Lynette

“ The loose sleeve of thin black serge flowed away from the strong, finely moulded wrist; the white starched guimpe showed snowy between the drooping folds of the nun's veil.... These familiar things Lynette drank in with a sense of unspeakable content and pleasure. Then—her eyes opened widely, and she knew.
She was looking into eyes that had seen the Beatific Vision—great grey eyes that were unfathomable lakes of heavenly tenderness and love divine. And the face that framed them was a radiant pale splendour, indescribable in its glorious beauty, unfathomable in its fulfilled peace. ”

“ There were roses on the table, and her sensitive mouth smiled at them expressively. In one corner stood her easel, an old mahogany bureau held her painting kit, palettes, brushes, tubes, boards, canvases. It was delightful to think that she could put on her sun-hat, wander out into the great gardens, and express herself in all the colours that she loved. Lynette’s glowing head would come dancing to her in the sunlight. The Wilderness was still a fairy world, where mortals dreamed dreams. ”

“ Lynette ponders, and her fine brows knit. Vexed and indignant, Red Umbrella, scanning the thoughtful face, admits its youth, its high-breeding, its delicate, chiselled beauty, and the slender grace of the supple figure in the grey-blue serge skirt and white silk blouse; nor is she slow to appreciate the value of the diamond keeper on the slight, fine, ungloved hand that rests upon the sun-hot moss between them. ”

“ Lynette was thinking but one thing: "She was not afraid of this man; not afraid to be alone with him in pathless solitudes. She might choose to be elsewhere ... yet she was safe with him. For, above all, he was a man; and never need a true girl fear a true man." ”

“ Her intuition recognised the admirable husband in him. This middle-class man had a rich vein of sentiment running through his nature, and he was not too clever or too critical to tire.
Dusk began to fall, and the fire was burning low. It was the hour for memories, and into the dusk of that little suburban room, glided a subtle sense of other presences, and she found herself thinking of Canterton and the child. If she were to have a child like Lynette. But it could not be Lynette—it could not be his child, the child of that one man. She sat up, shocked and challenged. ”

“ He was still shouting in that wonderful, golden voice of his; to every name in a calendar not of saints he laid his tongue as he read Babe Deveril's title clear for him. And, name to name, Babe Deveril checked off with him, hurling back anathema and epithet as good as came his way.... Lynette understood that both men had forgotten her. To them, passion-gripped as they were, it was as though she did not exist and had never existed. And yet it was largely because of her that they were gathering themselves to fly at each other! Man inconsistent and therefore man. ”

“ It was the night of her last day at Latimer. She would be sorry to leave it, and yet, to-morrow she would be at Fernhill. Lynette’s glowing head flashed into her thoughts, and a rush of tenderness overtook her. If life could be like the joyous eyes of the child, if passion went no further, if all problems remained at the age of seven!
How would Canterton like the pictures she had painted? A thrill went through her, and at the same time she felt that the garden was growing cold. A sense of unrest ruffled the calm of the moonlit night. ”

“ She turned on him impatiently, being only too conscious of the fact that Lynette was his child, and not hers.
“How can you expect me to have any authority? And in the end the responsibility always rests with the woman.”
“Perhaps—perhaps not. Run along, old lady. I’ll come and say good night presently.”
Lynette walked off to the south door, having no desire to be kissed by Mrs. Brocklebank in the drawing-room. She turned and looked back once at her father with a demure yet inimitable twinkle of the eyes. Canterton was very much part of Lynette’s life. ”

“ Lynette Brooke had her point of view. Yet it remains that from two widely separated peaks two eager hearts may see the same sun rise.
"Tell me," he said once. "What manner of man is this Babe Deveril? I know him as a man may know a man; you know him otherwise. Tell me; what have you found him to be?"
Never would she have been Lynette, had she not been ever quick of instinct ... instinct leaping, never looking, yet so certain to strike true! She read the thought under a thought; there came a living, joyous gloating ”

