Then, Even
Before The Tears Were Dry, Her Eyes Were Once More Gazing At
The Tireless Little Dancers, Taking On
Child after child as
they came timidly forward to have a share in the fun, and once
more she began
To plead with her "mummy," and would not be
denied, for she was a most determined little Saxon, until
getting her way she rushed out for a second trial. Again the
little dancer saw her coming and flew to her like a bird to
its mate, and clasping her laughed her merry musical little
laugh. It was her "sudden glory," an expression of pure
delight in her power to infuse her own fire and boundless
gaiety of soul into all these little blue-eyed rosy phlegmatic
lumps of humanity.
What was it in these human mites, these fantastic Brownies,
which, in that crowd of Rowenas and their children, made them
seem like beings not only of another race, but of another
species? How came they alone to be distinguished among so
many by that irresponsible gaiety, as of the most volatile of
wild creatures, that quickness of sense and mind and sympathy,
that variety and grace and swiftness - all these brilliant
exotic qualities harmoniously housed in their small beautiful
elastic and vigorous frames? It was their genius, their
character - something derived from their race. But what
race? Looking at their mother watching her little ones at
their frolics with dark shining eyes - the small oval-faced
brown-skinned woman with blackest hair - I could but say that
she was an Iberian, pure and simple, and that her children
were like her. In Southern Europe that type abounds; it is
also to be met with throughout Britain, perhaps most common in
the southern counties, and it is not uncommon in East Anglia.
Indeed, I think it is in Norfolk where we may best see the two
most marked sub-types in which it is divided - the two
extremes. The small stature, narrow head, dark skin, black
hair and eyes are common to both, and in both these physical
characters are correlated with certain mental traits, as, for
instance, a peculiar vivacity and warmth of disposition; but
they are high and low. In the latter sub-division the skin is
coarse in texture, brown or old parchment in colour, with
little red in it; the black hair is also coarse, the forehead
small, the nose projecting, and the facial angle indicative of
a more primitive race. One might imagine that these people
had been interred, along with specimens of rude pottery and
bone and flint implements, a long time back, about the
beginning of the Bronze Age perhaps, and had now come out of
their graves and put on modern clothes. At all events I don't
think a resident in Norfolk would have much difficulty in
picking out the portraits of some of his fellow-villagers in
Mr. Reed's Prehistoric Peeps.
The mother and her little ones were of the higher sub-type:
they had delicate skins, beautiful faces, clear musical
voices. They were Iberians in blood, but improved; purified
and refined as by fire; gentleized and spiritualized, and to
the lower types down to the aboriginals, as is the bright
consummate flower to leaf and stem and root.
Often and often we are teased and tantalized and mocked by
that old question:
Oh! so old -
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told -
of black and blue eyes; blue versus black and black versus
blue, to put it both ways. And by black we mean black with
orange-brown lights in it - the eye called tortoise-shell; and
velvety browns with other browns, also hazels. Blue includes
all blues, from ultramarine, or violet, to the palest blue of
a pale sky; and all greys down to the grey that is almost
white. Our preference for this or that colour is supposed
to depend on nothing but individual taste, or fancy, and
association. I believe it is something more, but I do find
that we are very apt to be swayed this way and that by the
colour of the eyes of the people we meet in life, according as
they (the people) attract or repel us. The eyes of the two
little girls were black as polished black diamonds until
looked at closely, when they appeared a beautiful deep brown
on which the black pupils were seen distinctly; they were so
lovely that I, predisposed to prefer dark to light, felt that
this question was now definitely settled for me - that black
was best. That irresistible charm, the flame-like spirit
which raised these two so much above the others - how could it
go with anything but the darkest eyes!
But no sooner was the question thus settled definitely and for
all time, to my very great satisfaction, than it was unsettled
again. I do not know how this came about; it may have been
the sight of some small child's blue eyes looking up at me,
like the arch blue eyes of a kitten, full of wonder at the
world and everything in it;
"Where did you get those eyes so blue?"
"Out of the sky as I came through";
or it may have been the sight of a harebell; and perhaps it
came from nothing but the "waste shining of the sky." At all
events, there they were, remembered again, looking at me from
the past, blue eyes that were beautiful and dear to me, whose
blue colour was associated with every sweetness and charm in
child and woman and with all that is best and highest in human
souls; and I could not and had no wish to resist their appeal.
Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue - a meeting
with one who almost seemed to be less flesh than spirit. A
middle-aged lady, frail, very frail; exceedingly pale from
long ill-health, prematurely white-haired, with beautiful grey
eyes, gentle but wonderfully bright.
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