Mrs. Harwood

“ Oh, do you remember those old braces, Laura?” cried Miss Lydia; “he always appreciates what is done for him—always,” and both the sisters chimed in in a breath.
“I was not speaking of Mr Summerhayes,” said Mary, returning into the cloud; “I was speaking of—men in general. I have never had any perfect people to deal with in my experience,” said the mistress of Fontanel, with a sidelong, female blow, which she could not resist giving. “And now we must say good-bye, dear Miss Harwood; it is so pleasant to see you, and to come into this sheltered place where nothing ever seems to change.” ”

“ Harwood would think it quite within the line of his duty to exercise the animal at times when Miss Gerald would be riding out. She knew that most girls liked Mr. Harwood, and whatever might be Mr. Harwood's feelings towards the race that so complimented him, she could not doubt that he admired to a perilous point the daughter of Colonel Gerald. If, then, the girl would return his feeling, what would become of Mrs. Crawford's hopes for Mr. Glaston?
It was the constant reflection upon this question that caused the sound of the mail gun to fall gratefully upon the ears of the major's wife. ”

“ If I stop, I shall go mad,” cried Maurice, fiercely.
The young guide added “Amen!” and
“Ay, go, go!” cried the old farmer, who had probably heard more of the gossip of the crowd than I had; “five minutes more, and they will be holding you back by force. Go. An Uri man has but his word; the money is paid, and the work must be done; but, Fritz, child, remember thy old mother at home, and do not let me go back alone to the hills.” ”

“ O, George, your eyes are better than mine!” said Emma, trembling, as she stood up for the tenth time to strain her gaze across the yellow flats.
“I see nothing,” answered I. “Stop, there is something in the distance, a dark object, but it cannot be a man and horse, it is so small, and so near the water, where no sane person would venture, with the tide coming in at such a rate. ”

“ But perhaps, when a woman is being married like Mary Clifford, it is a kind of comfort to her to feel as if she could not help herself, rather than to know that she is entering all these new dangers voluntarily, and in obedience to nobody’s will but her own.
“Well, I am sure, I wish them every comfort in life,” said Miss Harwood, as she stood leaning on her brother’s arm at the hall door of Fontanel, watching the carriage drive off which contained the happy pair. “She can’t feel much like a bride, poor thing, leaving all these children behind her. I am sure I wish her every happiness. ”

“ Do not think of such a thing,” said Harwood. “No; no one is to blame. Fate was too much for both of us, Mrs. Crawford. But all is over now. All the past days with her near us are now no more than pleasant memories. I go round to Natal in two days, and then to my work in the camp.”
“Oh, Mr. Harwood, what ruffians there are in this world!” said the lady just before they parted. Mr. Harwood smiled his acquiescence. His own experience in the world had led him to arrive unassisted at a similar conclusion.
Arthur Harwood kept his work and left by the steamer for Natal two days afterwards ”

“ Mr. Harwood, too, had an hour of reflection when he went to his room; but his thoughts were hardly of the excitable type of Markham's; they had, however, a definite result, which caused him to seek out Mr. Despard in the morning.
Mr. Despard had just finished a light and salutary breakfast consisting of a glass of French brandy in a bottle of soda-water, and he was smoking another sample of that box of cigars on the balcony.
“Good-morning to you, mister,” he said, nodding as Harwood came, as if by chance, beside him.
“Ah, how do you do?” said Harwood. “Enjoying your morning smoke, I see. ”

“ Another was quicker than I. His strong arm was round her, but the wave was too mighty, and both were hurried out into the boiling sea. Ha! yonder rises a human form out of the very jaws of death, clinging to the rock, but holding in a still firmer grasp something—an inert female form—Langley and Lucy again! ”

“ It is hard to believe, that along with these financial statistics, no whisper of the Sherringham peculiarities should ever have reached her maternal ears. But she was resolutely bent on having her own way. Have I said that the Digbys were nobodies, in the polite acceptation of the term? such was the case; but they were of that class of aspiring nobodies who contrive to hang on to the skirts of society, and who are tolerated by some because they are endured by others. Lucy had no such pitiful ambition as this, but her mother had decided that her child should be Lady Sherringham. ”

