Mrs. Cartwright

“ Well, there was nothing to do now except to make some atonement for the cruel fate that had come upon Richard Cartwright. It wasn’t her fault, but it might have been, and the least she could do would be to make whatever amends might be possible now. Being the daughter of a convict, she would of course never marry, and she would devote her life to the memory of this genius who had died betimes. ”

“ Cartwright. "Most of those manuals are written from the point of view of the man. That's where they fall short. I should make the Girl herself do the advising. I should let her give the 'pointers,' as Mr. Awdas calls them. I should divide them into little chapters: 'Of Proposing,' 'Of Presents,' 'Of In-Laws,' 'Of Caresses'——"
"'Of Caresses,'" took up Captain Ross, with another laugh, "is going to get you banned by the libraries."
"Not it. I," said Mrs. Cartwright, knitting, "shall not treat the subject in—in that way." ”

“ The captain looked round and his eyes fell upon Mrs. Cartwright. “D’ ye think ye could get some change of clothes for the young lady, some clothes to take away with her, mistress?” said he. “She can’t go away from home for a month or so without a change of clothes to wear. You can see that for yourself.”
“Shall I go, Edward?” said Mrs. Cartwright.
Mr. Cartwright groaned. “You’ll have to go, Polly,” he said; “there ‘s nothing else to do. But, oh, you villains, mark my words! You’ll hang for this, every mother’s son of you!”
“Why, I like your spirit, Mr. Tobacco-Planter,” said the pirate captain ”

“ Mrs. Cartwright told him, quickly and quietly, that this marriage was not complicated, on "the lady's" side, by any people at home, and turned to Olwen to confirm it. Olwen, who was wide-eyed with a mixture of feelings, which she was surprised to find were not all happy ones, agreed that Miss Walsh hadn't any relations.
And presently Mrs. Cartwright was writing to her sisters: "A marriage has been arranged between the French Sergeant and the Hotel Spinster I described to you in my last. I think an excellent plan. She wants marriage, he wants money. ”

“ Mr. Cartwright shouted. “Coming!” As he ran across the lawn, closely followed by Jones, he snatched a heavy coil of rope left by the workmen who had been swinging hammocks and arranging for Mrs. Cartwright’s outdoor bazaar.
“Call again, if you can,” Mr. Cartwright 163 yelled. Faintly, a voice seemed to come up out of the earth. “Help, help! Oh, please!”
Mr. Cartwright caught the direction of the voice, and ran along the cliffs. In a moment he espied the fallen bridge and guessed what had happened; then he and Jones saw the two girls in their perilous position. ”

“ He knew Mrs. Seaton, and thought she meant to hint his pluck might soon be needed. When Ellen smiled like that she was plotting something.
CHAPTER V CARTWRIGHT'S SCRUPLES The drawing-room at Mrs. Cartwright's house on the Cheshire side of the Mersey was large and old-fashioned. Cartwright thought the stiff, thick curtains and Victorian walnut furniture ugly, but Mrs. Cartwright liked the things and he was satisfied. Clara herself frankly belonged to the old school. She was conventional and often dull, but she had a placid dignity that did not mark all the up-to-date women Cartwright knew. ”

“ Mowbray.
"My friend!" said Mr. Cartwright, taking her hand; "my dear, dear friend! you are tried, you are very sorely tried. But it is the will of the Lord, and we must not repine at it: rather let us praise his name alway!"
"I do!" ejaculated the widow with very pious emotion; "I do praise and bless his holy name for all the salvation he hath vouchsafed to me, a sinner—and to my precious Fanny with me. Oh, Mr. Cartwright, it is very dear to me to think that I shall have that little holy angel with me in paradise! ”

“ Cartwright, as they landed at the small iron pier above the oyster parks. Then she guided them through the belt of pine woods that lay between the two borders of sandhills, past the lighthouse which they saw every day as a warning finger, but with which they now made acquaintance as the huge tower it was; she led them to the inn where they were to lunch. This was a long white building, its corners rounded and scoured by the flying sands borne on the gales of winter.
"Outside is the best dining-room," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I daresay Madame will think us mad—but it's an Indian summer day today. ”

