Chapter XVI: Lifts a Corner of the Mask

Ruth Willis bending forward, her gloved fingers clasped upon the open letter that she held, and her pale face on fire, as it were, with eager passion, seemed sadly out of tune with the still beauty of that silvan spot, where first the crystal Start, freed from its moorland cradle, gushed forth as a real river, although of puny dimensions, bearing its watery tribute to the sea. Above, arched the feathery larch, the slender hazel, and the tapering ash. Branches of the mountain-ash projected like the stone frettings of some medieval belfrey. The clear sweet warble of mavis and merle came throbbing softly to the ear from the dim green heart of the summer woodlands. The letter which she had purloined—the theft may have been prompted by the impulse of the moment, and it is charitable to hope that such deeds were new to her—was now hers, to peruse at her leisure. She read it then, did Ruth Willis, again and again, slowly and deliberately, scanning and weighing every word, as though she had been a student of the cuneiform character, puzzling out Babylonian tablets by the aid of vague and tentative keys to the long-dead language of which they bore the impress.

The letter ran thus:

8 BOND’S CHAMBERS,
ST NICHOLAS POULTNEY, LONDON.

DEAR SIR SYKES—It might be as well perhaps that we should come
to an understanding at once respecting the business on which I
spoke to you at the _De Vere Arms_ some days since. I do not
know whether you are aware that I hold evidence substantiating
the entire circumstances of the case, which I could at any time
reveal. I will mention no names of place or person, since this
is unwelcome to you; but in return for my consideration for
your interests, and for those whose prosperity and good name
are _now_ knit up in yours, I consider myself to possess a
claim upon your confidence. I therefore permit myself to think
that as your legal adviser I could conduct your affairs so that
you should be under no apprehension for the future, provided
always that the entire management (professionally) of your
estate and property should be placed in my hands. This, after
due consideration, I think would be the most expedient manner
of settling matters for the advantage of all parties concerned.

Trusting that you may see this arrangement in the same light as
myself, and that it may meet with your approval, as the only
means of arriving at a definitive understanding, I shall await
your reply. I beg to remain, my dear sir, very obediently and
faithfully yours,

ENOCH WILKINS, _Solicitor_.

Such was the letter which Sir Sykes Denzil had unguardedly left upon his library table; and it may be admitted that a more impudent epistle has rarely been addressed to a gentleman of equal station to that of the proprietor of Carbery. It was difficult at first sight to believe that a demand so audacious in itself, and so offensively urged, could be intended as anything else than a sorry jest. Yet that the writer was quite in earnest, nay more, that he felt himself assured of not craving in vain for the coveted boon, was palpable to so attentive a critic as was Ruth Willis.

‘If any man had dared to write thus to me,’ she said, slowly hissing out the words between her half-shut teeth, ‘and I had filled the position held by yonder pompous dolt, I would have—ay, given him cause to repent it.’

And the lurid light that glimmered in her dark eyes, and the hardening of her shrewd pale face until it seemed as though of chiselled marble rather than sentient flesh, and the swift and sudden gesture with which she raised and shook her clenched hand, as though it held a dagger—these signs were the revelation of a fierce and unscrupulous nature, kept down by the pressure of circumstances, but ready at pinch of need to flame forth, as the hot lava bubbles and seethes beneath the crust of cold ashes in which the vines of the Italian peasant have struck root.

Again and with deliberate care did the baronet’s ward read the letter through. Then she refolded it and replaced it in her pocket, and then consulted her watch. Only a few minutes had as yet elapsed since her escape—for it was little else—from the mansion.

‘I must not go back as yet,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘By this time the whole household will be astir like a hive of angry bees, if, as is all but certain, Sir Sykes has not had self-control enough to keep his own counsel as to the loss he has sustained. He should have burned this choice epistle the moment he had made himself master of its purport; but he is of that order of men who treasure up the very proofs that sooner or later overwhelm them with a weight of silent evidence. Was it not the learned forger, silver-tongued, plausible Dr Dodd, who was left alone with the fatal document that brought him to the gallows, alone in a room where a brisk fire was blazing? One flash of mother-wit, one motion of the hand, and nothing but a heap of tinder would have remained to bear witness of the fraud. But no! The doomed wretch waited passive for the hangman’s fingers to adjust the hempen noose about his miserable neck. So would not I!’

