Pretty early on the morning following his arrival in Méricourt, Ned strolled up the easy slope leading to the lodge of the chateau, and found himself lingering over against the embowered gates with a queer barm of humour working upon a commixture of emotions in his breast. Now it seemed that his very neighbourhood to the Madonna of his memory was effecting a climatic change both within and without him. For the first, little runnels of irresponsible gaiety gushed in his veins; for the second, the weather, that had been indifferent fine during his journey, appeared to have broken all at once into full promise of summer. It was not, indeed, that his sympathies enlarged in the near presence of one who might hold herself as a little moon of desire. It was rather, perhaps, because in the one-time surrender of her very soul to his inspection, she had made of him a confederate in certain unspoken secrets, the knowledge of which was to him like a sense of proprietorship in a picturesque little country-seat. Yet here, it may be acknowledged, he indulged something a dangerous mood.
He stood a minute before passing through the gates. The warmth of a windless night still slept in the velvety eyes of the roadside flowers. Morning was heaping off its bed-linen of glistening clouds. From a chestnut-tree came the drowsy drawl of a yellow-hammer. A robin—small fashionable idler of birds—abandoned the problem of a fibrous seed and, flickering to a stump, discussed the stranger impertinently and with infinite society relish. Only the swifts were alert and busy, flashing, poising, diving under the eaves; thridding Ned’s brain as they passed with a receding sound like that made by pebbles hopping over ice; seeming, in their flight of warp and woof, to be mending the pace set by the loitering day. Feeling their activity a rebuke, the visitor passed through the open gate.
Within, all was yet more pretty orderliness than that he had once admired. The lodge stood, sequestered trimness, between the luminous green of its porch and the high rearward trees that spouted up into the sky, full fountains of tumbling young leaves. The little paths were swept; the little long beds, bordered with trique-madame and planted with lusty perennials, were combed orderly as the hair of their mistress, and weeded to the least vulgar seedling; white curtains hung in the cottage windows; and everywhere was an added refinement of daintiness—a suggestion of increased prosperity.
“Now, Mademoiselle Legrand,” thought Ned, “has shown herself a little person of resource.”
He could hear the moan of the horn coming familiarly to him from the back garden. The sweet complaining cry woke some queer memories in him. He went forward a few paces up the drive—walking straight into weediness and the tangle of neglect—that he might get glimpse of the chateau. The place, when he saw it, glowered from an encroaching thicket. Even these few months seemed to have confirmed the ruin that had before only threatened. Its dusty upper windows were viscous, he could have thought, with the tracks of snails. Grass had made good its footing on the roof. It looked a forgotten old history of the past, with a toppling chimney, half dislodged in some gale, for dog’s-ear.
Ned turned his back on the desolate sight, and lo! there was the bright patch of brick and flower like a garden redeemed from the desert. It appeared to point the very moral of the times, but in its ethical, not its savage significance. He went to seek the priestess of this little temple of peace.
As he turned into the garden, a peasant woman was coming out at the lodge door. She had an empty basket lined with a clean napkin on her arm.
“Que la sainte virge vous bénissè par sa servante!” she murmured as she passed by the visitor.
Nicette was nowhere visible. Ned stole into the house and along the passage. A strip of thick matting, where had formerly been naked flags, deadened the sound of his footfalls. Laughter, but laughter a little thrilling, tingled in his veins. A certain apprehension, that time might not have dealt as drastically as he had desired it would with a misconstructive fancy, was lifted from his mind since yesterday. He felt there could be small doubt but that his own image had been deposed and replaced by a very idol of vanity—a self-conscious Adaiah that must find its supremest gratification in proving its consistency with the character assigned it. Indeed, his moderate faith in himself as an attractive quantity inclined him, perhaps, to underrate his moral influence. He had not yet learned that to many women there is no chase so captivating as that of incarnate diffidence.
He came softly upon Nicette in the dairy that was a little endeared to him by remembrance. Perhaps he would not have ventured unannounced to seek her in the more inner privacy of her own nest. But the cool dairy was good for a neutral ground. She stood with her back to him. The sunlight, reflected from vivid leafiness through the window, made a soft luminosity of the curve of her cheek, that was like the pale under-side of a peach. It ruffled the rebellious tendrils of hair on her forehead into a mist of green; it stained her white chaperon with tender vert, and discoloured the straight blue folds of her dress. Was she, he thought, a half-converted dryad or a lapsing saint?