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What she saw was a pale little boy of nine in a ragged shirt and trousers, and barefooted. His hair was shaggy and unbrushed but tossed back from a wide brow. His mouth was sullen. But she forgot all about shabby clothes, unbrushed hair, and sullen mouth when she came to his eyes. They were wide and clear, and returned the old woman's keen glance with a gaze of steady interest.
Virginia tingled with antagonism when she saw this man who had made the city tremble, who had set an iron heel on the flaming brand of her Cause. He, too, showed the marks of his Herculean labors, but only on his clothes and person. His long red hair was unbrushed, his boots covered with black mud, and his coat unbuttoned.
Polly looked untidier than ever; she wore a slatternly wrapper, and her hair was thrust unbrushed into its net. But she suffered, no doubt, in her own way; she was red-eyed, and very hasty-handed with her nestful of babes. Sitting in the cheerless parlour, Ned's dark-eyed eldest on her knee, Mary strove to soothe and encourage.
Gayly, with ready turns of speech and snatches of song, trolled in his musical barytone, Peter rode through the night, even as he rode through life, a Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart, unbrushed by the wing of sorrow, loving his pale griefs for the values they gave the picture.
They were my acquaintances of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar condition of life, and were now come to their marriage-ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them wear: the men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their laborers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil; the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath; all of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and care; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms; they were, in short, the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to sweep together into an unfragrant heap.
As for the young men, they were chiefly specimens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often shabbily genteel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, unshifted linen, and unwashed faces of yesterday, as well as the haggardness of last night's jollity in a gin-shop.
A blowsy, elderly, red-faced woman opened the door. She was clad in a greasy flannel dressing gown; unbrushed hair fell on her shoulders; naked, unclean toes protruded through holes in her stockings and slippers. "Good evening, dear," said the woman. Mavis turned to go. "Was you wanting rooms, my dear?" "I was." "I've the very thing you want. Don't run away." Mavis hesitated.
If he had been merely untidy and unashamed in dress, she might have tolerated the failing as the outward sign of a distinguished social philosophy; but, even in those early days, his Jeffersonian simplicity had yielded to an outbreak of vanity. Though his clothes were unbrushed and his boots were unpolished, he wore a sparkling pin in his tie and several sparkling rings on his fingers.
The astonished frenchman would very likely say, "I always thought that the english were a strange set of beings, but they now exceed the powers of my comprehension, they can elicit wit in the midst of gloom, and can say such things in a plain unbrushed coat of blue cloth, as all the robes, plumes, and finery of the republic, in her gaudy halls of deliberation, cannot inspire."
"So I have, so I have!" he said, laying down his pen. "And if I don't hasten, I shall miss it." Owen took his hat, saying, "Your hat wants brushing; you mustn't go to her with an unbrushed hat." Ulick ran away north, casting one glance back. Owen would he sit in his study thinking of his lost happiness or would he try to forget it in some picture-dealer's shop? "Has Mr. Dean come in?"
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