Alda

“ Alda burst out laughing. 'People can only do what they can. Marilda trying to be graceful would be worse than Marilda floundering her own way. But she really is the best and kindest girl living, and she gets on much better for having me to keep her out of scrapes.'
Wilmet went to bed that night thankful to have Alda's head on the pillow beside her, and most thankful for the tokens that she watched among her brothers and sisters, which showed how much her father's influence was extending beyond his short life. ”

“ He was really more hopeful about Alda than he had ever been. Just then she said: 'One thing more. Mary and Sophy are old enough to need a governess. I have managed so far with a bonne, but I have neither time, spirits, nor ability to teach, and Adrian would be furious if I asked him for a proper salary. Do you think Robina would come to us—to live of course as my sister, on an equality? The delight and comfort it would be——'
To poor Alda, thought Felix, but Robina ought not to be sacrificed. ”

“ Under such eyes of dark fire, it was well that Cherry could sincerely answer, 'Oh no! Every one does come round her; but she does not let him do so a bit more than other people.'
'You entirely believe that I may dismiss this as a base groundless suspicion?'
'I do!' she said, with all her heart. 'We all know that Alda is used to admiration; it comes to her as naturally as pity and help to me, and makes no impression on her. Mrs. Underwood likes to have him as a fashionable guest, that's all. Oh, Alda could never be so wicked!'
'You are right, Geraldine. ”

“ So John, who had first known Alda and Fernan as the senior lovers, while he was still in suspense, undertook the communication and made it when Alda was pouring out his tea that evening. Her hand was steady, but her lips drew together as she said, 'Riches to riches.'
'True, but hardly just.'
'No. She likes him,' and the emphasis was bitter. 'Can a woman be fair towards the man who once loved her?' thought John, but restrained his speech. ”

“ Alda decided that she was one of the heartless fine ladies one heard of in books—and no wonder, when her father was in trade, and she looked so vulgar; while Wilmet contended against her finery, and Cherry transferred the heartlessness to her cruel father and mother, and Robina never ceased to watch for her from the window, even when Felix and Edgar for very weariness had prohibited the subject from being ever mentioned, and further checked it by declaring that Marilda looked like a cow. ”

“ She comes round every man of you with her smooth tongue and pretty face, till you—you are ready to take her part against your own child, Underwood. When my poor girl's laid in her coffin, then you will know what a serpent you've been fostering.'
To Felix's surprise and annoyance, Alda must needs answer: 'I'm sure it's very hard! If people will look at me, I can't help it; and I've as much right to be spoken to as Marilda. ”

“ I'm not going to be a drudge. It is all very well for you, who like it, and have no notion of society, but for me—! And there he is furious to take me out. Men grow so wild and rough too in such places. You never saw anything blaze like his eyes!'
'I don't understand you. Could not you trust yourself anywhere with him?'
'You have no right to say such things,' pouted Alda, 'only because I have a little common prudence. ”

“ You are wealthy enough to be shocked at the worldliness of those who have to live up to a position. However, there is no reason to regret it! They have more in common than appears at first sight.'
And she soon escaped. Three lines of truly kind congratulation lay on Marilda's toilette table the next morning. Alda attempted no more—hers was a grief that would not brook the light. ”

“ I always feel, when I go back from St. Faith's, as if we had the framework, and of course the real essentials; but we have to do all the work of bringing it home to ourselves.'
'I know what you mean,' said Ferdinand; 'though Bexley must be more to me than any other place, this one is the great help and compensation to me. How I wish Alda were near it!'
'Has she ever been here?'
'Once or twice; but only under its shadow does one enter into the real life. Some day perhaps—'
Geraldine could not imagine the day of Alda's entering into the real life of St. Matthew's ”

