Lady Maud

“ I can see as well from this high mound as from the castle, or church-steeple, my lady; it is so hard to climb."
"Maud, if you like not to mount, say so, and I will go myself. You are dainty, young mistress."
Maud obeyed instantly, though with sundry mutterings, which, well for her, her lady heard not; for the Lady Frances was somewhat shrewishly given, and could scold as if she had not been a princess, the rank and bearing of which she was most anxious to assume, and carry as highly as the noblest born in Europe.
"See you aught?" ”

“ For she had not been married to Leven four years without learning something of Asiatic practices, and she knew that there were more means of making a man tell a secret than by persuasion or wily cross-examination. It was all very well to keep within the bounds of the law and civilisation, but where the whole existence of her best friend was at stake, Lady Maud was much too simple, primitive, and feminine to be hampered by any such artificial considerations, and she turned naturally to a man who did not seem to be a slave to them either. ”

“ It is what every lady thinks, I'm sure. People have been coming perilously near calling me 'poor Lady Maud' these last two seasons, and now--yes! I am to marry Mr. Wilson--you know him, I think."
"Yes, I do know that fortunate man, and, pardon me, Lady Maud, but you and I have been confidential, haven't we? ever since in a tourbillon of white frills and blue sashes you chose to prefer my walnuts to other folks' sweeties at dessert. Now about Eustace. What is to become of him?" ”

“ Maud quivered in impotent resentment whenever she encountered those eyes. They could not look upon a woman with reverence.
He strolled into the room in her mother's wake, fondling a dark moustache, in evident good humour with himself and all the world.
Lady Brian ran to her daughter with all a girl's impetuosity. "My dear, it's all settled!" she declared. "Giles and I are going to be married, and we're all going to live at "The Anchor" with him. And dear little Bunny is to have the best ground-floor rooms. ”

“ Rufus Van Torp, nor one with whom any one short of a prize-fighter would meddle, nor one to haunt the dreams of sweet sixteen. It was not for his face that Lady Maud, good and beautiful, liked him better than any one in {53} the world, except her own father, and believed in him and trusted him, and it was assuredly not for his money. The beggar did not live who would dare to ask him for a penny after one look at his face, and there were not many men on either side of the Atlantic who would have looked forward to any sort of contest with him without grave misgivings. ”

“ Margaret noticed, too, that although Lady Maud was a very striking figure, she was treated with respect in places where the singer knew instinctively that if she herself had been alone she would have been afraid that men would speak to her. She knew very well how to treat them if they did, and was able to take care of herself if she chose to travel alone; but she ran the risk of being annoyed where the beautiful thoroughbred was in no danger at all. ”

“ To accept such an offer as he made, would mean that she must do something which she felt was dishonourable, if she gave 'honour' the meaning an honest gentleman attaches to it, and that was the one she had learned from her father, and which a good many women seem unable to understand. To refuse, was to deprive hundreds of wretched and suffering creatures of the only means of obtaining a hold on a decent existence which Lady Maud had ever found to be at all efficacious. ”

“ The only woman with whom the great singer was at all intimate was the Countess Leven, Lord Creedmore's daughter, generally called 'Lady Maud,' whose husband had been in the diplomacy, and, after vainly trying to divorce her, had been killed in St. Petersburg by a bomb meant for a Minister. The explosion had been so terrific that the dead man's identity had only been established by means of his pocket-book, which somehow escaped destruction. So Lady Maud was a childless widow of eight-and-twenty. ”

“ She's a perfect lady, and she always says the right thing and does the right thing. Besides, we're great friends, she and I. We get on beautifully.'
'You're a celebrity,' observed Lady Maud.
'So's Miss Donne, and a much bigger one. So's Logo, for that matter, but she doesn't think a great deal of Greeks. You're a sort of celebrity, too, and she's {289} perfectly delighted you're coming, because you're "Lady" Maud, and a Russian countess into the bargain. Then there's that other Russian—not that you're one, but you understand—Kralinsky is his name, Count Kralinsky. ”

