Miss Manning

“ Manning... I do not know. It is so difficult. When I think of the love you give me—One ought to give you back love."
"You like me?"
"Yes. And I am grateful to you...."
Manning tapped with his racket on the turf through some moments of silence. "You are the most perfect, the most glorious of created things—tender, frank intellectual, brave, beautiful. I am your servitor. I am ready to wait for you, to wait your pleasure, to give all my life to winning it. Let me only wear your livery. Give me but leave to try. You want to think for a time, to be free for a time. ”

“ She plucked at the knots of her racket and heard him to the end, then spoke in a restrained undertone.
"You ask me to be engaged to you, Mr. Manning," she began.
"I want to lay all my life at your feet."
"Mr. Manning, I do not think I love you.... I want to be very plain with you. I have nothing, nothing that can possibly be passion for you. I am sure. Nothing at all." ”

“ Soon a portly lady made her appearance.
"You have a room to let?" said Miss Manning, interrogatively.
"Yes."
"Can I look at it?"
"It's for a gentleman," said the landlady. "I don't take ladies. Besides, it's rather expensive;" and she glanced superciliously at the plain attire of the seamstress.
Of course there was no more to be said. So Miss Manning and Rose found their way into the street once more.
The last on the list was Christopher Street.
"Come, Rose. Are you tired of walking?"
"Oh, no," said the child; "I can walk ever so far without getting tired." ”

“ Manning turned to her a frozen but furious face. "Virginia! Are you crazy? Our equal! You ... a Moultrie ... speak of a——"
"But, Manning, think of our obligation! He saved my life ... Giles's life. ... Manning, you must treat him with respect. ... You must come with me now while I speak to him." She seized Manning's arm and moved toward the drag.
"Haven't we done all that we can?" demanded Manning, in a low, fierce voice. "I've called on him, Sir Henry's called on him, Giles——"
"Manning, I'm ashamed of you!" whispered Virginia furiously. "Can one be too grateful, too appreciative?" ”

“ Manning had saved her as much as possible, but that filmy evening dress of hers was all in shreds, the diamonds—which she still wore in her dusky hair—looked grotesquely out of place. And so the fourth evening came, with Edith sleeping a few yards away, and Manning hunched up by the side of the fire, his empty pipe in his mouth and a look on his face that was not good to see. ”

“ Manning rose to say good-night, he looked gravely at the governess, and asked:
"Edna, can not Lila take the vacant place in your sad heart?"
"It is not vacant, sir. Dear memories walk to and fro therein, weaving garlands of immortelles—singing sweet tunes of days and years—that can never die. Hereafter I shall endeavor to entertain the precious guests I have already, and admit no more. The past is the realm of my heart; the present and future the kingdom where my mind must dwell, and my hands labor." ”

“ Part 5 At first the quality of her relationship to Manning seemed moving and beautiful to Ann Veronica. She admired and rather pitied him, and she was unfeignedly grateful to him. She even thought that perhaps she might come to love him, in spite of that faint indefinable flavor of absurdity that pervaded his courtly bearing. She would never love him as she loved Capes, of course, but there are grades and qualities of love. For Manning it would be a more temperate love altogether. Much more temperate; the discreet and joyless love of a virtuous, reluctant, condescending wife. ”

“ On the range the cattle bellowed in their thirst-torture; in the intervals of their cries sounded something far off, but regular as the thumping of a ship’s screw. The woman did not need an answer to her question. The steady trampling of hoofs came muffled through the dead air, but the sound was unmistakable. She put her arms about the man’s neck and crushed him to her with all her woman strength. “Oh, Jim, you’ve been a good man to me!” ”

“ Gabrielle changed color. "Never mind," said she, in a low voice, and pressing her father's hand. "What man has done man may do, though I am but a woman who say it."
"That's my brave girl!" fondly kissing her. "Well, my friends, if we can but get to Bordeaux, we shall escape; that is provided for. It was this which kept me from you so long. And what a return has been mine! I got no answers from you to my letters; I heard the persecution here was raging with fury; I came to snatch you from it, and found my home deserted, the factory burnt, the workmen scattered, no tidings of you to be found. ”

