Lewis Arundel; Or, The Railroad Of Life — John Shaqi
Lewis Arundel; Or, The Railroad Of LifeSmedley, Frank E. (Frank Edward)
General
Lewis Arundel; Or, The Railroad Of Life
Smedley, Frank E. (Frank Edward)
English fiction -- 19th century
“Yes, you will,” returned Lewis quietly; “every one does as I bid them.”
And grasping her wrist, while he fixed his piercing glance sternly
upon her, he led her up to the dog, and in spite of a faint show of
resistance, a half-frightened, half-indignant “I dare say, indeed,” and
a muttered hint of her conviction “that he had lately been accustomed to
drive black nigger slaves in Guinea,” with an intimation “that he’d find
white flesh and blood wouldn’t stand it, and didn’t ought to, neither,”
succeeded in making her shake its great paw, and finally (as she
perceived no symptoms of the _humanivorous_ propensities with which her
imagination had endowed it), pat its shaggy sides. “There, now you’ve
made up your quarrel, Faust shall help you to carry my things upstairs,”
said Lewis; and slinging a small travelling valise round the dog’s neck,
he again addressed him in German, when the well-trained animal left the
room with the astonished but no longer refractory Rachel.
[Illustration: 0020]
“You must be a conjurer, Lewis,” exclaimed his mother, who had remained
a silent but amused spectator of the foregoing scene. “Why, Rachel
manages the whole house. Rose and I do exactly what she tells us, don’t
we, Rose? What did you do to her? was it mesmerism?”
“I made use of one of the secrets of the mesmerist, certainly,” replied
Lewis; “I managed her by the power of a strong will over a weak one.”
“I should hardly call Rachel’s a weak will,” observed Rose, with a quiet
smile.
“You must confess, at all events, mine is a stronger,” replied Lewis.
“When I consider it necessary to carry a point, I usually find some
way of doing it; it was necessary for the sake of Faust’s well-being to
manage Rachel, and I did so.”
He spoke carelessly, but there was something in his bearing and manner
which told of conscious power and inflexible resolution, and you felt
instinctively that you were in the presence of a masterspirit.
Tea made its appearance; Rachel, upon whom the charm still appeared to
operate, seeming in the highest possible good humour,--a frame of mind
most unusual with that exemplary woman, who belonged to that trying
class of servants who, on the strength of their high moral character
and intense respectability, see fit to constitute themselves a kind of
domestic scourges, household horse-hair shirts (if we may be allowed the
expression), and, bent on fulfilling their mission to the _enth_, keep
their martyred masters and mistresses in a constant state of mental
soreness and irritation from morning till night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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