Edward Linton

“ She greeted Ellen cordially, who presented Miss Linton. King lost nothing of his mother's polite scrutiny of the girl, who bore it without the slightest sign of recognizing it beyond the lowering of her lashes after the first long look of the tall lady had continued a trifle beyond the usual limit. Book agent though she might be, Miss Linton's manner was faultless, a fact King noted with curious pride in his new friend—whom, though he himself was meeting her for but the second time, he somehow wanted to stand any social test which might be put upon her. ”

“ The secluded life at Brantwood became irksome to her, and the Lintons moved to Leinster Square, Bayswater, where the City life became equally irksome to her husband. Then came the separation, and Linton's departure for America, Mrs. Lynn Linton occupying various quarters in London, working on the Saturday Review, writing more novels, patronizing and generously helping young lady aspirants for literary successes, and making herself the centre of charming circles of friends and guests. In the lofty Queen Anne's Mansions, rising like a hill-summit above the flat plains and lake of St. ”

“ It was the quickest travelling Linton had yet experienced in the upper air, and he turned with some anxiety to Zenobia Jardine, thinking the pace might tax her nerves. She was perfectly calm, however, and her [Pg 18] father set all fears at rest by saying, as he slackened pace again:
"The steering with the new gyroscope is almost automatic, just as if she were a torpedo. Even in a stiff wind she reverts to a horizontal keel. It is simply like the balancing of a bird."
"The Bladud is splendid!" cried Linton with conviction.
"She's hard to beat," was the President's comment. ”

“ I thought I had impressed you with the necessity of keeping them from him.”
“So you had, sir; and, to the very utmost of my power, I did so; but here was a mere accident that foiled all my care and watchfulness.”
“As accidents ever do,” muttered Linton, with suppressed passion. “The game of life, like every other game, is less to skill than chance! Well, when can they be here?”
“To-morrow afternoon, sir, if not delayed by something unforeseen; though this is not at all unlikely, seeing the difficulty of getting posters. ”

“ Lillian Linton is a brilliant and beautiful girl of nineteen. She is a clear brunette, with a lovely bloom on her cheeks, vividly red lips, dark eyes and hair. Her features are delicate and regular; she is tall and finely formed, attractive in manner, but in disposition and temperament she is much like her mother.
The remaining individual of the group was Rupert Hamilton, Sir William Heath’s ward, and the child of his dear friend, Major Hamilton, who died several years ago. ”

“ Throwing a large cloak over his brilliant dress, Linton made his way by many a by-stair and obscure passage to the back of the theatre, by which the secret approach led to Cashel's dressing-room. Often as he had trod that way before, never had he done so in the same state of intense excitement. With the loss of the papers, he saw before him not alone the defeat of every hope he nurtured, but discovery, shame, and ruin! He whose whole game in life was to wield power over others, now saw himself in the grasp of some one, to whom he had not the slightest clew. ”

“ His handsome, alert face, its outlines slightly sharpened by his late experiences, his well-dressed, stalwart figure, carried no hint of the odious plaster jacket which to his own thinking put him outside the pale of interest for any one.
But it could not be Anne Linton; of course it could not! What should a poor little book agent be doing here in a rich man's car—unless she were in his employ? And somehow the fact that this girl was not in any man's employ was established by the manner in which the young man on the front seat spoke to her, as he now did, plainly heard by King. ”

“ And very likely one or other of the other boys would want the help, the advice, or the simple friendly intercourse she was always ready to give them, thus forming and moulding them and leading them to higher things, just as a mother or, rather, a wiser and infinitely more experienced elder sister might have done, had she possessed the tact and skill of Mrs. Linton-Ward.
"A woman's influence ..." she mused again, as she entered the hall.
There she came face to face with Johnny Gilroy, hurrying towards the door, his collar perfectly clean, his dress bow tied by the hand of a true artist. ”

“ He died at New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A., on 1 Jan. 1898.
Linton's fame as an engraver is widely spread, but he has never received justice as a poet. His more ambitious attempts, though often true poetry, are of less account than the little snatches of song which came to him in his later years, bewitching in their artless grace, and perhaps nearer than the work of any other modern poet to the words written for music in the days of Elizabeth and James. Produced at so late a period of life, these lyrics evince an indomitable vitality. ”

“ I recollect well the flaws in the course of proofs adduced, and I see how this discovery reconciles each discrepancy, and supplies every missing link of the chain.”
“Poor fellow!—it will be a sad blow for him,” said Linton, with admirably feigned emotion.
“But it need not, Mr. Linton; the church can tie a knot not even an equity suit can open. Let him marry.” ”

“ Linton had been with the paper for a year now, and he had seen all sorts of things, and had rubbed up against all sorts of interests, and talked to all sorts of human beings. He had worked at all hours of the day and night, in all kinds of weather, in all parts of the city and adjacent country. He had worked on Christmas and the Fourth of July, like policemen. It was, perhaps, the hardest work known to civilized man, and he had not once broken down in health; which is very good for a new reporter. On The Day they used to reckon on cubs breaking down at some stage of the first year or so ”

“ Then the little lawyer surprised Linton. He jumped down from his dignity and talked. He talked amiably enough; he said nothing he ought not to have said, but Linton got five sticks out of it (a half column) and told himself he was upholding the social fabric.
After he had written and filed his story, he told Billy Woods, The Day's star man, about it. Woods despised cub reporters theoretically, but he was always kind to those who came to him for advice.
"There's a great deal in throwing out a good bluff, isn't there?" said Linton. ”

