The Convict: A Tale. G. P. R. James
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Название: The Convict: A Tale
Автор: G. P. R. James
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066248253
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The young nobleman was about to reply, however, when Sir Arthur Adelon interposed, saying, "My lord, I should have introduced to you before now our friend, the Reverend Mr. Filmer--Mr. Filmer, Lord Hadley." The young lord bowed, and the other gentleman advanced a step, when, as he passed, Mr. Dudley perceived that a small spot, about the size of a crown piece, on the top of his head, was shaved, and recognising at once the Roman Catholic priest, he gained with rapid combination some insight into several things which had before been obscure.
The priest's manner softened. In a few moments he, with Lord Hadley and their host, were in full conversation. With timid hesitation young Edgar Adelon drew near and joined them; and Dudley, approaching the table near which Miss Brandon was still standing, spoke a few words with her in perhaps a lower tone than is quite customary on ordinary occasions. They neither of them knew that they were speaking low; but the emotions of the heart have immense mastery over the tones of the voice; and though the words that they uttered were little more than commonplace sentences of surprise and pleasure at their unexpected meeting, of question and explanation of what had occurred to each since they had last seen each other, they were certainly both a good deal moved by the unspoken eloquence of the heart. In a short time, just as Lord Hadley was about to retire to his room to put his dress in order, supper was announced, and postponing his toilet, he offered his arm to Miss Brandon, and led her into the adjacent room. Sir Arthur Adelon and Mr. Dudley followed, and the priest lingered for a moment or two behind, speaking to the baronet's son, and then entered the supper-room with a quick step. He then blessed the meal with every appearance of devotion; and Dudley's eye, which was marking much, perceived that Sir Arthur and his son made the sign of the cross, but that Eda Brandon forbore; and he was glad to see it.
The meal became very cheerful: as it went on, the first strangeness of new arrival wore off with the two guests. Jest and gaiety succeeded to more serious discourse, and topic after topic was brought forward and cast away again with that easy lightness which gives a great charm to conversation. The master of the house was somewhat stiff and stately, it is true; but the three young men did not suffer his dignified air to chill them. The priest was a man of great and very various information, had seen, studied, and penetrated not only all the ordinary aspects of society, but the hearts and spirits of thousands of individuals. There was not a subject that he could not talk upon, whether gay or grave; from the green-room of the theatre or opera-house, to the cabinets of statesmen and the saloons of monarchs. His conversation was graceful, easy, flowing, and becoming; and although there was a point of sarcastic wit in it which gave it, in the opinion of Dudley, almost too great a piquancy, yet when that gentleman recollected what had been said, he could not find one word that was unfitted to the character of a well-bred man and a priest. It was all so quietly done too: the stinging gibe, the light and flashing jest, that the young tutor sometimes thought the whole must have received point and peculiar application from the manner; but yet he could not recollect emphasis laid upon any word; and he carried away from that table, when he retired to rest at night, much matter for thought upon all that he had seen, and many a deep feeling re-awakened in his heart, which he had hoped and trusted had been laid asleep by the power of reason, and the struggle of a strong mind against a warm and enthusiastic heart.
CHAPTER IV.
The wind had blown away the clouds which lay so heavy on the sky the night before. The morning rose bright and sparkling, with a brisk gale stirring the air, and a clear, fresh, frosty look over the whole earth. At an early hour--for matutinal habits had become inveterate--Mr. Dudley rose, and going to the window, gazed out upon a scene of which he had been able to discover little at the dark hour of his arrival.
I will not pause to describe all that he beheld, for the public taste is as capricious in matters of composition as in regard to mere dress; and the detailed description of scenery, the pictures with the pen, which please much at one time, weary at another. It is a railroad age, too: all the world is anxious to get on, and we hurry past remorselessly all the finer traits of mind and character which were objects of thought and study to our ancestors, just as the traveller, in the long screaming, groaning, smoking train, is hurried past those sweet and beautiful spots in which the contemplative man of former days was accustomed to pause and ponder.
On one small portion of the landscape, however, I must dwell, for I shall have to speak of it presently, and must recur to it more than once hereafter. The house was situated in an extensive park; and a long avenue of beech trees, not perfectly straight, but sweeping with a graceful curve over the undulations of the ground, led down to the park gates and to the lodge. At a short distance from that lodge, a little thicket of wood joined on to the avenue, and ran along in irregular masses till it reached the park wall: and these objects, the avenue, the wavy green slopes of the park, the thicket beyond, and the top of the park wall, were those upon which Mr. Dudley's eye first rested. Beyond the limits of the park, again, in the same direction, he caught a glimpse of a varied country, apparently tolerably fertile and well-cultivated, close to the park, but growing rapidly wilder and more rude, as it extended into some high and towering downs, which Dudley conceived to be those he had traversed the night before.
As the reader well knows, some kinds of beech tree retain their leaves longer than almost any other tree or shrub, except the tribe of evergreens; and even through frost, and wind, and rain, they hang yellow upon the wintry boughs, till the coming of the new green buds, like ambitious children, forces their predecessors down to the earth. The avenue was thus thickly covered, so that any one might have walked there long unseen from most parts of the house or park. But when Lord Hadley, on his way back to London from the Continent, had accepted a kind, though not altogether disinterested invitation to Brandon--for so the place was called--he had merely mentioned that his tutor was with him, and to the tutor had been assigned a room considerably higher in the house than the apartments of more lordly guests. Dudley did not feel at all displeased that it should be so; and now as he looked forth, he had a bird's-eye view, as it were, of the avenue, and a fine prospect over the distant country. Thus he was well contented; and as he had been informed that the family did not meet at breakfast till half-past nine, and it was then little more than six, he determined to dress himself at once, and roam for an hour or two through the park, and perhaps extend his excursion somewhat beyond its walls.
One of the first operations in a man's toilet--I say it for the benefit of ladies, who cannot be supposed to know the mysteries thereof--is to shave himself; and an exceedingly disagreeable operation it is. I know not by what barbarous crotchet it has happened that men have tried to render their faces effeminate, by taking off an ornament and a distinction with which nature decorated them; but so it is, that men every morning doom themselves to a quarter of an hour's torture, for the express purpose of making their chins look smug, and as unlike the grown man of God's creation as possible. Dudley's beard was thick and black, and required a good deal of shaving. He therefore opened a very handsome dressing-case--it was one which had been a gift to him in his days of prosperity; and taking out a small finely-polished mirror, he fastened it--for the sake of more light than he could obtain at the looking-glass on the toilet-table--against the left-hand window of the room; then with a little Naples soap, brought by himself from the city of the syren, a soft badger's-hair brush and cold water--for he did not choose to ring the servants up at that early hour of the morning--he set to work upon as handsome a face as probably had ever been seen. The brush and the soap both being good, he produced a strong lather, notwithstanding the cold water; and turning to put down the brush and take up the razor, which he had laid down on a little table in the window, his eyes naturally fell upon that part of the park grounds beneath him, where the avenue terminated close to the house. As they did so, they rested upon a human figure passing rapidly from the mansion to the shade of the beech trees; and Dudley instantly recognised Edgar Adelon, the son of his host. There was nothing very extraordinary in the sight; but Dudley was a meditative man by habit, and while he reaped the sturdy harvest of his chin, he went on thinking of Edgar СКАЧАТЬ