Book: My Novel, Volume 2.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 2.



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BOOK SECOND.

INITIAL CHAPTER.

INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS.


"There can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main
divisions of your work--whether you call them Books or Parts--you should
prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter."

PISISTRATUS.--"Can't be a doubt, sir? Why so?"

MR. CAXTON.--"Fielding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he
supports by his example; and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew
what he was about."

PISISTRATUS.--"Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?"

MR. CAXTON.--"Why, indeed, Fielding says, very justly, that he is not
bound to assign any reason; but he does assign a good many, here and
there,--to find which I refer you to 'Tom Jones.' I will only observe,
that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that
thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning at
the fourth or fifth page instead of the first,--'a matter by no means of
trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, 'to persons who read books with no
other view than to say they have read them,--a more general motive to
reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books and
good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, Swift and Cervantes, have
been often turned Over.' There," cried my father, triumphantly, "I will
lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words."

MRS. CANTON.--"Dear me, that only means skipping; I don't see any great
advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it."

PISISTRATUS.--"Neither do I!"

MR. CANTON (dogmatically).--"It is the repose in the picture,--Fielding
calls it 'contrast.'--(Still more dogmatically.)--I say there can't be a
doubt about it. Besides" added my father after a pause,--"besides, this
usage gives you opportunities to explain what has gone before, or to
prepare for what's coming; or, since Fielding contends, with great truth,
that some learning is necessary for this kind of historical composition,
it allows you, naturally and easily, the introduction of light and
pleasant ornaments of that nature. At each flight in the terrace you may
give the eye the relief of an urn or a statue. Moreover, when so
inclined, you create proper pausing-places for reflection; and complete
by a separate, yet harmonious ethical department, the design of a work,
which is but a mere Mother Goose's tale if it does not embrace a general
view of the thoughts and actions of mankind."

PISISTRATUS.--"But then, in these initial chapters, the author thrusts
himself forward; and just when you want to get on with the /dramatis
personae/, you find yourself face to face with the poet himself."

MR. CANTON.--"Pooh! you can contrive to prevent that! Imitate the
chorus of the Greek stage, who fill up the intervals between the action
by saying what the author would otherwise say in his own person."

PISISTRATUS (slyly).--"That's a good idea, sir,--and I have a chorus, and
a choregus too, already in my eye."

MR. CANTON (unsuspectingly).--"Aha! you are not so dull a fellow as you
would make yourself out to be; and, even if an author did thrust himself
forward, what objection is there to that? It is a mere affectation to
suppose that a book can come into the world without an author. Every
child has a father,--one father at least,--as the great Conde says very
well in his poem."

PISISTRATUS.--"The great Conde a poet! I never heard that before."

MR. CANTON.--"I don't say he was a poet, but he sent a poem to Madame de
Montansier. Envious critics think that he must have paid somebody else
to write it; but there is no reason why a great captain should not write
a poem,--I don't say a good poem, but a poem. I wonder, Roland, if the
duke ever tried his hand at 'Stanzas to Mary,' or 'Lines to a Sleeping
Babe.'"

CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"Austin, I'm ashamed of you. Of course the duke could
write poetry if he pleased,--something, I dare say, in the way of the
great Conde; that is, something warlike and heroic, I'll be bound. Let's
hear!"

MR. CAXTON (reciting).--

"Telle est du Ciel la loi severe
Qu'il faut qu'un enfant ait un pere;
On dit meme quelquefois
Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois."

["That each child has a father
Is Nature's decree;
But, to judge by a rumour,
Some children have three."]


CAPTAIN ROLAND (greatly disgusted).--"Conde write such stuff!--I don't
believe it."

PISISTRATUS.--"I do, and accept the quotations; you and Roland shall be
joint fathers to my child as well as myself.

"'Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois.'"

MR. CAXTON (solemnly).--"I refuse the proffered paternity; but so far as
administering a little wholesome castigation now and then, I have no
objection to join in the discharge of a father's duty."

PISISTRATUS.--"Agreed. Have you anything to say against the infant
hitherto?"

MR. CAXTON.--"He is in long clothes at present; let us wait till he can
walk."

