Gladwyn

“ Gladwyne seems cordial to the people you object to, and one would imagine that she’s the embodiment of your best traditions, a worthy representative of the old régime.”
“Mrs. Gladwyne is a remarkably fine lady, but it’s unfortunate that she’s a little deaf and—it must be owned—not particularly intelligent. A good deal of what goes on escapes her. Besides, she has always idolized Clarence, and that would account for her not seeing his friends’ failings.”
“It’s curious that Gladwyne makes so much of that young Crestwick.” ”

“ One wing of the building was covered with Virginia creeper that glowed with the gorgeous hues of a fading maple leaf, the sunlight lay on the grass, and the feeling of tranquillity that hung about the place grew stronger. He thought that he could understand how the desire to possess it would stir an Englishman reared in such surroundings, and yet he was now convinced that this was not the impulse which had driven Gladwyne into deserting his starving cousin. The man had merely yielded to craven fear. ”

“ He strode out of the room, and Batley smiled as he followed him.
A day or two later Lisle stood on Gladwyne’s lawn. Gladwyne entertained freely, and though his neighbors did not approve of all of his friends, the man had the gift of pleasing, and his mother unconsciously exerted a charm on every one. She rarely said anything witty, but she never said anything unkind and she would listen with a ready sympathy that sometimes concealed a lack of comprehension. ”

“ It isn’t likely that Gladwyne will get such an opportunity again, and at the worst he acted on the spur of the moment.”
The lad nodded. He had felt that silence would entail some responsibility, but Bella accepted it without uneasiness. She seldom showed any hesitation when she had decided on a course.
In the meanwhile, Gladwyne had spent a miserable day, alternating between horror of himself and doubts about the future. Jim Crestwick’s description of the incident was correct—Gladwyne had ridden straight at the broken hurdle, knowing what the consequences might be and disregarding them. ”

“ Gladys no longer feared the glance of his eye nor the sound of his voice. A quiet confidence had established itself between them, and she really loved him. It was impossible for her to dwell beside a [Pg 89] human being, not absolutely repulsive, without pouring some of the riches of her affection upon him. As for him, Gladys herself had not the remotest idea how he regarded her, did not dream that she had awakened in his withered heart a slow and all-absorbing affection, the strength of which surprised himself. ”

“ Gladwin withdrew reluctantly, stealing a glance at Helen as he sidled through the curtained doorway. Her eyes never left the face of the man she thought she loved, but whose character was being swiftly revealed to her in a new light.
That resourceful individual waited only for the blue uniform to pass through the portières, when he sprang forward and reached out on both sides for the heavy mahogany folding doors. He brought them together swiftly and softly, then ripped down the portières from the pole, flinging one to the left of the door and the other across the chest. ”

“ They have loved one another ever since they were first together. I found it out in the train; and when Owen pressed Gladys very hard to tell him why she didn't love him, she said it was because she had promised you something. I could not hear what; but I heard enough to know that she loved Owen dearly. And she is good and clever; and, oh! so kind and gentle to me. I never think now of what I used to think so much—how she was a beggar at our gate; and everybody in London looks up to her and loves her. Mr and Mrs Jones, Miss Gwynne, and Rowland, all treat her like a lady. ”

“ It was no concern of mine that he had, in confidence, called Miss Gladwin "hard." He had called her "a sportsman," too. Set one off against the other, remembering his position and his cult.
Sir Thomas had been dead a year when Fullard and I first spent a Sunday together at Worldstone Park. He had been there before; so had I: but we had not chanced to coincide. It was May, and spring rioted about us. The girls, too, had doffed some of their funereal weeds; Nettie wore white and black, Beatrice black and white. Life was stirring in the place again. ”

“ The rest of the evening she was as much like velvet as it was in a Gladwin to be. But I waited. I wanted to know how she meant to arrange her fair fight. She wanted one. A sportsman, after all, you see.
Chapter Five SHE was not like velvet when we met the next morning after breakfast in her study: her own room was emphatically a study, and in no sense a boudoir. She was like iron, or like the late Sir Thomas when he gave me instructions for his new will and for the settlement on his intended marriage with Miss Nettie Tyler. ”

