The Happy WarriorHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
The Happy Warrior
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Fiction
Mrs. Espart proceeded to bring up the child born of this marriage
precisely as she had herself been brought up,--in narrow cloisters,
that is to say, in dutiful obedience and for the ultimate purpose of
suitable marriage. She repeated in Dora's training the training she
had received from her own mother, its object the same, with this
difference--that whereas in her case that object was a wealthy match,
in Dora's--Mr. Espart having made wealth unnecessary--it was position.
Time was absurdly young for any plans when Mrs. Espart first met Lady
Burdon, but plans had crossed her mind when she drove out to leave
cards at the Manor: she had heard of Rollo. She made Lady Burdon very
welcome when Lady Burdon came.
Dora was two years younger than Rollo, Lady Burdon found. When, on the
occasion of this visit, she was brought to the drawing-room--a
strikingly pretty child in a curiously unchildish way--she already
showed marks of the machinery that ordered her life. She was curiously
prim, that is to say, of noticeably trained deportment; curiously
self-assured and yet not childishly frank; curiously correct of speech
and with a dutiful trick of adding "Mamma" to every sentence she
addressed to her mother.
She was her mother's child; similarly trained; similarly developing.
"A very well brought-up child," as Lady Burdon afterwards commented to
her husband, and noted in her also the strong promise of the beauty
that later years were to realise. She was to be notably tall and was
already slim and shot-up for her years; she was to be notably fair of
complexion and showed already a wonderful mildness and whiteness of
skin, curiously heightened by the little flush of colour that warmed in
a sharply defined spot on either cheek. Lady Burdon rallied her once
during their conversation--the subject was French lessons, which it
appeared she found "Terribly puzzling, Lady Burdon, do I not, Mamma?"
and her face responded by a curious deepening of the red shades, her
cheeks and brow gaining a hue almost of transparency by contrast.
It was that quality and that characteristic that made Percival--meeting
her when she was brought over to tea with Rollo--call her, as he told
Ima, Snow-White-and-Rose-Red.
The name was from his fairy book, and to his mind fitted exactly this
fragile and well-behaved and reserved Miss who he thought was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen. It fitted her more surely yet when
he came to know her when she was fourteen and just returned, Rollo also
having come to the Manor, for her first holidays from the highly
exclusive school to which she was sent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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