Part 71 (1/2)

Said Rolfe, ”The young barbarian, as you call him, has disarmed me: he plays the fiddle like a civilized angel.”

”Oh, Mr. Rolfe!”

”What, you his mother, and not found that out yet? Oh yes, he has a heaven-born genius for music.”

Rolfe then related the musical feats of the urchin.

Sir Charles begged to observe that this talent would go a very little way toward fitting him to succeed his father and keep up the credit of an ancient family.

”Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that; but it is like him to make the best of things, to encourage us. But what do you think of him, on the whole, Mr. Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or to fear?”

”Give me another day or two to study him,” said Rolfe.

That night there was a loud alarm. Mr. Ba.s.sett was running about the veranda in his night-dress.

They caught him and got him to bed, and Rolfe said it was fever; and, with the a.s.sistance of Sir Charles and a footman, laid him between two towels steeped in tepid water, then drew blankets tight over him, and, in short, packed him.

”Ah!” said he, complacently; ”I say, give me a drink of moons.h.i.+ne, old chap.”

”I'll give you a bucketful,” said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help, took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He was diabolically beautiful. ”Kiss me, moons.h.i.+ne,” said he; ”I like to wash in you.”

Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir Charles and Lady Ba.s.sett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity; a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice trembled.

”I shall tell you,” said he, ”what I see--what I foresee--and then, with great diffidence, what I advise.

”I see--what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type.”

Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, ”We are to have a romance, it seems.”

Lady Ba.s.sett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.

The theorist continued, with perfect composure, ”I don't undertake to account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous, but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long, silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey, face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all.”

”This is a _little_ too far-fetched,” said Sir Charles, satirically; ”Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our family that all the Ba.s.setts were as black as ink till they married with you Rolfes, in the year 1684.”

”Oho!” said Rolfe, ”is it so? See how discussion brings out things.”

”And then,” said Lady Ba.s.sett, ”Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I think.”

”Ay, do,” said Rolfe; ”that will be a new form of circ.u.mlocution.”

Sir Charles complied, with a smile. ”Lady Ba.s.sett's theory is, that children derive their nature quite as much from their wet-nurses as from their parents, and she thinks the faults we deplore in Reginald are to be traced to his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark woman too.”

”Well,” said Rolfe, ”there's a good deal of truth in that, as far as regards the disposition. But I never heard color so accounted for; yet why not? It has been proved that the very bones of young animals can be colored pink, by feeding them on milk so colored.”

”There!” said Lady Ba.s.sett.

”But no nurse could give your son a color which is not her own. I have seen the woman; she is only a dark Englishwoman. Her arms were embrowned by exposure, but her forehead was not brown. Mr. Reginald is quite another thing. The skin of his body, the white of his eye, the pupil, all look like a reversion to some Oriental type; and, mark the coincidence, he has mental peculiarities that point toward the East.”

Sir Charles lost patience. ”On the contrary,” said he, ”he talks and feels just like an English sn.o.b, and makes me miserable.”