my room, and never saw anybody but my father, Dr. Jessop, and Jael. At last...

Summers and winters slipped by lazily enough, as the years seemed always to crawl round at Norton Bury. How things went in the outside world I little knew or cared. My father li...

"She has a house full of children, yet manages to keep it quiet and her own temper likewise. Astonishing patience! However people attain it who have to do with brats, _I_ can't...

For twelve years after then, we lived at Longfield; in such unbroken, uneventful peace, that looking back seems like looking back over a level sea, whose leagues of tiny ripples...

It was the year 1800, long known in English households as "the dear year." The present generation can have no conception of what a terrible time that was--War, Famine, and Tumul...

Guy and his mother were together. She lay on a sofa in her dressing-room; he sat on a stool beside her, so that her arm could rest on his neck and she could now and then turn hi...

Without any discussion, our plans were tacitly changed--no more was said about going home to dear Longfield. Every one felt, though no one trusted it to words, that the journey...

"What a comfort! the day-light is lengthening. I think this has been the very dreariest winter I ever knew. Has it not, my little daughter? Who brought her these violets?"

Two years rolled over Beechwood--two uneventful years. The last of the children ceased to be a child; and we prepared for that great era in all household history, the first marr...

After Midnight--I know not how long, for I lost count of the hours by the Abbey chimes, and our light had gone out--after midnight I heard by my father's breathing that he was a...

She looked round; asked me, according to her wont, if there was anything I wanted before she retired for the night?--(Ursula was as good to me as any sister)--then stood by my e...

It was winter-time. All the summer-days at Enderley were gone, "like a dream when one awaketh." Of her who had been the beautiful centre of the dream we had never heard nor spok...

Dinner was over; my father and I took ours in the large parlour, where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows across the wide oaken floor, shiny and har...

We knew that all our neighbours talked us over, making far more than a nine days' wonder of the "very extraordinary conduct" of Mr. and Mrs. Halifax. That even good Lady Oldtowe...

Many an anxious watch I had kept with him, but none sadder than this. Because now, for the first time, our house was divided against itself. A sorrow had entered it, not from wi...

The next day John rode away earlier even than was his wont, I thought. He stayed but a little while talking with me. While Mrs. Tod was bustling over our breakfast he asked her,...

But that question, simple as it was in itself, and most simply put, involved so much, that I felt I had no right to answer it; while, at the same time, I had no possible right t...

Perhaps it was, for John was bent on a trying errand. He was going to communicate to Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe, Ursula's legal guardian and trustee, the fact that she had promi...

The winter and spring passed calmly by. I had much ill-health, and could go out very little; but they came constantly to me, John and Ursula, especially the latter. During this...

A great, eager, but doggedly-quiet crowd, of which each had his or her--for it was half women--individual terror to hide, his or her individual interest to fight for, and cared...

In the late autumn, John married Ursula March. He was twenty-one, and she eighteen. It was very young--too young, perhaps, prudent folk might say: and yet sometimes I think a do...

Mrs. Jessop's drawing-room, ruddy with fire-light, glittering with delicate wax candle-light; a few women in pale-coloured gauzy dresses, a few men, sublime in blue coats, gold...

Summer waned. Already the beech-wood began to turn red, and the little yellow autumn flowers to show themselves all over the common, while in the midst of them looked up the lar...

It was a scene--glowing almost as those evening pictures at Longfield. Those pictures, photographed on memory by the summer sun of our lives, and which no paler after-sun could...

"Well done, Phineas--to walk round the garden without once resting! now I call that grand, after an individual has been ill a month. However, you must calm your superabundant en...

Near as we lived to Coltham, I had only been there once in my life; but John Halifax knew the town pretty well, having latterly in addition to his clerkship been employed by my...

A week slipped by. We had grown familiar with Enderley Hill--at least I had. As for John, he had little enough enjoyment of the pretty spot he had taken such a fancy to, being a...

We three were consulting, the morning after the death, on a plan which he and I had already settled between ourselves, namely, that we should leave our portion of the cottage en...

My father and I both glanced round, surprised at her unusual reticence of epithets: but when the lad addressed turned, fixed his eyes on each of us for a moment, and made way fo...

Many may remember that day; what a soft, grey, summer morning it was, and how it broke out into brightness; how everywhere bells were ringing, club fraternities walking with ban...

Next day, the rain poured down incessantly, sweeping blindingly across the hills as I have rarely seen it sweep except at Enderley. The weather had apparently broken up, even th...