“People don’t often really go mad from grief,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, as
she and Katharine walked slowly homeward in the bright spring afternoon.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if Hester married again in a few years. Not
very soon, of course--but in time. She’s very young yet. She’ll be very
young still in five years--for a widow.”
“I don’t think she can ever get over it,” answered Katharine, rather
coldly, being displeased at her mother’s careless way of speaking.
“It’s a mistake to take things too hard,” said the elder woman. “And
it’s a great mistake to underrate time. A great many curious things can
happen to one in five years.”
Katharine was not in search of unbelief, nor of encouragement in not
believing that human nature could really feel. Her faith in it had been
terribly undermined during the past winter, and she had just been with
two persons, Hester Crowdie and Paul Griggs, whose behaviour had at
least tended to restore it. She did not wish the recuperative effort of
her charity towards mankind to be checked. So she did not argue the
point, but walked on in silence.
She had not recovered, and could not recover for many days, from the
impression produced upon her by the ghastly scene in the studio. Her
young vitality abhorred death, and its contrary and hostile principle,
and when she thought of what she had seen, she felt the same sickening,
shrinking horror which had led her to hold back her skirt from any
possible contact with the carpet on which Crowdie’s body had been lying.
She might have been willing to admit that her mother, who had seen
nothing, but had sat downstairs talking with the comfortable, fat and
refined aunt Maggie, was not called upon to feel what she herself felt
after going through such a strange experience. But since her mother felt
nothing, her mother could not understand; and if she could not
understand, it was better to walk on in silence and to make her hasten
her indolent, graceful steps.
In reality, Mrs. Lauderdale was much more preoccupied about the
possibilities of the second will turning out to be favourable to her
husband or the contrary, and her preoccupation was not at all sordid,
though it was by no means unselfish. She was anxious about him, in her
unobtrusive, calm way. He talked of money in his sleep, as she had told
Katharine, and he was growing nervous. She had even noticed once or
twice of late that his hand shook a little as he held the morning paper
after breakfast, during the ten minutes which he devoted to its perusal.
That was a bad sign, she thought, for a man who had been famous for his
good nerve, and who had been known all his life as an unerring shot. She
did not like to think what consequences a great disappointment might
have upon his temper, which had shown itself so frequently of late,
after nearly a quarter of a century of comparative quiescence. Nor was
it pleasant to contemplate the new means of economy which he would
certainly introduce into his household if by any evil chance he got no
share of the Lauderdale fortune. But that, she told herself, was
impossible, as indeed it seemed to be.
It was of no use to be in a hurry, she told Katharine, as they had at
least an hour to get rid of before the time at which Mr. Allen was to be
expected. The Ralstons and Hamilton Bright would only come a few minutes
earlier. Every one would understand how unpleasant it might be to be
shut up together in such suspense for half an hour before the truth
could be known--each hoping to get the other’s money, as Mrs. Lauderdale
observed with a little laugh that had hardly any cruelty in it. But, of
course, nobody would be late on such an occasion. There was no fear of
that. And she laughed again, and stepped gracefully aside on the
pavement to let a boy with a big bundle go by.
She had not been deceived in her calculations, for there was still
plenty of time to spare when they reached the house in Clinton Place.
Katharine disappeared to her room, glad to be alone at last. There was a
hushed expectation in the air of the house, which reminded her of the
place she had just left, but she herself felt not the smallest interest
in the will. So far as she was concerned, she was perfectly well
satisfied with the course taken by the law, independently of any will at
all.
The Ralstons and Hamilton Bright came almost at the same moment, though
not together, and Katharine had no chance of exchanging a word with John
out of hearing of the rest. They all met in the library. The old
philanthropist was there, and every one was secretly surprised to
discover what a very fine-looking old man he was in a perfectly new
frock coat with a great deal of silk in front. But his heavy, shapeless
shoes betrayed his lingering attachment to the little Italian shoemaker
in South Fifth Avenue, whose conscientiously durable works promised to
outlast old Alexander’s need for them.
Alexander Junior stood before the empty fireplace, coldly nervous. He
could not have sat still for five minutes just then. When he spoke of
Crowdie’s death to Hamilton Bright, and immediately afterwards of the
weather, his steel-trap mouth opened and closed mechanically, emitting
metallic sounds--it could not be called speaking--and his glittering
grey eyes went restlessly from the window to the door and back again,
without even resting on Bright’s face.
