He rose and began; and as he continued, his wonderful art held the child
spell-bound. The meaningless words resolved themselves into symbols of
vast significance. She saw the little daughter, her cheeks like the
dawn of day, a vision of Stellamaris, and felt the moonless dark of the
stormy night and the hissing snow and the stinging blast, and she
shivered at the awful sight of the skipper frozen at the wheel, and a
hush fell upon her soul as the maiden prayed, and the tears fell fast
from her eyes as the picture of the fisherman finding the maiden fair
lashed to the drifting mast was flashed before her by the actor's magic.
“Now, Unity dear, don't you wish you could say it like that?” Aunt
Gladys remarked.
Unity, scarcely hearing, made perfunctory answer; but as soon as she
could, she fled to her bedroom, her ears reverberating with the echoes
of the beautiful voice, and her soul shaken with the poignant drama, and
crudely copying Herold's gestures and intonations, recited the poem over
and over again.
The result of this was not a sudden passion for romance or histrionics,
but it was remarkable enough. It awoke her sense of vowel sounds and
aspirates. Henceforward she discriminated between “lady” and “lidy,”
between “no” and “naow,” and although she never acquired a pure accent,
her organs of speech refusing to obey her will, she was acutely aware of
the wrong sounds that escaped from her lips.
As with this, so with other stages of development, both in things
external and things spiritual. Scales had to be torn from her eyes
before she saw; then she saw with piercing vision. Plugs had to be
wrenched from her ears before she heard; then she heard the horns of
Elfland. Her heart had to be plucked from her bosom before she felt;
then her whole being quivered with an undying emotion.
So the weeks and the months passed and grew into years, and Miss Lindon
said that she was a well-behaved and Christian child, and that it was a
pity she was so plain; and Risca, forgetful, after a while, of her agony
of tears and of Herold's angry diagnosis, retained his opinion that she
was just dull and stupid, though well-meaning, and, having his head full
of other things, took her at last for granted, together with his Aunt
Gladys, as a normal feature in his sometimes irritating, though on the
whole exceedingly comfortable, comic-opera household.
CHAPTER X
ONE evening by the last post John received a letter bearing the prison
stamp and addressed to him under the care of the firm of solicitors who
had defended his wife. It ran:
_I am coming out on Wednesday, the thirteenth. I suppose I shall have
somewhere to go to and not be expected to walk the streets. Louisa Anne
Risca._