“ David Linton’s eyes lingered hungrily on his son.
“We can only get the beacon ready, and then watch. Two of us can hide near the cave, and the third must be up on the point to light the fire if he hears a shot. If they come—well, we must let them land and get to the cave; and then we must try to prevent their getting back.”
“You will be heavily outnumbered.”
“Yes—but the advantage of surprise will be on our side, and we can take cover. I do not dare to get help; it may not be safe to trust anyone.”
“Very well,” David Lint on said, quietly. “Will you order the motor, O’Neill? ”

“ When Linton, then, deemed the time expired which his feelings of grief and shame had demanded for retirement, he reappeared in the world pretty much as men had always seen him. A very close observer, if he would have suffered any one to be such, might have perhaps detected the expression of care in certain wrinkles round his mouth, and in the extra blackness of his whiskers, where gray hairs had dared to show themselves ”

“ I disliked this Linton from the first, and I never yet saw any distinct reason to alter the sentiment. That he has puzzled me—ay, completely puzzled me and all my calculations, within the last few days, is quite true. He has done that which, in a man like himself, disconcerts one altogether, because it is so difficult to trace his probable motive. What would you say, were I to tell you that this deep man of the world, this artful and subtle gambler in the game of life, has actually proposed for a girl who is utterly without fortune or family influence? ”

“ That young man was not thinking of the orator, then. His thoughts were on the old man at whose side he sat—the old man who listened in dignified patience.
Now the delegates sniffed the truth. A word had put them on the trail. They were not sure. But they suspected. And mere suspicion sent them upon their settees, cheering wildly. Distrust of Spinney, sullen disloyalty to the machine-created Everett, furnished a soil in which hope for another solution of the tangle sprang with miraculous growth.
Linton waited until the roar of voices died away. ”

“ There's more than one amongst you would like to be safe home again, afore long! A set of lazy thieves, no less. The heavens be my bed, but I never thought I 'd see the day they 'd be bringing a 'naygur' to Ireland to teach us music!”
This singular apostrophe, which seemed to fill the measure of her woe, so far attracted Linton's curiosity to comprehend it, that he opened the window and looked out, and at once discovered, by the direction of the eyes of the circle, the object of the sarcasm. ”

“ Edgar Linton had his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed: but his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace. Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile; no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared. ”

“ LINTON, ELIZA LYNN (1822–1898) , English novelist, daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite, in Cumberland, was born at Keswick on the 10th of February 1822. She early manifested great independence of character, and in great measure educated herself from the stores of her father’s library. ”

“ Linton's books is the vein of mingled passion and tragedy that traverses it. The one charm it has beyond most others is the fresh breeze from the hills that seems to blow through it when the authoress condescends to be simply descriptive of places and people in the region of Wastwater and the Langdales. Her pen-pictures will do not only for her imaginary 'Greyrigg,' but for a hundred other dales and hillsides, lakes, tarns, and waters, and her portraits for a score of other country-folk and rural parsons to be found hereaway half a century ago, besides those she names. ”

“ W.J. Linton, an eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet of some note, a writer upon his craft, and a Republican. In 1867 they separated in a friendly way, the husband going to America, and the wife devoting herself to novel-writing, in which she attained wide popularity. ”

“ It is because an Earnshaw and a Linton between them have robbed him of all that he possessed, that, when his hour comes, he pays himself back by robbing the Lintons and the Earnshaws of all that they possess, their Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He loathes above all loathely creatures, Linton, his own son by Isabella. The white-blooded thing is so sickly that he can hardly keep it alive. But with an unearthly cruelty he cherishes, he nourishes this spawn till he can marry it on its death-bed to the younger Catherine, the child of Catherine Earnshaw and of Edgar Linton. ”

“ Rica sighed heavily, but made no answer; at last he said,—
“It is over with the Duke, and he bears it well.”
“Good blood always does,” said Linton. “Your men of birth have a lively sense of how little they have done for their estates, and therefore part with them with a proportionate degree of indifference. Where is he?”
“Writing letters in the boudoir off the drawing-room. ”

“ My own unworthiness to what I aspire recoils upon me at every instant, and nothing but the indulgent kindness with which you have always regarded me could give me courage. Forgive me this prolixity; I am like one who fears to plunge, lest he should never rise again.”
“If my estimate of you be correct,” said the old man, laying his hand upon Linton's, “the goal must needs be high to which you dare not aspire.”
“It is indeed so!” cried Linton, as if carried away by an irresistible emotion. “To me it means station, hope, worldly success, happiness,—ay, life itself. ”

“ Linton-Ward registered a mental oath that Mr. Billington-Shaw was going to have that post and have it quick, or she would know the reason why—so would her brother-in-law, the chairman.
Indeed, seldom has an appointment been made with greater speed. Mrs. Linton-Ward saw to that. In scarcely more than a week the Billington-Shaws were safely across the Channel, and in Mrs. Linton-Ward's boarding-house once more events pursued their accustomed tenor. Once Johnny Gilroy came timidly to her to have his dress bows tied; once more Dicky King brought her his torn and bleeding heart ”

“ Linton does not approve of sensational novels, and, moreover, wishes his son to be a lawyer, not a literary man. Young Frank is in a solicitor's office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and he employed his evenings in writing 'A Whim of Fate.' He published it under the name of 'John Parver,' so as to hoodwink his father, but now that he has scored a success I have no doubt he will confess."
"Do you think we will learn anything from him?"
"We will learn all we wish to know as to where he obtained his material. The young man's head is turned, and by playing on his vanity we may find out the truth." ”

“ This led to a friendship with the Italian revolutionist, and Linton threw himself with ardour into European politics. He carried the first congratulatory address of English workmen to the French Provisional Government in 1848. He edited a twopenny weekly paper, The Cause of the People, published in the Isle of Man, and he wrote political verses for the Dublin Nation, signed “Spartacus.” ”