Anstruther

“ ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXIV Jena, March 25th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You ask me to tell you more about my illness, but I am afraid I must refuse. I see no use in thinking of painful past things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as cheerful as possible—like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply to be alive with nothing in my body hurting. ”

“ Anstruther,—Our new address is Galgenberg, Jena,—rather grim, but what's in a name? The thing itself is perfect. It is a tiny house, white, with green shutters, on the south slope of the hill among apple-trees. ”

“ This strong man liked to feel that he had everybody in his power; it was good to him to know that he could move others as the man behind the curtain moves the puppets in a marionette show. It was not particularly that Anstruther cared for crime for its own sake, but he loved to be subtle and mysterious; it was a joy to him to get the better of his fellow creatures. Had Carrington but known it, the major part of the trouble which was racking his mind now had been brought about by the very man to whom he turned most readily in the hour of his misfortunes. ”

“ Anstruther. It was decided that she must spend the winter abroad.
Mr. Anstruther, when he went down to Westfield to make the necessary arrangements, not unnaturally told his story to the rector (an old gentleman) , who showed little surprise.
‘Really I had managed to piece out for myself very much what must have happened, partly from old people’s talk and partly from what I saw in your grounds. Of course we have suffered to some extent also. Yes, it was bad at first: like owls, as you say, and men talking sometimes. ”

“ ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XLIV Galgenberg, Sept. 16th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—It is kind of you to want to contradict what I said in my last letter about the outward appearance of my life, but really you know I am past my first youth. At twenty-six I cannot pretend to be what is known as a young girl, and I don't want to. Not for anything would I be seventeen or eighteen again. I like to be a woman grown, to have entered into the full possession of whatever faculties I am to have, to know what I want, to look at things in their true proportions. ”

“ Under their colour, young Anstruther (the son of my uncle's neighbour, Balcaskie) is shot dead, and the poor boy rolls down the hill, enveloped in its silken folds; but again it waves in the wind, as Private Evans snatches it up, and bears it on towards the Great Redoubt. ”

“ ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XLVIII Galgenberg, Oct. 8th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—We are very happy here just now because Papa's new book, at which he has been working two years, is finished. I am copying it out, and until that is done we shall indulge in the pleasantest day-dreams. It is our time, this interval between the finishing of a book of his and its offer to a publisher, for being riotously happy. We build the most outrageous castles in the air. Nothing is certain, and everything is possible. The pains of composition are over, and the pains of rejection are not begun. ”

“ There was a great deal of assorted merit scattered among those moths. Looks, intellect, a nice voice, an operatic moustache, or an aptitude for the informal recitation of engaging verses, werea purely random selection from their several strong points; but even these, picked out and fitted together, would have made a dazzling being: whom Miss Anstruther would have rejected as firmly and as finally as she had rejected his integral parts.
For there was no pleasing the girl. ”

“ She now tore open the envelope with strange misgivings; and the letter turned out to be from the squatter's wife on Ted Miller's station, telling how a buck-jumper had broken Ted Miller's back; and how, before his death, which ensued in a matter of hours, he had directed her to write to his family, and also—but separately—to "his greatest friend."
The fire dulled down, the candles shortened, and in their light Miss Anstruther sat in her dazzling ball-dress, her face as grey as its satin sheen. Her rounded arms were more florid than her face. She moaned a little to herself—she could not cry. ”

“ Seymour said, addressing Anstruther in the friendliest fashion, though he had taken great care to modulate his voice. "With all my skill in the art of magic I could not have evolved a fairer scene than this. And my experience dates back a thousand years."
"Quite the most respectable type of family magician," Anstruther laughed, as he helped himself liberally to champagne. "We are all so dreadfully modern nowadays. ”

“ ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXXII Jena, May 20th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I am sorry you think me unsympathetic. Hard, I think, was the word; but unsympathetic sounds prettier. Is it unsympathetic not to like fruitless, profitless, barren things? Not to like fogs and blights and other deadening, decaying things? From my heart I pity all the people who are so made that they cannot get on with their living for fear of their dying ”

“ This is where Miss Anstruther was so much more wholesome than the flirt who doesn't think she flirts: Miss Anstruther never rankled.
She had no mother to check her notorious propensity in its infancy, and no brother to bully her out of it in the end. Her father, an Honourable, but a man of intrinsic distinction as well, was queer enough to see no fault in her; but he was a busy man. She had, however, a kinsman, Lord Nunthorp, who used to talk to her like a brother on the subject of her behaviour, only a little less heavily than brothers use. Nunthorp knew what he was talking about. ”

“ I am pretty bad, and so are some of the others; but outside of hell itself there is no black-hearted scoundrel as bad as you."
The man's voice fairly vibrated with passion; but Anstruther lounged back in his chair with the air of a man who has just received a high compliment. He was a man who loved power. He liked to feel that he could pull the strings and move the actions of other men even when they fought desperately against his iron determination. ”

“ Miss Arbuthnot, the principal of the South Central High School, in which Cecil Anstruther had received her education, looked fully two inches taller than usual as she led her pupil up to the Chancellor’s dais, and the little knot of friends and teachers in the gallery applauded frantically, while even the men who had been ignominiously left behind in the race were magnanimous enough to do their share of clapping. ”

“ My dear Midge,' said Nunthorp, with a sudden access of paternal gravity, 'don't you think it about time that somebody came in and carried his bat?'
'Don't talk nonsense!' said Miss Anstruther, briskly. She added, almost miserably: 'I wish to goodness they wouldn't ask me! If only they wouldn't propose I should be all right. Why do they want to go and propose? It spoils everything.'
Her tone and look were quite injured. She was more indignant than Nunthorp had ever seen her—except once—for the girl was of a most serene disposition. ”

