5. AT THE WINDOW--THE ROAD HOME
The dancing was over at last, and the radiant company had left the room.A long and weary night it had been for the two players, though astimulated interest had hindered physical exhaustion in one of them for awhile. With tingling fingers and aching arms they came out of the alcoveinto the long and deserted apartment, now pervaded by a dry haze. Thelights had burnt low, and Faith and her brother were waiting by requesttill the wagonette was ready to take them home, a breakfast being incourse of preparation for them meanwhile.
Christopher had crossed the room to relieve his cramped limbs, and now,peeping through a crevice in the window curtains, he said suddenly,'Who's for a transformation scene? Faith, look here!'
He touched the blind, up it flew, and a gorgeous scene presented itselfto her eyes. A huge inflamed sun was breasting the horizon of a widesheet of sea which, to her surprise and delight, the mansion overlooked.The brilliant disc fired all the waves that lay between it and the shoreat the bottom of the grounds, where the water tossed the ruddy light fromone undulation to another in glares as large and clear as mirrors,incessantly altering them, destroying them, and creating them again;while further off they multiplied, thickened, and ran into one anotherlike struggling armies, till they met the fiery source of them all.
'O, how wonderful it is!' said Faith, putting her hand on Christopher'sarm. 'Who knew that whilst we were all shut in here with our punyillumination such an exhibition as this was going on outside! How sorryand mean the grand and stately room looks now!'
Christopher turned his back upon the window, and there were the hithertobeaming candle-flames shining no more radiantly than tarnished javelin-heads, while the snow-white lengths of wax showed themselves clammy andcadaverous as the fingers of a corpse. The leaves and flowers which hadappeared so very green and blooming by the artificial light were now seento be faded and dusty. Only the gilding of the room in some degreebrought itself into keeping with the splendours outside, stray darts oflight seizing upon it and lengthening themselves out along fillet, quirk,arris, and moulding, till wasted away.
'It seems,' said Faith, 'as if all the people who were lately so merryhere had died: we ourselves look no more than ghosts.' She turned up herweary face to her brother's, which the incoming rays smote aslant, makinglittle furrows of every wrinkle thereon, and shady ravines of everylittle furrow.
'You are very tired, Faith,' he said. 'Such a heavy night's work hasbeen almost too much for you.'
'O, I don't mind that,' said Faith. 'But I could not have played so longby myself.'
'We filled up one another's gaps; and there were plenty of them towardsthe morning; but, luckily, people don't notice those things when thesmall hours draw on.'
'What troubles me most,' said Faith, 'is not that I have worked, but thatyou should be so situated as to need such miserable assistance as mine.We are poor, are we not, Kit?'
'Yes, we know a little about poverty,' he replied.
While thus lingering
'In shadowy thoroughfares of thought,'
Faith interrupted with, 'I believe there is one of the dancers now!--why,I should have thought they had all gone to bed, and wouldn't get up againfor days.' She indicated to him a figure on the lawn towards the left,looking upon the same flashing scene as that they themselves beheld.
'It is your own particular one,' continued Faith. 'Yes, I see the blueflowers under the edge of her cloak.'
'And I see her squirrel-coloured hair,' said Christopher.
Both stood looking at this apparition, who once, and only once, thoughtfit to turn her head towards the front of the house they were gazingfrom. Faith was one in whom the meditative somewhat overpowered theactive faculties; she went on, with no abundance of love, to theorizeupon this gratuitously charming woman, who, striking freakishly into herbrother's path, seemed likely to do him no good in her sisterlyestimation. Ethelberta's bright and shapely form stood before her criticnow, smartened by the motes of sunlight from head to heel: what Faithwould have given to see her so clearly within!
'Without doubt she is already a lady of many romantic experiences,' shesaid dubiously.
'And on the way to many more,' said Christopher. The tone was just ofthe kind which may be imagined of a sombre man who had been up all nightpiping that others might dance.
Faith parted her lips as if in consternation at possibilities.Ethelberta, having already become an influence in Christopher's system,might soon become more--an indestructible fascination--to drag him about,turn his soul inside out, harrow him, twist him, and otherwise tormenthim, according to the stereotyped form of such processes.
They were interrupted by the opening of a door. A servant entered andcame up to them.
'This is for you, I believe, sir,' he said. 'Two guineas;' and he placedthe money in Christopher's hand. 'Some breakfast will be ready for youin a moment if you like to have it. Would you wish it brought in here;or will you come to the steward's room?'
'Yes, we will come.' And the man then began to extinguish the lights oneby one. Christopher dropped the two pounds and two shillings singly intohis pocket, and looking listlessly at the footman said, 'Can you tell methe address of that lady on the lawn? Ah, she has disappeared!'
'She wore a dress with blue flowers,' said Faith.
'And remarkable bright in her manner? O, that's the young widow,Mrs--what's that name--I forget for the moment.'
'Widow?' said Christopher, the eyes of his understanding gettingwonderfully clear, and Faith uttering a private ejaculation of thanksthat after all no commandments were likely to be broken in this matter.'The lady I mean is quite a girlish sort of woman.'
'Yes, yes, so she is--that's the one. Coachman says she must have beenborn a widow, for there is not time for her ever to have been made one.However, she's not quite such a chicken as all that. Mrs. Petherwin,that's the party's name.'
'Does she live here?'
'No, she is staying in the house visiting for a few days with her mother-in-law. They are a London family, I don't know her address.'
'Is she a poetess?'
'That I cannot say. She is very clever at verses; but she don't leanover gates to see the sun, and goes to church as regular as you or I, soI should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. Whenshe's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make uppretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. They willrun off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got inthe mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and awfulthat it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got to saythat she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so thatthere seems something wonderful in it. 'Tis a bother to start her, soour people say behind her back, but, once set going, the house is allalive with her. However, it will soon be dull enough; she and LadyPetherwin are off to-morrow for Rookington, where I believe they aregoing to stay over New Year's Day.'
'Where do you say they are going?' inquired Christopher, as they followedthe footman.
'Rookington Park--about three miles out of Sandbourne, in the oppositedirection to this.'
'A widow,' Christopher murmured.
Faith overheard him. 'That makes no difference to us, does it?' she saidwistfully.
Forty minutes later they were driving along an open road over a ridgewhich commanded a view of a small inlet below them, the sands of thisnook being sheltered by crumbling cliffs. Here at once they saw, in thefull light of the sun, two women standing side by side, their facesdirected over the sea.
'There she is again!' said Faith. 'She has walked along the shore fromthe lawn where we saw her before.'
'Yes,' said the coachman, 'she's a curious woman seemingly. She'll talkto any poor body she meets. You see she had been out for a morning walkinstead of going to bed, and that is some queer mortal or other she haspicked up with on her way.'
'I wonder she does not prefer some rest,' Faith observed
.
The road then dropped into a hollow, and the women by the sea were nolonger within view from the carriage, which rapidly neared Sandbournewith the two musicians.