“ Among those stacks of paper in the dusty loft, with the stamp and thud of the press close at hand, it was possible to forget, in creating sounds and longing to fulfil the dream of the spirit, that Alda was exacting and trying, Wilmet blind to the annoyances she caused, Cherry striving hard, and not always successfully, with the fretfulness of anxiety, and Felix—they durst not think in what state. That loft and that violin made their fairy-land, and one that rendered it most unusually hard for Lance to learn his holiday task. ”

“ I will! and then they'll make it up. Who would have thought Alda could have been so easily taken in? But how shall I do it unknownst to the harpies?'
Cherry offered a pencil, and a bit of her drawing-block. She made no suggestion, thinking that the more characteristic the confession was, the more it would prove its authenticity. Angela retired into a window, and wrote, in her queer unformed hand:
I, Angela Margaret Underwood, hereby confess that whatever I told Alda, my sister, about Geraldine and F.T., was all cram ”

“ What a heavenly light shone from the eyes of Ada! What a sunny smile played around her cheery mouth, dimpling her cheek with beauty.
“We will part no more, Albert,” she said. “After many, many trials, we have met at last to part no more. God has blessed us in each other’s love, and we will not cast from us the pure bright gift of heaven!”
“We will not,” cried Albert. “Bless you, my own true-hearted Ada! At the very moment of my despair, I have been, as it were, lifted to heaven. ’Tis foolish of me, Ada; but, even now, so great is my happiness, I can scarce believe it real.” ”

“ Albert took her hand gently and tenderly.
“Ada,” he said, “crime is not hereditary. You are sinless, spotless, and if I desert you because you may have the misfortune to be the child of one who is guilty, may God desert me in my utmost need.”
“Albert,” sobbed Ada, “I—I do not believe it; but it is a remote possibility that Jacob Gray is my father.”
“Nor do I believe it,” said Albert, “’Tis against all nature—depend upon it, Ada, it is not true.” ”

“ It is just like the cross people in books. Here I shall lie and cry all the time, while you are dancing about as merry as can be.’
‘No, no, Ada, you will not do that,’ said Phyllis, with tears in her eyes. ‘There is baby with all his pretty ways, and you may teach him to say Aunt Ada, and I will bring you in numbers of flowers, and there is your new doll, and all the pretty things that came from London, and the new book of Fairy Tales, and all sorts—oh! ”

“ You, Theodore, have yet, I find, to learn the character of woman. It has been my particular study. Alida, now ardently impassioned by first impressions, irritated by recent disappointment, her feelings delicate and vivid, her affections animated, it would be strange if she could suddenly relinquish premature attachments founded on such premises. ”

“ The good-hearted magistrate will be excused by our fair readers for forgetting that in all probability Ada, when she had left him, had gone back to Albert, and that, consequently, when he, Sir Francis, opened the door very abruptly, the beautiful girl was just, to the smallest possible extent annoyed, to be seen with Albert’s hand clasped in her own, and such a smile of joy on her face, that her lover thought himself in heaven, and, at all events, would have challenged any one to produce a heartfelt joy equal to that which then filled him with thankfulness. ”

“ But to-day, this very morning, she claimed again the duty of Alida. Is it to revenge herself on her?” she goes on intensely. “If so; if she puts hands on the poor girl, let her beware of Hermoine de Alva.”
As she speaks the girl, springing from Guy’s arms, starts up and whispers: “What’s that? Hark! My heaven, it is Alida!”
For a faint wailing sigh seems to come floating to the room from some distant apartment. “It is Alida! That coward has struck her!” she cries as the sound of agony comes floating in again. ”

“ Six months after the death of Mrs Yabsley, Ada and Mrs Herring sat in the back parlour of the Angel sipping brandy. They had drunk their fill and it was time to be going, but Ada had no desire to move. She tapped her foot gently as she listened to the other woman's ceaseless flow of talk, but her mind was elsewhere. She had reached the stage when the world seemed a delightful place to live in; when it was a pleasure to watch the people moving and gesticulating like figures in a play, without jar or fret, as machines move on well-oiled cogs. ”

