Miss West

“ Ah, my dear Miss West, you will excuse me, but a young lady like yourself, nursed in the lap of luxury, can hardly be expected to look at life with the same eyes as a poor waif like myself, who has penetrated to the very core of the city, and who has heard the stifled sigh of a vast perishing humanity. ”

“ West was elected to a couple of good clubs, some visiting-cards and invitations were left on Mr. and Miss West by footmen who had descended from coroneted landaus. Ladies with slim, smiling, scapegrace sons called on the heiress. Fast young married women, who looked forward to dances and all manner of festivities, called (and made their friends leave cards) . Young men who had seen and admired Miss West got introduced, and dropped in on Sundays. ”

“ Miss West is never idle. Below, in the big after-room, she does her own laundering. Nor will she let the steward touch her father’s fine linen. In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine. All hand-stitching, and embroidering, and fancy work she does in the deck-chair beside me. She avers that she loves the sea and the atmosphere of sea-life, yet, verily, she has brought her home-things and land-things along with her—even to her pretty china for afternoon tea. ”

“ Miss West, who also had an article of female attire, in an unfinished state, in her lap, which she worked upon in the intervals of her conversation, called these young ladies by name, one by one, and desired each to perform a magnificent curtsy to me, which the little misses, the eldest of whom could not have been more than fourteen years of age, did in grand style, worthy of the finest ladies in the land. ”

“ Christian parents surrounded her by the best influences. As a little child she chose reading rather than play, and later graduated with high honor from Rutger's Female Institute, having received the previous year the gold medal for proficiency in composition. In 1846 Miss West's marriage took place, and her first training in pioneer missionary work was received in what was then the frontier—the Territory of Wisconsin. Privations and hardships were endured patiently in the happy home where love reigned and Christian usefulness was the ruling motive of life. ”

“ Had she not been on the Elsinore, by this time I should have been so overwrought from lack of sleep that I would be biting my veins and howling—as mad a hatter as any of our cargo of mad hatters. And so we come to it—the everlasting mystery of woman. One may not be able to get along with her; yet is it patent, as of old time, that one cannot get along without her. But, regarding Miss West, I do entertain one fervent hope, namely, that she is not a suffragette. ”

“ The sunshine faded out of Debby's face, and there was a touch of bitterness in her tone, as she glanced at the circle of fashion-plates, saying with an earnestness which caused Miss West to open her pale eyes to their widest extent,—
"Aunt Pen, don't freeze me yet,—don't take away my faith in simple things, but let me be a child a little longer,—let me play and sing and keep my spirit blithe among the dandelions and the robins while I can; for trouble comes soon enough, and all my life will be the richer and the better for a happy youth." ”

“ West. "Don't be afraid, Mr. Somerled. I've troubled you enough. Even if we really are married, I would rather die than hold you. I know everything—how it was about me you quarrelled with her. But I've spoiled only a few weeks of your life. I won't spoil the rest. It is she who ought to be your wife, not I."
"Who has said that to you?" he asked.
"It is her own idea!" Mrs. West cried.
"Then it is a very foolish idea," said he. "Mrs. West and I never had it. If you love Basil Norman, Barrie, I won't stand in your way. But if you don't love him, by heaven he shan't take you from me." ”

“ If you have no regard for Miss West’s reputation, be good enough to think of mine. I do not choose to have gaily-dressed young women coming flaunting to my humble chambers at any hour of the day. I’ve been hitherto considered rather a steady, respectable sort of fellow; I wonder what people will think of me now? Your visit will be all over the Inns to-morrow, and half my circuit will be clamouring to know ‘who my friend was?’”
“Nonsense, Laurence! What an old-fashioned [Pg 202] frump you are! Girls do all sorts of things nowadays, and no one minds. It is the fashion to be emancipated. ”

“ Aulne.
Querida laughed: "I do. Miss West is a most engaging, most amiable and cultivated girl, and truly very beautiful."
"Oh! They are sometimes educated?" asked Stephanie, surprised.
"Sometimes they are even equipped to enter almost any drawing-room in New York. It doesn't always require the very highest equipment to do that," he added, laughing.
"That sounds like romantic fiction," observed Alice Annan. "You are a poet, Mr. Querida."
"Oh, it's not often a girl like Valerie West crosses our path. I admit that. Now and then such a comet passes across our sky—or is reported. ”

