Lady Gertrude

“ So her name was Gertrude.
They had still some distance to go, through narrow streets and alleys, before the woman announced that they had reached her house. "There is a light inside--perhaps it is mother, the child waked up I suppose. My mother lives up stairs," she explained, "my father is a shoemaker."
The window was so low that a child might have looked in easily, so he could overlook the whole room without difficulty.
"Stay," he whispered, holding Johanna's arm.
"O goodness! it is the young lady," she cried, "I hope she won't be angry."
But Frank Linden did not reply. ”

“ He had appointed a distant and elderly kinswoman, by name Miss Pendexter, as his daughter's household companion; and an old friend of his own, known to combine shrewdness with integrity, as her financial adviser. Motherless, country-bred, and homely-featured, Gertrude, on arriving at maturity, had neither the tastes nor the manners of a fine lady. Of a robust and active make, with a warm heart, a cool head, and a very pretty talent for affairs, she was, in virtue both of her wealth and of her tact, one of the chief figures of the neighborhood. ”

“ This was the impression Lady Gertrude's niece contrived to make on most people. It suited her very well and secured her many gifts and pleasures which would not otherwise have come her way. She had accepted Lady Gertrude's invitation to stay at Trenby Hall rather guardedly, in the first instance, but when, as the visit drew toward its end, her aunt had proposed that she should make her home there altogether she had jumped at the offer. ”

“ It is really inconsiderate of the old lady to impose her on you. Invent some excuse for keeping her away. I speak from experience, my love. Arthur invited a cousin once, you remember, I nearly died of vexation."
Gertrude laughed.
"Ah, Jenny," she said, shaking her head. The she hastened after her mother, who was already seated in the carriage. ”

“ Is Gertrude much worried?” asked Nell.
“Flossie has nearly cried herself sick, and Gertrude has bothered a good deal. But a lady has come⁠—⁠the summer boarder; only it isn’t the Miss Alfreton that you expected, but her sister, a Mrs. Bronson, and she’s a downright good sort, for she has been in the kitchen all the evening serving soup and toad-in-the-hole.” ”

“ It is a pleasure to see how the little fellow improves in the country air."
"Who lives in this wing?" inquired Jenny.
"Aunt Rosa."
"Good gracious! A sort of mother-in-law?" cried her sister in consternation.
Gertrude shook her head. "No, she is quite inoffensive, she belongs to the inventory--so to speak. But I would like Frank to have his mother here, the old lady is so alone and she is not very well."
Jenny laughed aloud, but Mrs. Baumhagen rustled so angrily into the next room that all the ribbons on her rather youthful toilette fluttered and waved in the air. ”

“ Go on as you have begun, and don't let him think he is to have it all his own way. Lovers are all very well, but husbands soon show their wives how cheap they hold them when they have won them all too cheap. Throw him aside in scorn! Let him not think or see that you care a snap of the fingers for him. That will rivet the fetters all the faster; and when you have got him like a tame bear at the end of a chain--why then you can make up your mind at leisure what you will end by doing."
Gertrude sprang up suddenly, and faced Lady Scrope with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes. ”

“ But Lady Northborough made up by her vivacity and high spirits for her husband’s absence. She was a typical American, highly educated, witty, fascinating, and sympathetic. She was not beautiful, but always exquisitely dressed, and dainty as a Dresden china statuette. This morning, in silver-gray brocade and rare old white lace, she looked a little picture as she chattered and smiled at her son during the drive.
“I’m just mad with anxiety to see your lovely Stella,” she was saying. “I’m so glad you are going to marry a beauty. I do love pretty women.” ”

“ She was fully resolved of one thing: that no man but Hilary Pritchard should be her husband; but she would never come to him with a stain upon her name.
Then, again, her reflections were disturbed by the memory of the gentle lady who believed her to be her daughter. How could she possibly desert her under any circumstances? Whatever the amount of her obligation toward Sir Philip, Stella realized that the love and duty she owed to Lady Gwendolen were none the less, but rather the more, urgent, should there, indeed, be no blood relationship between them. ”

