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For many seconds Mordaunt stood upon the threshold, gravely watching them, but he made no movement to draw nearer. At last noiselessly he withdrew, and closed the door. The grimness had all gone from his face. He even smiled a little as he resigned himself to spending the night in his own room. The idea of disturbing the brother and sister never crossed his mind.
Eccleston Square was by no means in a direct line between Kensington and the City, yet morning and evening, as sure as the clock pointed to half-past nine and to quarter to six, Tom would stride through the old-fashioned square and past the grim house, whose grimness was softened to his eyes through its association with the bright dream of his life.
Lise, she remembered, had sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in the streets, the suffering in the tenements.
Faint twitterings in the copses deepened to melody to canticles of rejoicing; tints of turquoise and opal crept into the shadows and gold into the greens: the night-dews gleamed upon the firs and grasses, while a luminous haze dimmed the dark glint of the waters to pearly gray, softened the grimness of the mountain-faces and wrapped them sea and mountains, as soul and body in a vision of mystery, a prelude to the blaze of golden glory that was suddenly outpoured on land and sea.
They were not soft days. A man hid such tenderness as he had under grimness, and prayed in the churches for phlegm. "I am a fighting man. I have no gentle ways." Then a belated memory came to him. "I give no tenderness and ask none. But such kindness as you have, lavish on the child Clotilde. She is much alone."
Now I wonder if you can guess what I'm hinting at?" West's face changed. The eagerness went out of it. Something of his habitual grimness of expression returned. Yet his voice was full of tenderness when he spoke. "Cynthia," he said very earnestly, "there is nothing on this earth that I will not do for you.
So, she faced him with an air of happy self-confidence, and spoke with the most musical cadences of her voice, the while the caress of her eyes sought to beguile the frown from his face. "Charles, you know Mrs. McMahon, and Mrs. Schmidt, and Miss Ferguson." "Yes, I know them," came the uncompromising answer. The grimness of his face did not relax.
After a time he slept again, but lightly, for the sun came in through the deep, unshaded window and fell on his face and on the rushes that covered the floor. And in his sleep the grimness was gone, and the pride. And his mouth, which was sad, contended with the firmness of his chin. Clotilde went back to her bed and tucked her feet under her to warm them.
"Does she know? The girl?" "Not a breath! And I would not be the one to tell her," Uncle Ulick added, with some grimness. "Yet it may be necessary?" Uncle Ulick shook his fist at a particularly importunate beggar who had ventured across the forecourt. "It's a gift the little people never gave me to tell unpleasant things," he said. "And if you'll be told by me, Colonel, you'll travel easy.
"Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?" His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently, "that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop or thereabouts, if I know myself and Oom Paul."
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