Bright himself was grave, manly, quiet, as he generally was. He was
eminently the man who could be reckoned with and counted upon. He would
make no attempt to conceal his disappointment if he were disappointed,
nor his satisfaction if he were pleased, but the expression of either
would be simple, quiet and manly, with few words, if any.
Mrs. Ralston watched the two as they stood side by side. From her
position on the sofa she could see Alexander Junior’s hands twitching
nervously behind him. But she was talking with Mrs. Lauderdale at the
same time. She made no pretence of being very sorry to hear of Crowdie’s
sudden death. She rarely saw him and she had never liked him. To her, he
was merely the husband of a very distant cousin--of a descendant of her
great-grandfather through a female branch. It was too much to expect
that she should be profoundly affected by what had happened. But her
dark, clearly cut features were grave, and there was a certain
expectancy in her look, which showed that she was not really indifferent
to the nature of the events momentarily expected. She admitted frankly
to herself that it would make an enormous difference in her future
happiness to be very rich instead of being almost poor, and she had told
her son so as they came to the house.
John was trying to talk to Katharine near the window, but he found it
impossible to shake off Alexander Senior, whose fondness for his
favourite granddaughter was proverbial in the family. The old gentleman
stood by, approvingly, and insisted upon leading the conversation which,
with old-fashioned grandfatherly wit--or what passed for wit in the
families of our grandfathers--he constantly directed upon the subject of
matrimony, with an elephantine sprightliness most irritating to John
Ralston, though Katharine bore it with indifferent serenity, and smiled
when the old man looked at her, her features growing grave again as soon
as he turned to John. She could not shake off the terrible impression
she had brought with her, and yet she longed to explain to John why she
felt and looked so sad. She, also, glanced often at the door. The
arrival of the family lawyer would put a stop to her grandfather’s
playful persecution of her, and give her a chance to say three words to
John without being overheard.
Ralston stood ready, knowing that she wished to speak to him alone, and
he paid little attention to Alexander Senior’s jokes. He glanced about
the room and said to himself that the members of the Lauderdale tribe
were a very good-looking set, from first to last. He was proud of his
family just then, for he had rarely seen so many of them assembled
together without the presence of any stranger, and he was most proud of
Katharine’s beauty. Pallor was becoming to her, for hers was fresh and
clear and youthful. It ruined her mother’s looks to be pale, especially
of late, since the imperceptible lines had been drawn into very fine but
clearly discernible wrinkles. Mrs. Lauderdale had told herself with
tears that they were really wrinkles, but she would have been sorry to
know that John, or any one else, called them by that name.
At last the lawyer came, and there was a dead silence as he entered--a
tall, lantern-jawed man, clean shaven, almost bald, with prominent
yellow teeth, over which his mobile lips fitted as though they had been
made of shrivelled pink indiarubber. He had very light blue eyes and
bushy brows that stood out in contrast to his bald scalp and beardless
face like a few shaggy firs that have survived the destruction of a
forest.
He spoke in an impressive manner, for he was deaf, emphasizing almost
every word in every sentence. He was a New Englander by birth, as keen
and provincial in New York as ever was a Scotchman in London.
Having been duly welcomed, and provided with a seat in the midst of the
assembled tribe, he leisurely produced a pair of gold-rimmed glasses
and a handkerchief, and proceeded to the operation of polishing the one
with the other. He was provokingly slow. His chair was placed so that he
sat with his back to the window, facing Mrs. Lauderdale and Mrs.
Ralston, who occupied the sofa on the right of the fireplace. The two
Alexanders and Bright completed the circle, while Katharine and John
placed themselves behind the lawyer. John could see over his shoulder.
Not a word was spoken while Mr. Allen made his careful preparations. It
could hardly be supposed that he had any traditional remnant of the
old-fashioned attorney’s vanity, which made him anxious to produce an
effect by taking as long as possible in settling himself to his work. He
was simply a leisurely man, who had been born before the days of hurry,
and was living to see hurry considered as an obsolete affectation, no
longer necessary, and no longer the fashion. There is haste in some
things, still, in New York, but not the haste that we of the generation
in middle age remember when we were young men. Mr. Allen, however, had
never been hasty; and he found himself fashionable in his old age, as he
had been in his youth, long before the civil war.
