Mrs. West

“ I go out of my way to steal a glimpse of Miss West through a cabin door or vista of hall when she does not know I am looking. A woman is a wonderful thing. A woman’s hair is wonderful. A woman’s softness is a magic.—Oh, I know them for what they are, and yet this very knowledge makes them only the more wonderful. I know—I would stake my soul—that Miss West has considered me as a mate a thousand times to once that I have so considered her. ”

“ She is not one bit astonished at the splendor of anything she sees. She has seen a great deal of the world, really, and America must be a much finer place than I ever thought it," mused Mrs. West to herself.
"There, the waltz is over, Aunt West," whispered the girl, clinging to her arm. "Hadn't we better go now? Some one may come out here."
"Yes, if you have seen enough—have you?" Mrs. West replied, and Leonora answered:
"Yes, quite enough, thank you. I do not like to look at such gayety, and my dear papa so lately dead. Oh, [Pg 108] Aunt West, please let us walk out in the air awhile. ”

“ Jane spoke of Clarice. And Mrs. West seemed thunderstruck, really thunderstruck, to hear that no tidings had been gained of her.
“It is like a romance,” she cried. “But for your telling me yourself, Lady Jane, I should scarcely have believed it. It seems so impossible in these days that any lady should be lost. We read advertisements in the Times of gentlemen missing; now and then of a lady; but I think—at least I have always supposed—that the ladies at least come to light again. ”

“ This relief of renewed normality is delicious—thanks to Miss West. Now why did not Captain West, or Mr. Pike, both experienced men, diagnose my trouble for me? And then there was Wada. But no; it required Miss West. Again I contemplate the problem of woman. It is just such an incident among a million others that keeps the thinker’s gaze fixed on woman. They truly are the mothers and the conservers of the race.
Rail as I will at Miss West’s red-blood complacency of life, yet I must bow my head to her life-giving to me. ”

“ Not so much as a word, a hint, a sign had come to Jane of her in any way during the past seven years. Even Mrs. West—the only link, as it had seemed to Lady Jane between Clarice in being and Clarice lost—had disappeared. Not disappeared in the same sense that Clarice had. Mrs. West had given up her house in Gloucester Terrace and gone to reside on the continent for the benefit of her children’s education. Her husband went with her. A successful man in business, he had realised a competency earlier than most men realise it, and had (perhaps wisely) retired from it altogether. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Persis looked at her with kind eyes. "I haven't added any new responsibility in taking these children, Mis' West. It was there just as soon as the money and leisure came to me, and I've made a start toward meeting it, that's all. We don't make our responsibilities; we just wake up to 'em."
"I must say you take to it like a duck to water," acknowledged Mrs. West in conciliatory accents. "Some women are just as unhandy with a baby as a man. Sophia Warren's one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it were dull or wet, there would be a matinee or the pictures; if fine they would go to Kew, Richmond, or the Zoo. It was an understood thing that Mrs. West should know nothing about the arrangement until the actual day itself.
"I think," remarked Dorothy, as they walked across Kew Bridge, "that I must be looking rather nice to-day. That's the third man who has given me the glad-eye since——"
"Oh, Dorothy! I wish you wouldn't say such dreadful things," protested Mrs. West in genuine distress.
Slipping her arm through her mother's, the girl squeezed it to her side. ”

“ She had begun to think about West in a way that caused her to feel guilty of disloyalty to her husband when no disloyalty had occurred—to desire to avoid the appearance of evil where no evil existed. All that she had done had been to liken her life with Donald, to what it might have been had she married West. It is a curious fact that the best of women are willing at times to compare the husband at his worst, with the lover at his casual best, and judge both accordingly. ”

“ He, the young lady’s papa—looking like a general or a judge, she couldn’t exactly say which, but as fine a show of a man as she wished ever to see; Mrs. West, so happy and smiling, just like a little girl that has got a present she’d been crying for; and Miss Mordaunt—well, nobody could beat her for looks and pretty ways. At the very top of the steps didn’t she seize Mimms and hug her, and introduce her to “Mr. Angus McCrea, the young man that ran away with me this morning, and that’s going to be my husband”? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And when you say the wives of the doctors share these jealousies----Mrs. McGanum and I haven't any particular crush on each other; she's so stolid. But her mother, Mrs. Westlake--nobody could be sweeter."
"Yes, I'm sure she's very bland. But I wouldn't tell her my heart's secrets if I were you, my dear. I insist that there's only one professional-man's wife in this town who doesn't plot, and that is you, you blessed, credulous outsider!" ”

“ I was getting feared!" cried her mother, who had gone to the kitchen to boil up the cocoa when she heard the key in the lock. She liked that sound. Ellen thought herself a wonderful new sort of woman who was going to be just like a man; she would have been surprised if she had known how many of her stern-browed ambitions, how much of her virile swagger of life, were not the invention of her own soul, but had been suggested to her by an old woman who liked to pretend her daughter was a son. ”

