There was a manner of half command and half dependence in the father’s call to his daughter,—a weak nature, still asserting the control it could not sustain over a stronger. And in her response an indulgence of this feeble attempt at authority.
Does all this seem much to find in the few simple words we had heard? The analysis might be made infinitely more thorough. Every look, tone, gesture of a man is a symbol of his complete nature. If we apply the microscope severely enough, we can discern the fine organism by which the soul sends itself out in every act of the being. And the more perfectly developed the creature, the more significant, and yet the more mysterious, is every habit, and every motion mightier than habit, of body or soul.
In an instant, the lady so sweetly heralded stepped from beneath the hood of the wagon, and sprang to the ground in more busy and cheerful guise than her voice had promised.
Again the same subtle magnetism between her and us. We could not have been more convinced of her right to absolute respect and consideration if she had entered to us in the dusky light of a rich drawing-room, or if we had been presented in due form at a picnic of the grandest world, with far other scenery than this of a “desart idle,” tenanted for the moment by a Mormon caravan. The lady, like her father, felt that we were gentlemen, and therefore would comprehend her. She saluted us quietly. There was in her manner a tacit and involuntary protest against circumstances, just enough for dignity. A vulgar woman would have snatched up and put on clumsily a have-seen-better-days air. This lady knew herself, and knew that she could not be mistaken for other than she was. Her base background only made her nobility more salient.
She did not need any such background, nor the contrast of the drudges and meretricious frights of the caravan. She could have borne full light without any shade. A woman fit to stand peer among the peerless.
We could not be astonished at this apparition. We had divined her father rightly, as it afterward proved. Her voice has already half disclosed her character. Let her face continue the development. We had already heard her called by her Christian name, Ellen. That seemed to bring us, from the beginning, into a certain intimacy with the woman as woman, sister, daughter, and to subordinate the circumstances of the life, to be in future suggested by the social name, to the life itself.
Ellen, then, the unknown lady of the Mormon caravan, was a high-bred beauty. Englishwomen generally lack the fine edge of such beauty as hers. She owed her dark fairness, perhaps, to a Sicilian bride, whom her Norman ancestor had pirated away from some old playground of Proserpine, and brought with him to England when he came there as conqueror. Her nose was not quite aquiline.
Positive aquiline noses should be cut off. They are ugly; they are immoral; they are sensual; they love money; they enjoy others’ misery. The worst birds have hooked beaks; and so the worst men, the eagles and vultures of the race. Cut off the beaks; they betoken a cruel pounce, a greedy clutch, and a propensity to carrion. Save the exceptions, but extirpate the brood.
This lady’s nose was sensitive and proud. It is well when a face has its share of pride in the nose. Then the lips can give themselves solely to sweetness and archness. Besides, pride, or, if the word is dreaded, a conscious and resolute personality, should be the characteristic of a face. The nose should express this quality. Above, the eyes may changefully flash intelligence; below, the mouth may smile affection; the cheeks may give balance and equability; the chin may show the cloven dimple of a tender and many-sided, or the point of a single-hearted and concentrated nature; the brow, a non-committal feature, may look wise or wiseacre; but every one of them is only tributary to the nose, standing royally in the midst, and with dignity presiding over its wayward realm.
Halt! My business is to describe a heroine,—not to discuss physiognomy, with her face for a type.