“ She and Baraka and the young Primadonna represented well three of the possible types of beauty, very different from each other; so widely different that perhaps no two of them would be likely to appeal to one man, as mere feminine beauty, at the same period of his life.
Straight and tall in her mourning, Lady Maud went down the stairs of the hotel. As she was going out the hall porter raised his cap, and she stopped a moment and asked him which was the nearest way to the telegraph office. ”

“ A woman who has been married for years to such a man as Leven, and who tries to do good to those fallen and cast-out ones who laugh and cry and suffer out their lives, and are found dead behind the Virtue-Curtain, is not ignorant of the human animal's instincts and ways, and Lady Maud was not at all inclined to believe her friend a Galahad. In the clean kingdom of her dreams men could be chaste, and grown women could be as sweetly ignorant of harm as little children ”

“ The good-hearted, commonplace people of a pleasant country down the coast—which I will call Dreamland for convenience' sake—thought of Maud only as a gentle and humane little lady, with a comfortable income and a character above reproach. So Maud abode in peace with her maids at the seaside cottage, spending the still hours of Dreamland between her rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward and the conservatory of lily-like nuns on the hill toward the sea. ”

“ All Sunday’s children are very wise, and, if they are maidens, always uncommonly beautiful. Maud was, as a child, admired by every body; nay, it once went so far, as that a rich and beautiful, but very sickly-looking, lady of quality, who was travelling over the mountain in a fine carriage, tried hard to coax the poor mother out of her pretty Maud with a large sum of gold. When the maiden had fairly stepped out of child’s shoes, and was obliged to seek employment away from home, there was a mighty ado. ”

“ The thought concerned a third person, and one who {47} rarely allowed himself to be overlooked; no less a man, in fact, than Mr. Rufus Van Torp, the American potentate of the great Nickel Trust, who was Lady Maud's most intimate friend, and who had long desired to make the Primadonna his wife. He had bought a place adjoining Lord Creedmore's, and there had lately been a good deal of quite groundless gossip about him and Lady Maud, which had very nearly become a scandal. The truth was that they were the best friends in the world, and nothing more ”

“ She flung Lady Hartledon's arm from her. Her voice rose to a shriek.
"Maude is not Lady Maude?"
Val shook his head sadly.
"And your children are lords and ladies and honourables," darting a look of consternation at Anne, "whilst my daughter's—"
"Peace, Lady Kirton!" sternly interrupted Val. "Let the child, Maude, be Lady Maude still to the world; let your daughter's memory be held sacred. The facts need never come out: I do not fear now that they ever will. I and my wife and Thomas Carr, will guard the secret safely: take you care to do so."
"I wish you had been hung before you married Maude!" ”

“ Maud, as she walked away, hardly knew whether to be pleased or not. "She saw I looked like a lady, and thought I could not be one honestly. I'll show them!"
She knew as few men as women. She sometimes went to the social gatherings affected by her father's friends, Odd Fellows' and Druids' balls and the festivities with which the firemen refreshed themselves after their toils and dangers. But her undeniable beauty gained her no success. She seemed to take pains to avoid pleasing the young carpenters, coachmen, and journeyman printers she met on these occasions. ”

“ Blackdeed," said the lady of the house, "one would expect that she would open her heart to her own flesh and blood, rather than to a comparative stranger like yourself."
"The idiosyncrasies of temperament, madam," said I, "are difficult to explain. The mere accident of relationship will not necessarily give a similarity of disposition. Occasionally we do find one in a family totally unlike the rest, and therefore misunderstood by them. The reason why Miss Maud takes no interest in what is conventionally termed society is that she feels above it. ”

“ She does not make rules. She only expects what the inborn instinct of a true lady would prompt you to do or to be. I am sure that after this explanation [92] none of you will fail to keep tryst with her expectations."
That was the only public reference to Maud's escapade. She left the room with a very red face when the class was dismissed. The little story put her so plainly in the wrong before the other girls that it made her cross and uncomfortable.
Every member of the class had five marks to her credit, and Betty was the lucky one whose almost literal reproduction of the story gave her ten. ”

