Adela Cathcart, vol 3 | Page 6

dignity than I had
ever seen her assume, 'that as soon as ever I attempted to open my
mouth, you told me not to tell lies. You believed the wicked people
who brought me here rather than myself. However, as you will not be
friendly, I think we had better go. Come, Charlie?'
"'Don't go, princess,' pleaded little Eddie.
"'But I must, for your auntie does not like me,' said Chrissy.
"'I am sure I always meant to do my duty by you. And I will do so
still.-- Beware, my dear young woman, of the deceitfulness of riches.
Your carriage won't save your soul!'
"Chrissy was on the point of saying something rude, as she confessed
when we got out; but she did not. She made her bow, turned and
walked away. I followed, and poor Eddie would have done so too, but
was laid hold of by his aunt. I confess this was not quite proper
behaviour on Chrissy's part; but I never discovered that till she made
me see it. She was very sorry afterwards, and my uncle feared the
brougham had begun to hurt her already, as she told me. For she had
narrated the whole story to him, and his look first let her see that she
had been wrong. My uncle went with her afterwards to see Mrs. Sprinx,
and thank her for having done her best; and to take Eddie such presents
as my uncle only knew how to buy for children. When he went to
school, I know he sent him a gold watch. From that time till now that

she is my wife, Chrissy has had no more such adventures; and if Uncle
Peter did not die on Christmas-day, it did not matter much, for
Christmas-day makes all the days of the year as sacred as itself."
CHAPTER II.
THE GIANT'S HEART.
When Harry had finished reading, the colonel gallantly declared that
the story was the best they had had. Mrs. Armstrong received this as a
joke, and begged him not to be so unsparing.
"Ah! Mrs. Armstrong," returned he laughing, "you are not old enough
yet, to know the truth from a joke. Don't you agree with me about the
story, Mrs. Cathcart?"
"I think it is very pretty and romantic. Such men as Uncle Peter are not
very common in the world. The story is not too true to Nature."
This she said in a tone intended to indicate superior acquaintance with
the world and its nature. I fear Mrs. Cathcart and some others whom I
could name, mean by Nature something very bad indeed, which yet an
artist is bound to be loyal to. The colonel however seemed to be of a
different opinion.
"If there never was such a man as Uncle Peter," said he, "there ought to
have been; and it is all the more reason for putting him into a story that
he is not to be found in the world."
"Bravo!" cried I. "You have answered a great question in a few words."
"I don't know," rejoined our host. "Have I? It seems to me as plain as
the catechism."
I thought he might have found a more apt simile, but I held my peace.
Next morning, I walked out in the snow. Since the storm of that terrible
night, it had fallen again quietly and plentifully; and now in the

sunlight, the world--houses and trees, ponds and rivers--was like a
creation, more than blocked out, but far from finished--in marble.
"And this," I said to myself, as I regarded the wondrous loveliness with
which the snow had at once clothed and disfigured the bare branches of
the trees, "this is what has come of the chaos of falling flakes! To this
repose of beauty has that storm settled and sunk! Will it not be so with
our mental storms as well?"
But here the figure displeased me; for those were not the true right
shapes of the things; and the truth does not stick to things, but shows
itself out of them.
"This lovely show," I said, "is the result of a busy fancy. This white
world is the creation of a poet such as Shelley, in whom the fancy was
too much for the intellect. Fancy settles upon anything; half destroys its
form, half beautifies it with something that is not its own. But the true
creative imagination, the form-seer, and the form-bestower, falls like
the rain in the spring night, vanishing amid the roots of the trees; not
settling upon them in clouds of wintry white, but breaking forth from
them in clouds of summer green."
And then my thoughts very naturally went from Nature to my niece;
and I asked myself whether within the last few days I had not seen
upon