The injuries, it seems, were not dangerous: an
assurance which her father received with a smile that
almost made one his friend—it was so glad
and gratified. He now expressed his obligations
to Graham with as much earnestness as was befitting
an Englishman addressing one who has served him, but
is yet a stranger; he also begged him to call the
next day.
“Papa,” said a voice from the veiled couch,
“thank the lady, too; is she there?”
I opened the curtain with a smile, and looked in at
her. She lay now at comparative ease; she looked
pretty, though pale; her face was delicately designed,
and if at first sight it appeared proud, I believe
custom might prove it to be soft.
“I thank the lady very sincerely,” said
her father: “I fancy she has been very
good to my child. I think we scarcely dare tell
Mrs. Hurst who has been her substitute and done her
work; she will feel at once ashamed and jealous.”
And thus, in the most friendly spirit, parting greetings
were interchanged; and refreshment having been hospitably
offered, but by us, as it was late, refused, we withdrew
from the Hotel Crecy.
On our way back we repassed the theatre. All
was silence and darkness: the roaring, rushing
crowd all vanished and gone—the damps, as
well as the incipient fire, extinct and forgotten.
Next morning’s papers explained that it was
but some loose drapery on which a spark had fallen,
and which had blazed up and been quenched in a moment.
M. DE BASSOMPIERRE.
Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen
amid the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in
and guarded dwellings, are liable to be suddenly and
for a long while dropped out of the memory of their
friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably,
perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent
intercourse— some congeries of rather exciting
little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather
seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication—there
falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank
of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike
entire and unexplained. The letter, the message
once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical,
ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that
indicated remembrance, comes no more.
Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses,
if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant
in his cell, his connections without are whirling
in the very vortex of life. That void interval
which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks
seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in
the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones—that
same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants
with hurry for his friends.
The hermit—if he be a sensible hermit—will
swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions
during these weeks of inward winter. He will
know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion,
the dormouse, and he will be conformable: make
a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of life’s
wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows
in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for
the season.