“ Cartwright threw off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before. Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained....
It was of rough sky-blue crêpy stuff with touches of creamy edging and of dull pink stitchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ... trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? ”

“ She is going to have a porch party, and we are to play the famous game ‘eyeology’ that she was talking of to Gladys the other day. Do you know what she means?”
Nobody at the table had ever heard of it.
“I begged Donald to tell me,” Grace added, “but he declares he is as much in the dark about it as the rest of us, and Mrs. Cartwright simply says, ‘wait and see!’”
“I suppose,” said Miss Sallie, “that you children never intend to rest again. I should think that Mrs. Cartwright would be perfectly used up from so much entertaining.” ”

“ Haven't you got any sensible boots?... You aren't fit to take care of yourself, as a matter of fact. You've got to let me take care of you."
"My dear boy," she smiled, shaking the head on which the moonlight was spinning those prophetic webs of silver, "all nice men at your age begin to feel that need of taking care of something. A young girl, that's what you ought to be seeing to the shoes of, and looking for wraps for, and all that. Not me, not me. A young girl."
"What young girl?" he demanded mutinously.
Mrs. Cartwright was silent as they passed into the darkness under the wooden jetty. ”

“ It blew along, fast and faster, the pink thread holding that feather-light Charm that the wind had swept away.
CHAPTER XVI THE COUNTER-CHARM
"Too old, by Heaven; let still the woman take
An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart."
Shakespeare.
The two parties (those of the stag gathering and the dove lunch) returned to the hotel at almost the same moment, just before dinner-time.
"We've had a ripping time!" Mrs. Cartwright said gaily, in answer to an enquiry from Captain Ross; young Jack Awdas, hearing, gave her a reproachful glance. ”

“ It really does not take very long to dress if one omits all ornamental additions, and dispenses with everything in the shape of a bath! Jack and Jill had not time to do more than taste the succulent young shoots of half a dozen rose-trees before Madge had crept downstairs and quietly opened the front-door. Then with a half-suppressed shout of battle she rushed towards them, waving a walking-stick which she had the presence of mind to snatch up in passing through the hall. The goats both gave a guilty start at the first sound, and then crossed the lawn in a series of most amazing bounds. ”

“ When the ditch was about half-full, the children launched their boats and made them go imaginary voyages from port to port, carrying merchandise.
"I will be London," said Madge, "and Betty can be Cardiff, and—"
"I can choose for myself without your help!" interrupted John peevishly. "I'll be Birmingham."
"Oh, you choose very cleverly for yourself!" jeered Madge. "I wonder how you can think of such difficult places!"
"You think nobody can be clever except yourself, but you are finely mistaken," rejoined John seriously; and he could not imagine why both his sisters burst out laughing. ”

“ Cartwright found herself thinking, with a half-mutinous, half-deprecating little smile, of some of the greatest love affairs of the world. They stood out in the history of human kind just as the lighthouse yonder towered above the low-rising dunes. ”

“ A nearer growling of guns, from the north, she judged, sounded as she tapped at the door.
"Come!" called the charming un-English voice.
Mrs. Cartwright entered her own familiar room with its known mingling of kuss-kuss, rose, and orris scent. The toilet silver, the Indian numnah on the floor, her husband's sword and sash over the bookshelf, and the enlarged photograph of him laughing under the black, semi-lune shadow of his solar-topi——these things were Claudia's background. Her eyes opened upon them each morning. Tonight they all seemed suddenly new to her.... ”

“ Charles's other nephew, Emanuel Philibert, the Prince of Piedmont, was another gallant squire of dames, as ready to take part in masque and dance as he was foremost in active warfare. Every evening there was music and dancing in the King's rooms, and the old halls of the merchants rang to the sound of laughter and melody. In that joyous throng the Countess Palatine was the gayest of the gay, and Christina forgot her sorrows to become young once more. ”