Again the girl glanced impatiently at her watch.

‘How Time lags!’ she exclaimed petulantly, as she marked the slow crawling of the thin black minute-hand around the dial; ‘heeding nothing, influenced by nothing, inexorable in his measured pace. It is a pain to such as I am to be forced to loiter here inactive, when there is a foe to cope with, a peril to avert.’

She said no more, but paced restlessly to and fro along the river-bank, beneath the arching boughs, with somewhat of the air and tread of a caged panther wearing away the sullen hours of captivity behind the restraining bars. Her very step had in it somewhat of the litheness which we notice in the movements of the savage, and the working of her keen features told how deeply her busy brain was pondering on the events of the day. Ruth’s face, when once it was withdrawn from the observation of others, was a singularly expressive one. When she had left the room wherein Jasper had fallen asleep among his pillows, the countenance of Sir Sykes’s ward had been eloquent with weariness and contempt. Now it told of resentment restrained, but only in part restrained, by a caution that was rather of habit than of instinct.

‘An hour more! yet an hour,’ said the girl at length, again looking at her watch, and then she stood leaning against the tough stem of a quivering mountain-ash that almost overhung the brawling torrent. She still kept in her left hand the book which she had had with her when entering the library at Carbery; but even had not the volume been one which she had lately perused, she was in no mood for reading. Manifestly her mind was shaping out some desperate resolution.

‘I will do it!’ she said at last, lifting her head with a defiant glitter in her lustrous eyes; ‘before I sleep it shall be written. I know and gauge beforehand the risk of such a course; know too that I am loosening my own grasp on the helm if I invite another to aid me. But that is better than to be foiled at the outset, and after weeks spent in this self-schooling, and in the sickening task of cajoling a shallow, knavish egotist, such as the future Sir Jasper will be until his dying day. Let those look to it who for their own schemes venture to cross my path!’

The hour, however slowly it might appear to pass in the estimation of one whose nerves were on fire with excitement, nevertheless did wear itself out, and there was an end of waiting. With tranquil step and unruffled brow, Sir Sykes’s ward returned to her guardian’s house, to find, as she had anticipated, confusion and dismay prevalent there; the servants sullen or clamorous, the baronet’s daughters distressed, and Sir Sykes himself in a state of feverish suspicion, which almost made him forget the traditions of good-breeding.

‘Do you, Miss Willis, know anything of this?’ he asked half rudely, the instant that he caught sight of his ward.

‘I—know of what?’ returned Ruth innocently, as she lifted her eyes, with a startled look, to his.

‘You forget, papa,’ said Lucy Denzil, almost indignantly, ‘that Ruth has heard of nothing. She was away from the house all the time.’

‘Yes, yes; I beg pardon of course,’ exclaimed the baronet reddening, but still fixing his eyes searchingly on the placid face of his ward.

The Indian orphan bore his scrutiny with an admirable composure. Her lower lip trembled a little, as was natural, when she turned towards Lucy. ‘Pray do tell me,’ she said, ‘what has happened? for it really does seem as though I had been unfortunate enough to make Sir Sykes angry with me.’

‘Papa has lost a letter—a letter of importance,’ said Lucy, blushing as she spoke; ‘and as the servants deny all knowledge of it, and its loss’——

‘Say theft, not loss!’ interrupted the baronet with unwonted harshness. ‘I make no doubt that the letter was stolen from my desk in the library, on which I had left it for but some two minutes, while I went to speak with my son in the White Room. The French window nearest to the fireplace was open, giving an easy means of entry, as of egress, for the purloiner of this letter, who must have been on the watch for an opportunity of surprising my secrets—that is to say,’ stammered Sir Sykes, who felt the imprudence of these last words—‘of basely prying into my private correspondence.’

