Mrs. Gardiner

“ Beetle-browed, swarthy of complexion, hook-nosed, and harsh of feature, Gardiner, notwithstanding his forbidding looks and stern, searching glances, which seemed to read the hearts of those he looked upon, and inspired more dread than love, had a countenance replete with intelligence, while his imperious looks and manner, untamed by reverse of fortune, showed the confidence he felt in his own mental powers and resources. ”

“ Gardiner, who had commenced telling them how eagerly she had watched for their coming, and of the strange presentiment that something was going to happen.
That moment stood out forever afterward in the life of hapless Bernardine.
She thought that when her eyes rested on the face that had been all the world to her, she would fall dead at his feet. But she did not; nor did the slightest moan or cry escape her white lips.
[Pg 197] She had expected that Jay Gardiner would cry out in wonder or in anger when he saw her; that he would recognize her with some show of emotion. ”

“ I will marry you."
"Oh, damn," said Gardiner. "Oh, I can't stand this. It's quite all right. I can get on without you." He stood by the table, striking match after match in vain efforts to light his cigarette; when he had it burning, he threw it away. Then he began on the matches again; the floor was strewn with broken ends. "My darling, it really is all right. I should have seen it before if I hadn't been an ass. What you can't give is the least part of what I want. Put me on the same ration as Denis, and I shall do famously." ”

“ The conversation soon turned upon fishing, and she heard Mr. Darcy invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he chose, while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was walking arm in arm with Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of her wonder. Elizabeth said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme; ”

“ The child came from behind the tapestry, saying solemnly, “Do you like Dr. Gardiner?”
Catharine screamed, and started back with her hand to her throat. “Oh, by'r Lady! Good lack, how ghostly! Oh, why do you frighten me, child? Why are you hiding there? What have you heard?”
Elizabeth looked as if she would cry. “I want you. Every one was hating me, and you are always kind. I came here to find you. Then Dr. Gardiner came. He always frightens me. ”

“ She may be ill, but not in danger. I will send her father to her in the meantime."
"What an honorable man Jay Gardiner is!" thought [Pg 113] the nurse, admiringly. "Not every man could have the strength of mind to keep away from the girl he loved, even if he was bound to another."
Doctor Gardiner dared not take even another glance at Bernardine, his heart was throbbing so madly, but turned and hurried from the house, and re-entering the cab, drove rapidly away. ”

“ Gardiner, the wife of a Major Gardiner, is the only daughter of Dr. Gosset; a wife, but not a mother. The second in the ranks is Mustapha. Every body quickly found out the original in Mr. Gardiner, a bookseller in Pall Mall ”

“ There were owls, too, hoo-hooing, and one whose note was like a silvery bell, calling from the woods across the valley. It was a night of romance—a night for love.
Gardiner's planets were Mercury and Venus; he incongruously combined the money-getting instinct with a sensuous temperament. He had intended to spend those minutes calmly in reviewing the pros and cons of marriage with Dorothea—for there were a good many cons; marriage, even with a rich woman, did not come into his scheme of life. But the white enchantment of the moonlight was too much for him; he became a lover and nothing more. ”

“ Jay Gardiner in question is some New York society belle instead of Bernardine. Ah, if it were Bernardine, I would have followed him to the end of the earth and murdered him; taken her from him by force, if no other way presented itself. I love the girl to madness, and yet I hate her with all the strength of my nature! ”

“ A pitiful shadow crossed the girl's face. Evidently she knew what the man had to say to her.
Tears which she could not resist came to her eyes, and her lovely lips trembled.
Doctor Gardiner could not help but observe this.
"Bernardine," he cried, hoarsely, forgetting himself for the moment, "I should like to ask something of you. Will you promise to grant my request?"
"Yes," she murmured, faintly and unhesitatingly.
"Do not trust the man to whom your father is talking."
"There is little need to caution me in regard to him, Doctor Gardiner," she murmured. ”