“ Ada had been poring, with rapture, over Jean Paul’s apostrophe to an old maid. She had found an advocate, and her large orbs were luminous with the enthusiasm of a mind that has just found, mirrored in another, the image of its own thoughts; and she looked so fair, so fresh, so any thing but like a student, that Catharine forgot her offences, and could only exclaim:
“Ada, you are radiant with beauty this morning. So should a woman look who has just parted from her lover. But you! you might as well be a mummy three thousand years old, as the beautiful girl you are.” ”

“ In the evening when I was preparing to make tea, and Ada was touching the piano in the adjoining room, and softly humming a tune to her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat down on the sofa near me, and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved him.
"She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely young creature as [Pg 820] that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe." ”

“ Ada shrunk back, as Sir Francis pointed to her, and leaning upon the arm of Albert, she sobbed as she said,—
“Oh, tell me, Albert, what is the meaning of all this fearful scene.”
“I have proof of the marriage of this lady’s mother with the elder brother Learmont, now in custody, from the Austrian ambassador,” said Sir Francis Hartleton. “His predecessor was present at the ceremony.”
“Ada,” cried Albert, rapturously. “Look up—my own Ada.”
“This,” said Sir Francis Hartleton, addressing her, “is your house. It is for you to make the company welcome, or not.” ”

“ Ada and Arthur generally were full of plans for themselves, which would include her if she could spare time; but generally she went quietly homewards to fulfil her housekeeping duties; and when these were done, she would take her work or mending into the verandah which faced the sea, the low hedge of the little garden having nothing but a path to separate it from high water, and with a sound of the waves in her ears she would sit and think—not only think, but pray. ”

“ You, in your pure innocence, my dear Ada, have yet to learn how many an aching heart is hidden by wreathed smiles.”
“’Tis very strange,” said Ada, musingly. “’Tis very strange that we should be unhappy, and the world so beautiful. To live—to have freedom and liberty—to go wherever the wayward fancy leads me, seem to me a great enjoyment. The birds—the sunshine—the flowers—ay, each blade of grass trembling and glistening with its weight of morning dew, is to me a source of delightful contemplation—I am sure all might be happy, the green fields and the sunny sky are so very beautiful.” ”

“ During the very short residence of Ada with Sir Francis Hartleton and his lady, she had endeared herself greatly to them. Her love of truth—her earnest depreciation of every wrong, and the sweet simplicity of her character had placed her so high in their esteem, that they had resolved she should never leave the friendly shelter of the roof, unless circumstances should arise to place her in a happy home of her own. ”

“ So Ada and Aunt Elizabeth were inseparably connected in Edna's mind.
"I must go get Ada ready," she said, jumping down from the sofa on which she had been sitting. "When shall I go to the city, papa?"
"Next week," he answered; and the little girl, on business intent, ran to the playroom.
There was a great deal to do before she should go away. She reflected. She must clean house, and see that all Ada's clothes were clean and whole, for it would never do to let Aunt Elizabeth find that they had not been kept carefully. "They are not all here," said the child, sitting down on the floor. ”

“ And now let us speak of Ada—the young, the beautiful, the persecuted Ada—who now for many weary months had endured the solitary and miserable life of a captive in the little house at Battersea.
From time to time Jacob Gray had enforced a renewal of the girl’s promise not to escape from her state of bondage; and who, under similar circumstances, would have refused the pledge when death was the only alternative? Life to all is dear and precious—it is the one possession to which mankind fondly clings under all privations—all sufferings. ”

“ Ada shook her head, as she said,—
“Do you know where resides a Mr. Seyton?”
“No,” replied the woman. “This London is such an immense place, that it’s like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to find anybody.”
“If I could find him,” sighed Ada, “he would be my friend. Is there a gentleman named Sir Francis Hartleton?”
“Indeed there is; and if you want him, he lives close at hand. He is a magistrate, and as good a man as ever breathed.”
“Indeed,” said Ada, “’Tis very strange!” ”