Miss Lawton

“ You and Nonna Angelique here need no plates to dress Shakspere's people by, and you won't be so cross when you see your new Juliet! Come now, Madame, no one knows better than you do how important is the setting of a jewel! Oh, I know what that shrug means and that 'la, la, la!' But as a just woman you must at least see my young Capulet before you condemn her. Miss Lawton," he continued, "please remove your jacket. Thanks! And now take off your veil and hat, please!" ”

“ Filing clerks, stenographers, secretaries, switchboard operators, telegraphers, even governesses. We have never had a failure, and I think it is because Miss Lawton gives not only her personal attention, but real love and faith to each girl. She is––wonderful.”
The face of the young woman was rapt as she spoke, and Blaine could guess without further explanation that she herself was a protégée of Miss Lawton’s, and a grateful one––unless she were playing a part. If so, she was an actress of transcendent ability.
“You say that you have never had a failure. ”

“ It is from Miss Lawton's maid, and she was told to write, because Miss Lawton knew I should be so grieved if I heard about her on a sudden," said the girl, her tears flowing afresh.
"It is not likely the family will want you going at such a time, Fanny. If the young lady has been kind, that is no reason you should take liberties. I do not see that I ought to let you do it," returned Mrs. Crook.
"Oh, but, please ma'am, Miss Lawton wants me to go, and sent word that I am to ask your leave. And there is a message for you too. ”

“ Horace stopped the lad, and took from the top of the heap two of the best of the fowls.
“Here, Ben,” he said, “take these home with you. We’ve got more than we know what to do with. We should only give them away to people who didn’t need them.”
Lawton had been moved almost to tears by the force of his self-depreciatory emotions. His face brightened now on the instant, as he grasped the legs of the turkeys and felt their weight. He looked satisfiedly down at their ruffling circumference of blue-black feathers, and at their pimply pink heads dragging sidewise on the snow. ”

“ No man could have so clear a skin and be so well-groomed at six in the morning if he drank or gambled. Alexander Groome had done both and she knew the external seals.
"Is Aileen Lawton a friend of yours?" she asked sharply.
"I have met Miss Lawton at a number of dances but she has not done me the honor to ask me to call."
"I think the more highly of you. Judge Lawton is an old friend of mine. His wife, who was much younger than the Judge, was an intimate friend of my daughter, Mrs. Abbott. Alexina and Aileen have grown up together. I find it impossible to forbid her the house. ”

“ She continued, and Harry Lawton continued, and they met.
Harry Lawton had known Eudora at once. She looked the same to him as when she had been a girl, and he looked the same to her when he spoke.
“Hullo, Eudora,” said Harry Lawton, in a ludicrously boyish fashion. His face flushed, too, like a boy. He extended his hand like a boy. The man, seen near at hand, was a boy. In reality he himself had not changed. A few layers of flesh and a change of color-cells do not make another man. He had always been a simple, sincere, friendly soul, beloved of men and women alike, and he was that now. ”

“ Jessica hurriedly took off her hat and cloak. Reuben Tracy had come to see her!
It was her stepmother who climbed the stairs to notify her, looking more lank and slatternly than ever, holding the bedroom door wide open, and saying sourly: “There’s a man down-stairs to see you already,” as if the visit were an offence, and Jessica could not pretend to be surprised. “Yes, I saw him,” she answered, and hurried past Mrs. Lawton, and down to the gaunt, dingy front room, with its bare walls, scant furniture, and stoveless discomfort, which not even Samantha dared call a parlor. ”

“ The man at the window scowls upon the just and the unjust with impartial incivility.”
“Just wait,” continued Miss Tabitha, impressively, “wait till you have heard all! This girl—Jess Lawton, they call her—drove home on the express-sleigh with her father right in broad daylight. And who do you think followed up there on foot—in plain sight, too—and went into the house, and stayed there a full half hour? Why, the immaculate Mr. Tracy! ”