“ For effrontery of possessiveness is there anything that can exceed the nest-making, planet-populating, female, human woman?--Come and see the chickens! Oh, well, the sailors for'ard may be hard-bitten, but I can promise Miss West that here, aft, is one male passenger, unmarried and never married, who is an equally hard-bitten adventurer on the sea of matrimony. When I go over the census I remember at least several women, superior to Miss West, who trilled their song of sex and failed to shipwreck me. ”

“ This the Union Signal under Miss West has had and the women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union repeatedly, in the most emphatic manner, endorsed her policy and conduct of the paper. Soon after she went to Chicago some women of that city, both writers and publishers, organized the Illinois Woman's Press Association, its avowed object being to provide a means of communication between women writers and to secure the benefits resulting from organized efforts. Miss West was made president and filled the position for several consecutive terms. ”

“ We have found out that this Miss West's name is really 'Westwood,' and that she is the daughter of the dreadful man who shot my husband's brother Beechfield some years ago. Perhaps you remember the case?"
"Oh, yes—I remember it!" said the doctor shortly. "That's the daughter? Poor girl!"
"It is naturally unpleasant to think that my brother—a cousin also of the General's—should be contemplating a marriage with her," said Mrs. Vane.
"Ah, well—perhaps so! We are all under the dominion of personal and selfish prejudice," said Doctor Middlemass. ”

“ Opposition always roused Lord Anthony; it acted as a spur. In a short five minutes he saw everything from his sister’s point of view, and had suddenly developed a passion for Miss West.
“Every marriage begins by an acquaintance. Perhaps in time,” he urged—“in [Pg 97] a few short months, my dearest Madeline——”
“I am not your ‘dearest Madeline,’ Lord Anthony,” she interrupted quickly. “Pray consider the subject closed once for all; and remember, for the future, that I am Miss West.” ”

“ For the first time, in the glare of the bright morning light, West took stock of the fellow, and realized his true nature. Instinctively he felt that here was the particular antagonist he was to be pitted against. Whatever might be the truth as to a strange woman, this man must be the controlling factor in any conspiracy. ”

“ That evening when "sober-suited twilight" had begun to fall over all things, when the stars began to sparkle in the sky, when the air began to be heavy with odors of rose and mignonette and jasmine and the odorous, heavy-scented honeysuckle, Mrs. West came into the sitting-room, where Leonora was leaning from the window, drinking in the peaceful sweetness of the summer eve.
"Are you lonely here in the dark, my dear? I will bring a lamp," she said.
"Not yet, please, Aunt West," said the girl. "I love this twilight dimness. I love to sit in the darkness and think."
"About your poor papa, dear?" ”

“ "I like wind," he said. "A day when there is no wind seems to me dead. A windy day wakes me up." He gave a conscious laugh. "On a calm day I fall into day dreams. No doubt you know my reputation, Miss West. If I cut you dead the next time we meet don't put it down to bad manners. Please understand that it is only abstraction and forgive me—and speak to me." ”

“ Her influence was far more powerful than Madeline’s, on the question of what was for the benefit of the invalid, and the invalid saw that it was useless to prolong the secret struggle, and succumbed to her fate.
Laurence Wynne had not come across Mr. West for a considerable time; but he [Pg 192] knew that the Wests were at Brighton, and that Miss West was almost convalescent. It was the end of October, London was filling, and he was lunching at his club, with one or two acquaintances at the same table, when one of them said—
“Hullo! there’s old West. ”

“ IN America where there are no Rebecca Wests, May Sinclairs, or Virginia Woolfs, one is forced to make a place for so able a writer as Evelyn Scott although this astringent author lacks the depth of passion and richness of texture of Miss West, the succinct ironic detachment of Miss Sinclair, and the vigorous culture of Mrs Woolf. ”