“ A female child is born, after which event the projected return is indefinitely postponed. So much by way of proem. The opening of the story shows us Mrs St Clair, now a widow, and her daughter, Gertrude, a beautiful and blooming maiden, taking up their abode with the elderly and unmarried Lord Rossville, who recognises the young lady as heiress to his title and estates. Under his roof, attention is drawn to a likeness existing between Gertrude and the portrait of one Lizzie Lundie, a low-born beauty of a bygone day, who had sat as model for a painting in the Castle. ”

“ The rose is such a lady—
So stately, fresh, and sweet;
It joys to hold her image—
The rain pool at her feet.
They look such common lasses,
Those red pinks in a line;
The rose is such a lady—
So dignified and fine. ”

“ Opposite Lord Carthew, as he sat at table, there hung a portrait of a man in armor, whose sinister light eyes seemed to follow his every movement. Look which way he would, from Stella Cranstoun’s beautiful face to the doctor’s plump, bland visage, or Lady Cranstoun’s washed-out countenance, Lord Carthew found his gaze fascinated and held by the pale, square, inscrutable face of the man in armor, about whose narrow, close-shut lips a bitter smile seemed to be playing. ”

“ A man who writes tender verses while at the same time he is privately acquainting himself with the amount of the lady's fortune through an agent--that was a tragi-comedy indeed, that would make a good plot for a farce--and she was to be the heroine!
She kept the fragment of that dreadful letter. Then she wrote a note to her mother and one to Uncle Henry, then took out her watch and looked for a time-table.
Whither? The Berlin express which connected them with all the outer world was already gone. Then she must wait until tomorrow--and then? Somewhere she must go--she must be alone! ”

“ Lord Carthew knew nothing of the doctor’s musings. One thought alone possessed him. To see Stella as soon as possible, to talk to her, to draw her out of her reserve and gradually get her to confide in him. As if divining his wishes, Dr. Graham suggested an adjournment to the drawing-room, and proposed to Lady Cranstoun, who was reclining on a sofa, a game of chess. ”

“ The walls were painted in white and gold, the furniture was of old-fashioned shape, covered by day with chintz, and resplendent at night in amber satin. A grand piano and a harp seemed lost in the distant and ill-lighted recesses of the room, which curtained four long windows opening on to a stone terrace at the back of the house. Near a tall standard lamp Lady Cranstoun’s sofa was standing, and close by, on a cushion on the hearthrug, her slender arms clasping her knees, and her eyes fixed on the fire, Stella Cranstoun was seated, with the head of a handsome collie dog resting on her knee. ”

“ And she put the lilies of the valley in her dress, the verses in her pocket, took the key-basket and went to the dining-room once more on a tour of inspection round the table, and then as she had nothing to do for the moment, she knocked at Aunt Rosa's door, which was only separated from the dining-room by a small entry.
The old lady was sitting at the window making roses. There was to be a wedding in the village at Whitsuntide. A small man was sitting opposite her, who greeted the entrance of the young wife with a low bow. ”

“ You should by rights be tramping from door to door at the heels of some filthy caravan, selling brooms, and stealing chickens, with a hedge to sleep under, and the police on your track! Do you know what you are—you, with your white face, and your defiant airs and graces, who do not consider an earl’s son good enough for you, but must needs disgrace yourself by a servant-girl flirtation in the corridor with a man who will make your folly a smoking-room jest? You think yourself a duke’s grandchild, a Douglas by descent, and daughter to my wife, Lady Gwendolen. ”

“ Beyond her French and German masters, and the old vicar of Grayling, and myself, she has hardly had any acquaintance with the other sex. A more absolutely fancy-free young lady, I should say, never existed. But she has so much charm and individuality, as well as beauty, that when once she enters into social life in London, under the judicious guardianship of her grandmother, the Duchess of Lanark, there is not much doubt that suitors will not long be lacking. ”