“ ON an early June evening Rainbow Valley was a entirely delightful place and the children felt it to be so, as they sat in the open glade where the bells rang selfishly on the Tree Lovers, and the White Lady shook her green tresses. ”

“ Her attention was attracted to Abdul, then young and handsome (he has often assured me) as the morning star, tall as the palm-tree, and strong as the whirlwind. Abdul was at that time in great trouble; his favorite wife had died, leaving him the one daughter of his house, Zuleika, then a child of five. Instead of intrusting her to the care of the women, Abdul was always with the little girl, who was as dear to him as the spring of water in the desert. Lady Margaret was struck by the devotion of this young father to his child, and became deeply interested in the pair. ”

“ But oh! what a lot of flowers there were to be had, and how lovely a garden might be if only—well, if only one had a real gardener, money, the sunny border, good soil, and—if they all came up!
And what flowers had I omitted? Of simple things that even an Ignoramus may have heard. There were all the poppy tribe, Iceland, Shirley, the big Orientals, Californian, though these are not poppies proper at all; verbena, the very name smelt sweet; gypsophila, a big word, but I knew the dainty, grass-like flower from London shops; penstemons, carnation, scabious, or lady's pincushions. ”

“ Oh! it was splendid to be in the toyshop the day before Christmas! All the tin soldiers stood up so straight and tall, looking as if they were just ready to march when the big drums and the little drums, which hung over their heads, should call them.
The rocking horses, which are always saddled, were waiting to gallop away. The tops were anxious to spin, and the balls really rolled about sometimes, because it was so hard for them to keep still.
The fine lady dolls were dressed in their best. One of them was a princess, and wore a white satin dress, and had a crown on her head. ”

“ Each day Robert put the nuts nearer the house.
They named the squirrel Lady Gray.
One day Robert’s mother sat down in a chair on the porch. She put some nuts on the floor and kept very still.
After a while Lady Gray came up on the porch. She looked at Robert’s mother, then she took a nut and ran away as fast as she could.
By and by Lady Gray became so gentle that she would hunt for nuts in their pockets.
One morning Father put a nut on his shoulder. Lady Gray jumped on Father’s shoulder and ate the nut. How they all laughed. ”

“ Billy Bundy [aside to Flossie Fixit] . This is no joke. What have you done? The poor Queen may die or go mad. If that is a false report, the one who started the lie deserves himself to be burned up in the fire. Lying is never right.
Thomas Page. It is only a proof of our stupidity.
Music: “Lady Autumn.”
Billy Bundy [exit and soon returns with Santa Claus, whom he ushers up to the Queen] . Santa Claus, we are afraid the Queen will die. Won’t you try to comfort her?
Santa Claus lays a gentle hand on the Queen’s shoulder. Shows her the greatest sympathy. ”

“ I should think the Almighty must smile sometimes at the very contrariness of us."
He patted her shoulder as she lifted her head, looking at her with his keen grey eyes that held humour as well as sympathy.
"You'll have plenty of solitude in this establishment, anyhow," he said. "You can soak yourself in it all day long. There's a library that may amuse you, but that's all I can offer in the way of entertainment."
"Oh, I don't want entertainment," Maud assured him.
"You're singularly unlike your mother," was Uncle Edward's comment. ”

“ Reine can only repeat, in gentlest sympathy.
Maud gives her an angry glance through her tears.
"Sorry," she says. "Sorry! Why should you be? Your fortune is built on the wreck of mine."
"Oh, Maud, do not say so," the girl cries, deeply pained. "Indeed, indeed, I do not want the money. I will ask Uncle Langton to give it all to you. I have Vane, I care for nothing else."
"You love him?" Maud says, with lifted brows, slightly incredulous.
"Yes," with a deep, beautiful blush.
"You cannot suppose that he cares for you," Maud says, with subdued contempt. ”