“ This condition was no particular surprise, for Harwood's daughter, scarcely more than a girl to my remembrance, would not likely remain there isolated and alone during such troublesome times, and the servants had doubtless long since disappeared in search of freedom. The young woman would doubtless be with friends, either in Lewisburg or Charleston ”

“ He sat up on the side of the bed, put his feet into the softly furred slippers, and held out his arms to the dressing-gown which Harwood gave him.
“I begin to remember, Harwood,” he said slowly. “This man Winton lost to me on two evenings—or was it three?—when I was flat.”
“You played with him four afternoons, and two of the sessions lasted into the night,” said Harwood. “You were quite flat. Afterward he entertained you on his yacht.”
“Yes; I remember now. A good-looking fellow; rich American family; about my age?”
“I presume so, sir.”
“Good nerve for cards until the stakes go high?” ”

“ Harwood's white-gloved hand led her hither and thither through the intricate maze; one must have been sadly lacking in the pictorial sense not to have experienced a thrill of delight in a scene so animate with grace, so touched with color. It was ungracious to question the sincerity of those who pronounced Marian the belle of the ball when Colonel Ramsay, the supreme authority in Hoosier pulchritude, declared her to be the fairest rose in a rose-garden of girls. ”

“ Pray now, Royston, be quiet a little—Mr. Harwood, I will speak to you seriously. I see you are attached to my niece, and I confess she has many faults; but you are a man of sense, and with you she will make a more respectable figure in the world than with any other. I am anxious for her welfare, and if you will marry her I will give her such a fortune as will make it no longer an imprudent step to follow your inclinations.
Har. No, sir, you shall keep your fortune and your too bewitching niece together. ”

“ Oswin saw Harwood's glance and heard Lottie's laugh. He also heard the young lady making an explanation of certain matters, to which Harwood answered with a second little smile.
“Kind? Oh, exceedingly kind of him to come so long a distance for the sake of assisting you. Nothing could be kinder.”
“I feel it to be so indeed,” said Miss Vincent. “I feel that I can never repay Mr. Markham.”
Again that smile came to Mr. Harwood as he said: “Do not take such a gloomy view of the matter, my dear Miss Vincent; perhaps on reflection some means may be suggested to you.” ”

“ I did go up country, but I returned in a few days and got aboard the first ship that was sailing for England, and—here I am.”
“And you mean to renew your life of wandering when you reach England?” said Harwood, after a pause.
“It is all that there is left for me,” said the man bitterly, though a change in his tone would have made his words seem very pitiful. “I am not such a fool as to fancy that a man can sow tares and reap wheat. The spring of my life is over, and also the summer, the seed-time and the ripening ”

“ Why linger on the sad story? Suffice it that Emma’s frail health had not been able to endure the anguish of that hideous scene. A blood-vessel had given way, and she never spoke more, and before we reached Avranches she was dead. ”

“ This morning we called at the Harwoods', and in their dining-room found 'Heathcote and Chute [107] for ever'—Mrs. William Heathcote and Mrs. Chute—the first of whom took a long ride yesterday morning with Mrs. Harwood into Lord Carnarvon's park, and fainted away in the evening, and the second walked down from Oakley Hall attended by Mrs. Augusta Bramston; they had meant to come on to Steventon afterwards, but we knew a trick worth two of that.
James called by my father's desire on Mr. Bayle [108] to inquire into the cause of his being so horrid. [143] Mr. ”

“ James Harwood brought him up to the castle one night for a hand at whist and a bit of supper, and he seemed to take a regular fancy to some of us, and asked us to take a glass now and then down at his place, which we did; and that's all about it; and I don't mean to stand any more cross-questioning."
"Why, Brook," cried his friend, the butler, "what's come to you? It isn't like you to answer any man in that way, least of all such on old friend as me." ”

