Miss Charteris

“ Charteris admitted, lazily; "but the blessed state of matrimony is liable to these mishaps. Let us be thankful that my wife's whim to visit her aunt has given us, at least, two perfect, golden weeks. Husbands are like bad pennies; and wives resemble the cat whose adventures have been commemorated by one of our really popular poets. They always come back."
Patricia communed with herself, and to Charteris seemed, as she sat in the chequered sunlight, far more desirable than a married woman has any right to be. ”

“ CHARTERIS. Ask Julia. (Paramore and Craven turn to Julia. Charteris remains doggedly looking straight before him.)
JULIA. It's quite true. He has been in love with me; he has persecuted me; and I utterly despise him.
GRAVEN. Don't rub it in, Julia: it's not kind. No man is quite himself when he's crossed in love. (To Charteris.) Now listen to me, Charteris. When I was a young fellow, Cuthbertson and I fell in love with the same woman. She preferred Cuthbertson. ”

“ Ebbsmith breaks from Charteris’ arm and throws herself into the arms of her husband. A smile spreads over the latter’s features as he realises the complete effectiveness of the cure he has practised upon his wife, of the stratagem by which he has won her away from Charteris forever, of the trickery by which he has shown Charteris up to her for the insincere philanderer he is, of the device of pretending to concur in her and Charteris’ plan to elope. He clasps her close to him and presses a kiss on her brow. ”

“ Who cares for temperament in a woman!"
Charteris assumed a virtuous expression. "I don't dare tell you," said he; "you forget I am a married man."
Then I frowned a little. I often resented Charteris's flippant allusion to a wife whom I considered, with some reason, to be vastly too good for her husband. And I considered how near I had come to remaining with the others at Willoughby Hall—for that new game they called bridge-whist! ”

“ Charteris, I could really bear the burden of such an honor without being crushed by it?"
"You can but try," he retorts, lightly. "England expects every man and every woman to do their duty."
"Then I am ready for the sacrifice," she laughs, as lightly.
He looks at her a moment in thoughtful silence.
"Well?" she asks, interpreting a question in his look.
"It is this, then, Reine: I am placed in an awkward position. How shall I introduce you—as Miss Langton, or as—as Mrs. Charteris?"
[Pg 65]
He flushes uncomfortably as the words leave his lips. His bride's face reflects the crimson glow. ”

“ One of the world's great bards has written: "The secret of genius is dogged persistence." Vane Charteris, toiling early and late in his dusty office for his little wife, finds it true. The laurels he would never have won in ease and indolence, begin to circle his brow with a chaplet that is the pride of his young wife's heart.
Yet he goes home one evening with a sigh instead of a smile for the dark-eyed wife who meets him in the [Pg 119] homely little parlor, made beautiful only by her beautiful presence.
"Reine, how lovely you are," he murmurs, bending to kiss the upturned lips. "Ah!" ”

“ She said, in that new, cold dispassionate voice:
“We shall want help—the odds are too great against two of us. I’ll get Mr. Lomas-Coper. He’s the only man here I could trust.”
“’Im?” spat the disgusted Orace. “That thunderin’ jelly-bag?”
“I know he’s not such an ass as he pretends to be,” said Patricia. “He’ll weigh in all right.”
They were nearing Bloem’s house at that moment, and a lean dark figure loomed startlingly out of the shadow of the hedge. A pencil of luminance leapt from Orace’s torch and picked up the pleasantly vacuous face of Algy himself. ”

“ The stipulation that Charteris should play only before prep. was rigidly observed, except when Merevale was over at the Hall, and the Sixth had no work. On such occasions Charteris felt justified in breaking through the rule. He had a gramophone, a banjo, a penny whistle, and a mouth organ. The banjo, which he played really well, was the most in request, but the gramophone was also popular. ”

“ Charteris' audience, though, were contending against the general human outflow and pushing toward the platform, for Fairhaven was proud of John Charteris now that his colorful tales had risen, from the semi-oblivion of being cherished merely by people who cared seriously for beautiful things, to the distinction of being purchasable in railway stations ”

“ Carn looked from one to the other; but Patricia, pulling her weight and more also, met the detective’s searching stare unabashed, and the Saint’s face displayed exactly what the Saint wanted it to display.
“I tried to tell you once,” Patricia pointed out, “only Mr. Templar interrupted.”
Simon flashed her a boatload of appreciation in a glance. Ye gods! What a girl! There wasn’t an actress in the world who could have taught her anything about the kind of acting that gets over without any stage effects—she had every woman in every Secret Service in Europe skinned a mile. ”

“ If he arrives, so much the better. I don’t know,” said Patricia slowly, “that I wouldn’t rather find the Tiger before Carn does.”
Orace, that simple soul, was amazed at the concentrated savageness of her low, even voice. Women, in his philosophy, did not behave like this. But Patricia had the gift of leadership, and he had ceased to question her authority. He made no comment.
“We must wait till they come in for the gold,” she said. “We might as well go back to the Pill Box and have dinner. We shall want all our strength.” ”

“ JULIA. No, really: you know it's against the rules of the club to coddle women in any way. Whoever is nearest to the door goes first.
CUTHBERTSON. Oh well, if you insist. Come, gentlemen: let us go to lunch in the Ibsen fashion—the unsexed fashion. (He goes out on the left followed by Paramore, laughing. Craven goes last. He turns at the door to see whether Julia is coming, and stops when he sees she is not.)
CRAVEN. Come, Julia.
JULIA (with patronising affection) . Yes, Daddy, dear, presently. (Charteris is meanwhile stealing to the right hand door.) Don't wait for me: I'll come in a moment. ”