“ John Lawton, Sr., had been a shrewd, far-sighted, honorable man, a hard worker, who held fast to what he earned until it could earn too. Strong and self-denying, he yet fathered a son who seemed to have been born for the express purpose of being fleeced. Honest, honorable, temperate, moral, without a single vice, possessing most of the virtues, he was nevertheless that piteous creature—the well-intentioned but unsuccessful man. ”

“ That is the most difficult part of all, Miss Lawton. You must obtain the positions for them. These three 73 men who stand in loco parentis toward you, as you say, and your spiritual adviser, Dr. Franklin, who so obviously wishes to ingratiate himself with them, would none of them refuse a request of this sort from you at this stage of the game, particularly if they are really engaged in a conspiracy against you. ”

“ Her thoughts came back to her father. They had been out there a very long time—too long, and—and what was that man—the purser—doing? Handing an envelope to a big man already in cap and ulster, and calling—could she be right—calling: "Miss Lawton? Is a Miss Sybil Lawton here?" The pilot had been dropped half an hour [Pg 366] or more ago. Why—why, what was this? An envelope thrust into her unwilling hand, and the purser was away, calling for a Mr. Pemberton Something, and waving one last missive aloft for its claimant.
"Dorothy!" gasped the old man, and closed his eyes a moment. ”

“ He opened a lower drawer in his massive desk and, drawing from it a business-like looking revolver of large caliber, presented it to the lawyer. With a warm hand-clasp he dismissed him, and, going to the telephone, called up Anita Lawton’s home.
“I want you to attend carefully, Miss Lawton. I 112 am speaking from my office. A man will be here with me in a few minutes, and I shall seat him close to the transmitter of my ’phone, leaving the receiver off the hook. Please listen carefully to his voice. ”

“ Horace pleaded, with alert eyes resting on her face. He paused only for an instant, and then, just as the tremor arising in his heart had reached his tongue, added earnestly, “For it is a Mauverensen I wish to marry.”
Mrs. Minster looked at him with no light of comprehension in her glance. “It can’t be our people,” she said, composedly, “for Anthony has no daughters. It must be some of the Schenectady lot. We’re not related at all. They try to make out that they are, but they’re not.” ”

“ A faint, reproachful smile accompanied a second shake of the head.
"Is it——" started Leslie.
"It's poverty!" gasped John Lawton. Then, having regained his power of speech, he went on: "Don't ask me to condemn my girl to poverty for life. Love sweetens the draught, but the bitterness is there all the time! Wait, my boy, wait! It is not for her alone I speak! Spare yourself the torment, the shame, the pain of denying to the woman that you love the little fripperies and follies and small luxuries that she craves as a flower craves sunshine! There's no pain like it in the world! ”

“ The Canadians, in a body, had gone with their escort to the row of new cottages which the company had hired for them, followed by a diminishing throng of hostile men and boys. There were numerous personal incidents to relate, and the two sisters listened with deep interest to the whole recital.
When it was finished the girl still sat about, evidently with something on her mind. At last, with a blunt “Can I speak to you for a moment?” she led Jessica out into the shop. There, in a whisper, with repeated affirmations and much detail, she imparted the confidential portion of her intelligence. ”

“ I will not ask your daughter to commit herself until she has had time and chance to know me through and through. It would not be fair to her otherwise. To pick a husband is the one grand, irrevocable step in a young girl’s life. Its success means bliss, content, sunshine; its failure means all that is the reverse. Therefore, I say, she cannot have too much information, too many advantages, to help her in her choice.”
Thus it came to be understood that Mrs. Minster was to say nothing, and was not to seem to make more of Horace than she had previously done. ”

“ Do you mind? I’m through! If there’s got to be any more weeping, they’re the ones that’ll do it!”
She ground her teeth together as she spoke, as if to prevent a further outpouring of angry words. All at once she stopped, on some sudden impulse, and looked her half-sister in the face. It was a long, intent scrutiny, under which Lucinda flushed and fidgeted, but its result was to soften Jessica’s mood. She resumed the walk again, but with a less energetic step, and the hard, wrathful lines in her face had begun to melt. ”

