Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

according to precedent; and if any terri- | Eva how he had promised her, as a means ble incidents did come out of this journey of securing Susanna against any approaches into Somersetshire, they would issue in of the Irishman, to make some few inquiries good, no doubt. So Mrs. Ballow wrote back, that she had no decided objection to offer to the scheme, which did, however, fill her with a lively anticipation of something horrible.

On the very same day which brought this letter from Minchley there came a letter from old Mrs. Torring, to say that she should have great pleasure, on her nephew's recommendation, in trying how she and Miss March were suited one to another.

as to the recent life of the great Protestant advocate. He now could tell her that his inquiries had issued in a result at once painful and pleasing. Painful, inasmuch as they revealed fresh wickedness in a man already known to be so wicked; pleasing, inasmuch as they afforded a means of guarding Mrs. Roberts against him. "I learn," Mr. Dowlas wrote, that this unhappy man, employing his old pretence of controversial zeal, obtained, some few years ago, an employment connected with a ladies' school (I believe he taught Latin and one or two other things): but what chiefly concerns us is, that some very questionable intercourse between himself and one of the under-teachers there compelled the mistress at once to dismiss them both. And, should he persecute your mother with any serious proposals, it will be something to have this matter against him. Your accession to so much wealth is likely, I fear, to bring him upon you, when he hears of it. It is sad to speak to you of your father as of your enemy; but we are both agreed that all your duty is due to your innocent parent. My children send you their best love."

Eva was glad to be assured that, in about a week, the whole truth of the affair would be just as well known to the family in Wales as to herself.

And the upshot of all these arrangements was, that on Saturday, the 6th of September, Eva, escorted by Mrs. Check, went down into Somersetshire to Mrs. Torring, to remain during a month for certain, for such longer time as mutual liking and mutual convenience might render agreeable to both parties. It must not be imagined that Eva, all this while, was forgotten by her friends in Wales. It was not thought expedient, until the arrangements could be made complete, to inform Mr. Dowlas of the wealth in store for him. Not to make her continued absence from Tremallyoc too much of a wonder, Eva did inform him that she was endeavouring, with the advice and assistance of her lawyer, to contrive some concession in his favour. The nonentity of their relationship would not be made known to him until the other matters were all made ready. To Mrs. Roberts Eva wrote, assuring her of a sufficient income for her own enjoy- The evening was coming on, when she ment; but warning her against acting as entered the town of Chelford, in the fly though she had become very rich. This which had brought her from Bridgewater caution was rendered necessary by the be- station. Mrs. Torring lived in an old-fashhaviour of the poor woman herself. For, ioned house in the outskirts of the quiet as Mr. Lewis heard through old Miss Tudor, little town. Mrs. Check and Eva alighted Mrs. Roberts was beguiling her lonely days at the gate, and the luggage was carried in by a series of tea-parties-tea-parties as through the little garden in front to the gay as decorum allowed in a house out of house-door. At that door stood Mrs. Torwhich a funeral had so recently passed. ring. She was scarcely a Not as yet had she succeeded in showing you would pass at any time without regard the splendid tea-service to her sister's envy-ing, and Eva, of course, was disposed to ing eyes. Mrs. Dowlas continued sulkily look at her attentively. resentful, and that supreme drop of joy in Mrs. Roberts's cup, figurative and literal, was to remain untasted forever. But, as there was really no knowing to what extravagance this foolish woman might be tempted, on the strength of her daughter's fictitious heirship, it was a positive duty to give her some idea that things were not as she supposed.

A day or two before Miss March went down into Somersetshire, she received a letter from Mr. Dowlas, in which he spoke of Murphy M'Quantigan. He reminded

woman whom

She was decidedly tall. She carried her eighty-four years as well as ever so great a number was borne since the days of our sojourn shrank to their present brief span. She was very nearly as upright as she could have been at twenty. She wore her own hair, white as wool, but abundant in quantity. Almost as white was the tint of her face, and though you could scarcely say that her features carried so much as the relics of any beauty; yet, so gently had the hand of time passed over them, that, with the tale of years which was written on

[merged small][ocr errors]

Eva scarcely knew what to say on her side. But she was presently greeted very intelligibly and warmly.

