Miss Bates

“ Miss Bates was assigned to it.
"She had come from California, and was unknown here. She proved to be handsome, fiery, forceful, and very talented. She was a revelation to the first audience, and it was disposed to go wild over her.
"Maybe it would have been better for Miss Rehan if the part had been given to her. Perhaps she had disliked to enact a wicked woman. Anyway, she had chosen instead to appear as a vain, frivolous, but clean and cheerful, wife of a London tradesman. ”

“ Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married. Miss Bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour ”

“ Rangely!" she cried. "How did you get into the room without my knowing? How horrid of you to surprise me like that!"
"But think how charming it is for me," he responded with an elaborate air of gallantry. "It is so delightful to see you on a pedestal."
"Meaning that I am no better than a graven image?" she demanded with a smile. "If that is the best you can do, I may as well come down."
She held out her hand for his, and then sat down, displaying one of the fascinating slippers, and the openwork instep of her silk stocking, through the meshes of which the pearly skin gleamed evasively. ”

“ Then the hands of a man clutched the farther edge of the table, and slowly and evidently with infinite difficulty a figure rose and the dark face of Bates, with eyes blurred and staring strangely, confronted me.
He drew his body to its height, and leaned heavily upon the table. I snatched a candle and bent toward him to make sure my eyes were not tricking me.
“Mr. Glenarm! Mr. Glenarm!” he exclaimed in broken whispers. “It is Bates, sir.”
“What have you done; what has happened?” I demanded.
He put his hand to his head uncertainly and gaped as though trying to gather his wits. ”

“ The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron.
"I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates—oh, here comes Mr. Bates now."
Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundry and looked Wilkins up and down.
"Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply.
"For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins said quietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself."
His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair that could not possibly concern him—yet the warning missed Bates somehow. ”

“ very well,” exclaimed Miss Bates, “then I need not be uneasy. 'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body's assent) —Do not you all think I shall?”
Emma could not resist.
“Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.”
Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; ”

“ Bates marked how her voice broke, He took a step after her, as she went to the settle.
“Dear madam, you deserve to be the happiest rather than the most wretched of your sex,” he said—his voice was also very soft and low.
Kitty turned to him, crying quickly: “And I should be so if—” here she sighed—it seemed to Mr. Bates quite involuntarily. “Pardon me: I—I—that is—sometimes the heart forces the lips to speak when they should remain silent. A woman is a simple creature, sir.”
“A woman is a very fascinating creature, I vow,” cried Mr. Bates, and he felt that he was speaking the truth. ”

“ She was as joyous as a child, her cheeks flushed with eagerness and her lips parted with laughter. She was a being as far removed as could well be imagined from the serene, pensive maiden who had watched the Baron von Waldstein ride out of the pine forest below the castle slope so few short weeks ago. Her mouth had shaped itself to a new seductiveness, her eyes had kindled with a new and less heavenly lustre, and her bosom had swelled into a new fulness. ”

“ And looking towards the mid-parlor door: "'As 'e come doon yet?" he inquired.
"Ay, a goodish bit sin'," Miss Bates said. "Bud ah thought it was women 'at did all gossipin'!" she declaimed angrily, seeing the blessed standard of intelligence-bearer thus being wrenched from her grasp and carried into the Spawer's breakfast-table by another. And raising her voice more loudly as the figure of Dixon disappeared from the kitchen on its coveted errand: "Ay, ye can talk aboot women talkin', mah wod! ”

“ Listening, Bates burst into a roar of astonished enthusiasm. “What a dog it is!” he cried. “John Rex, John Rex, you were never made to be a convict, man!”
Rex smiled. “Good-bye, Mr. Bates, and God preserve you!”
“Good-bye,” says Bates, rubbing his hat off his face, “and I—I—damme, I hope you'll get safe off—there! for liberty's sweet to every man.”
“Good-bye, prisoners!” says Sylvia, waving her handkerchief; “and I hope they won't catch you, too.”
So, with cheers and waving of handkerchiefs, the boat departed. ”

“ Bates dropped her voice. "Did you ever have a private secretary?"
"Me?" called Jane. "I'm my own."
"Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't ever change—no matter how many engagements and appointments and letters and dates you come to have. You'll never spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad enough—but, thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men servants are bad enough—every time I want to stir in my own house I seem to have a footman on each toe and a butler standing on my train; however, people in our position—well, Granger insists, you know. ”

“ Mr. Bates himself spent very little time in his wife's box. He lounged on one of the springy sofas in the narrow lobby behind, or leaned over the burnished barriers of other boxes to talk murmurously with other magnates about the Stock Exchange or the volume of traffic. He was a grave and somewhat inexpressive person, with reticent eyes and snow-white bunches of side-whiskers, and a rather cold and impassive manner. His wife followed his peregrinations with an indulgent eye.
"Poor Granger," she said to Jane; "this thing tires him more and more every year. So I give him plenty of leeway. ”

“ She secretly resolved to meet the lawyer with an indifference to which his should be as nothing; to be colder than ice, as unconcerned as a statue, and as firm as the Pyramids. Raising her eyes at this point of her revery, she saw her lover coming towards her down the village street. She felt a glow of pleasure in spite of herself. With a girl like Patty, no method of wooing could have been more effectual than that which circumstances had forced upon the lawyer, although he had felt keenly the loss of her society. ”

“ About half past two o'clock Rosa brought me a note, and said:—
"That Thurston girl left it, and told me not to give it to you till three o'clock; but if I don't give it to you now, I know I'd forget it."
I opened the note without thinking anything about the time. It was written in Kathie's uneven hand, and blotched as if it had been cried over. This is what it said:—
Dear Miss Ruth,—This letter is to bid you good-by. You are the only one in the world I love, and nobody loves me. I cant stand you to love that baby better than me, and God is so angry it dont make any difference what I do now. ”