BLANCHE.--"But pray whom do you mean for a hero? And is Miss Jemima your
heroine?"

CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"There is some mystery about the--"

PISISTRATUS (hastily).-"Hush, Uncle: no letting the cat out of the bag
yet. Listen, all of you! I left Frank Hazeldean on his way to the
Casino."




CHAPTER II.

"It is a sweet pretty place," thought Frank, as he opened the gate which
led across the fields to the Casino, that smiled down upon him with its
plaster pilasters. "I wonder, though, that my father, who is so
particular in general, suffers the carriage-road to be so full of holes
and weeds. Mounseer does not receive many visits, I take it."

But when Frank got into the ground immediately before the house, he saw
no cause of complaint as to want of order and repair. Nothing could be
kept more neatly. Frank was ashamed of the dint made by the pony's hoofs
on the smooth gravel: he dismounted, tied the animal to the wicket, and
went on foot towards the glass door in front.

He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody came, for the old woman-servant,
who was hard of hearing, was far away in the yard, searching for any eggs
which the hen might have scandalously hidden for culinary purposes; and
Jackeymo was fishing for the sticklebacks and minnows which were, when
caught, to assist the eggs, when found, in keeping together the bodies
and souls of himself and his master. The old woman had been lately put
upon board wages. Lucky old woman! Frank rang a third time, and with
the impetuosity of his age. A face peeped from the belvidere on the
terrace. "Diavolo!" said Dr. Riccabocca to himself. "Young cocks crow
hard on their own dunghill; it must be a cock of a high race to crow so
loud at another's."

Therewith he shambled out of the summer-house, and appeared suddenly
before Frank, in a very wizard-like dressing-robe of black serge, a red
cap on his head, and a cloud of smoke coming rapidly from his lips, as a
final consolatory whiff, before he removed the pipe from them. Frank had
indeed seen the doctor before, but never in so scholastic a costume, and
he was a little startled by the apparition at his elbow, as he turned
round.

"Signorino," said the Italian, taking off his cap with his usual
urbanity, "pardon the negligence of my people; I am too happy to receive
your commands in person."

"Dr. Rickeybockey?" stammered Frank, much confused by this polite
address, and the low, yet stately, bow with which it was accompanied.
"I--I have a note from the Hall. Mamma--that is, my mother--and aunt
Jemima beg their best compliments, and hope you will come, sir."

The doctor took the note with another bow, and, opening the glass door,
invited Frank to enter.

The young gentleman, with a schoolboy's usual bluntness, was about to say
that he was in a hurry, and had rather not; but Dr. Riccabocca's grand
manner awed him, while a glimpse of the hall excited his curiosity, so he
silently obeyed the invitation.

The hall, which was of an octagon shape, had been originally panelled off
into compartments, and in these the Italian had painted landscapes, rich
with the warm sunny light of his native climate. Frank was no judge of
the art displayed; but he was greatly struck with the scenes depicted:
they were all views of some lake, real or imaginary; in all, dark-blue
shining waters reflected dark-blue placid skies. In one, a flight of
steps ascended to the lake, and a gay group was seen feasting on the
margin; in another, sunset threw its rose-hues over a vast villa or
palace, backed by Alpine hills, and flanked by long arcades of vines,
while pleasure-boats skimmed over the waves below. In short, throughout
all the eight compartments, the scene, though it differed in details,
preserved the same general character, as if illustrating some favourite
locality. The Italian did not, however, evince any desire to do the
honours of his own art, but, preceding Frank across the hall, opened the
door of his usual sitting-room, and requested him to enter. Frank did so
rather reluctantly, and seated himself with unwonted bashfulness on the
edge of a chair. But here new specimens of the doctor's handicraft soon
riveted attention. The room had been originally papered, but Riccabocca
had stretched canvas over the walls, and painted thereon sundry satirical
devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works of fantastic
arabesques. Here a Cupid was trundling a wheelbarrow full of hearts,
which he appeared to be selling to an ugly old fellow, with a money-bag
in his hand--probably Plutus. There Diogenes might be seen walking
through a market-place, with his lantern in his hand, in search of an
honest man, whilst the children jeered at him, and the curs snapped at
his heels. In another place a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's
hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with
a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their
necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders
were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could.
In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was
symbolically conveyed; only over the mantel piece was the design graver
and more touching. It was the figure of a man in a pilgrim's garb,
chained to the earth by small but innumerable ligaments, while a phantom
likeness of himself, his shadow, was seen hastening down what seemed an
interminable vista; and underneath were written the pathetic words of
Horace--

"Patriae quis exul
Se quoque fugit?"

