Mrs. Blake

“ Blake.'
'My dear Miss Ross, then Mollie—bless her little heart!—is wrong. Is it my fault if those foolish children choose to swear by their mother? Cleverness does not consist in chattering a little French and Italian—does it, Captain Burnett? You and I know better than that, and it will always be a lasting wonder to me why I have a son like my Cyril.'
'You have two sons, Mrs. Blake.'
Something indefinable in Michael's tone made Mrs. Blake redden for a moment; then she recovered herself.
'Yes, thank God! I have; but a widow's eldest son is always her prop. Kester is a mere boy ”

“ Mr. Blake uttering a cry sank on his knees before the drawer. "My God! My God!" was his only reply, "what are these?" Suddenly he rose, his whole form quivering, his eyes burning. "Where is Mrs. Daniels?" he cried, hastily advancing and pulling the bell. "I must see her at once. Send the house-keeper here," he ordered as Fanny smiling demurely made her appearance at the door.
"Mrs. Daniels is out," returned the girl, "went out as soon as ever you got up from dinner, sir."
"Gone out at this hour?"
"Yes sir; she goes out very often nowadays, sir." ”

“ It was too late to remedy the evil, for I had only a sixpence in my pocket; and, moreover, I did not know where to find Mrs. Blake. Having purposed to make a call upon some young ladies that evening, I now went up into my room to dress. Upon my bed lay the spotless linen brought home by Mrs. Blake in the morning. The sight of it rebuked me; and I had to conquer, with some force, an instinctive reluctance, before I could compel myself to put on a clean shirt, and snow-white vest, too recently from the hand of my unpaid washerwoman. ”

“ Blake's unabashed reply; 'and where would be the harm, Audrey? You are of age; you have your own money. No one has a right to prevent your marriage. Of course, your people would be angry at first, but after a time they would relent. My darling girl, think of it: would it not be a noble act of self-sacrifice? And it would save Cyril!'
'He would not wish to save himself at the risk of my happiness and peace of mind,' she replied calmly. 'Dear Mrs. Blake, how strange that you should not know your own son better than that! ”

“ He and his wife, Edith (née Eppington) , were as ill-matched a couple as could be conceived by any dramatist seeking material for a problem play. As they stood before the altar on their wedding morn, they might have been taken as symbolising satyr and saint. More than twenty years his junior, beautiful with the beauty of a Raphael’s Madonna, his every touch of her seemed a sacrilege. Yet once in his life Mr. Blake played the part of a great gentleman; Mrs. Blake, on the same occasion, contenting herself with a singularly mean rôle—mean even for a woman in love. ”

“ Why her hands shake so all the time she never dares lift a dish off the table. And then the way she hangs about Mr. Blake’s door when he’s at home! She never goes in, that’s the oddest part of it, but walks up and down before it, wringing her hands and talking to herself just like a mad woman. Why, I have seen her almost put her hand on the knob twice in an afternoon perhaps, then draw back as if she was afraid it would burn her; and if by any chance the door opened and Mr. Blake came out, you ought to have seen how she run. ”

“ So I left her in New York, and came here, and, Blake, you know the rest. I did frustrate that bad man, of whom I do not wish to speak since he is dead. I did marry the heiress, or we went through the ceremony that our friends took to be such. We understood each other perfectly from the first. I found her precisely what I had thought her—a bold, ambitious woman, reveling in wealth that was the birthright of another; ready to marry a man for whom she did not care a jot, because she hoped he would some day place a coronet on her head. ”

“ Love softens difficulties as does nothing else in life; before she knew Karl Andinnian, Miss Blake would have scorned the notion of taking any man who could not have offered her a settlement of a thousand pounds a year at least.
But now--what was Karl Andinnian's share in all this? Simply none.
He had no more notion that the young lady was in love with him than that old Mrs. Blake was. If Miss Blake did not see the years she had come to, he did; and would nearly as soon, so far as age went, have offered to marry his mother. To a young man of twenty-six, a woman of thirty-four looks quite old. ”