“ The surface was hard, the poise unsympathetic.
“You ought to have good weather for your holiday. Where are you going?”
“Brighton!”
“Oh, Brighton!”
“We always go to Brighton!”
“A habit?”
“We are a family of habits.”
She held out a large and rather red hand to Lynette, but Lynette was an individualist. She, too, understood that Miss Vance was a habit, a time-table, a schedule, anything but a playmate. They went off together, Miss Vance with a last apprizing glance at Eve.
One woman’s attitude may have a very subtle influence on the mood of another. ”

“ The superb, unconscious cruelty of the act gives Lynette a little pang even as she goes on:
"She was not in the least shy. I think we should soon be very great friends. May her nurse bring her to see me sometimes? Most babies love flowers, and there is a garden full of them where I am staying. Do you live here?"
"Live here? Gracious, no!" Red Umbrella opens the round, brown eyes that Baby's are so unlike in shape and expression, and shrugs her pretty shoulders as high as the big ruby buttons that blaze in her pretty ears. ”

“ He found them with their heads together, auburn and black bent over Lynette’s drawing-book. He stood for a moment or two watching them, and listening to their intimate prattle. This girl who loved the colour and the mystery of life as he loved them could be as a child with Lynette.
“You seem very busy.”
Lynette jumped up.
“Daddy, come and look! Isn’t Miss Eve clever?”
For some reason Eve blushed, and did not turn to look at Canterton.
“Here’s Mr. Puck, and old Bruin, and Titania, and Orson, and the Devil Serpent. Miss Eve is just splendid at devils.”
“Is she? That’s rather a reflection.” ”

“ Then, their names called as they entered, came Enid and Elaine, each fair and sweet; and Vivien and Ettarre; then Lynette walking alone, with her saucy nose in the air and her flaxen curls spread out over her cream robe, a most bewitching sight. ”

“ She was sure in her sentiment, standing out for some ideal of sympathy that was fine and convincing to herself. Lynette appealed to her father, and to her father the case was carried.
He sided with Lynette, but not in Lynette’s hearing.
“What on earth is there to object to, Gertrude?”
“It is quite absurd, the child wanting to go into mourning because old Mrs. Carfax is dead.”
“Children have a way of being absurd, and very often the gods are absurd with them. The child shall have a black frock.”
Gertrude twitched her shoulders, and refused to be responsible for Canterton’s methods. ”

“ The Sisters were already in their places—a double row of black-draped figures, the Mother at the end of the first row, Lady Hannah in the chair beside her, where Lynette had always sat until now. It was not without a pang that the one saw her place usurped by a stranger; it was piercing pain to the other to feel the strange presence at her side. But something had already come between these two, dividing them. Something invisible, impalpable as air, but nevertheless thrusting them apart with a force that might not be resisted. ”

“ You’re not a great friend of Miss Eve’s, like me. She’s the dearest friend in the world.”
The governess felt that the dress was eccentric, and yet that Lynette had a sentimental conviction that carried her cause through. Miss Vance happened to be in a tactless mood, and appealed to Gertrude Canterton, and to Gertrude the idea of Lynette going into mourning because a certain young woman had lost her mother was whimsical and absurd. ”

“ Lynette, though he had ignored her presence or [Pg 268] because of this very attitude of his, could not hold back from exclaiming:
"He has two wounds now! Another shot in the back! And he gives them less attention than a sane man would give a cut finger!"
"The old fool! No more sense than a rabbit! Shot again? Twice in the back? Plugged a second time? The old fool!"
Like a flash in his quick movements he was down from the saddle; he left his horse with dragging reins to wait for him; over the uneven ground he came forward rapidly, queerly, hopping like an oddly oversized bird. ”

“ A swift change of sudden, quickening, poignant emotion passes over the still face. A sudden swelling of the white throat, a rising mist in the golden eyes, suggests to Lessie [Pg 646] that she has been fortunate enough to touch upon a painful subject, and that possibly this presumptuous young woman who has pitied a Viscountess may be going to cry! But Lynette drives back the tears.
"She was the Reverend Mother, the Mother-Superior of the Convent where I lived at Gueldersdorp." ”