“ I see even the pious and meek bishop of Winchester, the noble Gardiner, who is entertaining himself with Lady Jane over there, smiling very cheerfully, and that is a bad sign; for Gardiner smiles only when he has again caught a poor soul, and prepared it as a breakfast for his lord. I do not mean you, king, but his lord—the devil. For the devil is always hungry for noble human souls; and to him who catches one for him he gives indulgence for his sins for an hour. Therefore Gardiner catches so many souls; for since he sins every hour, every hour he needs indulgence. ”

“ To give herself a husband was to give herself a master, yet she dallied with the offers made to her, surely not from political craft alone. The thought of marriage, abhorrent to her brain, was pleasant to her heart, and she could not lightly speak the positive word of rejection. Even now, in the vain thought that she might rule a subject, even if she became his wife, she was toying with Lord Robert Dudley, the handsome and worthless son of the base Northumberland. ”

“ Gardiner had lived all his life too close to nature to escape the call of the spring. If his work had been out of doors, in the garden or the farm, he might have come through better; but he was in the printing room; always hot and stuffy with glue, and his exercise was limited to the five minutes' walk to and fro. He lost his sleep, and in the long vigils he was tormented by visions of Rochehaut. ”

“ Doctor Gardiner's carriage drew up quickly before the curbstone, and as he sprung from the vehicle, his astonishment can better be imagined than described at finding himself face to face with his friend, Miss Rogers, and that it was she who had been ejected so summarily. The poor soul almost fainted for joy when she beheld the young physician.
"My dear Miss Rogers!" he cried in amazement, "what in the name of Heaven does the scene I have just witnessed mean?" ”

“ But Gardiner was unable to give the required promise, and was committed, like Bonner, to the Fleet. 'I have held my office sixteen years,' he wrote to Sir John Godsalve, who was one of the visitors; 'I have studied only how I may depart with it without offence to God's law; and I shall think the tragedy of my life well passed over, so I offend not God's law nor the King's; I will no more care to see my bishopric taken from me than myself taken from my bishopric; I am by nature already condemned to die, which sentence no man can pardon.' [60]
Gardiner had endeavoured to destroy Cranmer. ”

“ In the course of his progress through France he received orders from Henry to send back his secretary Gardiner, or, as he was called at court, Master Stevens, for fresh instructions; to which he was obliged to reply that he positively could not spare him as he was the only instrument he had in advancing the king’s “secret matter.” Next year Gardiner, still in the service of Wolsey, was sent by him to Italy along with Edward Fox, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, to promote the same business with the pope. ”

“ Gardiner followed her down a white passage, not one line of which was true, into a low-pitched, pleasant living-room, with scarlet geraniums in the window. There beside the open hearth stood the bureau, black as bog oak and richly carved, with shining brass handles on drawers that slipped in and out at the touch of a finger. Madame chattered in her abominable Walloon French, Gardiner laughed and argued back; it was sadly plain to Lettice, who could distinguish such niceties, that he had picked up the accent of [Pg 99] the country. There are disadvantages in being imitative. ”

“ Now, no man who knows Frank Gardiner ever accused him of forgetting a friend or a service. I consider, Mr Fellgate, that you have done me a real service in this matter, and acted like a gentleman all round, and I would like to show you that I am not insensible of this. Though I am a bushranger, I am not a blackguard. If you will be good enough to accept this trifle, just in recognition of my admiration for you as an editor, and of my personal regard, you will do me a favour, Mr Fellgate. ”

“ Gardiner thanked him amiably, glanced over the sheet, and passed it to Denis, who read solidly through from end to end; this to keep out of the conversation. "Here's a man I don't know: safe to be a bounder: confound his impudence!"—such was his attitude to the casual stranger. He did not like the middle classes.
[Pg 29]
"We're up here because he didn't fancy the parlor," said Gardiner, with a lazy nod towards his friend. "Says the place makes him sick. You'd expect a flying man to have cranks, wouldn't you? He has enough to stock an engine. What do you recommend for nerves, doctor?" ”