“ Opposite this trio, with her left hand clasped in that of Netta, and close to her sofa, stands the fair, blue-eyed, graceful Gladys; thoroughly Irish in beauty, if Welsh in heart. The red glare of the large bright fire brings out her sweet, earnest face, and slight form. Her eyes are cast down, as if they cannot support the gaze of so many other eyes, and her cheeks are flushed with a strange excitement. Towering a full head above her, his arm round her waist, the thick black beard touching her hair is the manly, handsome Owen. ”

“ Has it not occurred to you that this young man, in thus keeping a distance from you, shows himself wiser than you?'
'How?' asked Gladys coldly. 'It can never be wise to wound the feelings of another.'
'My dear, though your simplicity is the loveliest thing about you, it is awfully difficult to deal with,' said Clara perplexedly. 'You must know, must admit, Gladys, that everything is changed, and that while you might be quite courteous, and even friendly after a fashion, with this Mr. Hepburn, anything more is quite out of the question. He must move in his own sphere, you in yours. ”

“ You know the clangour of a station bell; of all sounds the last that it resembles is that of the funeral knell; yet this was its echo in the heart of Gladys.
'Well, it's only for a week, after all, isn't it, Gladdie? It will be the weariest week of my life, I know. But I shan't mind—after all, it's my own doing—if only you come back with a better colour. You have been so pale, Gladdie, these last few days—pale and excitable. ”

“ Gladys replied quietly, "and till I do know them, I shall remain of my own opinion still. If you wish me not to see so much of Mr. Vardon, I shall try to do as you say; but if I happen to like any particular person, whether he's a peer or a ploughboy, I can't help liking him, so there's an end of it." And Gladys kissed her mother demurely on the forehead, and walked with a stately sweep out of the room.
"It's perfectly clear," said Lady Surrey to herself, "that that girl's in love with Mr. Vardon, and what on earth I'm to do about it is to me a mystery." ”

“ Five hundred a year is not despicable, and is good, like other boons, until revoked. But think what Beatrice Gladwin had been two months before—the greatest heiress in the country, mistress of all! So the old will had made her—the old will in my office safe, which, come next Tuesday, would be so much waste paper. I have always found something pathetic about a superseded will. It is like a royal family in exile.
Sir Thomas read over the documents and looked up at me as he took off his spectacles. ”

“ Gladwin did you want?” asked that young man incoherently.
“Why, Mr. Travers Gladwin!” exclaimed the girl indignantly, the color mantling to her forehead. “Is there more than one?”
“Well––er––that is,” the young man turned desperately to his friend, “do you know Mr. Gladwin?”
“Do I know him?” cried Helen Burton, and then, with a hysterical little laugh as she turned to her cousin, “I should think I did know him. I know him very, very well.”
Sadie Burton appeared both distressed and frightened and slipped limply down into one of the great chairs beside her. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the companionship of Walter was the only thing which saved Gladys from despair; but for the bright kinship of his presence she must have sunk under the burden of a life so hard, a life for which she was so unfitted; but they comforted each other, and kept warm and true in their young hearts faith in humankind and in the mercy of Heaven. ”

“ To him it would have been a mortal sin—the betrayal of his profoundest ideal. In the perversity—if you will—of his ecclesiastical conscience, he felt towards such a solution the feeling a man might have if the selling of his soul were to be a thing transacted in cold blood, rather than in the tempest of the moment. To marry Gladys would be to summon the very sacraments of his church to bless with a blasphemous consecration his treachery to their appeal. ”

“ He got up from his stool, and paced up and down the narrow space between the boxes in a very storm of indignation; and it seemed to Gladys that a few minutes had changed him from a boy into a man.
'Dear Walter,' she said gently, 'try to be brave. Perhaps it will not be so bad as you think.'
'It's so bad for Liz, poor thing, that it won't be any worse. She's lost, and she was the only one of them I cared for. If she'd had a chance, she'd have been a splendid woman. She has a good heart, only she never had anybody to guide her.'
Gladys could not speak. ”