When his glasses were fairly pinching the lower part of his thin grey
nose, he thrust one bony hand into his breast-pocket, leaning forward as
he did so, and quietly scanning the faces of his audience, one after
the other. He was so very slow that John and Katharine looked at one
another and smiled. From his pocket he brought out a great bundle of
papers and letters, and calmly proceeded to look through them from the
beginning, in search of what he wanted. Of course, the big blue envelope
was the last of a number of big blue envelopes, and the last but one of
all the papers.
“This is it, I think,” said Mr. Allen, with dignity and caution.
The two elder women drew two short little breaths of expectation, sat
forward a little, and then thoughtfully smoothed their frocks over their
knees. Alexander Junior’s knuckles cracked audibly, as he silently
twined his fingers round one another, and pulled at them in his anxiety.
Hamilton Bright uncrossed his legs, and recrossed them in the opposite
way. Katharine sighed. She was tired of it all, before it had begun.
“Yes,” said Mr. Allen, with even more dignity, but with less caution in
making the assertion, “I believe this is it.”
“Thank the Lord!” exclaimed John Ralston from behind the lawyer, who was
deaf.
Mrs. Ralston smiled a little, and avoided her son’s eyes. Hamilton
Bright looked absolutely impassive.
“You all see what it is,” said Mr. Allen. “It is a large blue envelope,
gummed without a seal, marked ‘Will,’ in a handwriting which may be that
of the late Mr. Lauderdale, though I should not be prepared to swear to
it, and dated ‘March’ of this year. It is reasonable to suppose that it
contains a will made in that month, and therefore prior to the one of
which we have knowledge. Mr. Lauderdale”--he turned to Alexander
Senior--“and you, Mrs. Ralston--with your consent, I will open this
document in your presence.”
“By all means--open it,” said Alexander Junior, with evident impatience.
“Certainly, certainly, Mr. Allen,” said his father. “That’s what we
expect.”
Mrs. Ralston contented herself with nodding her assent, when the lawyer
looked at her. He searched for a penknife in his pocket, found it,
opened it, and with infinite care slit the envelope from end to end.
After carefully shutting the knife, and returning it to his pocket
again, he withdrew a thick, folded sheet of heavy foolscap. As he did
so, a smaller piece of paper, folded only once, fluttered to the ground
at his feet. It might have been a note of old Robert Lauderdale’s,
expressing some particular last wish of such a nature as not to have
found its proper place in a document of such importance as the will
itself. The eyes of every one being intent upon the latter, as Mr. Allen
opened it, no one paid any attention to the bit of paper.
Mr. Allen was old and formal, and he had no intention of bestowing a
preliminary glance at the contents of the paper before reading it. He
began at the beginning, for the first words proved it to be a will, and
nothing else. It began, as many American wills do, with the words, “In
the name of God. Amen.” Then followed the clause revoking all previous
wills, each and every one of them; and then the other, relating to the
payment of just debts and funeral expenses. Then Mr. Allen paused, and
drew breath.
The tension in the atmosphere of the room was high, at that moment of
supreme anxiety.
“ ‘It is my purpose,’ ” Mr. Allen read, “ ‘to so distribute the wealth
which has accumulated in my hands as to distribute it amongst those of
my fellow creatures who stand most directly in need of such help--’ ”
There was a general movement in the circle. Everybody started. Alexander
Junior’s hands dropped by his sides, and his steel-trap mouth relaxed
and opened.
“Go on!” he said, breathlessly.
Mr. Allen went on, shaking his head from time to time, as his only
expression of overwhelming stupefaction. It was by far the most
extraordinary will he had ever seen; but it was legally and properly
worded, with endlessly long, unpunctuated sentences, all of which tended
to elucidate the already sufficiently clear meaning. In half-a-dozen
words, it is sufficient to say that the will constituted the whole
fortune, without legacies, and without mention of heirs or relatives,
into a gigantic trust, to be managed, for the final extinction of
poverty in the city of New York, by a board of trustees, to exist in
perpetuity. Many conditions were imposed, and many possible cases
foreseen. There were elaborate rules for filling vacancies in the
trusteeship, and many other clauses necessary for the administration of
such a vast charitable foundation, all carefully thought out and clearly
stated. The perspiration stood upon the old lawyer’s astonished head, as
he continued to read.