“ One day Gardiner succeeded in getting an old chief so tipsy that, without realizing what he was doing, he led the white man to the clay bed and showed him the metallic spots glittering in the sun. With a cry of delight Gardiner sprang forward and tore at the earth with his fingers, while the Indian stood by laughing at his eagerness.
Presently a shade crossed the white man's face, for he thought that this vast treasure would have to be shared by others. It was too much to endure. He wanted all. He would be the richest man on earth. ”

“ Still, he could not go far; his father was getting an old man, and clung to him. A winter walking tour discovered his ideal on the Semois. He [Pg 23] settled his affairs at the Easedale with his usual luck and expedition, and was free to start his new life—if only—
Since the affair with Pilar, Gardiner had given women a wide berth. The burnt child dreads the fire, and besides he was mightily distrustful of his own temperament. He did not make the mistake of despising all women for the fault of one ”

“ It might be said that this was the first time Gardiner had ever seen Lettice, for, remembering that gleam, he looked with curiosity. He found himself gazing into a pair of perfectly intelligent and faintly derisive hazel eyes.
When you have summed up a person as ordinary and inoffensive, it is a shock to discover that the said person has turned the tables by reading the inmost secrets of your heart. ”

“ You DO live. You ARE what you long to be. That ideal you're always trying to grasp—don't you know why you can't grasp it, Pauline? Because it's your own self, your own image reflected as in a mirror."
He broke off abruptly, acutely conscious that he was leaning far over the barrier between them. There was a distant shout, from vigorous, boyish lungs. Gardiner, mad with the joy of healthy seven, came running and jumping across the field to land with a leap astride the hillock, scattering wisps of hay over his mother and Scarborough. ”

“ Let me fasten the tucker in your frock. There, that does look better. Madam Royall is quite dressy, like all fashionable people who go out and have company. I'm not much of a hand to fix up children, seeing that for years I have had none of it to do. But I guess I can manage to tie the sash. There, I think that will do."
"Oh, how lovely! How good of you, Miss Recompense."
Recompense Gardiner hated to take the credit for anything she had not done, but she had to let it go now. ”

“ Gardiner, his good mother, dated from Paris the 25th of January following, that is 1719-20, in answer to one in which she had warned him to expect such trials: "I have (says he) already met with them, and am obliged to fight, and to dispute every inch of ground. But all thanks and praise to the great Captain of my salvation. He fights for me, and then it is no wonder that I come off more than conqueror:" by which last expression I suppose he meant to insinuate that he was strengthened and established, rather than overborne, by this opposition. ”

“ When the legate sat down, Gardiner gave him the thanks of Parliament, and suggested that the two Houses should be left to themselves to consider what they would do. Pole withdrew with the King and Queen, and Gardiner exclaimed: A prophet has 'the Lord raised up among us from among our brethren, and he shall save us.' For the benefit of those who had been at the further end of the hall, he then recapitulated the substance of what had been said. ”

“ Here, above the world, Lettice found the breathing-space which she loved as well as he. There was a pot of violets on the table; he put the blossoms aside with one finger, and buried his nose in the moss surrounding them. That was good! That was the breath of the woods; Gardiner would have given all the flower scents in the world for that wet woody fragrance.
Sitting down, he discovered that he was tired, very tired. It is deadly demoralizing to be hunted. ”

“ The chief points in Gardiner's life must be taken from the Rev. Dr. Doddridge's "Some remarkable passages in the Life of the Hon. Colonel James Gardiner, who was slain at the battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745." He was the son of Captain Patrick Gardiner, of Torwood Head, Linlithgowshire, and was born 10 January, 1687. At the early age of 14 he bore an ensign's commission in a Scotch Regiment in the Dutch service until 1702, when he received an Ensign's commission from Queen Anne. At the age of 19, in the battle of Ramillies, he received a wound in his mouth by a musket ball. ”