Mary Gray

Katharine Tynan

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• Publié par: zawyug
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 15
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Gray, by Katharine Tynan This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Mary Gray Author: Katharine Tynan Release Date: December 27, 2006 [EBook #20201] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY GRAY *** Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) MARY GRAY BY KATHARINE TYNAN Author of "Julia," "The Story of Bawn," "Her Ladyship," "For Maisie," etc., etc. WITH FOUR COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. H. TAFFS CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, PARIS, N EW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 1909 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED "The men would salute their old General, the General salute his old regiment" CONTENTS CHAPTER I. WISTARIA TERRACE CHAPTER II. THE WALL BETWEEN CHAPTER III. THE N EW ESTATE CHAPTER IV. BOY AND GIRL CHAPTER V. "OLD BLOOD AND THUNDER" CHAPTER VI. THE BLUE R IBBON CHAPTER VII. A C HANCE MEETING CHAPTER VIII. GROVES OF ACADEME CHAPTER IX. THE R ACE WITH D EATH CHAPTER X. D ISPOSSESSED CHAPTER XI. THE LION CHAPTER XII. H ER LADYSHIP CHAPTER XIII. THE H EART OF A FATHER CHAPTER XIV. LOVERS' PARTING CHAPTER XV. THE GENERAL HAS AN IDEA CHAPTER XVI. THE LEADING AND THE LIGHT CHAPTER XVII. A N IGHT OF SPRING CHAPTER XVIII. H ALCYON WEATHER CHAPTER XIX. WILD THYME AND VIOLETS CHAPTER XX. JEALOUSY, C RUEL AS THE GRAVE CHAPTER XXI. TWO WOMEN CHAPTER XXII. LIGHT ON THE WAY CHAPTER XXIII. THE N EWS IN THE WESTMINSTER CHAPTER XXIV. THE FRIEND CHAPTER XXV. THE ONE WOMAN CHAPTER XXVI. GOLDEN D AYS CHAPTER XXVII. THE INTERMEDIARY CHAPTER XXVIII. N OEL! N OEL! LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS [Transcriber's note: This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project. Only the Frontispiece was included in the scans.] "THE MEN WOULD SALUTE THEIR OLD GENERAL, THE GENERAL SALUTE HIS OLD REGIMENT" "SIR R OBIN D RUMMOND HAD COME TO MARY'S SIDE, AND TURNED THE PAGE OF HER MUSIC" "'D O YOU KNOW WHAT I CAME HERE IN THE MIND TO ASK YOU? '" "'MISS N ELLY IS IN THE DRAWING -ROOM, SIR '" MARY GRAY CHAPTER I WISTARIA TERRACE The house where Mary Gray was born and grew towards womanhood was one of a squat line of mean little houses that hid themselves behind a great church. The roadway in front of the houses led only to the back entrance of the church. Over against the windows was the playground of the church schools, surrounded by a high wall that shut away field and sky from the front rooms of Wistaria Terrace. The houses were drab and ugly, with untidy grass-plots in front. They presented an exterior of three windows and a narrow round-topped hall-door which was a confession of poverty in itself. Five out of six houses had a ramping plaster horse in the fanlight of the hall door, a fixture which went with the house and was immune from breakage because no one ever thought of cleaning the fanlights. In the back gardens the family wash was put to dry. Some of the more enterprising inhabitants kept fowls; but there was not much enterprise in Wistaria Terrace. Earlier inhabitants had planted the gardens with lilac and laburnum bushes, with gooseberries and currants. There were no flowers there that did not sow themselves year after year. They were damp, grubby places, but even there an imaginative child like Mary Gray could find suggestions of delight. Mary's father, Walter Gray, was employed at a watchmaker's of repute. He spent all his working life with a magnifying glass in his eye, peering into the mechanism of watches, adjusting the delicate pivots and springs on which their lives moved. His occupation had perhaps encouraged in him a habit of introspection. Perhaps he found the human machine as worthy of interest as the works of watches and clocks. Anyhow, in his leisure moments, which were few, he would discuss curiously with Mary the hidden springs that kept the human machine in motion, the strange workings and convolutions of it. From the very early age when she began to be a comfort and a companion to her father, Mary had been accustomed to such speculations as would have written Walter Gray down a madman if he had shared them with the grown people about him rather than with a child. Mary was the child of his romance, of his first marriage, which had lasted barely a year. He never talked of her mother, even to Mary, though she had vague memories of a time when he had not been so reticent. That was before the stepmother came, the stepmother whom, honestly, Walter Gray had married because his child was neglected. He had not anticipated, perhaps, the long string of children which was to result from the marriage, whose presence in the world was to make Mary's lot a more strenuous one than would