Lady Geraldine

“ Kate monopolized all the men in the house, and, being at home, Dutton, in common decency, could not suffer Lady Geraldine to be neglected. There were only those two girls staying at "The Towers." Others sometimes came to dinner with their parents, and an impromptu dance was often got up. Geraldine had begun to listen for Harry's step, seat herself near a vacant chair, and thrill with delight when he took it. No man dislikes such unconscious flattery, and Dutton, ill at ease in mind, felt himself soothed by her kindness. ”

“ For some there are no marriage bells—for Lady Geraldine, for instance, who is content to devote herself unostentatiously to the care of her sister's neglected children—neglected in spite of French and German governesses, Italian singing masters, Parisian waiting-maids, and half an acre or so of nursery and schoolroom—and to wider charities: not all unhappy, and thankful for having escaped that far deeper misery—the fate of an unloved wife. ”

“ He loved her because she was unattainable, she was a Queen; he could never have loved an ordinary woman like that. A soap bubble is the most beautiful thing in the world because it is so unattainable, you cannot put it in your pocket.
Then Geraldine suddenly appeared before my mind. Not only Geraldine, but the thousand and one things that made her up. I have told you before that colour and scent and sound seem to act as food and drink to me. This Geraldine had all these in their fullest perfection, like some strange tropical fruit that no one could imagine till they had seen. ”

“ It stood the test of years—it stood even her marriage to another."
Another pause.
"She was the prettiest and merriest child you ever saw," he finally went on. "Had she been an Indian maid they would have called her 'Dancing Sunshine.' But being just a Baltimore girl, with her parents more fond of reading Scott than of any other literature save the Bible, she was named Geraldine. You remember that line in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel':
The fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine. ”

“ Mr James told me to tell you; it's only beknownst to Mr James and I—God help me—God help us all—Miss Geraldine—is a boy."
"A boy," I said, half rising out of my chair; "what do you say—how—how can a girl be a boy?"
"Hush, ma'am, for the love of God don't speak above your breath. People may be listening, and no one knows it, not even Miss Geraldine herself." ”

“ They say she was brought up by a Puritan grandmother, who died last year, and left her all her fortune. However that may be, the Lady Geraldine never appears when she can escape doing so. My lady gives way to her. They say she does not care to have a grown-up daughter at her heels, she who might pass for four-and-twenty herself any day, but for that damning evidence. But they say the father is beginning to declare that his daughter is no longer to be kept in the background. I suppose the next thing will be that they will marry her to some young nobleman. ”

“ I did read some or it ere it went to the Queen. I thought it more beautiful than I can say."
"It should be beautiful, in all sooth, fair lady," answered Grey in a very low voice, "for the thought of it was inspired by the looks and words of one who is of all living creatures the fairest, the purest, the most precious. If my poor work meets with success in the world, it will be due not to any skill of mine, but to the goodness of two gracious ladies, one who inspired and the other who approved its motive."
Geraldine's face burned; there was a great joy in her heart. ”

“ Geraldine shook her head. She could not imagine what such a place as this could be like.
"Are there many more people in the world from where you come?" asked Geraldine after a pause, resting her chin on her hand and gazing at me with a deep, far-away look, as if she recognised me dimly but was not quite sure. ”

“ Fitzgerald had feared that Cissy was in the plot of Geraldine's elopement, but the young girl's surprise and grief were so genuine that she dismissed the doubt. "She has treated you shamefully, too, my dear," said the lady. "After inviting you here as a guest, and promising you such a charming time, it was abominable to go off that way and leave you in the lurch."
"Do not worry about me. My only concern is for you in your trouble. Geraldine acted willfully, I know, but there is one comfort. The man she has married is good and true, and cannot fail to make her happy." ”

“ Well, ma'am, things went like a marriage bell till Miss Geraldine was past fourteen; then one day Mr James came out of the picture gallery with his face like a ghost, and he caught me by the arm so that I thought I'd have screeched with the pain of it, and he says, 'James, James, the Sinclairs have got us.' Those were his very words, and with that he led me into the gallery, right to the ebony frame with Mr Gerald's picture and the picture of Beatrice Sinclair, and there, sure enough, was the likeness. Miss Geraldine had grown the living image of Miss Beatrice Sinclair ”