“ Whenever a man has put to me the question, 'Are you Hofer?' I have never yet said 'No;' and I cannot begin now."
Anna was going to remonstrate; but he smiled rather sadly at her and said—
"It would be to little good, dear—we are already discovered by Franz."
Here Johann burst into a loud fit of crying, and flung himself on the straw; while Anna stood speechless.
"We had better go somewhere else, then," said she, after a moment.
"Where? We dare not descend into the valleys; and if we stray about the mountains, Rudolf will not know where to find us, and we shall perish with hunger. ”

“ He must feel the joy in her heart that all was well with him. The hoofs came nearer, the man’s voice sounded but intermittently, as he got his horse under better control. She felt as if he must come to her, as if some overpowering consciousness of her presence would speak from her heart to his; but his eyes scanned the distant trail for a glimpse of Kitty or Kitty’s horse. Judith saw that his head was bound in something white and that it bore a red stain, but he held himself well in the saddle. He was not the man to heed a tumble. ”

“ The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of their eyes. Their prowess in the field of letters had not been publicly discussed before. Mary Carmichael, emboldened by Judith’s presence, looked at her tormentors with a judicious glance.
“The girls are doing fairly well,” she replied, suppressing the mischief in her eyes, “but the boys, poor fellows, I think something must be the matter with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when they were babies, Mrs. Yellett?”
“Not more than common. All babies fall on their heads; it’s as common as colic.” ”

“ Judith was her staff of office, her emblem of authority in the house of Warren Rodney.
Singing Stream held out her hands to Sally in a gesture of appeal—and blundered. Of the chief’s daughter, walking proudly, Sally was afraid; but a supplicating half-breed in strips of purple calico, not even hemmed, was a matter for merriment. Sally put her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and laughed a dry cackle. The light in the brown woman’s eyes, as she looked at the white, was like prairie-fires rolling forward through darkness. ”

“ Manning is a true lady and is thoroughly in love with her husband. So it will put the fellows on their honor and make them show a bit of genuine chivalry as well. She is as bright as a fairy, has lots of pluck, and what is more, has a capital voice. We can take care of her and I don't think we'll be out in the end."
"From your view of the case, I don't think you will," was Mason's comment. "Still the thing is so unprecedented that it will be impossible to eliminate the element of risk."
"Life would not be worth living if we could," returned Sir George. "We always have it." ”

“ For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill,
And the lambs shall be scattered—’
No, no, Jimmy, muvvy cannot sing. Oh, can’t you feel, child? Judith, Judith, why were you ever born?”
It was still in the valley. Had they come to the dead cotton-woods yet? Had they begun it? The children shrank from this gray-faced woman whom they did not know and but yet a little while had been their mother. An awful silence had fallen on the night. The range-cattle no longer bellowed in their thirst; the hot wind no longer blew from the desert. ”

“ Manning frowned with concern. “I’ve been noticing you with Mara lately. You seem pretty interested in her.”
“Is she one of those vices you were telling me about, Manning?” said Rynason quietly. “You want to warn me to stay away from her?”
Manning shook his head, a quick gesture dismissing the idea. “No, Lee, not at all. She’s not that kind of a woman. And that’s my point. I can see how you look at her, and you’re on the wrong track. When you’re out here on the Edge, you don’t want a wife.” ”

“ In her contemplative stoicism she felt with pride that she was no unworthy daughter of her mother’s people, and catching a glimpse through the trees of the abjectly waiting woman who, though safe and sound, could but wait, wretched and dispirited, for some one to come and adjust her to the situation, Judith felt for her a wondering pity at her helplessness. She waited, expectant, for the sound of Peter’s horse. Surely he must come at any moment, overcome with apologies, and she—Judith hid her face in her hands at the thought—she would steal away through the thicket at the first sound of hoofs. ”