"Well, my dear, I'm very glad to see you, and I hope we shall get on well together. I had no idea you were so very pretty. I was never so pretty as you are, but I'll tell you what I was once as young; yes, I was indeed. And how old do you think I am now? Why I'm eightyfour; and I've had a very comfortable life, and am very well off in my old age. Well, now come in, and have your tea, and Pat terson shall show you up to your room. Why, who have you got here?

Eva presented Mrs. Check, and Mrs. Torring, with peremptory hospitality, insisted that Eva's escort should remain with her until the Monday, which arrangement was accepted. Eva made a movement towards the staircase.

"Law, Patterson!" said her mistress, "why, you look as if you'd lost your wits. Show the young lady to her room, and look out to see where you can put the old one."

Mrs. Patterson, who really had been looking as one from whom the present has vanished, and whose thoughts are gone back into the past, now started, as one suddenly awakened, and performed her duty towards Eva. Miss March knew that servants are not always well disposed towards persons in the capacity in which she had come to Chelford, and she was very much relieved to find Mrs. Torring's principal servant so extremely attentive. Patterson seemed to take a positive pleasure in consulting her as to every little arrangement involved in the taking possession of her room. She looked at Eva, and watched the replies which her questions called forth, just like some one waiting for the responses of a mighty oracle. It would have been an attention almost oppressive, only that Eva's expectations had rather run the other way, and so the disappointment could not be too complete.

After a brief toilette, Eva joined the old

lady in her drawing-room, and they had their tea. It was a pleasant room, with a little of that preciseness which we associate rather with old maids than with old widows. But Mrs. Torring had never had any children. She was the widow of a colonel, had seen a great deal of the world in her time, and, what had now become a distinction very rare, had visited France before the Revolution. She talked, during tea, of this and kindred matters. When it was over, she entered on things more directly concerning the immediate present.

The old lady sat back in an arm-chair, with a large book on an easel before her; but she was not reading.

"Well, my dear, now I've got a question to ask you. How do you think you shall like me?"

"I think I shall like you very well," Eva said, taking Mrs. Torring at her word, and giving her a direct reply.

"You think you will? Well, I'm very glad to hear you say so, because it's not everybody that does like me. There's Miss Varnish, at Deverington Hall, she doesn't like me in the least; she knows I've found her out."

"A friend of yours?" Eva asked, feeling that she must say something.

A friend of mine! No-nasty creature! I hope I know her a little better. She's a nasty, wily, slimy thing. I as good as told her so when she was last here. What do you think she's doing? Why, making love to her master, or whatever you may call him, while his wife is still alive. There, my dear, now what do you think of such conduct as that ? "

66

Why, I think, Mrs. Torring, it cannot be too severely condemned. But on that very account, one should be quite sure before accusing anybody of it."

"Well, my dear; you're right to say so.. I consider that remark of your's a very wise and proper one. Yes, my dear, I do. You know we are told never to speak evil one of another. But, as for that nasty thing, we'll have her some day, and then you shall see for yourself."

Eva felt no particular interest in the blame which might or might not attach to the aspiring Miss Varnish. Knowing how bitterly and unjustly she herself had been credited with matrimonial intriguing, she was, perhaps, rather inclined to disbelieve such accusations, and to support those against whom they might be levelled. But the name of Deverington Hall had a very great interest indeed for Eva. Before parting with her Minchley friends on

[ocr errors]

That

the previous day she had been entrusted | cept, by all means, the acquaintance of with a full knowledge of all the facts in Mr. Deverington Hall and its inmates. Ballow's own possession, and likewise of all such an opportunity would be offered her at the suppositions which had been built upon all Mrs. Campion's morbid state rendered them. And she had been recommended, some what improbable. in case the chance was offered her, to ac