“ Geraldine saw before her an elegant-looking gentleman—tall, broad-shouldered, graceful, with a clean-shaven face, clear-cut features, fair, clustering locks, and large, glittering, light-blue eyes, keen and clear as points of steel in their direct gaze, but with something unpleasant somehow in their admiring expression that made the pretty salesgirl drop her eyes bashfully, as he continued, easily:
"I have lost a bet of a box of gloves to a lady, and would like you to assist me in selecting some pretty ones to pay the debt." ”

“ O mother dear! that thou wert here!’ ‘I would,’ said Geraldine, ‘she were!’
But soon with altered voice, said she— ‘Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine! I have power to bid thee flee.’ Alas! what ails poor Geraldine? [Pg 319] Why stares she with unsettled eye? Can she the bodiless dead espy? And why with hollow voice cries she, ‘Off, woman, off! this hour is mine— Though thou her guardian spirit be, Off, woman, off! ’tis given to me.’
Then Christabel knelt by the lady’s side, And raised to heaven her eyes so blue— ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘this ghastly ride— Dear lady! it hath ’wilder’d you! ”

“ Magnelius Grandcourt who was giving the first dinner and dance for Geraldine Seagrave. In the cloak-room she encountered some very animated women of the younger married set, who spoke to her amiably, particularly a Mrs. Dysart, who said she knew Duane Mallett, and who was so friendly that a bit of colour warmed Geraldine's pallid cheeks and still remained there when, a few minutes later, she saluted her heavily jewelled hostess and recognised in her the fat fore-and-aft lady of the day before. ”

“ Bassett was prepared for what he had to tell. During the long wait for the officers of the law his mind had been ranging over it, shaking bare from unnecessary detail the chain of events that had ended in murder. It was impossible to conceal the situation between Sybil and the Stokeses; he could not if he had wished it and he did not wish it. A girl had been brutally done to death, a girl innocent of any evil intention, and his desire to bring her murderer to justice was as strong as either Williams’ or Rawson’s. ”

“ Geraldine got her full [pg 9] deserts—me; and if George had the misfortune to sit on the bag in the taxi, what matter? Geraldine had acquiesced; after that who cared what Geraldine's mother did, said, thought or wore?
Small Boy. "Who's that fat man, Dad?"
Dad. "Don't know. He looks like a profiteer."
Small Boy. "Don't you think he must be one of the excess profiteers?"
"Lady Clerk wanted for office work, with an engineering firm, a few miles out of Leeds; also able to cook and serve a luncheon for the principals."—Yorkshire Paper.
If you want a cook nowadays you must employ a little diplomacy. ”

“ Geraldine evidently was utterly ignorant of the mirror and its picture. Geraldine the observed imagined herself unobserved: then, like a little thief, she bent her lips to kiss the woman's hair without the woman knowing. I threw my head back and caught the kiss upon my lips, I threw my arms back and caught her round the neck; never was a thief so caught in his own trap. ”

“ No one in the house knew; all the servants were dismissed but me, 'We are safe now,' said Mr James. Ma'am, do you know that from the lodge gates this park is surrounded by a stone wall, sixteen miles long and six feet high? it cost a mine of money, but it was built. Do you know that Miss Geraldine has never been beyond that wall? There are sixty and more miles of drives all through the park, and there the horses that draw her carriage can go at a gallop and go all day without crossing the same ground twice over. ”

“ Anne packed for a space, then gave it up. She couldn’t go on with it, she wanted to be down-stairs, not lose one minute of the last evening at Gull Island. Her spirits, oppressed by Joe’s behavior, began to bubble again, foam up in sparkling effervescence. You couldn’t pack clothes in a trunk when you felt like dancing and the hour was too beautiful for belief and your lover might be waiting for you in the garden. She slipped off her negligée and chose her most becoming dress, leaf-green crêpe that made her look slim as a reed and turned her skin to ivory. ”