“ While thinking over the various ways in which she could amuse herself with the doll's dressing-table, she had been excitedly swinging the little brown bag up and down by the string. Five shillings and sevenpence, mostly in pennies, is rather heavy; an insecurely tied knot gave way, and the bag suddenly fell with a loud clatter—not to the ground, that would have been a very bearable misfortune, but through a grating in the pavement on which Madge happened to be standing at the moment.
It does not often fall to a person's lot to drop his whole fortune down a grating into someone else's cellar. ”

“ CARTWRIGHT had always believed in the blindness of love—that is, of woman's love. "If she loves you, she won't see your faults," he had said, complacently.
He held this opinion until he met Edith Martine. Miss Martine was really very nice. Cartwright had decided that when he saw her on his first night at the Mountain House. She was small and fair and sympathetic, and she was a gentlewoman. Cartwright was discriminating. He often associated with girls who were not gentlewomen—sometimes he liked that kind best, but he knew the difference. ”

“ Cartwright gave a little hopeless sort of laugh to herself as she threw upon him that quick glance that seemed to be not looking.
He put on his coat (at her orders) , his flyer's coat with the wide collar that made his head seem even smaller and the oval of his face more perfect as it rested against the fur. That young, young face topping the athlete's body that towered above her own, that spring and lilt of his walk had never before made such appeal to the sense of physical beauty that was in her. ”

“ What is that you are taking out of his mouth?”
“I’m afraid it’s a tassel,” said Jack gravely. “Shall I flog him?”
Miss Cartwright was one of those kind gentle people whose conscience and soft-heartedness are always falling foul of each other.
“Perhaps it does not so much matter,” she said hurriedly; “it is only the same tassel which he has torn off so often before, that I daresay he fancies he has a sort of right to it.”
“I’m very much afraid he is giving you no end of trouble,” said Jack remorsefully. ”

“ Fanny Mowbray started, but recovering herself, said, "Mr. Cartwright, give me leave to introduce my friend Miss Mary Richards to you. She is one of your parishioners, and one that you will find capable of appreciating the happiness of being so."
Mr. Cartwright extended his pastoral hand to the young lady with a most gracious smile.
"Bless you both!" said he, joining their hands between both of his. "To lead you together in the path in which we must all wish to go, would be a task that might give a foretaste of the heaven we sought!" ”

“ The finest of all Cartwright's poems is here—the magnificent "Song of Dalliance"—beginning, "Hark, my Flora! Love doth call us." It is ascribed to Cartwright in the unique miscellany (preserved in the Bodleian) , Sportive Wit: the Muses' Merriment, 1656, but is not printed in his Works. Cartwright had a great reputation among his contemporaries. "My son, Cartwright," said Ben Jonson, "writes all like a man." "Cartwright was the utmost man could come to" in the opinion of that excellent prelate, Bishop Fell. All the wits of the age paid tributes to his memory. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. AN ALARMING JUMP.
"I'll tell you what it is, children," said Captain West briskly as he entered the dining-room rather late for breakfast, "if these pets of yours are going to keep me trotting about the garden at night I shall lose my excellent character for punctuality in the morning. Why, here is Madge coming down late too, and looking very displeased with the world. I don't know if Jack and Jill are responsible for her frowns as well as my lateness; if so, they have a good deal upon their consciences!" ”

“ In another moment he was sitting on the Eagle's Nest.
"This is a goodish sort of tree," he remarked, looking round with a patronizing air. "Very easy to climb, of course—"
"Oh, but I can go much higher than these boughs by the wall!" interrupted Betty. "So high that my feet are where your head is now."
"That's not much," said Lewis scornfully. "Girls never can climb much. They just flop about, and catch their frocks in all the branches, and get giddy, and cry to be helped down again!" ”

“ The twins, it may be remembered, had been climbing in the Eagle's Nest a good part of the afternoon, and were consequently as hungry as people who have been playing for hours in the open air have a right to be. They were waiting on the door-step when the carriage drove up, and began at once to reproach Madge for being so late, and to inquire what she had brought.
"Come along," said Miss Thompson briskly. "Not a word is to be spoken until Madge has taken off her hat and we are seated at the tea-table. If we begin to embark on our adventures now, we shall never get any tea to-night." ”