Holmes Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-98826-285-1
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 215 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig is a novel by American author Mary Jane Holmes, first published in 1867. The story follows three young women who come from very different backgrounds but are brought together by their shared experiences and trials. Norah is a poor but virtuous young woman who falls in love with a wealthy man named Arthur, while Kitty Craig is a wealthy heiress who must navigate the challenges of societal expectations and family obligations. The novel deals with themes of love, class, and the role of women in society, and was a popular work of sentimental fiction in its time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Holmes, Mary Jane

Leseproben

CHAPTER I.
ANNIE STRONG.
“Millfield,” said Hal, “is one of those little New England towns which seem to have been finished up years and years ago, and gone quietly to sleep without a suspicion that anything more could be expected of it. It stands on a spur of the mountains which lie between Pittsfield and Albany, and can be distinctly seen from the car windows, with its spotless houses of white, with fresh green blinds, and the inevitable lilac bushes and sweet syringas in front. I was born there, and when I wish to rest and get away from the noise and turmoil of New York, I go there and grow a younger and a better man amid the Sunday stillness which reigns perpetually in its streets. And yet you would be surprised to find how much intelligence and genuine aristocracy that little village has. There are the Crosbys, who claim relationship with the Adamses, and a real scion of the Washingtons, and a lineal descendant of Lord Cornwallis, and Miss Talleyrand, who prides herself upon having, in her veins, the best blood in New England, though good old Deacon Larkin’s wife once shocked her horribly by saying ‘she didn’t see, for her part, why Polly Talleyrand need to brag so about good blood, when she was as full of erysipelas as she could hold.’” Here I laughed heartily over Miss Talleyrand’s good blood, while Hal lighted a fresh cigar, and continued: “Next to these aristocrats—upper crust, as the deacon’s wife called them—comes the well-to-do class, tradespeople and mechanics, the people whose sons and daughters work in the shoe-shops, for you know the shoe business is nowhere carried on so extensively as in New England, and it gives employment to many girls as well as boys, the former stitching the uppers, as they are called, and the latter putting on the soles. There is a very large shop in Millfield, which employs at least fifty girls, and at the time I am telling you about, there was not in the whole fifty—no, nor in the entire town—so pretty a girl as Annie Strong, the heroine of my story. She was not very intellectual, it is true, or very fond of books, but she was beautiful to look at, with a lithe, graceful figure, and winsome ways, while her voice was sweet and clear as a robin’s. Birdie Strong, we called her, on account of her voice, and when she sang in the gallery of the old brick church, I used to shut my eyes, and fancy I was in Heaven, listening to the music of the sweetest singer there. “Bob I may as well be frank with you. I was in love with Annie Strong, and I am certain she liked me a little, though she never encouraged me in the least. She was not a bit of a coquette, and made no secret of the fact that money, and nothing else, would have any influence with her. Annie was ambitious, and when, from her shoe-bench in the hot work-room, she saw Judge Crosby’s daughter go by in her dainty white dress and sash of blue, she thought hard, bitter things of the humble life she led, and vowed to accept the first man who could give her silks, and lace, and diamonds, and a place in society. “At last the man came—a brusque, haughty Englishman, with a slight limp in his left ankle, and a cold, hard expression in his steel-gray eyes, but tolerably good-looking, with a certain assurance and style, and lavish generosity, which won upon the people, and made him quite a lion. Eva Crosby invited him to tea; Miss Talleyrand’s niece drove with him once or twice; and so he became the fashion. He was not young—was thirty-five at least, and looked older. He was of Scottish descent, he said, though English born, and he owned an estate in the north of Scotland, a large chateau in the south of France, and a city house in London, and he called himself Ernest Walsingham Haverleigh. If he chose he could be very gracious and agreeable, though his manner was always haughty in the extreme, and had in it an undisguised contempt for everything American. “I disliked him from the first, and hated him after the day of Miss Crosby’s lawn party, to which Annie Strong was invited, and where she shone the belle of the fête, notwithstanding that her dress was a simple blue muslin, and the ruffle round her throat imitation lace. I learned that fact from hearing Miss Talleyrand’s niece, from Springfield, say to Eva Crosby, in speaking of Anna, ‘She is rather pretty, but decidedly flashy. Her love of finery leads her to wear imitation lace. If there’s any one thing I detest, it is that. It always stamps a person.’ “And so Anna was stamped, but did not seem to mind it at all. How plainly I can see her now as she came through the gate with her hat in her hand, and her beautiful hair falling in curls about her neck and shoulders. “Up to that moment Haverleigh had maintained an indolent, bored attitude, with a look of supreme indifference on his face, but when Anna joined us, his manner changed at once, and he devoted himself to her with a persistency which brought upon her the jealous rancor of every lady present. But Anna did not seem to know it, and received the Englishman’s attentions with an air of sweet unconsciousness, which only deepened his ardor, and made him perfectly oblivious to every one around him. The next day he made some inquiries with regard to Anna’s family, and before night had learned all there was to know of them, both good and bad. They were poor, but perfectly respectable people, and no taint had ever rested upon the name of Strong. Years and years before, Grandfather Strong had married a second wife, with a daughter about the age of his own son, afterwards Anna’s father, and this daughter, Milly Gardner, who was in no way connected with the Strongs, had run away with a Boston man, who promised her marriage and then deserted her. A few years later news was received in Millfield of her death, and so the scandal died and was buried in poor Milly’s grave, and the family seldom spoke her name. Indeed, Anna’s mother, who was many years younger than her husband, had never known Milly, while Mr. Strong himself, who had loved her as a dear sister, never blamed her. She was more sinned against than sinning, and so he let her rest in peace, and his children only knew of her as Aunt Milly, who was very pretty, and who was dead. Mr. Strong was dead now himself, and his widow lived in a little red house on the common, with her three children—Mary, who made dresses in the winter, and taught school in the summer; Anna, who worked in the shoe-shop; and Fred, the youngest and pet of the family, who was destined for college, and for whom the mother and sisters hoarded their small earnings and denied themselves everything. “This is the history of the Strongs up to the time when Haverleigh came to Millfield and made up his mind to marry Anna, with the decided understanding, however, that in taking her he was not taking her family. And Anna listened to him, and throwing aside her love, and pride, and womanhood, cast into one scale her humble home, with its poverty and privations, her scanty dress, her hateful life of toil in the dingy shop, stitching shoes for the negroes to wear; while into the other she put a life of ease and luxury, the country seat in Scotland, the chateau in Southern France, the city house in London, with the gay seasons there, and what weighed more with her—the satins, and laces, and diamonds which, as Mrs. Haverleigh, she was sure to wear. Of course, the latter scale overbalanced the former, and without a particle of love, but rather with a feeling of dread and fear for the cold Englishman, Anna promised to be his wife, on one condition. Fred was to go to college, the mortgage of five hundred dollars on the red house was to be paid, her mother was to have a dress of handsome black silk, and Mary one of dark blue. This request she made timidly, not daring to look at the man who, with a sneer on his face, answered, laughingly: “‘Oh, that is a mere trifle. Fred shall go to college, the mortgage shall be paid, the silk gowns shall be forthcoming, and here is the wherewithal.’ “It was a check for five thousand dollars which he gave her, and his unlooked-for generosity went far toward reconciling Mrs. Strong and Mary to the match. And so it was a settled thing, and Anna stitched her last shoe in the dingy shop; went down the staircase for the last time, sang her last song in church, and was married quietly at home one lovely morning in July, when Millfield was looking its best from the effects of a recent rain. There were drops of crystal on the freshly cut grass, and the air was sweet with the perfume of roses and pinks, and heliotrope, while the sky overhead was blue and clear as the eyes of the young bride, who, if she felt any regret for the home she was leaving, did not show it in the least. Perhaps she was thinking of the costly diamond on her finger, and the silken robe she wore, or possibly of the grandeur which awaited her over the sea. Poor Anna—she was very young—only eighteen—and to change at once from a poor girl, who was every morning awakened by the shoe-shop whistle, to a life she hated, to step into wealth and elegance must have benumbed and bewildered her so that she did not realize what she was doing, when at last she said good-by to the home of her childhood, and went away alone with a man she had scarcely known two months—a man whom she did not love, and who, even while caressing her, made her feel the immense condescension it had been on his part to make her his wife. “Their destination was New York, where Anna had never been, and where they were to spend a week or two before sailing for Europe. At the hotel where...