“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.