‘Are you quite, quite sure, papa dear,’ pleaded Blanche, ‘that you left the letter there, instead of bestowing it in some safe place for safe keeping, which may afterwards have escaped your memory, and will presently be recollected? Such things have happened often and often, even to the most methodical, and’——

‘There, there, my girl!’ broke in the baronet peevishly. ‘Have I not heard that argument repeated _ad nauseam_ by every man and maid that I have questioned; and is it not the stock answer to all inquiries after missing trinkets or valuables unaccounted for? I grant that I can prove nothing. If I could’——

He did not complete the sentence, but crushing down the wrath that almost choked his voice, turned away. Nothing, at this unpleasant conjuncture, could be in better taste, or more simple, than Ruth’s demeanour. She began to cry. It was the first time since the day of her arrival that any one at Carbery had seen her in tears, and now both Blanche and Lucy came kindly to kiss her and console her with whispered entreaties to excuse Sir Sykes for an indiscriminate anger which there was much to palliate. But Ruth soon dried her eyes, and going up to her guardian laid her hand upon his arm and looked up timidly in his face.

‘Let me be useful,’ she said. ‘Let me help in hunting high and low for this letter; pray, pray do, dear Sir Sykes, you who have been so very, very kind to me since I have been here.’

Nothing could be prettier. And Sir Sykes, though in his present irritable condition he actually shuddered at her light touch upon his arm, as though he had been in contact with a snake, was compelled to say a word or two of apology.

‘I am greatly annoyed,’ he said awkwardly, ‘and have been unjust and inhospitable, I fear, and must ask you to forget my rudeness. I am best alone.’

Sir Sykes therefore withdrew, and for some time was seen no more; while Jasper, who had been an amused spectator of the turmoil, sauntered back to the White Room, muttering as he went: ‘Lucky, rather, that this child had so perfect an alibi, or the governor would have tried, convicted, and sentenced his only son and heir as the light-fingered captor of his lost property. A new sensation, it strikes me, that of injured innocence. And talking of that—how nicely Miss Ruth, be she who she may, played her part—not one bit overdone—it was perfect! We breathe here an atmosphere of mystery; but it will be strange if, when I am all right again, I do not make a push to get at the governor’s secret, whatever it may be.’

The letter, it need hardly be said, remained undiscovered by the volunteer searchers who undertook the quest of it; but gradually the indignant household became more calm, and the general voice confirmed the comfortable opinion, that Sir Sykes had unwittingly locked up the missing document in some desk or drawer, whence it would one day be satisfactorily extracted.

CURIOUS RESEARCHES INTO HUMAN CHARACTER.

There can be little doubt that the domain of mental science is being invaded on more than one side by the sciences which deal more especially with the material world and with the physical universe around us. When physiologists discovered that the force or impulse which travels along a nerve, which originates in the brain, and which represents the transformation of thought into action, is nearly allied to the electrical force—now one of man’s most useful and obedient ministers—one avenue to the domain of mind was opened up. And when physiologists, through the aid of delicate apparatus, were actually enabled to measure the rate at which this nerve-force travels along the nerve-fibres, it may again be said that physical science was encroaching on the domain of mind, being in a certain sense thus enabled to measure the rapidity of thought.

A study, exemplifying in a more than ordinary degree the application of the methods of physical science to the explanation of states of mind, was brought under the notice of the members of the British Association at the last meeting of that body. In the department of Anthropology, or the science investigating the physical and mental constitution of the races of man, Mr Francis Galton, as president of this section, devoted his address to an exposition of the classification or arrangement of groups of men, according to their habits of mind, and their physiognomy.

