Wilcox

“ Many people would think Miss Wilcox, standing there [495] in her blue merino dress and pomegranate ribbon, a very agreeable woman. She has regular features; the nose is a little sharp, the lips a little thin, good complexion, light red hair. She is very business-like, very practical; she never in her life knew a refinement of feeling or of thought; she is entirely limited, respectable, and self-satisfied. ”

“ I—I—it is a long time since I have carried you in my arms, Ada Wilcox."
"Ada Wilcox!" said the woman, with a start; "let me down, Jacob Strong; my name is not Ada Wilcox; all that bore that name are gone; the homestead is full of strangers; Wilcox is a dead name; that of Leicester has crept over it like night-shade over a grave." ”

“ Young Wilcox’s rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make him recall and record it verbatim, was of a fantastically poetic cast which must have typified his whole conversation, and which I have since found highly characteristic of him. He said, "It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon." ”

“ Wilcox was already in the garden. She evidently loves it. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out. Then she walked off the lawn to the meadow, whose corner to the right I can just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the hay that was cut yesterday—I suppose for rabbits or something, as she kept on smelling it. The air here is delicious. Later on I heard the noise of croquet balls, and looked out again, and it was Charles Wilcox practising; they are keen on all games. ”

“ So, in despair, Thomson began to cultivate Wilcox. He began to feel that Wilcox was a type of the world, a bad world, for which he was not responsible. The world's servant he must be, if he received its wages. When he secured the coveted appointment, through the political pull of Wilcox and the mild kindness of Mrs. Wilcox, he was ready to teach whatever was wanted of him, whether it was truth in Germany or not. He found that he could change his notions of truth. The Wilcox idea was that everything in America is all right just as it is. ”

“ Then, dodging the subaltern’s bullet, the native turned and fled. Two privates cornered and disarmed him, but before they could put in a finishing blow, Wilcox had shouted: “Hold on there! Wait till I come!”
“As you have mercy, put me out of this life!” moaned Ellard.
The tall, strong, young athlete of a moment before lay helpless on the ground, a bleeding, legless trunk. ”

“ The salesman was very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her. It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable and quite unlike herself.
Miss Wilcox went to the Ritz. It was, she felt, a place where married ladies without husbands would be neither noticed nor commented on. There is, after all, nothing so very unusual in a wedding ring and Miss Wilcox's appearance did not arouse idle and libelous speculations. ”

“ Miss Wilcox conscientiously cultivated display in her young ladies, thinking she thus fulfilled a duty to herself and to them, at once spreading her own fame and giving the children self-possessed manners. ”

“ Prudence sat deep in thought. She had an enterprise in view for the furtherance of which she foresaw the necessity of laying resolute siege to the will of Master Robert Wilcox. She would require his co-operation, and as she traced out the lines of her campaign, her eyes glistened brightly, and her lips curved into a roguish smile. For Prue was one to scorn an easy dominion, else had she never given her heart to so resolute a lover as Robert.
So intent was she upon her thoughts that she did not notice the approach of Master Wilcox himself, walking with rapid step down the trim garden path ”

“ Ellin. “Has she known of this business? Is she in the secret? Is she herself an accomplice, or a mere tool? Have her in.”
Miss Wilcox rang the bell, demanded Matilda Fitzgibbon, and the false heiress soon appeared. She came in her ringlets, her sash, and her furbelowed dress adornments—alas! no longer acceptable.
“Stand there!” said Miss Wilcox, sternly, checking her as she approached the hearth. “Stand there on the farther side of the table. I have a few questions to put to you, and your business will be to answer them. And mind—let us have the truth. We will not endure lies.” ”

“ Miss Wilcox was the big, muscular type of girl that goes in for athletics, cares little for books, loving rather to strive muscle against muscle than to swaddle and grow prim and become self-conscious of nose and eyelash. These athletic girls are glorious at tennis and hockey—Bea Wilcox, at fifteen, was a wonder at both sports; she could even bat and play first-base like a man—but they are not usually considered refined. Delicate intellectual shadings they do not always perceive. ”

“ True, her cheeks lost their roses, but without attaining an interesting transparent whiteness and her figure became angular, rather than thin. Cold food, ugly clothes and enforced isolation began to lose their charms and Miss Wilcox abandoned the intellectual life.
She discovered that men were her only interest—probably she had always known it. Even the curate, who was like a curate on the stage, was glorified into an adventurous possibility from the mere fact that he belonged to that strange, tropical species—the other sex. ”

“ But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind. ”

“ Wilcox, “I consider to be an excellent idea. And now, ladies, I beg of you not to let a word of all this escape you. In a house like ours, one cannot be too careful. Until we really know the truth, there is no use in telling anyone what we think. Will you all promise me to be silent about it?”
203Mrs. Dumaresq and Mrs. Whitley agreed, and after some persuasion a reluctant consent was won from the medical woman, who promised to hold her tongue, until after the trial, any way.
204 CHAPTER XX.
NOTICE TO QUIT. With the curious intuition common to the sick, Prudence felt that something was wrong. ”

“ An undefined wonder would smite her sometimes that she did not take more real satisfaction in flattering and caressing this embryo heiress—that she did not like better to have her always at her side, under her special charge. On principle Miss Wilcox continued the plan she had begun. On principle, for she argued with herself: This is the most aristocratic and richest of my pupils; she brings me the most credit and the most profit: therefore, I ought in justice to show her a special indulgence; which she did—but with a gradually increasing peculiarity of feeling. ”

