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"My Novel" – Volume 12
«My Novel» — Volume 12
BOOK TWELFTH
INITIAL CHAPTER
WHEREIN THE CAXTON FAMILY REAPPEAR
"Again," quoth my father,—"again behold us! We who greeted the commencement of your narrative, who absented ourselves in the midcourse when we could but obstruct the current of events, and jostle personages more important,—we now gather round the close. Still, as the chorus to the drama, we circle round the altar with the solemn but dubious chant which prepares the audience for the completion of the appointed destinies; though still, ourselves, unaware how the skein is to be unravelled, and where the shears are to descend."
So there they stood, the Family of Caxton,—all grouping round me, all eager officiously to question, some over-anxious prematurely to criticise.
"Violante can't have voluntarily gone off with that horrid count," said my mother; "but perhaps she was deceived, like Eugenia by Mr. Bellamy, in the novel of 'CAMILLA'."
"Ha!" said my father, "and in that case it is time yet to steal a hint from Clarissa Harlowe, and make Violante die less of a broken heart than a sullied honour. She is one of those girls who ought to be killed! All things about her forebode an early tomb!"
"Dear, dear!" cried Mrs. Caxton, "I hope not!"
"Pooh, brother," said the captain, "we have had enough of the tomb in the history of poor Nora. The whole story grows out of a grave, and if to a grave it must return—if, Pisistratus, you must kill somebody— kill Levy."
"Or the count," said my mother, with unusual truculence. "Or Randal Leslie," said Squills. "I should like to have a post-mortem cast of his head,—it would be an instructive study."
Here there was a general confusion of tongues, all present conspiring to bewilder the unfortunate author with their various and discordant counsels how to wind up his story and dispose of his characters.