“ I declare, to hear how you speak is enough to make one hate the world,” said Miss Lydia, with the usual joint disregard of punctuation. “But, Miss Harwood, you always take Mary’s side.”
“I didn’t know we were come so far as to take sides,” said Miss Amelia, dryly; “Mary never takes her own side, that’s clear. She tries to please everybody, poor soul; to make her husband happy by letting him suppose himself the master of Fontanel,—and to make her son happy by making believe he’s all right and in his natural place; and what’s to come of it all after Charley comes of age is more than I can tell ”

“ What more can God want of man than his life? have I not paid that debt daily for four days?” He rose from his chair and stood upright upon the deck with clenched hands and lips. “It is past,” he said, after a long pause. “From this hour I throw the past beneath my feet. It is my right to forget all, and—I have forgotten all—all.”
Mr. Harwood had truly reason to feel surprised when, on the following day, Oswin Markham came up to him, and said quietly:
“I believe you are right, Harwood: after all, it would be foolish for me to part from the ship at St. Helena. ”

“ So saying, the guide again quitted the road. Maurice, whose usually pale face was now flushed and hectic, made some peevish remonstrance. But Fritz assured us that we should save miles by striking off across the rugged table-land, where no horse could pass. A few minutes after this a low sullen roar, faint, but hollow and deep, like the noise of a distant cataract, reached our ears. Fritz paused, with a gesture of discouragement.
“An avalanche, far off, but to windward. I fear the worst!” said he.
We strode on in silence over the rough ground, always knee-deep in the frozen drift. ”

“ Sometimes he grew tired of the dull routine, and would wish himself at the diggings with the young men from St. Louis, and then with Mr. Graham, at the mill, but a glance at his mother, working over the hot stove, or washing at the spring, would render him content, for he would say, "She is happy with all her toil, while I am near, and shall I worry over a little extra work, when it keeps me with her?" And then away to his work he would go with renewed energy, and sometimes Mr. Harwood would give him a holiday which would quite revive his drooping spirits, and make him strong for weeks. ”

“ Now I must look after this precious portmanteau of mine.”
“And assist that helpless little creature to look after hers,” muttered Harwood when the other had left him. “Poor little Lottie! is it possible that you have landed a prize at last? Well, no one will say that you don't deserve something for your years of angling.”
Mr. Harwood felt very charitably inclined just at this instant, for his reflections on the behaviour of Markham during the last few days they had been at the same hotel at Cape Town had not by any means been quieted since they had parted. ”

“ Bradfort's acquaintances, I think she was among the very plainest.”
“What is beauty, Miles? In marriage, very different recommendations are to be looked for by the husband.”
“Yet, I have understood you practised on another theory; Mrs. Hardinge, even as I recollect her, was very handsome.”
“Yes, that is true,” answered the good divine, simply; “she was so; but beauty is not to be considered as an objection. If you do not relish the idea of Kate Hervey, what do you say to Jane Harwood—there is a pretty girl for you.”
“A pretty girl, sir, but not for me. ”

“ And here is Loo. Well, I am not sure that poor Loo is not as much forced as the strawberries; she looks a long way older than her mother, it appears to me. Poor thing! perhaps it’s not wonderful under the circumstances; and I think Loo would be pretty if she was free in her mind, or had time for anything but brooding over affairs. She is, let me see, eighteen at her next birthday——”
“Hush, Amelia! My dear Mary, it makes me very happy to see you,” said old Miss Harwood, rising from her comfortable chair, with the slow motion of an old woman, to meet the kiss of the mistress of Fontanel. ”

“ It was obviously impossible that such a man could put himself on that mental level which would be implied by his action should he consent to make any answer to a person like Mr. Harwood. But apart from these general grounds, Mr. Glaston had got concrete reasons for declining to discuss any subject with this newspaper man. He knew that it was Mr. Harwood who had called the tone-poems of the college magazine alliterative conundrums for young ladies; that it was Mr. Harwood who had termed one of the colour-harmonies a study in virulent jaundice ”