Of the curious and absorbing nature of such a study nothing need be said. Lavater’s method of pursuing the study of character through the investigation of the features of the human face has long been known. But Lavater’s system is on the whole much too loose and elementary to be regarded as satisfactory by modern scientists, whose repudiation of phrenology as a system capable of explaining the exact disposition of the brain functions, has unquestionably affected Lavater’s method also. Mr Galton refers at the outset of his address to the fact we have already alluded to—namely, that physiologists have determined the rate at which nerve-force, representing a sensation or impulse of thought and action, travels along the nerves. The common phrase ‘as quick as thought’ is found to be by no means so applicable as is generally supposed, especially when it is discovered that thought or nervous impulse, as compared with light or electricity, appears as a veritable laggard. For whilst light travels at the rate of many thousands of miles—about one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles according to the latest researches—in a second of time, nerve-force in man passes along his nerves at a rate varying from one hundred and ten or one hundred and twenty to two hundred feet per second. Or, to use Mr Galton’s words, nerve-force is ‘far from instantaneous’ in its action, and has ‘indeed no higher velocity than that of a railway express train.’

As we could naturally suppose from a consideration of this fact, small animals presenting us with a limited distance for nerve-force to travel, will avoid rapid blows and shift for themselves in the struggle for existence at a much quicker rate than large animals. Take two extreme cases in illustration of this fact. A mouse hears a suspicious or threatening sound, and at once, so to speak, accommodates its actions and movements to its protection. The ear of the mouse, as one of its ‘gateways of knowledge,’ is situated so close to the brain that the interval which elapses between the reception of the sound by the ear, or between its transmission as an impulse to the brain and the issue of a command or second impulse from the brain to the muscles of the body for the purpose of movement, is too short to be perfectly appreciated by the observer. In a whale, on the contrary, which may attain a length of eighty feet, a much longer interval will elapse before action of body follows on nervous impulse, seeing that the nerve-impulse has a longer distance to travel. Assuming that in such animals as the whales the nerve-action travels at the rate of seventy or eighty feet per second, it follows that in a large whale which has been struck near the tail by a harpoon, a second or so will elapse before the impulse is transmitted to the brain, whilst another second will pass before the second impulse is sent from the brain to put the muscles of the tail in action for the purpose of retaliating upon the harpooner. In such a case it is assumed that the brain of the animal will be the nervous centre or station at which information is received, and from which instructions are in turn telegraphed to the various organs and parts of the body. In the actual details of the case, however, it is probable that the spinal marrow of the animal or some part of it would act as the ‘head-office’ for receiving and issuing commands. We know that a headless frog will wipe off with one foot a drop of vinegar that has been placed on the other, and in the absence of the brain we thus assume that the spinal cord may act as a nerve-centre.

Doubtless the spinal marrow discharges this function naturally; and in view of this latter supposition, the interval between the reception of a blow and the muscular actions of an animal would be of less duration than in the case we have just supposed, where the brain is regarded as the central station of the nervous system. As an eminent authority in physical science has remarked, ‘the interval required for the kindling of consciousness would probably more than suffice for the destruction of the brain by lightning, or even by a rifle-bullet. Before the organ (that is, the brain) can arrange itself, it may therefore be destroyed, and in such a case we may safely conclude that death is painless.’

But confining ourselves to the domain of human thought, it seems perfectly clear that the differences between persons of different temperament are in reality referable in great part to the varying rates at which nervous impulses are transmitted through the nerves, and to or from the brain. The difference between a person of phlegmatic disposition and a person of sanguine temperament, may thus be properly enough referred to the varying rates with which sensations and feelings are appreciated and acted upon. Disposition or temperament thus becomes referred, secondarily, to the manner in which and aptitude with which nerves receive and transmit impressions. Primarily, of course, we must refer the exact causes of the quicker or slower transmission of impulses to the constitution of the individual who exhibits them.

