So, when the day was come, I went with Mrs Stoyte; and the first person I saw was a young lady on the stair-head as we went up, and Mrs Emerson presenting her to many. A fine young London madam, who curtseyed to me, taking no more heed than of any other.
Shall I admit her beauty? I did not think her charming, despite fine sparkling eyes and a luxuriance of brown hair. Her lips were full and her chin round, but she looked full her age, and between the brows was a line that I would call the Doctor's sign-manual. I have it myself--I have seen it in others--'t is the claw-foot of care, care never-ending and cruel unrest, and hope that sickens the spirit and fades the bloom; and in her, though but just of age, the first bloom was gone that is like morning dew in a young girl's eyes. He loves to tyrannise over women and show his familiarity by a certain brutality of address, and the line comes not slowly.
I caught sight of her person with mine in a long glass--she in her sea-green sacque flowered with pink, and myself in gray,--"an angel's face a little cracked,"--that was the best he could say for Stella! She gave not a thought to the faded Dublin lady that would have given all but her eternal hope to read in that girl's soul. Oh, the mask of the human face behind which none may look!
Hester Vanhomrigh--Vanessa
So she went, and after a year he returned, now Dean of St. Patrick. He was kind, but 't was a kindness that stood apart and viewed itself carefully, lest it diminish my due. 'Twas easy seen he was engaged in thought. Well--shall a woman expect more from a man in the world's eye? Let her be humbly grateful for the crumbs he lets fall.
Also for the crumbs from her rival's table; for Miss Hessy following, and now an orphan, was established soon after at Marlay; and whether I would or not, I knew when the Dean's rides took him that way, my Mrs Prue being courted by his man Samuel, and all he did trickling through that channel. 'T was at this time also that copies were handed about of his poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," and 't was the very top of talk and admiration. Many might guess who was the lady, and the Dean was mighty angry, and said 'twas but a jest, and no friend to him who took it otherwise.
He asked me with a feigned carelessness if I had read it; and I replying carelessly that I thought it extreme fine and could wish he would write oftener in that vein, he smiled and looked pleased, and so it passed. But again and yet again I conned the lines:--
'T is to the world a secret yet
Whether the nymph, to please her swain,
Talks in a high romantic strain,
Or whether he at last descends
To act with less seraphic ends.
Or, to compound the business, whether
They temper love and books together,
Must never to mankind be told,
Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold.
I knew the meaning of that passage where others guesst. I read it by the light of a sunset many years gone, and lived in hell.