“ Easier but no more satisfactory. Evidently charm was a strange, mysterious thing, for which there was no recipe. A dangerous force governing many things and subject to no law.
Every one was kind to Miss Wilcox. Lady Mary (Vera's mother) was always asking her to picnics and lawn-tennis, parties and festivities of all sorts. On these occasions, Sir Harry invariably chaffed her about the curate, little knowing that his foolish jokes were a source of exquisite and almost guilty pleasure to her. ”

“ Next morning he sat next to Calder, a Classic boy, in Hall, and asked him if he could keep a secret. Oh yes, Calder could keep any amount of secrets. Then Wilcox told him the same story that he had confided to Underwood, only adding that the amount in question was said to be several pounds.
Calder hazarded the names of several boys; but Wilcox shrugged his shoulders at them all.
“You’d better not ask me,” he said; “it will only get out and make trouble.”
“Oh! but I promise I wouldn’t tell a soul,” said Calder. ”

“ Dr. Sippets considers it a very happy thing that the ailment flew there; for his heart will be all right, and that’s a great part of the system, in love. His head is of no importance in that condition; and Mrs. Wilcox proved to me last night, that it is quite a superfluity in the present days. Madam, you know you did, and you did it thoroughly.”
My uncle gave a wink at Mrs. Wilcox, not with any overture to familiarity—for he was very shy of widows—but to intimate to her that she should talk a little nonsense, after his example, as a rescue from hysterics. ”

“ Francis Wilcox, whose prominence in university life entitled him to vast consideration, came first, and advised Spinden that he was a disgrace to his club—an argument infinitely more powerful than if he had rested his hopes on the class, or the university. Wilcox said that Monk had it in him to play a rattling game, and that there were mighty few athletes in the club anyway, and that it was a distinct reflection on the constitution for a man who'd done so well in the cage to play like such a novice on the field. ”

“ When Sedgwick's column reached the summit along the road, about a mile from Salem Church, Wilcox's cavalry skirmishers were met, and a section of artillery opened with solid shot from a point near the church, where Wilcox was hurrying his forces into line. The intervening ground was quite open on both sides the road. The heights at Salem Church are not considerable; but a ravine running north and south across its front, and as far as the Rappahannock, furnishes an excellent line of defence, and the woods come up to its edge at this point, and enclose the road. ”

“ After the capture of the enemy's entrenchments and artillery on the right of the road in a field, and near several houses, a portion of the Eleventh Alabama, of Wilcox's brigade, under Colonel Nydenham Moore, was ordered to drive the enemy from the woods near a small house, several hundred yards to the right and a little to the front. ”

“ Many of his questions seemed highly out of place to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the latter with strange cults or societies; and Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious body. When Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore, he besieged his visitor with demands for future reports of dreams. ”

“ Wilcox, “the Lord make us truly thankful.”
With a creak and a rustle, some five-and-thirty boarders drew in their chairs. The covers were removed, and a ripple of prosy talk began.
As usual, it started with polite enquiries as to each other’s health. In boarding-houses it generally does. No one cares a button for you or your ailments, but they ask after them all the same with exasperating regularity and take no interest in the answer.
“How is your cold, Major Jones?”
“Better, thank you, Mrs. Dumaresq—and your neuralgia?” ”

“ Wilcox drily, “in your place I should have Doctor Creedy in at once. You know, Miss Semaphore, we must take precautions—we must take precautions—and if your sister has any symptoms 103betokening infectious disease, I lay it on you as a matter of conscience to tell me about it at once, that her removal may be arranged for before it is too late.”
“You are mistaken, indeed, you are mistaken, Mrs. Wilcox,” urged poor Miss Prudence, with tears in her eyes. “There is no possible need for alarm. It really is nothing catching. ”

“ Where are we? I remember walking, wading, it seemed to me, neck deep through a crowd, trying to keep up with you. Some one said they were taking us to prison; that I had done nothing, and they would not keep me. That you and Julia would stay, but I must go into the street, because a wife could not bear witness against her husband, but a grandchild could. Have I been crazy, or walking in my sleep, Wilcox? ”

“ But to reach that stone wall Wilcox must march through the fire that shot to pieces the brigades of Kemper, Garnett and Armistead. General Wilcox says that he reached the foot of the hill; that he could not see a man whom he was sent to support; that he was subjected to such an artillery fire from front and both flanks that he went back in search of a battery; that he could find none; that returning to his brigade he regarded further advance useless and ordered a retreat.
On the left, Pettigrew and Trimble carried their battle to the Emmitsburg road and to the advanced line. ”

“ Wilcox has a Pickling and Preserving establishment besides, separate from his business house, owning a great deal of first class real estate. There is no man in the community in which he lives, that turns money to a greater advantage than Mr. Wilcox, and none by whom the community is more benefited for the amount of capital invested. He makes constant and heavy bills in eastern houses, and there are doubtless now many merchants in New York, Boston, and Baltimore cities, who have been dealing with S.T. Wilcox, and never until the reading of this notice of him, knew that he was a colored man. ”

“ As he spoke, the remembrance of the scene I had witnessed in the grounds, and Clement-Pell’s curious fear later when I told him of the same man watching him, flashed over me, bringing a conviction that the report was true.
“I heard it at the chief Bank yesterday,” began Mr. Brandon. “Having some business to transact in the town, I went over by train in the afternoon, and chanced to meet Wilcox in High Street. He is a red-faced man in general——”
“Oh, I know Wilcox,” impatiently interrupted the Squire. “Face as red as the sun in a fog. ”