Alexander Junior seemed to be absolutely paralyzed, and stared like a
man distracted, who sees nothing, with wide-open eyes. Even Mrs. Ralston
bent her dark brows, and bit her even lips, in disappointment. Hamilton
Bright bent down, leaning his elbows upon his knees, and looked at the
fourth page of the vast sheet of closely written foolscap.
“We’re a pack of fools!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “The will isn’t
signed.”
Alexander Junior uttered a loud exclamation, sprang to his feet, and
snatched the will from the lawyer’s hand so roughly as to brush the
gold-rimmed glasses from his thin nose, on which they had pinched their
unsteady hold, and they fell to the ground.
“Eh? What?” he asked, very much disturbed by such rude interruption.
Alexander had turned to the end, and had seen that it was a blank,
without signatures either of testator or witnesses.
“Thank God!” he exclaimed, fervently, as he dropped back into his chair.
“That almost killed me,” he added in a low voice, regardless of the
others.
But no one paid much attention to him. Hamilton Bright remained
impassive. Each of the others uttered an exclamation, or breathed a sigh
of relief. For some minutes afterwards there was a dead silence.
Mr. Allen was fumbling on the floor for his gold-rimmed glasses, still
very much confused. They had managed to get under the low chair in which
he sat, and which had a long fringe on it, reaching almost to the
ground, so that he took some time in finding them.
“Of course he would never have signed such a thing!” said Hamilton
Bright, with emphasis. “He had too much sense.”
“I should think so!” exclaimed Mrs. Lauderdale. “The only thing I can’t
understand is how it ever was kept and marked ‘Will.’ ”
“Uncle Robert once told me that he had often made sketches of wills
leaving all his money in trust to the poor,” said Katharine. “He never
meant to sign one, though. This must be one of them--of course--it can’t
be anything else!”
“His secretary probably put it away, supposing he wanted to keep it,”
said Ralston, from behind Mr. Allen. “Then he forgot all about it, and
so it turned up among the papers. It’s simple enough.”
“Oh, quite simple!” assented Alexander Junior, with a half-hysterical
laugh.
Mrs. Ralston was watching the lawyer as he felt for his glasses on the
carpet. He paused, wiped his brow--for it was a warm afternoon, and he
had been nervously excited himself in reading the document. Then he
continued his search.
“There’s a bit of paper there on the floor, beside your hand,” said Mrs.
Ralston. “I saw it drop when you opened the envelope. Perhaps it’s
something more important.”
Mr. Allen recovered his glasses at that moment, and with the other hand
took up the little folded sheet. With the utmost care and precision he
went through the same preparations for reading which had been
indispensable on the first occasion.
“Let us see, let us see,” he said. “This is something. ‘I hereby
certify,’--oh, an old marriage certificate of yours, Mrs. Ralston. John
Ralston and Katharine Lauderdale--married--dear me! I don’t understand!
This year, too! This is very strange.”
Again every one present started, but with very different expressions.
Hamilton Bright grew slowly red. There was a short pause. Then John
Ralston rose to his feet and bent over Mr. Allen’s shoulder.
“It’s our certificate,” he said, quietly. “Katharine’s and mine. We were
married last winter.”
And he took the paper from the hands of the wondering lawyer, and held
it in his own.
“Katharine!” cried Mrs. Lauderdale, when she had realized the meaning of
Ralston’s words.
“Katharine!” cried Alexander Junior, almost at the same moment.
At any other time some one of all those present might have smiled at the
difference in intonation between Mrs. Lauderdale’s cry of unmixed
astonishment, and her husband’s deprecatory but forgiving utterance of
his daughter’s name. Both conveyed, in widely differing ways, as much as
whole phrases could have told, namely, that Mrs. Lauderdale was
sincerely pleased, in spite of all her former opposition to the
marriage, and that her husband, while he would much rather have his
daughter married to Ralston secretly than not at all, felt that his
dignity and parental authority had been outraged, and that he would be
glad to have an apology, if any were to be had, of which condition his
voice also expressed a doubt.