have been the case if she had been a child alone. Not that Mary grumbled about the stepbrothers and sisters. Year after year, from the time she could stagger under the weight of a baby, she had received a new burden for her arms, and had found enough love for each newcomer. The second Mrs. Gray was a poor, puny, washed-out little rag of a woman, whose one distinction was the number of her children. They had always great appetites to be satisfied. As soon as they began to run about, the rapidity with which they wore out their boots and the knees of their trousers, and outgrew their frocks, was a subject upon which Mrs. Gray could expatiate for hours. Mary had a tender, strong pity from the earliest age for the down-at-heel, overburdened stepmother, which lightened her own load, as did the vicarious, motherly love which came to her for each succeeding fat baby. Mary was nurse and nursery-governess to all the family. Wistaria Terrace had one great recompense for its humble and hidden condition. It was within easy reach of the fields and the mountains. For an adventurous spirit the sea was not at an insuperable distance. Indeed, but for the high wall of the school playground, the lovely line of mountains had been well in view. As it was, many a day in summer Mary would carry off her train of children to the fields, with a humble refection of bread and butter and jam, and milk for their mid-day meal; and these occasions allowed Mrs. Gray a few hours of peace that were like a foretaste of Paradise. She never grumbled, poor little woman, because her husband shared his thoughts with Mary and not with her. Whatever ambitions she had had to rise to her Walter's level—she had an immense opinion of his learning—had long been extinguished under the accumulation of toils and burdens that made up her daily life. She was fond of Mary, and leant on her strangely, considering their relative ages. For the rest, she toiled with indifferent success at household tasks, and was grateful for having a husband so absorbed in distant speculations that he was insensible of the near discomfort of a badly-cooked dinner or a buttonless shirt. The gardens of the houses opened on a lane which was a sort of rubbish-shoot for the houses that gave upon it. Across the lane was a row of stabling belonging to far more important houses than Wistaria Terrace. Beyond the stables and stable yards were old gardens with shady stretches of turf and forest trees enclosed within their walls. Beyond the gardens rose the fine oldfashioned houses of the Mall, big Georgian houses that looked in front across the roadway at the line of elm-trees that bordered the canal. The green waters of the canal, winding placidly through its green channel, with the elm-trees reflected greenly in its green depths, had a suggestion of Holland. The lane was something of an adventure to the children of Wistaria Terrace. There, any day, you might see a coachman curry-combing his satin-skinned horses, hissing between his teeth by way of encouragement, after the timehonoured custom. Or you might see a load of hay lifted up by a windlass into the loft above the stables. Or you might assist at the washing of a carriage. Sometimes the gate at the farther side of the stable was open, and a gardener would come through with a barrowful of rubbish to add to the accumulation already in the lane. Through the open gateway the children would catch glimpses of Fairyland. A broad stretch of shining turf dappled with sun and shade. Tall snapdragons and lilies and sweet-williams and phlox in the garden-beds. A fruit tree or two, heavy with blossom or fruit. Only old-fashioned people lived in the Mall nowadays, and the glimpses the children caught of the owners of those terrestrial paradises fitted in with the idea of fairyland. They were always old ladies and gentlemen, and they were old-fashioned in their attire, but very magnificent. There was one old lady who was the very Fairy Godmother of the stories. She was the one who had the magnificent mulberry-tree in her garden. One day in every year the children were called in to strip the tree of its fruit; and that was a great day for Wistaria Terrace. The children were allowed to bring basins to carry away what they could not eat; and benevolent men-servants would ascend to the overweighted boughs of the tree by ladders and pick the fruit and load up the children's basins with it. Again, the apples would be distributed in their season. While the distribution went on, the old lady would stand at a window with her little white dog in her arms nodding her head in a well-pleased way. The children called her Lady Anne. They had no such personal acquaintance with the other gardens and their owners, so their thoughts were very full of Lady Anne and her garden. When Mary was about fourteen she made the acquaintance of Lady Anne—her full name was Lady Anne Hamilton—and that was an event which