Mr Galton gives a very interesting example of the differences to be observed between various individuals in the respects just noted, by a reference to a practice common amongst astronomers. He says: ‘It is a well-known fact that different observers make different estimates of the exact moment of the occurrence of any event. There is,’ he continues, ‘a common astronomical observation in which the moment has to be recorded at which a star that is travelling athwart the field of view of a fixed telescope, crosses the fine vertical wire by which that field of view is intersected. In making this observation it is found that some observers are over-sanguine and anticipate the event, whilst others are sluggish, and allow the event to pass by before they succeed in noting it.’ This tendency of each individual is clearly not the result either of inexperience or carelessness, since, as astronomers well know, ‘it is a persistent characteristic of each individual, however practised in the art of making observations or however attentive he may be.’ And so accustomed indeed are astronomers to these differences in observers, that a definite and standing phrase—that of the ‘personal equation’—is used in that science to express the difference between the time of a man’s noting the event and that of its actual occurrence. Every assistant in an observatory has his ‘personal equation’ duly ascertained, and has this correction applied to each of his observations. This most interesting fact relates exact or mathematical science in the most curious manner to the mental character of an individual. Mr Galton, however, does not rest merely with the announcement of this latter result. He goes much further in his theoretical inquiry, and suggests that peculiarities in the respect just noted might be found to be related to special points in the conformation of the body. Thus could the ‘personal equations’ of astronomers be related to the height of body, age, colour of hair and eyes, weight, and temperament, some valuable facts might be deduced regarding the union of definite characters to form a special constitution.

Some other methods may be cited of estimating the differences between various temperaments in appreciating sensations and in acting upon them. If a person is prepared to give an instantaneous opinion as to the colour of a certain signal—black or white—but is unaware of the particular colour which is to be exhibited, and if he is further instructed to press a stop with his right hand for the one colour and a left-hand stop for the other, the act of judgment necessary to determine the particular stop in each instance, is found to occupy an appreciable interval. This is particularly the case if a single signal has been previously shewn, and the observer’s quickness of sight has been tested and calculated by his pressing a single stop whenever he saw the object. The comparison between the interval elapsing between the mere sensation of sight and the act of pressing the stop in the latter case, and the interval which elapses when the observer has to make up his mind as to the difference between two signals, is seen to be very marked.

Setting thus before his mind a certain number of tests of individual temperament and character such as have been illustrated, the observer may next proceed to the task of discovering whether persons who exhibit similar qualities of mind in these experiments, can be proved to be related to each other in other particulars of their physical or mental disposition. Mr Galton has ingeniously suggested that by an arrangement of mirrors, four views of a person’s head might be taken at once, and would thus afford an ordinary photographic portrait, a portrait of a three-quarter face, a profile view, and a figure of the top of the head respectively. Such a series of views would present all the aspects required for a comparison of the general as well as special contour of the head of the individual with the heads of others photographed in like manner.

Our author, whose researches on the heredity of men of genius and the transmission from one generation to another of qualities belonging to the highest development of man’s estate, are well known, turned his attention to the opposite phase of human life and character, and investigated in an avowedly casual, but still important manner, the likenesses and differences between members of the criminal classes of England. The social and practical importance of a study such as the present may be readily estimated. There are few persons who have not considered the bearings and influence of criminal antecedents upon the offenders of the present day. Although to a very large extent our temperaments and dispositions are of our own making, and are susceptible of the favouring influences of education and moral training, there can be no doubt of the truth of the converse remark, that to a very great extent the traits of character we inherit from our parents exercise an undeniable influence over us for weal or for woe. If, therefore, through research in the direction we have indicated, it can be shewn that criminality runs in types, our notions of criminal responsibility, and our ideas regarding the punishment, deterrent and otherwise, of the criminal classes, must be affected and ameliorated thereby.