“I’ll tell you all about it, from the beginning,” said John Ralston.
He told the story in as few words as he could, omitting, as he had done
in telling his mother, to give Katharine her full share of
responsibility. She bent far forward in her seat while he was speaking,
and leaned upon the back of Mr. Allen’s chair, never taking her eyes
from her husband’s face. More than once her eyes brightened with a sort
of affectionate indignation, and her lips parted as though she would
speak. But she did not interrupt him. When he had finished he stood
still in his place, looking at his father-in-law, and still holding the
certificate of his marriage in his hand.
Alexander Junior would have found it hard to be angry just at that
moment. He had his desire. In the course of five minutes he had been
cast down from a position of enormous wealth and power, since there
could be no question but that the half of the great estate would really
be in his control if there were no will; he had been plunged into such a
depth of despair as only the real miser can understand when his hundreds
or his millions, as the case may be, are swept out of sight and out of
reach by a breath; and he had been restored to the pinnacle of happiness
again, almost before there had been time to make his suffering seem more
than the passing vision of a hideous dream. Moreover, the marriage being
already accomplished and a matter of fact, made it a positive certainty
that all that part of the fortune which belonged to the Ralstons would
return to his own grandchildren. His outraged sense of parental
importance was virtuously, but silently, indignant, and he admitted
that, on the whole, the causes of satisfaction outnumbered any reasons
there might be for displeasure. Something, however, must be done to
propitiate the prejudices of the world, which had much force with him.
“I think we’d better all go into the country as soon as possible,” he
observed, thinking aloud.
But no one heard him, for Katharine had risen and come forward and stood
beside her husband, slipping her arm through his, and invisibly pressing
him to her--unconsciously, too, perhaps--whenever she wished to
emphasize a word in what she said.
“I want to say something,” she began, raising her voice. “It’s all my
fault, you know. I did it. I persuaded Jack one evening, here in this
very room--and it was awfully hard to persuade him, I assure you! He
didn’t like it in the least. He said it wasn’t a perfectly fair and
honest thing to do. But I made him see it differently. I’m not sure that
I was right. You see, we should have been married, anyway, as it’s
turned out, because papa’s been so nice about it in the end. That’s all
I wanted to say.”
There was probably no malice in her diplomatic allusion to her father.
The only person who smiled at it was Mrs. Ralston.
“Except,” added Katharine, by an afterthought, “that the reason why we
did it was because we wanted to be sure of getting each other in the
end.”
“Well,” said Hamilton Bright, who was very red, “I suppose the next
thing to do is to congratulate you, isn’t it? Here goes. Jack, I’m sorry
I slated secret marriages the other day. You see, one doesn’t always
know.”
“No,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale, who had her arms around her daughter’s
neck. “One doesn’t--as Ham says.”
“That’s all right, Ham,” said John Ralston. “I didn’t mind a bit.”
But Hamilton Bright minded very much, in his quiet way, for he had
played a losing game of late, and the same hour had deprived him of all
hope of marrying Katharine, faint as it had been since she had so
definitely refused him, and of all prospect of ever getting a share of
the Lauderdale fortune. But he was a very brave man, and better able
than most of those present to bear such misfortunes as fell to his lot.
As for marrying, he put it out of his thoughts; and so far as fortune
was concerned, he was prosperous and successful in all that he undertook
to do himself, unaided, which is, after all, the most satisfactory
success a man can have in the long run. The right to say ‘I did it
alone’ compensates for many fancied and real wrongs. And that was
something which Hamilton Bright had very often been able to say with
truth. But his love for Katharine Lauderdale had been honest, enduring
and generally silent. Never had he spoken to her of love until he had
fancied that his friend John Ralston had no intention, nor she, either,
of anything serious.