“ With Blake's next words she threw away the whole matter, and he seemed to have thrown it away too.
"Elsie, my love," he said, "I want to tell you something to-night, this last night which will never come again, no, nor any other night like it. I want to tell you that you are the only woman in the world whom I have loved, and whom I have wished to marry, whom I would have married if things had been different. I have fought against you, but you have conquered, and I tell you so this night. ”

“ Blake give any intimation of the direction he intended taking. A few minutes revealed to me his elegant form well mounted and showing to perfection in his closely buttoned coat, slowly approaching up the road. Taking advantage of a rise in the ground, I lingered till he was almost upon me, when I cantered quickly on, fearing to arouse his apprehensions if I allowed him to pass me on a road so solitary as that which now stretched out before us: a move provocative of much embarassment to me, as I dared not turn my head for the same reason, anxious as I was to keep him in sight. ”

“ He thought even less of young Blake, and thought of him without much conscious anger. The case there was a very plain one. He had known young Blake in the days when aspirations did not exist, and when the desire to be good was no part of his life. He took him as he had known him then, and the case was very simple. Whatever an attractive woman will give, men like Blake will take, recking of nothing, forecasting nothing, careless of themselves, merciless to her whom they are by way of loving. In regard to Blake the thing had nothing strange in it. ”

“ Blake know anything about it?”
The faintest shadow of a change came into her manner. “Yes,” said she, “I told him at breakfast time; but Mr. Blake doesn’t take much interest in his servants; he leaves all such matters to me.”
“Then he does not know you have come for the police?”
“No, sir, and O, if you would be so good as to keep it from him. It is not necessary he should know. I shall let you in the back way. Mr. Blake is a man who never meddles with anything, and—”
“What did Mr. Blake say this morning when you told him that this girl—By the way, what is her name?”
“Emily.” ”

“ Reaching the Maze, Miss Blake woke up from these thoughts with quite a start of surprise: for the gate was open and a woman servant stood there, holding colloquy with the butcher's boy on horseback: a young man in a blue frock, no hat, and a basket on his arm. A middle-aged and very respectable looking servant, but somewhat old-fashioned in her appearance: a spare figure straight up and down, in a black-and-white cotton gown and white muslin cap tied with black ribbon strings. ”

“ Any woman who plays with Blake will find that she is playing with fire."
"I don't understand you, Mr. Trant; or how what you say can in any way apply to me."
"They say you are a flirt. So is Blake."
"Well?"
"He never cared for a woman in his life, Miss Valliant; but it has always been with him as it is with the sportsman after game. The more difficult it is to get, the more fellows there are after it, the more determined he is that it should fall to his gun. Blake would follow a woman he thought worth his trouble through thick and thin till he had got her down at his feet." ”

“ Blake. I do delight in anything out of the common.'
'Oh, Edith never denied that she was fascinating. She is a clever woman, too; only there were certain little solecisms committed that made her think Mrs. Blake was not a thorough gentlewoman. They are undoubtedly very poor; and though, of course, that is no objection, it is so absurd for people in such a position to try and ignore their little shifts and contrivances. Honest poverty is to be respected, but not when it is allied to pretension.'
'My dear Gage, was it you or Mrs. Bryce who made that exceedingly clever speech! ”

“ It seems to me to be just the spot a young lady might select, if obliged to live apart for a time from her husband."
"Of course, there's something in that," conceded Miss Blake. "Does she visit at all in the neighbourhood?"
"I think not. I am sure not. If she did I should see her go in and out. She takes a walk occasionally, and sometimes goes to church on Sundays. But she mostly keeps in her shell, guarded by her two old domestics."
In talking, they had crossed the road, and now halted again at the little gate of Clematis Cottage. ”

“ Bearing on this point, it is to be remarked that a madman insists on others seeing as he sees. But Blake did not expect his companion of the moment, John Varley, or Mrs. Blake, to behold the visionary spectres summoned from the void before his eyes, of prophet, king, and poet. ”