“ Next morning, after breakfast, Lady Surrey sent for Gladys to come to her in her boudoir. Then she put her daughter in a chair by the window, drew her own close to it, laid her hand kindly on her shoulder—she was a nice little woman at heart, was the countess—and said to her gently, "My dear Gladys, there's a little matter I want to talk to you about. You are still very young, you know, dear; and I think you ought to be very careful about not letting your feelings be played upon in any way, however unconsciously. Now, you walk and talk a great deal too much, dear, with Mr. Vardon. ”

“ Do you not know that you can go out and in just as you like? Of course you shall go. I will take you myself, if mamma cannot, and wait for you outside.'
True to her promise, Clara ordered the brougham on Monday afternoon, and carried Gladys off to Colquhoun Street. Clara was, like most quiet people, singularly observant, and she noted with interest, not unmixed with pity, how nervous Gladys became as they neared their destination. Mingling with her pity was a great curiosity to see the young man whose image seemed to dwell in the constant heart of Gladys. ”

“ Gladys does not care for him really a bit. She only does it to amuse herself; to satisfy her wicked, wicked nature! She would like to lead him as far as she possibly could, and then to turn upon him and make him thoroughly miserable. She is the kind of girl—Oh what am I saying to you, Mr. Taxater?—that men always are attracted by. Some men I believe would even call her beautiful. I don’t think she’s that at all. I think she is gross, fleshly, and horrid! But I know what a danger she is to Mr. Clavering. ”

“ It really is too provoking that you should have stayed so long, when you knew that I particularly wanted you to-day.' Gladys enters the room pale and breathless, just as Miss Gwynne is endeavouring to fasten in the wreath of forget-me-nots and lilies. She does not turn round, and is at the moment too much engrossed with her own appearance to think of Gladys. ”

“ They'll take all you have to give them, and laugh in your face. They have no such quality as gratitude in them.' [Pg 305]
Gladys curled her lips in scorn.
'How unhappy you must be to have so little faith in humankind. That has not been my experience; but we shall never agree on that point. Shall we go up-stairs now?'
Her perfect independence of and indifference to his opinion, betrayed in the careless ease of her manner as she rose from the hearth, exasperated him not a little.
'No, I am not coming up-stairs,' he answered, as rudely as he dared.
'What shall I say to Mrs. Fordyce, then? ”

“ Gladys, to Neville:
"I am making a perfectly good cat, Valerie," she whispered. "Gladys, aren't you a little bit flattered? I suppose you think it's honour enough to belong to that man up there on the scaffolding. I imagine it is; he is a very wonderful man, Gladys, very high above us in intellect as he is in body. He doesn't pay very much attention to you and me down here on the floor; he's just satisfied to own us and be amiable to us when he thinks about us. ”

“ Yes, and you stumbled against the chest and knew that I was in it.”
“But I say,” asked Gladwin, abruptly. “How did you come to use my name?”
“It wasn’t safe to use mine, and when I met Miss–––that girl––your name was in my mind––I borrowed it.”
“That’s the thing I can’t forgive you for,” said Gladwin, regretfully––“to deceive her as you did. That was rotten.”
“I don’t care for your opinion on that,” said the picture expert, warmly. “How can a man like you understand a man like me? It can’t be done. We’re further apart than the poles.”
“But you must see, Wilson––that’s the name, isn’t it?” ”

“ And what did Walter say when you told him my marriage-day was fixed?' inquired Gladys, as she tied the ribbon on her hair.
'I shall not tell you what he said,' answered the little spinster, quite severely for her. 'You are in a mood which would make you laugh at an honest heart's suffering.'
'You think very highly of me, Guardy, I must say,' said Gladys a trifle unsteadily. 'But why do you speak of an honest man's suffering? Do you mean to say it made Walter suffer to hear I was going to be married?'
'My dear, he loves you as his own soul. ”

“ When we've seen that, we'll take a trap and drive to the other places.'
'But that will cost a great deal,' said Gladys doubtfully, recalled for the moment to the small economies it was her daily lot to practise.
'Perhaps; but we'll manage it, I daresay. It is impossible for us to walk, so there's no use saying another word. Give me your arm.'
Gladys was ready in a moment. Never since the old fen days had she felt so happy, because the green earth was beneath her feet, the trees waving above her, the song of birds in her ears instead of the roar of city streets. ”