“ Then Lynette cried: "Well done, knave; you are as noble as any knight. Now do not shame me; I said you would win. Strike! strike! and the wind will change again."
Gareth struck harder, he hewed great pieces of armor from the old knight, but clashed in vain with his sword against the hard skin, until at last he lashed the Evening-star's sword and broke it at the hilt. "I have you now!" he shouted, but the cowardly knight of the Evening-star writhed his arms about the lad till Gareth was almost strangled. ”

“ So they told him, and related the great deeds he had done when he rode with the damsel Lynette.
“By my head,” said Sir Tristram, “he is a good knight and a big man of arms; and if he be young, he will yet prove a full noble knight.”
So Sir Tristram, Sir Ironside, Sir Persaunt, and Sir Perimones rode together to help Sir Gareth, who went on one side to repair his helm and drink water. And he gave his dwarf his ring to hold while he drank, and then forgot to get it again; of which the dwarf was glad, because he desired that Sir Gareth should be known. ”

“ And the beams of the sun fell upon the skirts of the forest so that all the thick foliage of the woodland was entirely bathed in that golden light. And the same light flashed upon the polished armor of the knight and shone here and there very gloriously as though several stars of singular radiance had fallen from heaven and had catched upon that lonely knight-rider, who drew rein at their approach and so sat watching their coming.
Then Lynette turned to Beaumains and she said: "Sir kitchen knave, look you! yonder is a right knight with whom you may hardly hope to have ado. ”

“ But now she was suddenly impatient to be gone, and went hurrying to a door which led into a hallway, the hallway in turn leading to her room at the back of the house.
"A woman," growled Timber-Wolf disgustedly, getting only a glimpse of a hastily departing figure. "It begins to look as though a man couldn't pick him a spot in the wilderness that the female didn't crowd in."
Lynette heard, and knew with a flash of resentment that he did not care whether she had heard or not, and that with the last word he would be turning to Deveril and forgetting that he had seen her. ”

“ There’s no logic anywhere. But she’d go raving mad. And I love her.” Little, aggressive Lynnette flushed all by herself. “Dick left me, in a sort of way, to his mother. He said: ‘Be sweet to her, Lynnette.’ Well,” Lynnette ended defiantly, “I reckon I can lie a good while longer, if it helps her.”
It is queer, considering what a small accident and what a second of time may end a life, that so many lives weather appalling shocks and years of heart-break. ”

“ For Shelley had been living at Lynton during the early days of his ill-fated first marriage with the Harriet; the cottage where they lived can still be seen, though much altered and modernized since the unhappy young man and woman tried to work out together a means of right living and mutual happiness, and made so tragic a failure of it.
It was to Lynton, too, that Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and Coleridge, came on a visit, and were so ravished by the beauty of the place that they were nearly decided to settle here, and might have founded a school of Devon poets instead of Lake poets. ”

“ A notion had been suggested to him, after your departure, that his sister had somewhat marred your peace at East Lynne, and he blamed you much, if it was so, for not giving him your full confidence on the point, that he might set matters on the right footing. But it was impossible, and there was the evidence in the note besides, that the presence of Miss Carlyle at East Lynne could be any excuse for your disgracing us all and ruining yourself."
"Do not let us speak of these things," said Lady Isabel, faintly. "It cannot redeem the past." ”

“ Lynnette answered slowly, “nothing definite. Sometimes I fancy that the identity wasn’t lost to everybody, over in France. That maybe the soldiers who—who brought the four boys from the cemeteries found something to mark them, or one of them, and just said nothing about it. Maybe one of those soldiers might come to you. Why,” exploded Lynnette, “two or three times when I’ve seen a young, military-looking chap coming down this street my heart has been in my mouth. I’ve said: ‘He’s the sign.’”
“You have?” cried the woman. And then, with her arms reaching: “You little Lynnette! You loved Dick.” ”

“ It is past nine, and I have not been to the office for a month."
The tears rose in her eyes. "I wish you would be always with me! East Lynne will not be East Lynne without you."
"I will be with you as much as ever I can, my dearest," he whispered. "Come and walk with me through the park."
She ran for her bonnet, gloves and parasol. Mr. Carlyle waited for her in the hall, and they went out together.
He thought it a good opportunity to speak about his sister. "She wishes to remain with us," he said. "I do not know what to decide. ”