She had made respectable advancement in study; that is, she had taught herself to write, with even greater mechanical facility than Ned; and other knowledge had fallen upon her, as it were, by a reflected light from him; or, to use another simile, had been spattered upon her by the full stream which the Doctor poured into the vessel of the boy’s intellect. So that she had even some knowledge of the rudiments of Latin, and geometry, and algebra; inaccurate enough, but yet with such a briskness that she was sometimes able to assist Ned in studies in which he was far more deeply grounded than herself. All this, however, was more by sympathy than by any natural taste for such things; being kindly, and sympathetic, and impressible, she took the color of what was nearest to her, and especially when it came from a beloved object, so that it was difficult to discover that it was not really one of her native tastes. The only thing, perhaps, altogether suited to her idiosyncrasy (because it was truly feminine, calculated for dainty fingers, and a nice little subtlety) was that kind of embroidery, twisting, needle-work, on textile fabric, which, as we have before said, she learnt from crusty Hannah, and which was emblematic perhaps of that creature’s strange mixture of races.
Elsie seemed not only to have caught this art in its original spirit, but to have improved upon it, creating strange, fanciful, and graceful devices, which grew beneath her finger as naturally as the variegated hues grow in a flower as it opens; so that the homeliest material assumed a grace and strangeness as she wove it, whether it were grass, twigs, shells, or what not. Never was anything seen, that so combined a wild, barbarian freedom with cultivated grace; and the grim Doctor himself, little open to the impressions of the beautiful, used to hold some of her productions in his hand, gazing at them with deep intentness, and at last, perhaps, breaking out into one of his deep roars of laughter; for it seemed to suggest thoughts to him that the children could not penetrate. This one feature of strangeness and wild faculty in the otherwise sweet and natural and homely character of Elsie had a singular effect; it was like a wreath of wild-flowers in her hair, like something that set her a little way apart from the rest of the world, and had an even more striking effect than if she were altogether strange.
Thus were the little family going on; the Doctor, I regret to say, growing more morose, self-involved, and unattainable since the disappearance of the schoolmaster than before; more given up to his one plaything, the great spider; less frequently even than before coming out of the grim seclusion of his moodiness, to play with the children, though they would often be sensible of his fierce eyes fixed upon them, and start and feel incommoded by the intensity of his regard;—thus things were going on, when one day there was really again a visitor, and not a dilapidated patient, to the grim Doctor’s study. Crusty Hannah brought up his name as Mr. Hammond, and the Doctor—filling his everlasting pipe, meanwhile, and ordering Hannah to give him a coal (perhaps this was the circumstance that made people say he had imps to bring him coals from Tophet)—ordered him to be shown up. [Endnote: 2.]
A fresh-colored, rather young man [Endnote: 3] entered the study, a person of rather cold and ungraceful manners, yet genial-looking enough; at least, not repulsive. He was dressed in rather a rough, serviceable travelling-dress, and except for a nicely brushed hat, and unmistakably white linen, was rather careless in attire. You would have thought twice, perhaps, before deciding him to be a gentleman, but finally would have decided that he was; one great token being, that the singular aspect of the room into which he was ushered, the spider festoonery, and other strange accompaniments, the grim aspect of the Doctor himself, and the beauty and intelligence of his two companions, and even that horrific weaver, the great dangling spider,—neither one nor all of these called any expression of surprise to the stranger’s face.
“Your name is Hammond?” begins the Doctor, with his usual sparseness of ornamental courtesy. [Endnote: 4.]
The stranger bowed.
“An Englishman, I perceive,” continued the Doctor, but nowise intimating that the fact of being a countryman was any recommendation in his eyes.
“Yes, an Englishman,” replied Hammond; “a briefless barrister, [Endnote: 5] in fact, of Lincoln’s Inn, who, having little or nothing to detain him at home, has come to spend a few idle months in seeing the new republic which has been made out of English substance.”
“And what,” continued Doctor Grim, not a whit relaxing the repulsiveness of his manner, and scowling askance at the stranger,—“what may have drawn on me the good fortune of being compelled to make my time idle, because yours is so?”
The stranger’s cheek flushed a little; but he smiled to himself, as if saying that here was a grim, rude kind of humorist, who had lost the sense of his own peculiarity, and had no idea that he was rude at all. “I came to America, as I told you,” said he, “chiefly because I was idle, and wanted to turn my enforced idleness to what profit I could, in the way of seeing men, manners, governments, and problems, which I hope to have no time to study by and by. But I also had an errand intrusted to me, and of a singular nature; and making inquiry in this little town (where my mission must be performed, if at all), I have been directed to you, by your townspeople, as to a person not unlikely to be able to assist me in it.”