The Family
he had been in Spain a good deal, and was an authority on certain phases of Spanish history. He had a
long brown face, with an oval chin over which he
wore a close-trimmed Van Dyke, like a tuft of shiny
black fur. With this silky, very black hair, he had
a tawny skin with gold lights in it, a hawk nose, and
hawk-like eyes—brown and gold and green. They
were set in ample cavities, with plenty of room to
move about, under thick, curly, black eyebrows
that turned up sharply at the outer ends, like
military moustaches. His wicked-looking eyebrows
made his students call him Mephistopheles—and
there was no evading the searching eyes underneath them; eyes that in a flash could pick out a
friend or an unusual stranger from a throng. They
had lost none of their fire, though just now the man behind them was feeling a diminution of ardour.
His daughter Kathleen, who had done several successful studies of him in water-colour, had once said:—“The thing that really makes Papa handsome is the modelling of his head between the top of his ear and his crown; it is quite the best thing about him.” That part of his head was high, polished, hard as bronze, and the close-growing black hair threw off a streak of light along the rounded ridge where the skull was fullest. The mould of his head on the side was so individual and definite, so far from casual, that it was more like a statue’s head than a man’s.
—13—