“ He shook his head.
"You forget," he answered, "that I am a deacon. At the Clergy House we do not read novels."
"How little you must know of life," returned she.
There was a silence of some moments. The train rushed on, past fields desolate under patches of snow, and stark, leafless trees; over rivers dotted with cakes of grimy ice; between banks of frost-gnawed rock. The landscape in the dim January afternoon was gray and gloomy; and as day declined everything became more lorn and forbidding. Maurice turned away from the window, and sighed. ”

“ He had surprised Rangely kissing the hand of that lady with an air of devotion so warm that the blood of the young deacon rose in resentment which he supposed to be entirely disapproval. He was in a state of mind which made him especially sensitive to any suggestion of love; and the sight of any man caressing the hand of a beautiful woman could not but set his heart throbbing with disconcerting rapidity. In his world even the touch of a woman's fingers was almost a forbidden thing, and to kiss them an act not to be so much as imagined. ”

“ The reminder, with all its suggestiveness, was too poignant; I ameliorated my life by putting it up here out of sight."
She did not question him further, but, gathering up her dress, turned and went down the next flight of stairs, which brought her to a landing eight or ten feet from the floor of the studio. There she turned again and looked back at him descending. She almost seemed to herself not to speak, yet by some inward volition her lips formed the words:
"Hope is only a bubble, yet it rims with rainbows whatever we see mirrored in it." ”

“ Spokesly felt like a little social diversion.
"Busy?" he enquired, thrusting his curiously ill-balanced features into the port and smiling. Mr. Bates's smile was unfortunate. Without being in any way insincere, it gave one the illusion that it was fitted on over his real face. A long, sharp nose projecting straight out from a receding brow nestled in a pomatumed and waxed moustache, and his eyes, of an opaque hazel, became the glinting centres of scores of tiny radiating lines. ”

“ In this joyous mood she came to the studio. A sudden thought darted through her mind, with no apparent connection, of the talk of the night previous, and for an instant her face clouded; but the exhilaration of the morning and the reaction from the sad, overstrained state in which her husband had left her, both helped her to throw off all mournful thoughts. Ninitta had not arrived, and Mrs. Greyson busied herself about the bas-relief, preparing for work. Suddenly the tap of Grant Herman sounded upon her door. ”

“ May started up, her eyes dilating.
"Oh, how did you know?" she demanded.
"The Count thinks the most horrible things," the widow went on mercilessly. "You know what foreigners are. It wouldn't have been so bad if it were an American."
Poor May put her hands together with a woeful gesture as if she were imploring mercy.
"Oh, is it the Count really?" she cried. "I saw that he had a red carnation in his buttonhole yesterday, but I hoped that it was an accident."
"A red carnation?" repeated Mrs. Neligage.
"Yes; that was the sign by which I was to know him. I said so in that letter." ”

“ The sky was cloudless, the grass and foliage yet untouched by frost, but beginning to show russet tints of ripeness. The only sound which came to the maiden's ears was the soft purling of the brook beneath her feet as it flowed among the sedges and alders. Now and then a dragon-fly flitted like a flash across; and occasionally a minnow, with the gleam of a dark back or red-tipped fin, darted through the dusky water.
Patty was out of sympathy with the peaceful scene. Such a restless mood had seized her as she seldom experienced. ”

“ But old Blue-beard himself who hadn’t been away a week!
He kissed his wife, and, after a brief pause, said, smiling blandly:
“I’d like my keys, my dear.” He saw a tear upon her cheek,
And guessed the truth. She gave him all but one. He scowled and grumbled:
“I want the key to the small room!” Poor thing, she could not speak!
He saw at once the stain it bore while she turned pale and paler,
“You’ve been where I forbade you! Now you shall go there to stay!
Prepare yourself to die at once!” he cried. ”

“ A carpenter of the name of Bates was called in, so distant a relative of Mrs Bowater's apparently that she never by nod, word, or look acknowledged the bond. Mr Bates held my landlady in almost speechless respect. "A woman in a thousand," he repeatedly assured me, when we were grown a little accustomed to one another; "a woman in ten thousand. And if things hadn't been what they was, you may understand, they might have turned out different. Ah, miss, there's one looking down on us could tell a tale." ”

“ Her thoughts whirled through her head as the band of the Wild Huntsman, tempest-driven, might sweep through the forest. Had she forgotten, then, her love for her husband, she questioned herself, or was it that she had been bewitched and entangled perchance in the meshes of wicked sorcery? Surely, could she once take shelter in the arms of Albrecht and feel his strong clasp about her, she should be safe from these wild and sinful thoughts. She fled ever faster, hearing in the echoes of the hoof-beats of her own palfrey the trampling of Count Stephen's steed behind her. ”

“ Good-by. Pity, great pity, you weren't at Oxford, Mr. Taberman. It would have done you good, made a man of you."
"Not if Harvard's failed to," retorted Jerry loyally. "Good-by, and good luck. Hope we'll meet again some day."
They shook hands, and Mr. Wrenmarsh and Jack descended to the waiting cutter.
"Adio, Signor'," called out old Gonzague, who was standing by the main-rigging.
"A riverderla forse" returned the collector from the stern-sheets of the cutter.
"Il mondo è piccolo, Signor'. Spero," answered the Provençal.
"Oars!" cried Jack. "Bear away,—let fall,—ready,—pull." ”