Читать книгу Sword and Gown - George A. Lawrence - Страница 10

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The Saturday night is waning, but Molyneux shows no signs of moving yet from Keene’s apartments. He has been a model of prudence though so far, as to his drinks, and, in good truth, their companion is not amusing, or instructive, or convivial enough, to tempt or to excuse transgression.

Dick Tresilyan looks about twenty-five, strongly and somewhat heavily built; rather over the middle height, even with the decided stoop of his broad, round shoulders. He carries far too much flesh to please a professional eye, and by the time he is fifty will be very unwieldy; but there is more activity in him than might be supposed, and he walks strongly and well, as you would find if you tried to keep pace with him through the turnips on a sultry September day. His face, without a pretension to beauty in itself, suggests it—just the face that makes you say, “that man must have a handsome sister;” indeed, it bears an absurdly strong family likeness to Cecil’s, amounting to a parody. But the outline of feature which in her is so fine and clear, is dull and filled out even to coarseness. It reminded one of looking at the same landscape, first through the medium of a bright blue sky, and then through driving mist, when crag, and cliff, and wood still show themselves, but blurred and dimly. His hair and eyes are, by several shades, the lighter of the two. The great difference is in the mouth. Cecil’s is so delicately chiseled, so apt at all expressions, from tender to provocative, that many consider it one of her best points; her brother’s is so weak and undecided in its character (or rather want of character), that it would make a more intellectual face vacuous and inane.

The “Tresilyan constitution” holds its own gallantly against the inroads of hardish living, and Dick looks the picture of rude health. Men endowed with an invincible obtuseness of intellect and feeling, have no mental wear and tear, and if the machine starts in good order, it seems as if it might last out indefinitely; so it would, I dare say, if it were not for a propensity to drink, and otherwise to abuse their bodily advantages, peculiar to this class. But for this neutralizing element in their composition perhaps they would live as long as crows or elephants, and we should be visited by a succession of stupid Old Parrs; which would be a very dreadful dispensation indeed. The present subject takes a good deal of exercise, to be sure, and naturally, few cares have ever troubled him; he has always had more money than he knew what to do with, and—as for serious annoyances, a certain train of thought is necessary to form them, while our poor Dick’s brain is utterly incapable of holding more than one idea at a time. Whatever may happen to be the dominant thought, reigns with an undivided empire, and will not endure a rival even near its throne, till it is violently thrust out and annihilated by its successor, on the principle of