“‘There is an excellent place in the long shrubbery,’ said the Master.
“‘Gentlemen,’ said I, ‘shame upon you both! Sons 94 of the same mother, would you turn against the life she gave you?’
“‘Even so, Mackellar,’ said Mr. Henry, with the same perfect quietude of manner he had shown throughout.”
It is not necessary for Mackellar to tell us that, whereas Mr. Henry is phlegmatic and deliberate, the Master is impulsive and mercurial. It is not necessary for him to attempt analysis of the emotions and thoughts of the leading characters, since these are sufficiently evident from what they do and say. The action happens to the eye and ear, without the interpretation of an analytic intellect; but the reader is made actually present at the scene, and can see and judge it for himself. The method is absolutely narrative and not at all expository,––entirely objective and concrete. Surely this is the most artistic means of portraying those elements of character which contribute to external, or objective, events: and even what happens inside the mind of a character may often be more poignantly suggested by a concrete account of how he looks and what he does than by an abstract analytic statement of the movements of his mind. When Hepzibah Pyncheon opens her shop in the House of the Seven Gables, her state of feeling is indicated indirectly, by what she does and how she does it.
3. By Effect on Other Characters.––Perhaps the most delicate means of indirect delineation is to suggest the personality of one character by exhibiting his effect upon certain other people in the story. In the third book of the “Iliad,” there is a temporary truce upon the plains of Troy; and certain elders of the city look forth from the tower of the Scæan gates and meditate upon the ten long years of conflict and of carnage during which so many of their sons have died. Toward them walks the white-armed Helen, robed and veiled in white; and when they 95 mark her approach, they say to each other (old and wise and weary with sorrows though they be):––
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“‘Small blame is theirs, if both the Trojan knights And brazen-mailed Achaians have endured So long so many evils for the sake Of that one woman.’” ––(Bryant’s Version.) |
Perhaps the most remarkable instance in modern literature of the use of this expedient is Mr. Kipling’s tale of “Mrs. Bathurst.” The story is all about the woman from whom it takes its title; but she never for a moment appears upon the scene of action, and is portrayed entirely through her effect upon several different men. Here is a bit of conversation concerning her. Note her effect upon the humorous and not especially sensitive Pyecroft.––
“Said Pyecroft suddenly:––
“‘How many women have you been intimate with all over the world, Pritch?’
“Pritchard blushed plum color to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch neck.