THE RUSSIAN STEPPE. - Not unlike our own western prairies, the Russian steppe consists of a vast illimitable plain, its monotonous expanse stretching away in every direction to the horizon, never broken by a hill or even a tree, but undulating like an ocean whose waves have suddenly been arrested. For thousands and thousands of miles these gentle undulations succeed one another, such a sameness pervading the landscape, that, at last, though the traveller knows that his horses are galloping on and he sees the wheels of his car turn round, yet he seems fastened to the same spot, unable to make any progress. Not even a bush is to be seen on the level ground, not a rivulet is to be heard, but here and there in the hollow are tall green reeds and scattered willows, where sullen rivers flow slowly along between sandy banks. So far do these desolate tracts extend that it has been declared that a calf born at the foot of the great wall of China might eat its way along till it arrived a well-fattened ox, on the banks of the Dneister. In the spring the steppe possesses a peculiar charm of its own. The grass is then comparatively soft, and of a dazzling green. Here and there, literally, "you cannot see the grass for flowers," "for they grow in masses, covering the ground for acres together, hyacinths, crocusses, tulips, and mignionette. The air is fresh and exhilarating, the sky is clear and blue, and the grass rings with the song of innumerable birds. In some districts the steppe retains for a length of time the beauty with which spring has clothed it, but in the interior, where rain is unknown, when summer comes, the pools and watercourses dry up, and the earth gradually turns dry, and hard and black. Shade is utterly unknown; the heat is everywhere the same. At morn and eve the sun rises and sets like a globe of fire, while in the noontide it wears a hazy appearance, due to the dust which pervades the atmosphere like smoke. The herds grow lean and haggard, and the inhabitants appear wrinkled and melancholy and darkened by the constant dust to an almost African hue. In the autumn the heat lessens, the dust colored sky becomes once more blue, and the black earth green, the haze gathers into clouds, and the setting sun covers the sky with the splendor of gold and crimson. With September this

phase ends. No yellow cornfields, no russet leaves, throw a glory over the later portion of the year; but October comes in wet and stormy, and soon after winter arrives, cold and terrible, sweeping the plains with hurricanes and snowstorms.

MEMOIRES D'UNE ENFANT. Par Madame Michelet. (Hachette.) In this volume the wife of the eminent French historian tells, in a charmingly brilliant, though artless style, and with genuine though ingenuous feeling, the story of an interesting childhood, made somewhat gloomy through the coldness of her mother and the want of genial playmates. She was the second girl, and remembers so minutely all the drawbacks of her infancy, that we can understand now why second girls are so often a little unhappy, whilst the first-born becomes the companion of her mother. Madame Michelet gives us, with a dramatic simplemindedness, the key to many traits in childhood which so few of us can thoroughly interpret or analyze, because few of us have any but a rather dim recollection of what we thought and felt long years ago. The writer's story of her first doll, which she had to manufacture herself out of scraps of wood and rags and a little bran, is almost tragic; the reader follows it with the lively interest which he would bestow on a plot contrived by the grown-up people in a halfsensational novel. The bright spot in this sad childhood is the unbounded, almost idolatrous love, which the affectionate child bears to her old father. The life of this adventurous father, who was with Toussaint l'Ouverture at St. Domingo, and with Napoleon at the Isle of Elba; who fought in the ranks of negroes, and married, after forty, his young pupil, the fourteen-years-old daughter of an American slaveowner; who lived at Montauban, and went to die at Cincinnati, is related with enthusiastic affection, and was, indeed, worth relating. Although Madame Michelet belongs to the school of sentimental writers, she is so superior to them in graceful vigour and terseness of style, genial openheartedness, boldness of expression, and frankness of feeling, that she has made of the analysis of a child's sentiments a philosophical and almost manly book.

E

From the Spectator.