That criminality, like moral greatness, ‘runs in the blood,’ there can be no doubt. It would in fact be a most unwonted violation of the commonest law of nature, were we to find the children of criminals free from the moral taints of their parents. As physical disease is transmissible, and as the conditions regulating its descent are now tolerably well ascertained, so moral infirmities pass from one generation to another, and the ‘law of likeness’ is thus seen to hold true of mind as well as of body. Numerous instances might be cited of the transmission of criminal traits of character, often of very marked and special kind. Dr Despine, a continental writer, gives one very remarkable case illustrating the transmission from one generation to another of an extraordinary tendency to thieve and steal. The subjects of the memoir in question were a family named Chrétien, of which the common ancestor, so to speak, Jean Chrétien by name, had three sons, Pierre, Thomas, and Jean-Baptiste. Pierre in his turn had one son, who was sentenced to penal servitude for life for robbery and murder. Thomas had two sons, one of whom was condemned to a like sentence for murder; the other being sentenced to death for a like crime. Of the children of Jean-Baptiste, one son (Jean-François) married one Marie Tauré, who came of a family noted for their tendency to the crime of incendiarism. Seven children were born to this couple with avowedly criminal antecedents on both sides. Of these, one son, Jean-François, named after his father, died in prison after undergoing various sentences for robberies. Another son, Benoist, was killed by falling off a house-roof which he had scaled in the act of theft; and a third son, ‘Clain’ by nickname, after being convicted of several robberies, died at the age of twenty-five. Victor, a fourth son, was also a criminal; Marie-Reine, a daughter, died in prison—as also did her sister Marie-Rose—whither both had been sent for theft. The remaining daughter Victorine, married a man named Lemarre, the son of this couple being sentenced to death for robbery and murder.

This hideous and sad record of whole generations being impelled, as it were, hereditarily to crime, is paralleled by the case of the notorious Jukes-family, whose doings are still matters of comment amongst the legal and police authorities of New York. A long and carefully compiled pedigree of this family shews the sad but striking fact, that in the course of seven generations no fewer than five hundred and forty individuals of Jukes blood were included amongst the criminal and pauper classes. The account appears in the Thirty-first Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York (1876); and the results of an investigation into the history of the fifth generation alone, may be shortly referred to in the present instance as presenting us with a companion case to that of the somewhat inaptly named Chrétien family. This fifth generation of the Jukes tribe sprang from the eldest of the five daughters of the common ancestor of the race. One hundred and three individuals are included in this generation; thirty-eight of these coming through an illegitimate grand-daughter, and eighty-five through legitimate grand-children. The great majority of the females consorted with criminals: sixteen of the thirty-eight have been convicted—one nine times—some of heinous crimes: eleven are paupers and led dissolute or criminal lives: four were inveterate drunkards: the history of three is unknown; and a small minority of four are known to have lived respectable and honest lives. Of the eighty-five legitimate descendants, only five were incorrigible criminals, and only some thirteen were paupers or dissolute. Jukes himself, the founder of this prolific criminal community, was born about 1730, and is described as a curious unsteady man of gipsy descent, but apparently without deliberately bad or intently vicious instincts. Through unfavourable marriages, the undecided character of the father ripened into the criminal traits of his descendants. The moral surroundings being of the worst description, the beginnings of criminality became intensified, and hence arose naturally, and as time passed, the graver symptoms of diseased morality and criminal disposition.

The data upon which a true classification of criminals may be founded are as yet few and imperfect, but Mr Galton mentions it as a hopeful fact, that physiognomy and the general contour of the head can be shewn to afford valuable evidence of the grouping of criminals into classes. This method of investigation, however, it must be noted, is by no means a return to the old standing of phrenology, which, as all readers know, boasts its ability to mark out the surface of the brain itself into a large number of different faculties. The most that anthropologists would contend for, according to the data laid down, is, that certain general types of head and face are peculiar to certain types of criminals. Physical conformation of a general kind becomes thus in a general manner related to the mental type.

The practical outcome of such a subject may be readily found in the ultimate attention which morality, education, and the state itself, may give to the reclaiming of youthful criminals and to the fostering, from an early period in their history, of those tendencies of good which even the most degraded may be shewn to possess. If it be true that we are largely the products of past time, and that our physical and mental constitutions are in great measure woven for us and independently of us, it is none the less a stable fact, that there exists a margin of free-will, which, however limited in extent, may be made in the criminal and debased, and under proper training and encouragement, the foundation of a new and better life.

MONSIEUR HOULOT.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.