“ Again nothing—vacancy, dust in a film on the bureau tops, beds untouched in meticulous smoothness.
One door was closed, near the stair-head. Opening this she looked into a store-room, a large, dark interior lit by two small windows. They were dust grimed, and the light came in dimly, showing upturned trunks and boxes, pieces of furniture, lines of clothes hanging on the walls.
“Here,” she thought, and with her heart leaping in her throat, crossed the threshold:
“Joe, it’s Anne. I’ve come to help you.”
Nothing stirred in the encumbered space, no stealthy body detached itself from the shadows. ”

“ Fitzgerald.
So she heard with delight her son's avowal that he would cut out the humble fireman in the regard of pretty Geraldine.
She readily acceded to every condition he imposed on her in the furtherance of his plans.
Their conference over, he went to seek his friends, whom he found playing a game of billiards with his pretty sister, Lady Amy.
The young Americans were both charmed with the dainty beauty whose dark, curly tresses and laughing blue eyes were so like those of her brother that they showed their near kinship very plainly indeed. ”

“ GERALDINE
"Well, suppose I was once a man, suppose I was Gerald Wilder," I said to myself as I went into the library and music room, where a fire was lit, "Oh, bosh—and yet——"
I shut the library door and looked round. Thousands of books, a grand piano standing open, cigar boxes, cigarette boxes, easy chairs, turkey carpet. I lit a cigarette, and turned to the piano. I play well, but I am always too weak to play now. ”

“ He looked there now, let his glance slip along the curve of headlands till it reached the two girls, perched on a boulder like a pair of bright-plumaged birds. He was thinking how to approach the matter in his mind, when Mrs. Cornell went on:
“I don’t see what any one wanted to build a house here for—cut off this way. It’s too lonesome. With the tide at the full as it is now you can’t get ashore without a motor-boat. You know that current’s something fierce.” ”

“ I told the old butler to bring me my luncheon to my room when luncheon-time came, for I felt ill—so I did—and would not come down again that day.
Then I went upstairs to my bedroom utterly determined to give Geraldine a lesson that she would never forget. She might wait for me, but I would not come, not I.
Up in my bedroom I fell into one of those stupid fits in which we—at least I do—take a tremendous amount of interest in nothing. I looked at my rings and at my hair brushes. I looked at myself in the glass. I stood with my head against the pane, looking out at the garden. ”

“ When Shine left it he had gone down, passed the balcony where Stokes was waiting, and hearing his following footsteps, moved with that close imitation of Sybil’s gait to the summer-house. There the dim light and the drooping curls of his wig enabled him to carry through the deception. Stokes’ wild speech, followed by the drawing of the pistol, had terrified him. Confronted by a man armed and half-mad, panic had seized him and he had made a rush from the place.
So Joe had died, a body clad in gala dress swirling out on currents that would never bring him back. Anne said nothing. ”

“ From the stairs outside came a [Pg 152] faint creak, a pause and then again, step by step a bare or stockinged foot in gradual descent.
The big man arose as noiselessly as he could and made for the hall. But his bulk and his boots were not adapted to rapid movements or silent surprise. As he reached the hall he heard the pattering flight of light feet and cursed under his breath as he felt for the electric button. Her room—the one he had seen Miss Pinkney put her in—was just beyond the stair-head to the right. ”

“ At areaways red-faced women sat limp in loose clothing, and from open windows came the crying of tired little children. To leave Joe to this while she was basking in the delights of Gull Island—apart from anything he might do—it wasn’t fair. And then suddenly the expression of her face changed and she drew in from the window—Hugh Bassett was coming down the street. ”

“ Williams was unable to hide his elation. His idea, augmented by Shine’s, was a bull’s-eye hit, and his voice showed an exultant excitement as he called to Miss Pinkney to bring a sheet. Rawson’s satisfaction was less apparent, but his eye was alight with anticipation. If it was the boy, he had run back up-stairs, for no exit had been attempted through the kitchen. With the whole house astir he’d be afraid to come down and they had him safe as a rat in a trap. Impatient at the wait for Shine’s reappearance he left the room, saying he was going to the boat-house for a word with Patrick. ”