THE CLOTHES OF THE MIND.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

thins out the lips and draws them wide, sending away from the corners elliptic curves, with the long axis horizontal. In the phlegmatic man's face, on the contrary, MR. ERNST SCHULZ's very extraordinary the under lip is thick and prominent, entertainment at the Egyptian Hall is throwing a deep shadow on the chin, and something more than a mere amusement. the only line is that which seems to divide Any one who has seen the forty-eight utter- the double chin, the true chin from the ly different transformations through which underhanging flesh. Here the whole charthe young German's sensible, observant, acter of the very same face is altered withslightly humorous, not otherwise very re- out even a change of hair or beard, or the markable face passes in the course of the slightest alteration in the angle at which it ninety-six minutes or so during which the is seen, from a type of the most abstract entertainment lasts, just one transforma- dogmatic activity, -square with the acute tion for every two minutes of the time, inculcation of positive teaching, - into one will be dull if he does not begin asking of gross phlegmatic heaviness, that would himself a dozen different and not very seem to be not only of a much lower type easily answerable questions on the secret of culture, but of a coarser family stock. of mental clothes, the mode in which one Mr. Schulz's own natural face, though much and the same mind, in one and the same younger and less lined altogether, is no body, manages to assume and throw off doubt nearer to that of the professor, - a this immense variety of widely separated German professor, by the way, than to moral costumes, ranging from the stupid, "the phlegmatic man," of whom he has pudgy pride of the wealthy English Philis- very little trace indeed in his natural comtine, to the wild animal pride, deeply position; but no one would suspect his very seamed with animal cares, of the Red close personal relationship to either of the Indian Chief. Of course in such a charac- two characters, if they did not know it beter as the Chief of the Fox Indians Mr. forehand. One of his most efficient exSchulz gives himself the help of head- pedients in effecting these changes is,dress and costume; but in several of the that after he has thrown his face into the changes through which his face passes, deep, artificial lines which he chooses for there is absolutely no alteration even in the the moment to assume, he casts upon it, arrangement of his hair, the whole trans- thus metamorphosed, a very much intenser formation being due to the alteration in light than any whieh is ever thrown upon the attitude and lines of his face, the altered his own natural face, the effect of which is curve of the eyebrows and the lips, the very much to heighten all the lights and angle at which the head is held, or thrown deepen all the shadows, so that the newly back or forwards, and the lines, deep or assumed expression is enormously intensified shallow, into which he ploughs his pliant as compared with what it would express in countenance. Take, for instance, his rep- an ordinary light. If any one has ever resentation of what he calls the phleg- noticed how much any even common exmatic temperament, a full front, sallow pression of pleasure, or awe, or misery is face, with very few lines, hair brushed to intensified by a flash of lightning suddenly the back, lips full, chin slightly heavy, eyes passing over the face which wears it, he not closed, but only half open, great dis- will get some slight conception of one of play of ears, big white cravat, and very the most important means of Mr. Schulz's little neck, and compare it with just the wonderful self-transformations. We obsame front face, as he gives it us in his ideal served repeatedly that, after he had asProfessor, the hair arranged in precisely sumed his new aspect, we could still trace the same way, no addition whatever, ex- clearly enough Mr. Schulz's own natural cept in the blue-rimmed spectacles, a white expression beneath the new one, until the cravat not very different in magnitude intense light of the lamps was cast upon it, from that of the phlegmatic man, and yet when the natural Mr. Schulz entirely vanwithout even a family likeness of expres- ished, and the expression he had assumed sion between the two faces. The whole was so greatly intensified as to swallow up, difference consists in the open, bright, as it were, the natural face beneath. So, a twinkling eyes, which peer out eagerly through the professorial spectacles, the slightly distended, dogmatic nostrils, which seem to quiver with positive assertion, and the horizontally elongated mouth, which

room with a new window thrown out will look at first, even in the dusk, half strange and half familiar, but if a blaze of light is let in through it, the whole effect of the room is so changed by the emphasis thus

given to this new feature of it, that you can | the excess of self-esteem into the imploring barely recognize the old features at all. hope of female vanity that it has not quite failed.