It was with the consent and approval of all her family that Katharine
entered upon her married life at last, after having been secretly and in
name the wedded wife of John Ralston for more than five months. The
world thought it not extraordinary that there should be no public
ceremony, considering the recent decease of Robert Lauderdale and the
shockingly sudden death of Walter Crowdie. The Lauderdales, said the
world, had shown good taste, for many reasons, in having a private
wedding. Having always lived quietly, it would have been unbecoming in
them to invite society to a marriage of royal splendour, when he who had
left them their wealth had not been dead two months. On the other hand,
the union of forty millions with twenty could hardly have been decently
accomplished by means of two carriages from the livery stable and a man
from the greengrocer’s. The world, therefore, said that the Lauderdales
and the Ralstons had done perfectly right, a fact which pleased some
members of the tribe and was indifferent to others. The only
connections who were heard to complain at all were the three Miss
Miners, whose old-maidenly souls delighted in weddings and found
refreshment in funerals.
And the only person whom Katharine missed, and cared to miss, amongst
all those who congratulated her was Paul Griggs. She did not see him,
after they had met on the stairs of the house in Lafayette Place, for a
long time. During the summer which followed the announcement of her
marriage, she heard that he was in the East again--a vague term applied
to Cairo, Constantinople and Calcutta. At all events, he was not in New
York, but had taken his weary eyes and weather-beaten face to some
remote region of the earth, and gave no further sign of life for some
time, though a book which he had written before Crowdie’s death appeared
soon after his departure. Katharine received one letter from him during
the summer--a rather formal letter of congratulation upon her marriage,
and bearing a postmark in Cyrillic characters, though the stamp was not
Russian, but one she had never seen.
* * * * *
Here ends an act of Katharine’s life-comedy, and the chronicler leaves
her with her beauty, her virtues and her imperfections to the judgment
of that one reader, if perchance there be even one, who has had the
patience to follow her so far, with little entertainment and no
advantage to himself. And to that one reader--an ideal creation of the
chronicler’s mind, having no foundation in his experience of
humanity--the said chronicler makes apology for all that has been amiss
in the telling of the events recorded, conscious that a better man could
have done it better, and that better men are plentiful, but stout in
asserting that the events were not, in themselves and in reality,
without interest, however poorly they have been narrated.
Moral, there is none, nor purpose, save to please; and if any one be
pleased, the writer has his reward. But besides moral and purpose in
things done with ink and paper, there is consequence to be considered,
or at least to be taken into account. In real life we take more thought
of that than of anything else; for, consciously or unconsciously, man
hardly performs any action, however insignificant, without
intention--and intention is the hope of consequence.
All that happened to Katharine Lauderdale, and all that she caused to
happen by her own will, had an effect upon her existence afterwards. She
was entering upon married life with a much more varied experience than
most young women of her age. She had been brought into direct and close
relation with people influenced by some of the strongest passions that
can rouse the heart. She had been hated by those who had loved her, and
for little or no fault of hers. She had seen envy standing in the high
place of a mother’s love, and she had seen the friendship of her
girlhood destroyed by unreasoning jealousy. Above all, she had known the
base hardness and the revolting cruelty which the love of money could
implant in an otherwise upright nature. The persons with whom she had to
do were not of the kind to commit crimes, but in her view there was
something worse, if possible, than crime in some of the things they had
done.
So much for the evil by which she had passed. For the good, she had
love, good love, pure love, honest love--the sort of love that may last
a lifetime. And if love can weather life it need not fear the whirlpool
of death, nor the quicksands of the uncertain shore beyond. It is life
that kills love--not death.
Therefore, as the chronicler closes his book and offers it to his single
long-suffering reader, he says that more remains to be told of Katharine
and of the men and women among whom she lived; namely, the consequences
of her girlhood in her married life.
THE END.
* * * * *
KATHARINE LAUDERDALE.
By F. MARION CRAWFORD,
AUTHOR OF “SARACINESCA,” “PIETRO GHISLERI,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
Two Volumes, Bound in Polished Buckram, in Box, $2.00.
The first of a series of novels dealing with New York life.
