Artists -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Love stories; Rich people -- Fiction
ENTER--NURSE ROSEMARY
Nurse Rosemary Gray had arrived at Gleneesh.
When she and her "box" were deposited on the platform of the little
wayside railway station, she felt she had indeed dropped from the
clouds; leaving her own world, and her own identity, on some
far-distant planet.
A motor waited outside the station, and she had a momentary fear lest
she should receive deferential recognition from the chauffeur. But he
was as solid and stolid as any other portion of the car, and paid no
more attention to her than he did to her baggage. The one was a nurse;
the other, a box, both common nouns, and merely articles to be conveyed
to Gleneesh according to orders. So he looked straight before him,
presenting a sphinx-like profile beneath the peak of his leather cap,
while a slow and solemn porter helped Jane and her luggage into the
motor. When she had rewarded the porter with threepence,
conscientiously endeavouring to live down to her box, the chauffeur
moved foot and hand with the silent precision of a machine, they swung
round into the open, and took the road for the hills.
Up into the fragrant heather and grey rocks; miles of moor and sky and
solitude. More than ever Jane felt as if she had dropped into another
world, and so small an incident as the omission of the usual respectful
salute of a servant, gave her a delightful sense of success and
security in her new role.
She had often heard of Garth's old castle up in the North, an
inheritance from his mother's family, but was hardly prepared for so
much picturesque beauty or such stateliness of archway and entrance. As
they wound up the hillside and the grey turrets came into view, with
pine woods behind and above, she seemed to hear Garth's boyish voice
under the cedar at Overdene, with its ring of buoyant enjoyment,
saying: "I should like you to see Castle Gleneesh. You would enjoy the
view from the terrace; and the pine woods, and the moor." And then he
had laughingly declared his intention of getting up a "best party" of
his own, with the duchess as chaperon; and she had promised to make one
of it. And now he, the owner of all this loveliness, was blind and
helpless; and she was entering the fair portals of Gleneesh, unknown to
him, unrecognised by any, as a nurse-secretary sort of person. Jane had
said at Overdene: "Yes, ask us, and see what happens." And now this was
happening. What would happen next?
Garth's man, Simpson, received her at the door, and again a possible
danger was safely passed. He had entered Garth's service within the
last three years and evidently did not know her by sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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