“ They are without passion or imagination, cold and avaricious, and their women are like them. Their wit, when they have any, is of the kind that delights in carping, ironical raillery. Their minds,{286} when they are developed, are cast in a logical and scientific mould. Therefore it is that the representative writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at Chartres are Pierre Nicole, the moralist and theologian of the Port Royal School (Essais de Morale) ; Michel Félibien, the critical and scientific historian of Paris (Histoire de la Ville de Paris) ”

“ In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress- mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of all queens, but the most womanly of women, as we shall see ”

“ There we shall find her in her splendour on her throne, above the high altar, and still more conspicuously in the Rose of France in the north transept. Still again she is enthroned in the first window of the choir next the north transept. Elsewhere we can see her standing, but never does she come down to us in the full splendour of her presence. Yet wherever we find her at Chartres, and of whatever period, she is always Queen. Her expression and attitude are always calm and commanding. She never calls for sympathy by hysterical appeals to our feelings ”

“ The man who has heard his chaunts, breathing only celestial vows, is best able to conceive the love he manifested in honour of the Virgin.’
Under Fulbert, indeed, the school of Chartres became famous for its music and for its plain-song renderings of the sacred offices. ”

“ Is it possible, madam, said she, that the king should still continue to love? How could he take a fancy to one, who was so much older than himself, who had been his father's mistress, and who, as I have heard, is still such to many others?—'Tis certain, answered madam de Chartres, it was neither the merit nor the fidelity of the duchess of Valentinois, which gave birth to the king's passion, or preserved it; and this is what he cannot be justified in; for if this lady had had beauty and youth suitable to her birth, and the merit of having had no other lover ”

“ The Chartres apse is as entertaining as all the other Gothic apses together, because it overrides the architect. You may, if you really have no imagination whatever, reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; the feebleness of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulant or strychnine, and we shrink like sensitive-plants from the touch of a vision or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel a woman's taste, and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else. ”

“ She has been always the first town of Our Lady, the chosen citadel of the Virgin. The friars of the Middle Ages, who obtained the right of coining money, stamped on their coins the legend Prima Sedes Francie, and Charles-le-Chauve, when he presented to the town the Veil of the Blessed Mary, chose the Church of Chartres as the earliest and most august sanctuary of the cult of the Virgin. ”

“ For Chartres was the Lourdes of the Middle Ages. The maimed and the halt recovered their powers, leapt from the waggons and flung away their crutches; the blind received their sight, the sick were healed, and all joined, after returning thanks before the altar, in the task of building the house of their Redeemer.
You see their work, you behold the material in which they wrought, as you stand before the western façade [58] and gaze in wonder; for the stones, it seems, have become intelligent, and matter is here spiritualised. ”

“ Mademoiselle de Chartres was not ignorant of it; and he made her sensible at his return, that she was the cause of that deep melancholy which appeared in his countenance. He had so much merit and so much agreeableness, that it was almost impossible to make him unhappy without pitying him, nor could she forbear pitying him; but her pity did not lead to love. She acquainted her mother with the uneasiness which the Chevalier's passion gave her.
Madam de Chartres admired the honour of her daughter, and she admired it with reason, for never was anyone more naturally sincere ”

“ You had better stop here, once for all, unless you are willing to feel that Chartres was made what it is, not by artist, but by the Virgin.
If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and the sculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through the glass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servant of Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talking about it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be; one has no business to labour painfully to explain and prove to one's self what is as clear as the sun in the sky ”

“ It is the granary of France. Le blé c’est la Beauce et la Beauce c’est Chartres. [2]
And on every side of it, spread out in the summer time like a many-coloured carpet under the great dome of the sky, stretch the cornfields, cut by the black lines of the railway, or by the straight, disheartening lengths of roads which run beyond the distant horizon of monotonous level, to Dreux, to Orléans, to Paris. The twin spires of Chartres are the only landmark. The sole beauty in this country must be found in its fecundity ”

“ She does not assert herself; probably she intends to be felt rather than feared. Compared with the Greek Virgin, as you see her, for example, at Torcello, the Chartres Virgin is retiring and hardly important enough for the place. She is not exaggerated either in scale, drawing, or colour. She shows not a sign of self-consciousness, not an effort for brilliancy, not a trace of stage effect—hardly even a thought of herself, except that she is at home, among her own people, where she is loved and known as well as she knows them. The seven great windows are one composition ”

“ It was supplied by popular enthusiasm, inspired by religious fervour. For though the work of building, impeded by plague and famine, and a terrible fire which destroyed the town in 1134, went on slowly at first, in 1144 a great outburst of devotion occurred throughout the land. Whole populations arose and came to Chartres to labour at the work of God’s house. A noble rivalry urged every man to toil, and women even took their share in a burden which their faith rendered light, in a task which their devotion made both pleasant and honourable. ”

“ After the loss of her husband she retired from court, and lived many years in the country; during this retreat, her chief care was bestowed in the education of her daughter; but she did not make it her business to cultivate her wit and beauty only, she took care also to inculcate virtue into her tender mind, and to make it amiable to her. The generality of mothers imagine, that it is sufficient to forbear talking of gallantries before young people, to prevent their engaging in them; but Madam de Chartres was of a different opinion, she often entertained her daughter with descriptions of love ”

“ The duchess handed me a small tinder-box to enable me to light a wax-candle, and she went away with Camille. I remained alone locked up in the room, and at the end of three hours, just as I had completed my task, Madame de Polignac came for the parcel and I left the palace.
The Duchess de Chartres, daughter of the Prince of Conti, was twenty-six years of age. She was endowed with that particular sort of wit which renders a woman adorable. She was lively, above the prejudices of rank, cheerful, full of jest, a lover of pleasure, which she preferred to a long life. ”