“ Then on, to more open ground, past the village of Souza on its boulder-strewn hill, surrounded by groves of ilex and pine, overlooking wooded gorge and merry cascade; on, with the smoothly rounded snow mountain, and the peaked, richly coloured rocks ever before us—with sheets of blue and white anemone scattered upon the mossy ground at the foot of giant trees; ascending more and more steeply, with views ever more and more beautiful, into the enchanted forest, fir-cones crackling under the horses' feet, and thickly growing pines throwing shady tracery over the sunny pathway. ”

“ Steep rose the green hills above and below us, with the blue sea at every turn stretching wide before us, and bringing out into clearer prominence its three islands, whilst the opposite shore of Tuscany lay a soft blue line on the horizon. On the lower slope, groups of olive, orange, and lemon trees—the two latter in full fruit—and the sun shining gaily on the many golden balls; above us, banks of cystus, shining arbutus and Mediterranean heath, with foaming cascades pouring down from the rocky hillsides, and rose-coloured cyclamen and golden broom bending lovingly above their banks. ”

“ For more than an hour, a party of young men slowly paraded the village street, singing the same melancholy-sounding chant, sometimes in unison and sometimes in parts, but always ending in the same prolonged note. ”

“ The ascent to the top of the Col Sevi, 1600 feet high, was long and steep, with grand views, lying through many a wild and rugged hill varied by chestnut groves, through which gleamed the everlasting snow barriers on every side.
Then through ilex woods, soft and shady, with many a sylvan glade between their gnarled, huge, moss-hugged trunks; past the village of Renno hanging overhead, and other hamlets, to more barren hills, and on to the summit of the Col, where a new range of snow mountains lay before us, glistening in the hot sun and cool puffs of sudden wind. ”

“ The rocks, scattered about the little bay on which we entered, completely sheltered us from the village, and looked picturesquely black with the clear white foam dashing over them in the occasional gleams of a stormy sun. Regardless of the great blue-black curtain darkening the hills before us and spreading over half the sky, we flung ourselves, face downwards, upon the sands, and commenced an energetic search for shells. ”

“ Crushed but not quelled, ruined but not disheartened, decimated but never terrified, the Corsican nature, strong and simple, remained true to its universal instinct, the principle which was their very life and being, and which they imbibed with their mother's milk—love of country and love of liberty. ”

“ On first entering the defile, the view was lovely. Far away was a peep of the distant sea, before which stretched two ranges of blue and purple hills, set in a frame of steep grey rocks, green gorge, and foaming river. ”

“ Reaching the top of the last stony height, about six miles from Bonifacio, a splendid view lay spread before us. As far as the eye could reach the great Mediterranean glittered like a blue mirror to the horizon, with its white cliffs and low blue hills, surrounded by many small islands, while the white bastion walls of Bonifacio glistened in the noonday sun far off upon the mainland, overtopping all.
On our right rose the splendid rocks, black pointed and well-nigh inaccessible, upon which is situated the Hermitage de la Trinité. ”

“ The Ornano family was, in point of nobility, far superior to Sampiero's own, but the Corsican colonel's fame in courts and in the field was already too widely spread for him to be considered an unworthy son-in-law to any noble; whilst he himself, we may well believe, was of an appearance well fitted to succeed in winning the affections of any woman. He was a tall man, with the carriage and piercing eye of a soldier, and with dark curling hair and features of a stern nobility, that harmonized well with his character. ”

“ For miles on every side extended a vast unbroken plain, and the east coast lay before us spread out in sweeps of pale green marshy land, bright blue sea, and intersecting salt lakes. A little further on, Bastia herself came into view, standing white and picturesque against her brown rocks, and over her sunny sea, on which lay many a white-sailed vessel, unmoved by breath of wind or sway of tide in the hot calm of the June day, whilst the large village of Furriano, on an adjacent hill, looked greyly down from its cool green nest of foliage. ”