["What exile from his country can also fly from himself?"]

The furniture of the room was extremely simple, and somewhat scanty; yet
it was arranged so as to impart an air of taste and elegance to the room.
Even a few plaster busts and statues, though bought but of some humble
itinerant, had their classical effect, glistening from out stands of
flowers that were grouped around them, or backed by graceful screen-works
formed from twisted osiers, which, by the simple contrivance of trays at
the bottom filled with earth, served for living parasitical plants, with
gay flowers contrasting thick ivy leaves, and gave to the whole room the
aspect of a bower. "May I ask your permission?" said the Italian, with
his finger on the seal of the letter.

"Oh, yes," said Frank, with naivete.

Riccabocca broke the seal, and a slight smile stole over his countenance.
Then he turned a little aside from Frank, shaded his face with his hand,
and seemed to muse. "Mrs. Hazeldean," said he, at last, "does me very
great honour. I hardly recognize her handwriting, or I should have been
more impatient to open the letter." The dark eyes were lifted over the
spectacles and went right into Frank's unprotected and undiplomatic
heart. The doctor raised the note, and pointed to the characters with
his forefinger.

"Cousin Jemima's hand," said Frank, as directly as if the question had
been put to him.

The Italian smiled. "Mr. Hazeldean has company staying with him?"

"No; that is, only Barney,--the captain. There's seldom much company
before the shooting season," added Frank, with a slight sigh; "and then,
you know, the holidays are over. For my part, I think we ought to break
up a month later."

The doctor seemed reassured by the first sentence in Frank's reply, and,
seating himself at the table, wrote his answer,--not hastily, as we
English write, but with care and precision, like one accustomed to weigh
the nature of words,--in that stiff Italian hand, which allows the writer
so much time to think while he forms his letters. He did not, therefore,
reply at once to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till
he had concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the
taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, he said,

"For your sake, young gentleman, I regret that your holidays are so
early; for mine, I must rejoice, since I accept the kind invitation you
have rendered doubly gratifying by bringing it yourself."

"Deuce take the fellow and his fine speeches! One don't know which way
to look," thought English Frank.

The Italian smiled again, as if this time he had read the boy's heart,
without need of those piercing black eyes, and said, less ceremoniously
than before, "You don't care much for compliments, young gentleman?"

"No, I don't indeed," said Frank, heartily.

"So much the better for you, since your way in the world is made: it
would be so much the worse if you had to make it!"

Frank looked puzzled: the thought was too deep for him, so he turned to
the pictures.

"Those are very funny," said he; "they seem capitally done. Who did
'em?"

"Signoriuo Hazeldean, you are giving me what you refused yourself."

"Eh?" said Frank, inquiringly.

"Compliments!"

"Oh--I--no; but they are well done: are n't they, sir?"--

"Not particularly: you speak to the artist."

"What! you painted them?"

"Yes."

"And the pictures in the hall?"

"Those too."

"Taken from nature, eh?"

"Nature," said the Italian, sententiously, perhaps evasively, "lets
nothing be taken from her."

"Oh!" said Frank, puzzled again. "Well, I must wish you good morning,
sir; I am very glad you are coming."

"Without compliment?"

"Without compliment."

"A rivedersi--good-by for the present, my young signorino. This way,"
observing Frank make a bolt towards the wrong door. "Can I offer you a
glass of wine?--it is pure, of our own making."

"No, thank you, indeed, sir," cried Frank, suddenly recollecting his
father's admonition. "Good-by, don't trouble yourself, sir; I know any
way now."

