Rest Harrow: A Comedy of ResolutionHewlett, Maurice
General
Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution
Hewlett, Maurice
Fiction
There's a taste for names in the Percival family: we have Philippa,
Hawise. Now for the seated pair, one on either side of Philippa: they
are Melusine, who has a long neck and a very demure look, and a great
deal of hair, and Victoria, who, having just tossed back her head, lifts
her chin and glimmers at you through half-shut eyes. Her lips laugh
snugly at some mischief meditating. Neither of these can be our lady,
who must therefore be the last and youngest, this child of eighteen
or so, round-cheeked, round-eyed and serious, with critical lids, like
those of the Farnese Hera, and a beautiful mouth: Sanchia-Josepha,
crouched on the floor at the feet of Philippa. A charming bevy of
maidens--Philippa, Hawise, Melusine, Victoria, Sanchia-Josepha; ten
years ago happily sisters and rich in promise, looking out boldly at the
veiled years ahead of them. Ten years ago? Call it eight, and you make
our Miss Percival, say, six-and-twenty by this time.
There are many other photographs--girls and women, most of them; but
here is a man, dignified by a place apart upon the bureau. He occupies
one side of it by himself, balanced by the sisters at the other. A
youngish man in yeomanry uniform he appears only in torso. He has the
smooth head of a soldier, and rather a low, but very square, forehead.
His eyes are smallish, and set deep. They look to be grey, light grey,
but may be light blue. He has a good nose, high-bridged, large, thin,
and practically straight. Such noses are seldom perfectly straight, and
his is not. I observe that he has curled his moustache with the tongs,
so that it is well away from his upper lip. If I had been he I should
not have done that. It is too much trouble--and if a man takes pains
about his toilette, those pains ought not to be evident. Moreover, the
mouth is by no means this young man's best feature. There is a twist,
the hint of a snarl in the upper lip. The lower protrudes. The gentleman
is the least in life underhung. Consider his chin. It has the jut of
the Hapsburgs', of Charles the Fifth's, not pronounced by any means,
but undoubtedly there. Firmness, or perhaps obstinacy, hard judgment, an
uneven temper, a leaning to autocracy, I read in this portrait. There is
no signature, nothing to tell you who he is. Certainly, no Percival.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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