“ West—pleasure-loving Billy West—who from his freshman days had looked upon the world as little more than an amazing joke, had by one stroke of fortune suddenly found all the pleasures, all the luxuries that life contained, at his feet. He did not envy West this good fortune, he was too staunch a friend for that, but he thought of Edith, and their little up-town flat, and as her tired face rose before him he suffered the pangs of that greatest of all forms of poverty, the inability to do for those we love. ”

“ Miss Lucille Western was playing an engagement in Cleveland when "our baby" was a few months old. My friend and I were both her ardent admirers. I don't know why it has arisen, this fashion to sneer more or less openly at Miss Western's work. If a woman who charms the eye can also thrill you, repel you, touch you to tears, provoke you to laughter by her acting, she surely merits the term "great actress." ”

“ She was crying as she ended, crying piteously; while West sat like a stone image, gazing at her.
"Oh, do speak to me!" she sobbed. "Do say something! Do you know what they want to do? But I won't let them—I won't let them! It—it's too dreadful a thing to happen to a woman. I can't bear it. I won't bear it. It will be much easier to die. But you shall know the truth first."
"Cynthia, stop!" It was West's voice at last, but not as she had ever heard it. ”

“ Every time one walked in the Old Town she had just gone by, beautiful and pale as though in her veins there flowed exquisite blood that diffused radiance instead of ruddiness, clad in the black and white that must have been a more solemn challenge, a more comprehensive announcement of free dealings with good and evil, than the mere extravagance of scarlet could have been; and wearing a string of pearls to salve the wound she doubtless always felt about her neck. Ellen glowed at the picture as girls do at womanly beauty. ”

“ West kept his good humor and self-control intact, but it was hardly to be expected that he enjoyed venomous misrepresentation of this sort. The solidest comfort he got in these days came from Sharlee Weyland, who did not read the Chronicle, and was most beautifully confident that whatever he had done was right. But after all, the counselings of Miss Avery, of whom he also saw much that spring, better suited his disgruntled humor.
"They are incapable of appreciating you," said she, a siren in the red motor. "You owe it to yourself to enter a larger field. ”

“ I shall be extremely annoyed if, whilst you are in the ward, you couple my name with Mr. West’s.”
“Shouldn’t think of doing so, Sister,” he said seriously. “If there’s one thing I can do better than another it is keeping a secret. Once I make up my mind to shut my mouth, wild ’orses wouldn’t open it.”
“I like him,” she went on (it appeared that the Sister was not averse to speaking of Myddleton West) , “I like him very much, but it is possible to like a person, Twenty, without going so far as to become engaged.” ”

“ West, laughing wildly. "I'm not quite old enough yet to have a daughter of her age, and she's not such a child as she looks. But do talk to her, by all means. I'm sure she'll be very pleased."
"Then your name is MacDonald?" Jack Morrison exclaimed. "We were saying at dinner how much you look like Mrs. Bal MacDonald, the beautiful actress. Is she any relation?"
"Yes, she is," I answered. And I would have gone on to tell him and his friends that she was my mother, but I saw Sir S. and Mrs. West and Basil looking as if they wanted to get away, so I dared not go into particulars. ”

“ So Captain West hugs the land. He heaves-to on the port tack until the leeward drift brings the land into perilous proximity, then wears ship and heaves-to on the port tack and makes leeway off shore.
I may be weary of all this bitter movement of a labouring ship on a frigid sea, but at the same time I do not mind it. In my brain burns the flame of a great discovery and a great achievement. I have found what makes all the books go glimmering; I have achieved what my very philosophy tells me is the greatest achievement a man can make. I have found the love of woman. ”

“ Miss West had got a chill the night of the dance, and it was known in society that for many, many days the charming hostess lay between life and death.
Josephine, a romantic and imaginative Gaul, had long believed that her mistress [Pg 160] had a secret love affair. She drew her own inferences; she sympathized, and she commanded the household to keep silence respecting Miss West’s mysterious errand. The morning after the ball, when diphtheria developed, the house was rapidly emptied. Even Josephine fled, and left her lady in the hands of trained nurses. Mr. ”