“ After some seconds she heard his tread and felt him bend over her. "Ellen," he mumbled, "I must go with mother. That fool will be too awful on the platform. I must see her through."
From the dark fey shape he made against the firelight she knew that he was not thinking of her, that the life she had given him by her love no longer ran in his veins. She scratched one of her wrists. If she could have let the life he had given flow out of her veins she would have done it. "Ay, do," she said. "I like you to be good to your mother. ”

“ His mother suspected that the box was the cause of his neglect of his books, and going into the garret and finding him busy at a picture, she was about to reprimand him; but her eye fell on some of his compositions, and her anger cooled at once. She was so pleased with them that she loaded him with kisses, and promised to secure his father's pardon for his neglect of school. The world is much indebted to Mrs. West for her early and constant encouragement of the talent of her son. He often used to say, after his reputation was established, "My mothers kiss made me a painter!" ”

“ In consequence, she greeted this new admirer gladly as a sop to her pride and, presently, as Roy exerted himself to the utmost toward making a favorable impression, for the sake of the genuine pleasure his company gave her. Being a sensible young woman in the main, the inevitable comparisons that soon began to arise in her mind between the two young men did much toward tearing loose the roots of love from her heart, leaving the soil there freshly tilled for the planting of other seed.
Mrs. West played her part excellently as chaperon by giving her society much of the time to David and Billy. ”

“ It's like you, mother, to read from a patch of brown skin on a woman's face things that other people would have found out only by searching registry records and asking the police. It's like the way you always turned your back on the barometer and read the sky for news of the weather. You're an old peasant woman under your skin, mother." His voice was hazed with delight. He had forgotten the moment in the timeless joy of his love for her. Ellen, in the shadows, stirred and coughed. ”

“ The squire, however, sent after his sister the same holloa which attends the departure of a hare, when she is first started before the hounds. He was indeed a great master of this kind of vociferation, and had a holla proper for most occasions in life.
Women who, like Mrs Western, know the world, and have applied themselves to philosophy and politics, would have immediately availed themselves of the present disposition of Mr Western's mind, by throwing in a few artful compliments to his understanding at the expense of his absent adversary; but poor Sophia was all simplicity. ”

“ Johnnie exclaimed, as the house seemed filled with Dora’s delirious ravings. “Father and that Mr. West can bring him in a chair! He shall!” and Johnnie rushed across the street, nearly upsetting Mrs. West in his headlong haste, and bursting upon Richard with the exclamation, “She’ll die! she is dying, and you shall go! You must,—you will! We’ll take you in this big chair!” and Johnnie wound his arm around the doctor’s 234neck, while he begged of him to go and save Aunt Dora. ”

“ Mrs. Weston again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Weston! always my kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her. There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure!—and the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she would have sat longer, but she was in such a hurry to have me draw her four children that she would not be quiet. ”

“ Mrs. West made arrangements for Anna to live with her parents, who in a short time made her their adopted child. It was a beautiful country home, and she became as a dear child to Mr. and Mrs. Warren.
THE GLOW WORM.
On a summer's evening, about half an hour after bed time, as three little brothers lay talking together they heard a gentle footstep on the stairs. ”

“ And she had for once had a real live earl’s daughter in her drawing-room, and had insulted her!
“How could poor Clarice have stayed in that family for a day?” thought Jane.
CHAPTER XXVI.⁠AN OMINOUS SHADOW.
Lady Jane was next driven to the other address, Mrs. West’s. The lady was at home, and Jane found her a very different person from Mrs. Lorton: a kind, cordial, chatty little woman, without pretence or form; a lady too. Mr. West was engaged in some City business, and neither he nor his wife aspired to be greater and grander than they were entitled to be. ”

“ If West had not known the young woman under different conditions, he might have accepted this theory, and dismissed the whole matter from mind. But it was the haunting memory of that earlier Natalie Coolidge, the mistress of Fairlawn, which would not permit his complete surrender. She had seemed all that his dream of womanhood called for. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If she had not set herself to find out what was hobbling the tongue of the man she wanted, she would have been less than a woman; and Miss Avery was a good deal more. Hence, when she had seen West with Sharlee Weyland, and in particular on the last two or three times she had seen West with Sharlee Weyland, she had watched his manner toward that lady with profound misgivings, of the sort which starts every true woman to fighting for her own. ”

“ She liked the people, who all looked darkly dressed and meek as they hurried along into the layer of shadow that lay along the ground, and who seemed to be seeking so urgently for cabs and porters because their meagre lives had convinced them that here was never enough of anything to go round. If she and her mother had ever come to London on the trip they had always planned, she would have been swinging off now to look for a taxi, just like a man; and when she came back her mother would have said, "Why, Ellen, I never would have thought you could have got one so quickly." ”

“ Ellen fell back in a sitting posture and looked for Richard, whom she had forgotten, and who was now standing at the end of the bed. She stretched out her hands to him and moaned; and at that sound recognition stirred in the centre of Mrs. Melville's immense glazed gaze, like a small waking bird ruffling its feathers on some inmost branch of a large tree.
"Oh, mother dear! Mother dear!"
From that roaring throat came a tortured, happy noise; and she tried to make her lips meet, and speak.
"My wee lamb, don't try to speak. Just lie quiet. It's heaven just to be with you. You needn't speak." ”