“ If you are to blame anybody, I'm afraid it must be yourself. You must give them some encouragement, Midge, or I don't think they'd all come to the point as they do. I never saw such sportsmen as they are! They walk in and walk out again one after the other, and they seem to like it——'
'I wish they did!' said Miss Anstruther, devoutly. ”

“ As you are perfectly well aware, knowing the man quite as well as I do, he is, like most geniuses, an exceedingly poor man. At the same time, unlike most geniuses, he is as unscrupulous as he is clever. I have more than an idea that he could tell us all about this affair, but I prefer to pose as a person who has come into it by accident, and who is only languidly interested. I have had some hesitation in mentioning my estimate of Anstruther's character to his ward, but I feel very uneasy so far as Claire is concerned. I know for a fact that Anstruther is painfully hard up ”

“ ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXV. Jena, March 31st.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—Yes, of course I will be friends. And if I can be of any use in the way of admonishment, which seems to be my strong point, pray, as people say in books, command me. Naturally we are all much interested in you, and shall watch your career, I hope, with pleasure. I am sorry the Foreign Office bores you so much. Do you really have to spend your days gumming up envelopes? Not for that did you win all those scholarships and things at Eton and Oxford, and study Goethe and the minor German prophets so diligently here. ”

“ A sweetly pretty and highly accomplished young girl, little Miss Anstruther came to know too much to dream of taking any man's word on this point. She was reputed to have refused more offers than a good girl ought to get ”

“ Go to Blackheath—to Sir Richard Anstruther—he is my friend—tell him everything—"
She was down at my feet, and had caught my hand to her bosom.
"I can't!" she cried, "I can't go—and leave you here alone. I have loved you so—from the very first, and it seems that each day my love has grown until it is part of me. Oh, Peter!—don't send me away from you—it will kill me, I think—"
"Better that than the shame of a prison!" I exclaimed, and, while I spoke, I lifted her in my arms. "Oh!—I am proud—proud to have won such a love as yours—let me try to be worthy of it. Good-by, my beloved!" ”

“ Seymour laughed. "From what you told me just now, it is evident that Anstruther means to leave a note for his pal if the latter is away. In the event of 'Simple Charlie' being professionally engaged elsewhere to-morrow night, he will be asked to find a substitute. As we are perfectly well aware of the fact that there is no chance of Anstruther finding his friend at home, it is only logical to assume that he will leave the note behind. ”

“ I do miss dear Vicki whom I greatly loved, I do miss the cheery Joey, I miss Papa Lindeberg who likened me to Hebe, I miss his wife who kept me in my proper place—it is quite true that I miss these people, but that would never of itself be a feeling strong enough to sweep me off my feet into black pools of misery as I was swept this afternoon, and never, never would make me, who have so fine a contempt for easy tears, cry. No, Mr. Anstruther, bitter truths once seen have to be stared at squarely, and I am simply comparing my lot with Vicki's and being sorry for myself. ”

“ Anstruther sprang to his feet and hurried into the patient's bedchamber.
"The woman's dead, Doctor," cried Jason Jones, standing in the middle of the room. "She's dead!"
The physician hastened to the bedside, where Janet Orme, the nurse, was bending over the still form. Pushing her away, Dr. Anstruther made a hurried examination.
It was true; the woman was dead. At the very moment of reunion with the husband from whom she had so long been parted, she had passed on to another life, leaving reconciliation in abeyance. ”

“ At last the medical opinion was given that little Arthur might, with great care and incessant watching ("which it is plain he will have, Mrs. Grey," added the old doctor, bowing and smiling) , grow up to be a man yet.
When Dr. Anstruther said this, Christian felt as if the whole world had brightened. ”

“ He gave one half-frightened glance in the direction of the Frenchman, who shrugged his shoulders, as if to say the whole affair was no business of his.
"I shall not betray him," he whispered to Rigby. "It is a painful case, which will be no better for being dragged into the light of day. Besides, that man will be punished enough; a long term of imprisonment will be worse to him than hanging. He understands, now, that I am not going to betray him."
Anstruther was himself again at last. He stood rigid and erect; there was the faint suggestion of a smile upon his face. ”

“ After all, supposing that Miss Anstruther does remain with us during the whole of her uncle’s sojourn in China, where will be the great misfortune of entertaining a young lady for a few months? and how could [66] we have done otherwise than offer to receive a friendless girl, arriving in the country under such peculiar circumstances? who has also, by marriage, become a connection of my own, and been reared in such intimate relations with my wife, as to be looked on by Janie almost in the light of a sister. ”

“ Now, Anstruther, I am going to speak to you as a friend. When you are a little older, you will know that men of the world—gentlemen—are not in the habit of bringing the names of ladies into a discussion. If they differ in opinion on some subject of this kind, they contrive to quarrel ostensibly about something else.”
“And you would have me let Major North say the vile things he was doing about Miss Keeling for all the hotel to hear, and yet pretend to take no notice?” ”

“ Without education or principle, and with no friend on the wide earth to confide in or to consult, the two young Anstruthers, like weeds that will yet flourish though trampled upon, grew up vigorous in body, and enthusiastically as well as devotedly attached to each other, with a depth and power of affection which appeared, before long, the only redeeming quality in characters wherein strong passions and weak principles promised little, and threatened much, to all with whom they might hereafter become associated. ”

“ Hugh Anstruther exclaimed: he was having luncheon with Vincent at the latter's hotel. "Here are you, a fresh-elected member of Parliament—and I dare say as proud as Punch in consequence; and within a measurable distance of your taking your place in the House, you leave England, and come away over to America to hunt up an old man and a young girl. Do I wonder?—I do not wonder. A bonnier lassie, a gentler creature, does not step the ground anywhere; ay, and of good birth and blood, too; though there may be something in that to account for George Bethune's disappearance. ”