But the bland Italian followed his guest to the wicket, where Frank had
left the pony. The young gentleman, afraid lest so courteous a host
should hold the stirrup for him, twitched off the bridle, and mounted in
haste, not even staying to ask if the Italian could put him in the way to
Rood Hall, of which way he was profoundly ignorant. The Italian's eye
followed the boy as he rode up the ascent in the lane, and the doctor
sighed heavily. "The wiser we grow," said he to himself, "the more we
regret the age of our follies: it is better to gallop with a light heart
up the stony hill than sit in the summer-house and cry 'How true!' to the
stony truths of Machiavelli!"

With that he turned back into the belvidere; but he could not resume his
studies. He remained some minutes gazing on the prospect, till the
prospect reminded him of the fields which Jackeymo was bent on his
hiring, and the fields reminded him of Lenny Fairfield. He returned to
the house, and in a few moments re-emerged in his out-of-door trim, with
cloak and umbrella, re-lighted his pipe, and strolled towards Hazeldean
village.

Meanwhile Frank, after cantering on for some distance, stopped at a
cottage, and there learned that there was a short cut across the fields
to Rood Hall, by which he could save nearly three miles. Frank, however,
missed the short cut, and came out into the high road; a turnpike-keeper,
after first taking his toll, put him back again into the short cut; and
finally, he got into some green lanes, where a dilapidated finger-post
directed him to Rood. Late at noon, having ridden fifteen miles in the
desire to reduce ten to seven, he came suddenly upon a wild and primitive
piece of ground, that seemed half chase, half common, with crazy
tumbledown cottages of villanous aspect scattered about in odd nooks and
corners. Idle, dirty children were making mud-pies on the road;
slovenly-looking women were plaiting straw at the threshold; a large but
forlorn and decayed church, that seemed to say that the generation which
saw it built was more pious than the generation which now resorted to it,
stood boldly and nakedly out by the roadside.

"Is this the village of Rood?" asked Frank of a stout young man breaking
stones on the road--sad sign that no better labour could be found for
him!

The man sullenly nodded, and continued his work. "And where's the Hall--
Mr. Leslie's?"

The man looked up in stolid surprise, and this time touched his hat.

"Be you going there?"

"Yes, if I can find out where it is."

"I'll show your honour," said the boor, alertly.

Frank reined in the pony, and the man walked by his side. Frank was much
of his father's son, despite the difference of age, and that more
fastidious change of manner which characterizes each succeeding race in
the progress of civilization. Despite all his Eton finery, he was
familiar with peasants, and had the quick eye of one country-born as to
country matters.

"You don't seem very well off in this village, my man?" said he,
knowingly.

"Noa; there be a deal of distress here in the winter time, and summer
too, for that matter; and the parish ben't much help to a single man."

"But surely the farmers want work here as well as elsewhere?"

"'Deed, and there ben't much farming work here,--most o' the parish be
all wild ground loike."

"The poor have a right of common, I suppose," said Frank, surveying a
large assortment of vagabond birds and quadrupeds.

"Yes; neighbour Timmins keeps his geese on the common, and some has a
cow, and them be neighbour Jowlas's pigs. I don't know if there's a
right, loike; but the folks at the Hall does all they can to help us, and
that ben't much: they ben't as rich as some folks; but," added the
peasant, proudly, "they be as good blood as any in the shire."

"I 'm glad to see you like them, at all events."

"Oh, yes, I likes them well eno'; mayhap you are at school with the young
gentleman?"

"Yes," said Frank.

"Ah, I heard the clergyman say as how Master Randal was a mighty clever
lad, and would get rich some day. I 'se sure I wish he would, for a poor
squire makes a poor parish. There's the Hall, sir."




CHAPTER III.

