Crush thy heart to mine,
Make it forget!”
The voice was small, sweet, emotional, but a man’s; the soft throb of a guitar accompanied it. All bespoke a certain melting effeminacy that was disagreeable to Ned. He pushed open the door however, made his salutation, and stood to take stock of his surroundings.
Here, in truth, was revealed the working heart of the model—the stokehole of that vessel of which the outer room exhibited but the polished bearings. The fat air was heavy with the smell of lately cooked food; the pots, the trenchers, the waste parings that had served to the preparation of the latter were even now in huddled process of removal by a panting cuisinière, with whom the company present did not hesitate to exchange a dropping-fire of badinage. A foul litter of vegetable and other rubbish disgraced the white deal of the table—cabbage leaves and broken egg-shells and a clump of smoking bones. In the scuttle was a mess of turnip peelings, on the hearth an iron pail brimming with gobbets of grease and coffee-grounds and the severed head of a cock.
“A Dutchman’s cleanliness,” thought Ned (and he had some experience of it), “is like the elf maid’s face, a particularly hollow mask. He reeks fustian while he washes his windows three times a-day.”
The room was long and low, with black beams to its ceiling, from which hung bushes of herbs. A steaming scullery opened from it on the fire side; on the other, against the distempered wall, stood a row of curtained cupboards, half-a-dozen of them like confessional-boxes; and in the intervals of these were, perched on brackets, five or six absurd little figures—saints and Virgins, the latter with smaller dolls, to represent the Christ, pinned to their stomachers. There was but a single window to this kitchen, at its far end; and a couple of lamps burning rancid oil seemed the very smoking nucleus of an atmosphere as stifling as that of a ship’s caboose in the tropics.
A figure seated on the table struck a tinkling cord as Ned advanced, and sang up a little impertinent stave of welcome.
“Behold, Endymion wakes from Latmus!” said he, and flourishing a great flagon of wine to his mouth, he tilted it and drank.
He was a smooth-cut young fellow, with features modelled like a girl’s. His hair, his brows, the shade on his upper lip toned from brown to rough gold. His eyes were soft umber, his cheeks flushed sombrely like autumn leaves. He was as assured of himself as a gillian, and a little theatrical withal in his pose and the cock of his hat.
There were two others in company—a serene large man, with deliberate lids to his eyes and straight long hair, and a round-faced sizar from the University of Liége. These latter smoked, and all three drank according to their degree of wine, hollands, or brandy-and-water.