“_Katharine Lauderdale_ is essentially a dramatic novel, possessing the
unity of time and place and of action.... It is a love story, pure and
simple, with no straining after the moral that Mr. Crawford so
denounces.... _Katharine Lauderdale_ is a thoroughly artistic novel. The
characters are boldly drawn; even those of minor importance are vivid
and real.”--_Louisville Evening Post._
“While it is a love story, it is much more. It is an accurate picture of
certain circles of New York society to-day, and in the analyses of
character and motive Mr. Crawford has done nothing better than this book
gives us.... Mr. Crawford is always happy in his sense of locality, and
the familiar scenes of Washington Park, Clinton Place, and Lafayette
Place are brought distinctly before the reader.”--_Living Church._
“It is exceedingly interesting.”--_Congregationalist._
“Mr. Crawford at his best is a great novelist, and in _Katharine
Lauderdale_ we have him at his best.”--_Boston Daily Advertiser._
“A most admirable novel, excellent in style, flashing with humor, and
full of the ripest and wisest reflections upon men and women.”--_The
Westminster Gazette._
“It is the first time, we think, in American fiction that any such
breadth of view has shown itself in the study of our social
framework.”--_Life._
“Admirable in its simple pathos, its enforced humor, and, above all, in
its truths to human nature.... There is not a tedious page or paragraph
in it.”--_Punch._
“It need scarcely be said that the story is skilfully and picturesquely
written, portraying sharply individual characters in well-defined
surroundings.”--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
“_Katharine Lauderdale_ is a tale of New York, and is up to the highest
level of his work. In some respects it will probably be regarded as his
best. None of his works, with the exception of Mr. Isaacs, show so
clearly his skill as a literary artist.”--_San Francisco Evening
Bulletin._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
F. Marion Crawford’s Novels.
NEW UNIFORM EDITION.
12mo. Cloth. $1.00 each.
SARACINESCA.
“The work has two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make
it great,--that of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of
giving a graphic picture of Roman society in the last days of the Pope’s
temporal power.... The story is exquisitely told.”--_Boston Traveller._
SANT’ ILARIO.
A Sequel to _SARACINESCA_.
“A singularly powerful and beautiful story.... It fulfils every
requirement of artistic fiction. It brings out what is most impressive
in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to
sensationalism or artifice. It is natural, fluent in evolution,
accordant with experience, graphic in description, penetrating in
analysis, and absorbing in interest.”--_New York Tribune._
DON ORSINO.
A Sequel to _SARACINESCA_ and _SANT’ ILARIO_.
“Perhaps the cleverest novel of the year.... There is not a dull
paragraph in the book, and the reader may be assured that once begun,
the story of _Don Orsino_ will fascinate him until its close.”--_The
Critic._
PIETRO CHISLERI.
“The imaginative richness, the marvellous ingenuity of plot, the power
and subtlety of the portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic
environment,--the entire atmosphere, indeed,--rank this novel at once
among the great creations.”--_The Boston Budget._
A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
“It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief
and vivid story.... It is doubly a success, being full of human
sympathy, as well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the
unusual with the commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and
guilt, comedy and tragedy, simplicity and intrigue.”--_Critic._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
MR. ISAACS.
A Tale of Modern India.
“Under an unpretentious title we have here the most brilliant novel, or
rather romance, that has been given to the world for a very long
time.”--_The American._
DR. CLAUDIUS.
A True Story.
“It by no means belies the promises of its predecessor. The story, an
exceedingly improbable and romantic one, is told with much skill; the
characters are strongly marked without any suspicion of caricature, and
the author’s ideas on social and political subjects are often brilliant
and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say that there is not a
dull page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the recreation of
student or thinker.”--_Living Church._
TO LEEWARD.
“A story of remarkable power.”--_The Review of Reviews._
“The four characters with whose fortunes this novel deals, are, perhaps,
the most brilliantly executed portraits in the whole of Mr. Crawford’s
long picture gallery, while for subtle insight into the springs of human
passion and for swift dramatic action none of the novels surpasses this
one.”--_The News and Courier._
THE THREE FATES.
“Mr. Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of
human nature and his finest resources as a master of an original and
picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken for all in all it is
one of the most pleasing of all his productions in fiction, and it
affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say
of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like
the same adequacy and felicity.”--_Boston Beacon._
A CIGARETTE-MAKER’S ROMANCE.
“The interest is unflagging throughout. Never has Mr. Crawford done more
brilliant realistic work than here. But his realism is only the case and
cover for those intense feelings which, placed under no matter what
humble conditions, produce the most dramatic and the most tragic
situations.... This is a secret of genius, to take the most coarse and
common material, the meanest surroundings, the most sordid material
prospects, and out of the vehement passions which sometimes dominate all
human beings to build up with these poor elements, scenes, and passages,
the dramatic and emotional power of which at once enforce attention and
awaken the profoundest interest.”--_New York Tribune._
AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.