“ Blake, an invalid widow with scarce a penny, scraped out a livelihood by taking the public-school teachers to board, while her Muriel did half the housework, and taught, herself, in a primary school, having neither time nor talents to fit herself for a higher grade. Never was there a girl who better exemplified the old simile of the clinging vine than she ”

“ Blake, with the ready good-humour that seemed natural to her; 'you are too old to cry at a word. Miss Ross, may I have one of those delicious cakes? I shall feel a different woman after my tea. Children, what can have become of your brother? I thought he was only going out for half an hour.'
'He is to dine at Woodcote to-night, I believe, Mrs. Blake.'
'Yes; Dr. Ross kindly asked him this morning. I must not begin to talk about Cyril; that must be a tabooed subject. Of course, a mother has a right to be proud of her son—and such a son, too!—but it is not necessary for her to bore other people. ”

“ Blake watched her varying moods with the same fascination with which one regards a wind-blown blaze, recognizing, even in her moments of repression, that she was ready to burst forth anew at the slightest breath. She was the sort of woman to dominate men, to inspire them with tremendous enthusiasm for good or for evil as they chanced to lean toward the one or the other. While she seemed wholly admirable, she exercised a damnable effect upon Norvin. ”

“ A bright-eyed, dark-haired brunette, with expressive features and a slim graceful form, can make a young artist and poet overlook such trifles as defective scholarship. Nor were a fair outside and a frank accessible heart deceptive lures in this instance. Catherine—Christian namesake, by the way, of Blake's mother—was endowed with a loving loyal nature, an adaptive open mind, capable of profiting by good teaching, and of enabling her, under constant high influence, to become a meet companion to her imaginative husband in his solitary and wayward course. ”

“ I write to ask your consent to my marriage with Miss Ethel Blake. I anticipate all your objections, but hope your affection for me will induce you to waive them, and that my dear mother will use all her influence with you in my behalf. Need not tell you how good and amiable and charming Miss Blake is; you have seen enough of her in social circles, in C——, to appreciate her many lovable qualities. She will make the best of wives, and your and my dear mother's consent is all I want to complete my happiness. ”

“ Grey's name," replied the woman.
"Who is the baby considered like!" went on Miss Blake, still regarding it. "Its father or its mother!"
"It's not much like anybody, that I see, ma'am. The child's too young to show any likeness yet."
"I declare that I see a likeness to Sir Karl Andinnian?" cried Miss Blake, speaking partly upon impulse. For, in looking whether she could trace this likeness, her fancy seemed to show her that it was there. "What a strange thing, nurse!"
With one startled gaze into Miss Blake's eyes, Ann Hopley went off in a huff. The suggestion had not been palatable. ”

“ My journal of this year contains nothing about Blake. But in January 1828 Barron Field and myself called on Mrs. Blake. The poor old lady was more affected than I expected she would be at the sight of me. She spoke of her husband as dying like an angel. She informed me that she was going to live with Linnell as his housekeeper. And we understood that she would live with him, and he, as it were, to farm her services and take all she had. The engravings of Job were his already. Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims were hers. I took two copies—one I gave to C. Lamb. ”

“ Miss Blake herself brought all her rare energy, her unflagging perseverance to the task. When she took a cause to heart, no woman was so indomitable as she. As may readily be supposed, a good deal had to be done to the room before it could be made what was wanted; but contrivance worked wonders. All the money Miss Blake could spare she freely applied: it was not sufficient, and she wrote to sundry friends, begging contributions. She next went, with Miss St. Henry and Miss Moore, to some of the houses in the vicinity, to every one where it might be safe to go, asking for aid. ”

“ I want to be a sensible woman, and a useful one," I said, as I proceeded to wind my yarn from Mrs. Blake's outstretched arms. In a short time I had the pleasure of seeing a pretty little sock evolving itself out of the long strand of yarn. Mrs. Blake finding me anxious to be helpful to her poor neighbors, began unfolding histories from time to time, as I sat in her tidy kitchen, that to me seemed to rise to the dignity of tragedies. ”