Frank looked right ahead, and saw a square house that, in spite of modern
sash windows, was evidently of remote antiquity. A high conical roof; a
stack of tall quaint chimney-pots of red-baked clay (like those at Sutton
Place in Surrey) dominating over isolated vulgar smoke-conductors, of the
ignoble fashion of present times; a dilapidated groin-work, encasing
within a Tudor arch a door of the comfortable date of George III., and
the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance of the small finely-
finished bricks, of which the habitation was built,--all showed the abode
of former generations adapted with tasteless irreverence to the habits of
descendants unenlightened by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the
past. The house had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste
land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by a
disorderly group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, until an
abrupt turn of the road cleared that screen, and left the desolate abode
bare to the discontented eye. Frank dismounted; the man held his pony;
and after smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the
door, and startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the
modern brass knocker,--a knock which instantly brought forth an
astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and
called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been
regaling themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in
full sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive paintless
wooden rail. In process of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and
inquisitive family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and, leaning
her nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with much
curiosity and some suspicion.

While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white trousers
with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance towards the respective
members of the family within. Mr. Leslie, the paterfamilias, is in a
little room called his "study," to which he regularly retires every
morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing till one o'clock, which is
his unfashionable hour for dinner. In what mysterious occupations Mr.
Leslie passes those hours no one ever formed a conjecture. At the
present moment he is seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of
which being shorter than the other is propped up by sundry old letters
and scraps of newspapers; and the bureau is open, and reveals a great
number of pigeonholes and divisions, filled with various odds and ends,
the collection of many years. In some of these compartments are bundles
of letters, very yellow, and tied in packets with faded tape; in another,
all by itself, is a fragment of plum-pudding stone, which Mr. Leslie has
picked up in his walks, and considered a rare mineral. It is neatly
labelled, "Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1804, by Maunder Slugge
Leslie, Esq." The next division holds several bits of iron in the shape
of nails, fragments of horse-shoes, etc., which Mr. Leslie has also met
with in his rambles, and, according to a harmless popular superstition,
deemed it highly unlucky not to pick up, and, once picked up, no less
unlucky to throw away. Item, in the adjoining pigeon-hole, a goodly
collection of pebbles with holes in them, preserved for the same reason,
in company with a crooked sixpence; item, neatly arranged in fanciful
mosaics, several periwinkles, Blackamoor's teeth (I mean the shell so
called), and other specimens of the conchiferous ingenuity of Nature,
partly inherited from some ancestral spinster, partly amassed by Mr.
Leslie himself in a youthful excursion to the seaside. There were the
farm-bailiff's accounts, several files of bills, an old stirrup, three
sets of knee and shoe buckles which had belonged to Mr. Leslie's father,
a few seals tied together by a shoe-string, a shagreen toothpick case, a
tortoise shell magnifying-glass to read with, his eldest son's first
copybooks, his second son's ditto, his daughter's ditto, and a lock of
his wife's hair arranged in a true lover's knot, framed and glazed.
There were also a small mousetrap; a, patent corkscrew too good to be
used in common; fragments of a silver teaspoon, that had, by natural
decay, arrived at a dissolution of its parts; a small brown holland bag,
containing halfpence of various dates, as far back as Queen Anne,
accompanied by two French /sous/ and a German /silber gros/,--the which
miscellany Mr. Leslie magniloquently called "his coins," and had left in
his will as a family heirloom. There were many other curiosities of
congenial nature and equal value--/quae nunc describere longum est/.
Mr. Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed "putting things to
rights,"--an occupation he performed with exemplary care once a week.
This was his day; and he had just counted his coins, and was slowly tying
them up again in the brown holland bag, when Frank's knock reached his
ears.

Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incredulously, and
was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of
yawning which prevented the bag being tied for full two minutes.