A Fantastic Tale.
Illustrated by W. J. HENNESSY.
“The artistic skill with which this extraordinary story is constructed
and carried out is admirable and delightful.... Mr. Crawford has scored
a decided triumph, for the interest of the tale is sustained
throughout.... A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting
story.”--_New York Tribune._
GREIFENSTEIN.
“ ...Another notable contribution to the literature of the day. It
possesses originality in its conception and is a work of unusual
ability. Its interest is sustained to the close, and it is an advance
even on the previous work of this talented author. Like all Mr.
Crawford’s work this novel is crisp, clear, and vigorous, and will be
read with a great deal of interest.”--_New York Evening Telegram._
WITH THE IMMORTALS.
“The strange central idea of the story could have occurred only to a
writer whose mind was very sensitive to the current of modern thought
and progress, while its execution, the setting it forth in proper
literary clothing, could be successfully attempted only by one whose
active literary ability should be fully equalled by his power of
assimilative knowledge both literary and scientific, and no less by his
courage and capacity for hard work. The book will be found to have a
fascination entirely new for the habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr.
Crawford has succeeded in taking his readers quite above the ordinary
plane of novel interest.”--_Boston Advertiser._
ZOROASTER.
“It is a drama in the force of its situations and in the poetry and
dignity of its language; but its men and women are not men and women of
a play. By the naturalness of their conversation and behavior they seem
to live and lay hold of our human sympathy more than the same characters
on a stage could possibly do.”--_The New York Times._
A ROMAN SINGER.
“One of the earliest and best works of this famous novelist.... None but
a genuine artist could have made so true a picture of human life,
crossed by human passions and interwoven with human weakness. It is a
perfect specimen of literary art.”--_The Newark Advertiser._
PAUL PATOFF.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
KHALED.
A Story of Arabia.
“Throughout the fascinating story runs the subtlest analysis, suggested
rather than elaborately worked out, of human passion and motive, the
building out and development of the character of the woman who becomes
the hero’s wife and whose love he finally wins being an especially acute
and highly finished example of the story-teller’s art.... That it is
beautifully written and holds the interest of the reader, fanciful as it
all is, to the very end, none who know the depth and artistic finish of
Mr. Crawford’s work need be told.”--_The Chicago Times._
CHILDREN OF THE KING.
“One of the most artistic and exquisitely finished pieces of work that
Crawford has produced. The picturesque setting, Calabria and its
surroundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the Gulf of Salermo, with the
bewitching accessories that climate, sea, and sky afford, give Mr.
Crawford rich opportunities to show his rare descriptive powers. As a
whole the book is strong and beautiful through its simplicity, and ranks
among the choicest of the author’s many fine productions.”--_Public
Opinion._
MARZIO’S CRUCIFIX.
“This work belongs to the highest department of character-painting in
words.”--_The Churchman._
“We have repeatedly had occasion to say that Mr. Crawford possesses in
an extraordinary degree the art of constructing a story. His sense of
proportion is just, and his narrative flows along with ease and
perspicuity. It is as if it could not have been written otherwise, so
naturally does the story unfold itself, and so logical and consistent is
the sequence of incident after incident. As a story _Marzio’s Crucifix_
is perfectly constructed.”--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
MARION DARCHE.
“Full enough of incident to have furnished material for three or four
stories.... A most interesting and engrossing book. Every page unfolds
new possibilities, and the incidents multiply rapidly.”--_Detroit Free
Press._
“We are disposed to rank _Marion Darche_ as the best of Mr. Crawford’s
American stories.”--_The Literary World._
THE NOVEL: What It Is.
18mo. Cloth. 75 cents.
“When a master of his craft speaks, the public may well listen with
careful attention, and since no fiction-writer of the day enjoys in this
country a broader or more enlightened popularity than Marion Crawford,
his explanation of _The Novel: What It Is_, will be received with
flattering interest.”--_The Boston Beacon._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Her mother had been Margarate Lauderdale=> Her mother had been Margaret
Lauderdale {pg 21}
clap you in jug=> clap you in the jug {pg 53}