Lady Anstruthers

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You know he—he has loved a woman.”
The Maid of Honor laughed.
“He has loved a woman,” emphasized the Fool, “and for a man, especially for a king, that is a very rare experience.”
“It was before Ermyntrude was born,” reminded the little old Lady-in-Waiting, softly; and her pretty, faded eyes lost themselves in the sunset. “Before even your mother came to be Mistress of the Robes to his mother, my dear,” she drew the girl down beside her on the ancient settle, “when I{184} myself was a slip of a girl in the Palace at Camelot, and the young Prince Richard barely through with his examinations. ”

“ Ask her. The first time in her life she's ever had a good time is now, since she's been working for some one that does realise that a girl's got to have her bit of fun and liberty same as everybody else, be she duchess or be she lady's-maid!"
"She is a lady's-maid no longer," said my Aunt Anastasia, in a voice that shook. The others looked fearfully uncomfortable, all except Miss Vi Vassity, who seemed to be hanging with the keenest enjoyment upon every syllable that fell from the lips of the two "opposing parties."
"My niece is no longer a lady's-maid," repeated Aunt Anastasia. ”

“ See how she can manage a man, when she chooses to take the trouble; see how little she cares for the fine speeches that would influence other women. See her dance, hear her sing, and you will begin to understand her. A fellow can never tire of her, for she is everything she has the whim to be, and she is everything equally well.”
“So she is, Heaven knows,” Hector Anstruthers muttered, bitterly, looking across the room at her, as she stood talking to Colonel Esmond. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am on my way to meet Miss Anstruther, my wife’s cousin.’
‘Lucky dog!’ said Forster. He is one of those fellows who imagine that no age, position, or circumstances are powerful enough to prevent a man admiring a pretty woman. ‘If all I have heard about her from Dunn is true, you are not likely to have your house much to yourself whilst Miss Anstruther is in it, Norton.’
‘Well, I shall go out of it, then,’ I answered, not over pleased at the notion of never being left in peace with Janie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I shall keep my word with Margaret Anstruther; and extend no farther encouragement to the bachelors who may come lounging about my house. It is a strange taste on her part; but she must be a girl in a thousand to dislike admiration, and to look upon careless attentions as an offence against the solemnity of marriage. It is a solemn thing, when you come to think, that if you make a mistake upon the subject, you are in for it, and nothing can pull you out again. I wonder if Margaret has had an unrequited attachment ”

“ Although she may never be in a position to require such knowledge, excepting as the mistress of a house, yet those women make the best mistresses who know the time, the labour, and the skill required in every form of domestic work."
"I think you degrade your daughter by this strange request," said Mrs. Armstrong, whose opinions of what a lady might do without compromising her dignity and refinement were thoroughly shocked.
"Nothing done by a lady," replied Mr. Armstrong, with an emphasis on the word, "will ever degrade her, if it can be done by a woman without disgrace." ”

“ This is a real one, though, out of her bouquet. I believe they call them heart’s-ease.”
“Heart’s-ease be ——,” began Anstruthers, roughly, but he checked himself in time. “She is the sort of a woman to wear heart’s-ease!” he added, with a sardonic laugh. “She ought to wear heart’s-ease, and violets, and lilies, and snowdrops, and wild roses in the bud,” with a more bitter laugh for each flower he named. “Such fresh, innocent things suit women of her stamp.”
“I say,” said Lyon, staring at his sneering face, amazedly, “what is the matter? You talk as if you had a spite against her. What’s up?” ”

“ You will go with Padini to-night to----"
"No, no!" Serena cried. "I implore you to spare me that humiliation again. What have I done that I should have to endure all this--what can be possibly gained by it?"
For the first time Anstruther displayed real signs of anger. "Now, listen to me," he said. "Once for all, I tell you not to speak to me like this again. Do you think I have studied you all these years for nothing? Do you suppose I do not know how disloyal you are in your heart towards me? There is one class of woman who has to be ruled by fear alone, and you are one of them. ”

“ What has it brought my poor Lady Anne Blunt to? She is the talk of all the footmen and boys in the street, and will be company for them shortly, and yet is so blinded by her passion as not at all to perceive the misery she has brought herself to; and this fond love of hers has so rooted all sense of nature out of her heart, that, they say, she is no more moved than a statue with the affliction of a father and mother that doted on her, and had placed the comfort of their lives in her preferment. ”