While such the employment of the study, let us turn to the recreations in
the drawing-room, or rather parlour. A drawing-room there was on the
first floor, with a charming look-out, not on the dreary fir-trees, but
on the romantic undulating forest-land; but the drawing-room had not been
used since the death of the last Mrs. Leslie. It was deemed too good to
sit in, except when there was company: there never being company, it was
never sat in. Indeed, now the paper was falling off the walls with the
damp, and the rats, mice, and moths--those /"edaces rerum"/--had eaten,
between them, most of the chair-bottoms and a considerable part of the
floor. Therefore, the parlour was the sole general sitting-room; and
being breakfasted in, dined, and supped in, and, after supper, smoked in
by Mr. Leslie to the accompaniment of rum-and-water, it is impossible to
deny that it had what is called "a smell,"--a comfortable, wholesome
family smell, speaking of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous social
habitation. There were two windows: one looked full on the fir-trees;
the other on the farmyard, with the pigsty closing the view. Near the
fir-tree window sat Mrs. Leslie; before her, on a high stool, was a
basket of the children's clothes that wanted mending. A work-table of
rosewood inlaid with brass, which had been a wedding-present, and was a
costly thing originally, but in that peculiar taste which is vulgarly
called "Brummagem," stood at hand: the brass had started in several
places, and occasionally made great havoc in the children's fingers and
in Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact it was the liveliest piece of furniture in
the house, thanks to the petulant brasswork, and could not have been more
mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the work-table lay a housewife
and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little
scraps of linen and cloth for patches. But Mrs. Leslie was not actually
working,--she was preparing to work; she had been preparing to work for
the last hour and a half. Upon her lap she supported a novel, by a lady
who wrote much for a former generation, under the name of "Mrs. Bridget
Blue Mantle." She had a small needle in her left hand, and a very thick
piece of thread in her right; occasionally she applied the end of the
said thread to her lips, and then--her eyes fixed on the novel--made a
blind, vacillating attack at the eye of the needle. But a camel would
have gone through it with quite as much ease. Nor did the novel alone
engage Mrs. Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted herself
to scold the children, to inquire "what o'clock it was;" to observe that
"Sarah would never suit;" and to wonder "why Mr. Leslie would not see
that the work-table was mended." Mrs. Leslie has been rather a pretty
woman. In spite of a dress at once slatternly and economical, she has
still the air of a lady,--rather too much so, the hard duties of her
situation considered. She is proud of the antiquity of her family on
both sides; her mother was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of
Daudle Place, a race that existed before the Conquest. Indeed, one has
only to read our earliest chronicles, and to glance over some of those
long-winded moralizing poems which delighted the thanes and ealdermen of
old, in order to see that the Daudles must have been a very influential
family before William the First turned the country topsy-turvy. While
the mother's race was thus indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only
the name but the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the Normans, and went far to
establish that crotchet of the brilliant author of "Sybil; or, The Two
Nations," as to the continued distinction between the conquering and
conquered populations. Mrs. Leslie's father boasted the name of
Montfichet,--doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great barons of
Alontfichet, who once owned such broad lands and such turbulent castles.
A high-nosed, thin, nervous, excitable progeny, those same Montfydgets,
as the most troublesome Norman could pretend to be. This fusion of race
was notable to the most ordinary physiognomist in the physique and in the
morale of Mrs. Leslie. She had the speculative blue eye of the Saxon,
and the passionate high nose of the Norman; she had the musing do-
nothingness of the Daudlers, and the reckless have-at-every-thingness of
the Montfydgets. At Mrs. Leslie's feet, a little girl with her hair
about her ears (and beautiful hair it was too) was amusing herself with a
broken-nosed doll. At the far end of the room, before a high desk, sat
Frank's Eton schoolfellow, the eldest son. A minute or two before
Frank's alarum had disturbed the tranquillity of the household, he had
raised his eyes from the books on the desk to glance at a very tattered
copy of the Greek Testament, in which his brother Oliver had found a
difficulty that he came to Randal to solve. As the young Etonian's face
was turned to the light, your first impression on seeing it would have
been melancholy, but respectful, interest,--for the face had already lost
the joyous character of youth; there was a wrinkle between the brows; and
the lines that speak of fatigue were already visible under the eyes and
about the mouth; the complexion was sallow, the lips were pale. Years of
study had already sown in the delicate organization the seeds of many an
infirmity and many a pain; but if your look had rested longer on that
countenance, gradually your compassion might have given place to some
feeling uneasy and sinister,--a feeling akin to fear. There was in the
whole expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the debility
of the frame. You saw there the evidence of a mind that was cultivated,
and you felt that in that cultivation there was something formidable.
A notable contrast to this countenance, prematurely worn and eminently
intelligent, was the round healthy face of Oliver, with slow blue eyes
fixed hard on the penetrating orbs of his brother, as if trying with
might and main to catch from them a gleam of that knowledge with which
they shone clear and frigid as a star.

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