It is curious to notice how much of our natural interpretation of the meaning of certain lines and attitudes of the face depends not so much on those lines and attitudes themselves, as on the context in which we find them, and which is made to suggest to us an interpretation of its own. In one part of his entertainment Mr. Schulz takes a framework of painted cardboard, or some substance of that nature, representing various head-dresses, such as a monthly nurse's, a scolding elderly female's in a bonnet with yellow strings, a fascinating spinster's "of a certain age," and so forth, and frames his own face in it, so as to give a new marginal gloss or commentary as it were to the very same attitudes of face which he has before presented to us under no such disguise. The same thing is done later in the evening by the use of real head-dresses, turbans, feathers, &c. In each case the observer, preoccupied and retained as it were in favour of a special interpretation by the associations connected with the head-dress, whether painted or real, construes the very same lines and expressions of countenance which seemed to say one thing when they stood alone, into quite a different meaning when he is prejudiced by this external commentary. Thus two of Mr. Schulz's representations are really, if you compare the countenances alone the mere lines and expressions of the face-precisely alike, the one which he calls, we think, "the genial man," and in which he is unaided by adventitious costume and framework, and the one in which he represents the amiable spinster whom he calls Miss Eve. lina Matilda Peablossom. Put your hand over the hair and neck-tie of the photograph of the one, and over the ringlets and lace of the photograph of the other, and precisely the same features in precisely the same posture, and lined with precisely the same lines, remain; yet while the one picture seems to express a self-satisfied smirk of self-love overflowing into general approbation and good humour, the other seems to express a (rather vulgar) admiration felt for another, overflowing into a certain limited measure of humble satisfaction with herself. The long ringlets are alone answerable for this difference of impression. Long ringlets so uniformly plead for approbation, and are so expressive not of selfconfidence, but of plaintive requests for admiration, that they put a new gloss on the smirk of the features, and turn it from

-

The least interesting and yet perhaps most popular part of the entertainment is the exhibition of the various kinds of beards and moustaches which Mr. Schulz manages to exhibit by means of an optical apparatus, which casts the appearance of a very black beard or moustache of any shape he chooses, on his face, from which it vanishes again at a touch like a shadow of a cloud on the appearance of the sun. The only intellectual interest this part of the exhibition has, is not in itself, for there is nothing but the novelty of the optical delusion which is its method to distinguish it from the disguising effect of false beards and moustaches, in which none but children would take much interest, but in the illustration it gives us of the absolute externality of the whole machinery of expression. When you see the great, rough, black "democratic beard," as Mr. Schulz calls it, cloud the air for a moment with a shadowy flicker, and then settle in a solid grove on the face, and again at a touch dissipate into the air and leave it as white and pale as ever, we can scarcely help realizing not only that the special gleams of expression which Mr. Sehulz brings and banishes at pleasure are equally shadows, and still more of intellectual shadows, but that the mind sits as loose to the mechanism of expression, worked through the movement of its own features, as it does to that worked by casting external shadows upon the face, or making itself in actual costumes. When Mr. Schulz, in imitating "the pious man," makes himself no doubt without knowing it look so absurdly like Lord Shaftesbury in a moment of lugubrious devotion, or, in imitating "the melancholy man," makes himself the image of an acquaintance of ours who was once melancholy mad, it is impossible not to fancy that Mr. Schulz might, if he pleased, almost live one distinct life in his own mind, and quite a different apparent life in the external world; that to himself he might be known, for instance, as a man never even for a moment content with his position, while to the world he might live as a man abounding in pride and selfelation; or that to himself he might be known as an acute and vigilant observer, while he could seem to the world a model of absolute inanity. He makes us feel, at all events, that with him the expression assumed by the face is almost as voluntary as the costume assumed by the person, that

« AnteriorContinuar »