“ The world knew Mistress Anne but as a dull, plain gentlewoman, whom her more brilliant and fortunate sister gave gracious protection to, and none missed her when she was absent, or observed her greatly when she appeared upon the scene. To-day she was perchance more observed than usual, because her pallor was so great a contrast to her ladyship’s splendour of beauty and colour. ”

“ A triumphant beauty on the verge of becoming a great duchess is not like to be neglected by her acquaintance, and thus her ladyship held assemblies both gay and brilliantly varied, which were the delight of the fashionable triflers of the day.
This afternoon they flocked in greater numbers than usual. The episode of the breaking of Devil, the unexpected return of his Grace of Osmonde, the preparations for the union, had given an extra stimulant to that interest in her ladyship which was ever great enough to need none. ”

“ The blue and ruddy flicker of the wreckwood lit up the dark day.
"I've been thinking a lot about this, and I know now—there is only one thing between us, and that's Ansdore."
"How d'you mean? It ain't between us."
"It is—again and again you seem to be putting Ansdore in the place of our love. What other woman on God's earth would put off her marriage to fit in with the sheep-shearing?" ”

“ ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
XXVIII Jena, April 26th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—You seem to be incurably doleful. You talk about how nice it must be to have a sister, a mother, some woman very closely related to whom you could talk. You astonish me; for have you not Miss Cheriton? Still, on reflection I think I do see that what you feel you want is more a solid bread-and-butter sort of relationship; no sentiment, genial good advice, a helping hand if not a guiding one—really a good thick slice of bread-and-butter as a set-off to a diet of constant cake. ”

“ She was a woman as fastidious as she was ambitious, for she belonged to the aristocracy of her own country, and there was still much of the Puritan in her, albeit none of the provincial. She would give her immaculate daughter to no man whom she knew to be unworthy, no matter what his rank; and, unsuspected, she had examined and rejected all the young unmarried noblemen she had met during her last two seasons in England. As it happened, she had never met Ordham, although she enjoyed something more than a passing acquaintance with Lady Bridgminster. ”

“ Leave Iris alone. At present she is strung up to an intense pitch of gratitude, having barely escaped a terrible fate. Let her come back to the normal. Anstruther's shady record must gradually leak out. That will disgust her. In a week she will appeal to you to buy him off. He is hard up—cut off by his people and that sort of thing. There you probably have the measure of his scheming. He knows quite well that he can never marry your daughter. It is all a matter of price. ”

“ I persisted. "It isn't, when these other girls talk of making a career for themselves somehow. They can get on——"
"They are not ladies."
"It's a deadly handicap being what our family calls a lady," said I. "I'm going to stop being one and to have something like a life of my own at last."
[Pg 43] "I forbid you," said Aunt Anastasia, in her stoniest voice, "I forbid you to do anything that is unbefitting my niece, my brother's child, and Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter!" ”

“ Still, although doubtless she can boast of some good features, to call such a woman beautiful is absurd; and one has only to see her stand side by side with my rosebud wife to perceive the worse points which she possesses. It brings out at once, as I made Janie laugh by observing, all the yellow that is in her. She is not so plain, perhaps, as I expected; but ‘beautiful’ is the last epithet I should apply to Margaret Anstruther. No woman [86] who is not fair can possibly be pretty; and how any man can prefer a dark face is to me inexplicable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But I have brought into sad trouble and distress with her family—who are most obstinate people—and with the opinion of the public, I suppose, a young lady worth more than all the goods I ever ran, or ever could run, if I went on for fifty years. By name she is Mistress Mary Anerley, and by birth the daughter of Captain Anerley, of Anerley Farm, outside our parish. ”

“ Being a poor creature and timorous and weak—”
“Weak! weak!” the duchess cried, amid a greater flood of streaming tears—“ay, I have dared to call you so, who have the heart of a great lioness. Oh, sweet Anne—weak!”
“’Twas love,” Anne whispered. “Your love was strong, and so was mine. That other love was not for me. I knew that my long woman’s life would pass without it—for woman’s life is long, alas! if love comes not. ”

“ How the general rush, and whirl, and glitter, and clatter of them would make my Aunt Anastasia feel perfectly faint!
Eight or ten aspirins, I should think, would not be enough to restore her, could she but have a glimpse of the society into which Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter is now plunged.
And in such an "infra dig." position, too!
For I am not "an artist," as they all are! I am distinctly quite below them! I am in domestic service. A "dresser" of the girl whom all of them call "Nellie" when they are not using the generic "dears" and "darlings" to her. ”