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Page 43
Flicker, flack! The school-boys stirred up snapdragon again, and with
the blue light upon his features the tutor made so horrible a grimace
that MacGreedy swallowed the raisin with a start. He had bolted it
whole, and it might have been a bread pill for any enjoyment he had of
the flavour. But the tutor laughed aloud. He certainly was an alarming
object, pulling those grimaces in the blue brandy glare; and
unpleasantly like a picture of Bogy himself with horns and a tail, in a
juvenile volume upstairs. True, there were no horns to speak of among
the tutor's grizzled curls, and his coat seemed to fit as well as most
people's on his long back, so that unless he put his tail in his
pocket, it is difficult to see how he could have had one. But then (as
Miss Letitia said) "With dress one can do anything and hide anything,"
and on dress Miss Letitia's opinion was final.
Miss Letitia was a cousin. She was dark, high-coloured, glossy-haired,
stout, and showy. She was as neat as a new pin, and had a will of her
own. Her hair was firmly fixed by bandoline, her garibaldis by an
arrangement which failed when applied to those of the widow, and her
opinions by the simple process of looking at everything from one point
of view. Her _forte_ was dress and general ornamentation; not that
Miss Letitia was extravagant--far from it. If one may use the
expression, she utilized for ornament a hundred bits and scraps that
most people would have wasted. But, like other artists, she saw
everything through the medium of her own art. She looked at birds with
an eye to hats, and at flowers with reference to evening parties. At
picture exhibitions and concerts she carried away jacket patterns and
bonnets in her head, as other people make mental notes of an aerial
effect, or a bit of fine instrumentation. An enthusiastic
horticulturist once sent Miss Letitia a cut specimen of a new flower.
It was a lovely spray from a lately-imported shrub. A botanist would
have pressed it--an artist must have taken its portrait--a poet might
have written a sonnet in praise of its beauty. Miss Letitia twisted a
piece of wire round its stem, and fastened it on to her black lace
bonnet. It came on the day of a review, when Miss Letitia had to appear
in a carriage, and it was quite a success. As she said to the widow,
"It was so natural that no one could doubt its being Parisian."
"What a strange fellow that tutor is!" said the visitor. He spoke to
the daughter of the house, a girl with a face like a summer's day, and
hair like a ripe corn-field rippling in the sun. He was a fine young
man, and had a youth's taste for the sports and amusements of his age.
But lately he had changed. He seemed to himself to be living in a
higher, nobler atmosphere than hitherto. He had discovered that he was
poetical--he might prove to be a genius. He certainly was eloquent, he
could talk for hours, and did so--to the young lady with the sunshiny
face. They spoke on the highest subjects, and what a listener she was!
So intelligent and appreciative, and with such an exquisite _pose_
of the head--it must inspire a block of wood merely to see such a
creature in a listening attitude. As to our young friend, he poured
forth volumes; he was really clever, and for her he became eloquent.
To-night he spoke of Christmas, of time-honoured custom and old
association; and what he said would have made a Christmas article for a
magazine of the first class. He poured scorn on the cold nature that
could not, and the affectation that would not, appreciate the domestic
festivities of this sacred season. What, he asked, could be more
delightful, more perfect than such a gathering as this, of the
family circle round the Christmas hearth? He spoke with feeling, and it
may be said with disinterested feeling, for he had not joined his
family circle himself this Christmas, and there was a vacant place by
the hearth of his own home.
"He is strange," said the young lady (she spoke of the tutor in answer
to the above remark); "but I am very fond of him. He has been with us
so long he is like one of the family; though we know as little of his
history as we did on the day he came."
"He looks clever," said the visitor. (Perhaps that is the least one can
say for a fellow-creature who shows a great deal of bare skull, and is
not otherwise good-looking.)
"He is clever," she answered, "wonderfully clever; so clever and so odd
that sometimes I fancy he is hardly 'canny.' There is something almost
supernatural about his acuteness and his ingenuity, but they are so
kindly used; I wonder he has not brought out any playthings for us
to-night."
"Playthings?" inquired the young man.
"Yes; on birthdays or festivals like this he generally brings something
out of those huge pockets of his. He has been all over the world, and
he produces Indian puzzles, Japanese flower-buds that bloom in hot
water, and German toys with complicated machinery, which I suspect him
of manufacturing himself. I call him Godpapa Grosselmayer, after that
delightful old fellow in Hoffman's tale of the Nut Cracker."
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