“ There is not a man alive so loving as he: he loves his old wife as if she were indeed a young maiden." For Dame Alice, whom More had wedded very soon after the death of his first child-wife, was nec bella nec puella—neither a beauty nor a girl. And besides these, in the year when little Margaret, according to Miss Manning, began to write in her "fayr Libellus" which her tutor, Master Gunnel, gave her, there were dwelling in the house the aged father, Sir John More, good judge and humorous man, with his third wife. ”

“ And among them stood Judith, waiting to play her part, waiting to show her world that she could dance and be merry because all was well with her and hers. But the bronzed sons of the saddle hung back, they who a day before would have quarrelled for the honor of a dance. They were afraid of her; it would be like dancing with the death angel. She looked from face to face. Surely some one would ask her to dance, and her eyes fell on Henderson, returning from the bottled courage in the bunk-room. ”

“ Cardinal Wiseman was slowly dying; the tiller of the Church was slipping from his feeble hand; and Manning was beside him, the one man with the energy, the ability, the courage, and the conviction to steer the ship upon her course. More than that; there was the sinister figure of a Dr. Errington crouching close at hand, ready to seize the helm and make straight—who could doubt it?—for the rocks. In such a situation the voice of self-abnegation must needs grow still and small indeed. Yet it spoke on, for it was one of the paradoxes in Manning's soul that that voice was never silent. ”

“ It was Manning's voice which collected my scattered wits for me.
"I will come round to-morrow about half-past ten," he said "You needn't be the least worried though. Everything's going as well as it possibly can."
Christine held out her hand. "I am not anxious now," she said simply. "Good-bye, and thank you very much."
He looked down at her in a way that filled me with a sudden and peculiar resentment.
"Don't go in for a minute," he said. "Come as far as the end of the road with me. I want to show you how to get to the barge in case you ever honour me with a visit." ”

“ Mary had dismissed her pupils a few minutes before the usual hour, on a particularly bad day, that she might rally her scattered faculties and present something of a countenance to the watchful eye of Mrs. Yellett. Every element of humor had vanished from the situation. The inverted tub was no longer a theme for merriment in her diary; home-life without a house was no longer a diverting epigram; she had closed her eyes that she might not see the mountains in all their grandeur. In her present mood of abject homesickness the white-capped peaks were part and parcel of the affront. ”

“ If he stayed they would come for him; if he went, they would apprehend him before he was ten miles from the house.
“Jim, we got to think. If there’s a chance in a thousand that you can get away, you got to take it; if there ain’t, the children mustn’t know. We got to think it out!”
“There ain’t a chance in a thousand, old girl. There ain’t one in a million. They’re circling round in the hills out here now, waitin’ for me, like buzzards waitin’ for the eyes of a dyin’ horse.” ”

“ He cries, "My Meg!" and hugs me to him as though our very Souls shoulde grow together. He sayth, "Bless thee, bless thee! Enough, enough, my Child; what mean ye, to weep and break mine Heart? Remember, though I die innocent, 'tis not without the Will of God, who coulde have turned mine Enemies' Hearts, if 'twere best; therefore [258] possess your Soul in Patience. Kiss them alle for me, thus and thus ..." soe gave me back into Dancey's Arms, the Guards about him alle weeping; but I coulde not thus lose Sight of him for ever ”

“ He bent towards her; to brush her cheek lightly as they rode was but to imply his appreciation of the scene as a bit of chiaroscuro, the panorama of the desert night, eternal romance typified by the man and woman scaling the heights, the goddess of love lighting them on their way by her flaming torch. But Judith, who said little because she felt much, was in no mood to brook such dalliance, and, urging the mare sharply, she cantered down the divide at peril of life and limb. Peter, cursing the heavy-footed beast he rode, came stumbling after. ”

“ In glancing up to make some remark about Judith, Mary was confronted by a radiant apparition whose lilac calico skirts looked fresh from the iron.
At the side of the house languished a wretched, abortive garden, running over with weeds and sage-brush, and here a man pottered with the purposeless energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in the direction of the house, as he turned a spade of earth again and again in hopeless, pusillanimous industry. ”