“ The sarcasm was framed in pleasantry, and Miss Tabitha took it in smiling good part, with no further pretence of reservation.
“Well, then, you must know that Ben Lawton—he’s a shiftless sort of coot who lives out in the hollow, and picks up odd jobs; the sort of people who were brought up on the canal, and eat woodchucks—Ben Lawton has a whole tribe of daughters. Some of them work around among the farmers, and some are in the button factory, and some are at home doing nothing; and the oldest of the lot, she ran away from here five years ago or so, and went to Tecumseh. ”

“ Jessica was glad that so splendid an equipage should have drawn up at her door, with a new-born commercial instinct, even before she recognized either occupant of the sleigh.
“That’s Kate Minster,” said Samantha, still with the hat of her dreams on her head, “the handsomest girl in Thessaly, and the richest, and the stuck-up-edest. Cracky! but you’re in luck!” ”

“ Well, his wife—who was his cousin, Annie Fairchild, and who took the Burfield school after I left it to study law—she happens to be an angel. She is the sort of woman who, when you know her, enables you to understand all the exalted and sublime things that have ever been written about her sex. Well, a year or so after she married Seth and went to live in Tecumseh, she came to hear about poor Jessica Lawton, and her woman’s heart prompted her to hunt the girl up and give her a chance for her life. ”

“ During these spells of composing he would see no one, read no letters, but write on and on, eating sparingly, sipping his coffee, and refreshing his jaded anatomy by taking a bath, in which he would lie for a whole hour, plunged in meditation. After his voluntary seclusions, he suddenly reappeared in his usual haunts, active and feverish as ever, note-book ready to hand, in which he jotted down his thoughts, discoveries, and observations for future use. On its pages were primitively outlined the features of most of the women of his fiction. ”

“ Lawton's face.
If his chair had been of hot iron, he could not have moved more quickly. Almost the same moment, Mr. Lawton's pistol was in my father's hand, cocked and primed and pointed at Mr. Sims.
"Brutus," said my father, "unburden Mr. Sims of his weapons, Lawton, a breath of night air may relieve you. Let us go to the window and reflect on the slip that may occur between the container and the nose. My son, give Mr. Lawton your arm. Assist me to open the shutters. Now Mr. Lawton, call to your men. Tell them they may go. Louder, louder, Mr. Lawton. Surely your voice has more strength. ”

“ Captain Lawton and another man who had helped in the production of the piece were dining with us, and we were then going on to our box at the theatre.
At dinner Viola seemed to regain some of her old gay spirits, and the light rose colour I loved crept back into her cheeks as she laughed and talked with Lawton seated on her right hand. I had always thought him a particularly handsome fellow, and to-night it struck me suddenly what an extremely attractive man he must be in a woman's eyes. ”

“ All the annoyance she had been nursing fled on the instant. Her eyes moistened, and she laid her hand softly on the other’s arm.
“You at least mustn’t think harshly of me,” she said with a smile. “That would be too sad. I would give a great deal if the furnaces could be opened to-morrow—if they had never been shut. Not even the girls whose people are out of work feel more deeply about the thing than I do. But—after all, time must soon set that right. Tell me about yourself. You are not looking well. Is there nothing I can do for you?” ”

“ You brought the wolf to bay and drew the sword of justice!"
Mr. Lawton half started from his seat.
"Be still, Shelton," he snapped, "or I'll have them gag you."
My father clenched his fist, drew a deep breath, and his voice lost its strident note.
"Ah, Lawton, Lawton," he said. "Will you always be impetuous? Will you never be subtle, but always crude, always the true rough diamond with the keen edge? No, you won't gag me, Lawton.
"And so you will send me to France, Jason, and my son too, criminals to justice. It is thoughtful of you to think of justice, but tell me, Jason. ”

“ Then he stopped with abruptness, and held the door open with a hand that began to tremble as the color left his face.
A voice in the hall was speaking, and with such sharply defined distinctness and high volume that each word reached even the mother where she sat.
“You may tell your son, General Boyce,” said this voice, “that I will not see him. I am sorry to have to say it to you, who have always been polite to me, but your son is not a good man or an honest man, and I wish never to see him again. With all my heart I wish, too, that we never had seen him, any of us.” ”