FullReads

The trained novel readers, those who have made a business of it (if any such should honor this poor little story with their attention), will glance down the opening paragraphs for a description of the heroine’s tresses. The opening sentences of Miss Braddon are enough to show how important a thing a head of hair is in the getting up of a heroine for the popular market. But as my heroine is not a got-up one, and as I can not possibly remember even the color of her hair or her eyes as I recall her now, I fear I shall disappoint the professionals, who never feel that they have a complete heroine till the “long waving tresses of raven darkness, reaching nearly to the ground, enveloping her as with a cloud,” have been artistically stuck on by the author. But be it known that I take Priscilla from memory, and not from imagination. And the memory of Priscilla, the best girl in the school, the most gifted, the most modest, the most gentle and true, is a memory too sacred to be trifled with. I would not make one hair light or dark, I would not change the shading of the eyebrows. Priscilla is Priscilla forever, to all who knew her. And as I can not tell the precise color of her hair and eyes, I shall not invent a shade for them. I remember that she was on the blond side of the grand division line. But she was not blond. She was–Priscilla. I mean to say that since you never lived in that dear old-fogy Ohio River village of New Geneva, and since, consequently, you never knew our Priscilla, no words of mine can make you exactly understand her. Was she handsome? No–yes. She was “jimber-jawed”–that is, her lower teeth shut a little outside her upper. Her complexion was not faultless. Her face would not bear criticism. And yet there is not one of her old schoolmates that will not vow that she was beautiful. And indeed she was. For she was Priscilla. And I never can make you understand it.

As Priscilla was always willing to oblige any one, it was only natural that Mrs. Leston should send for her to help entertain the marquis. It was a curious chance that threw the young Marquis d’Entremont for a whole summer into the society of our little village. His uncle, who was his guardian, a pious abbe, wishing to remove him from Paris to get him out of socialistic influences, had sent him to New Orleans, consigned to the care of the great banking house of Challeau, Lafort & Company. Not liking to take the chances of yellow fever in the summer, he had resolved to journey to the North, and as Challeau, Lafort & Company had a correspondent in Henry Leston, the young lawyer, and as French was abundantly spoken in our Swiss village of New Geneva, what more natural than that they should dispatch the marquis to our pleasant town of vineyards, giving him a letter of introduction to their attorney, who fortunately spoke some book French. He had presented the letter, had been invited to dinner, and Priscilla Haines, who had learned French in childhood, though she was not Swiss, was sent for to help entertain the guest.

I can not but fancy that D’Entremont was surprised at meeting just such a girl as Priscilla in a rustic village. She was not abashed at finding herself face to face with a nobleman, nor did she seem at all anxious to attract his notice. The vanity of the marquis must have been a little hurt at finding a lady that did not court his attention. But wounded vanity soon gave place to another surprise. Even Mrs. Leston, who understood not one word of the conversation between her husband, the marquis, and Priscilla, was watching for this second surprise, and did not fail to read it in D’Entremont’s eyes. Here was a young woman who had read. She could admire Corinne, which was much in vogue in those days among English-speaking students of French; she could oppose Saint Simon. The Marquis d’Entremont had resigned himself to the ennui of talking to Swiss farmers about their vineyards, of listening to Swiss grandmothers telling stories of their childhood in Neufchatel and Vaud. But to find in this young village school-teacher one who could speak, and listen while he spoke, of his favorite writers, was to him very strange. Not that Priscilla had read many French books, for there were not many within her reach. But she had read Grimm’s Correspondence, and he who reads this has heard the echo of many of the great voices in French literature. And while David Haines had lived his daughter had wanted nothing he could get to help her to the highest culture.