Gomme signed him to a seat:
“Sit down, Noll—I’ll be all right in a minute.” He blew his nose. “No—better still, light the gas. I must stop. Tears will not bring back one’s dead, nor grief annul the things that are done. Light up! A man can only cry comfortably in the dark.”
Noll struck a light, turned on the tap of the wrought-iron gas-jet; and the gas leaped into flame.
The old attic was gone.
In its place was a picturesque medieval room of quaint nooks and demure corners, with stiff wooden settles of curving line against the wall, and low bookshelves round the rest of the walls; and above, on a deep coloured frieze under the low ceiling, was a long space of rigid trees from the land of Morris, green trees that yielded vasty purple and golden fruits on close-bunched foliage—and in the blue intervals between the stilted trees sailed white-sailed many-coloured galleons and purple triremes—and on the wall beneath the frieze and above the long curves of the low bookshelves was a yellow space splashed with huge orange-coloured dogs, with emerald eyes and scarlet mouths, that leaped along on hind legs to the chasing of each other and an occasional orange stag amidst mighty flowering plants that seemed to whirl in autumn tints with cunning running lines half-flower, half-leaf. And here and there was a knight in armour, and a hawk upon his wrist, and clothes upon his horse, and about him was always written Soe sirre Gallahydde gotte hyme pryckynge to hys pilgrymmynges; and when the knight was faded blue the writing was russet green; but when the knight was russet green the writing about him was faded blue. And here and there was a lady with hair in plait, and she wove at a loom, and sang with ruddy lips, and the writing about her was Chaunted the Queene ande weaved hyre tale righte Fyttyngelye; and when the queen was orange yellow the writing was white, and when the queen was white the writing was orange yellow. The old bookshelves, with their gay untidiness of many-coloured books, were gone; and in their place in more severe order on dark oaken bookshelves of suave design were ranked books all bound exactly alike in uniform yellow half-calf bindings. The floor was rich-stained and polished, and in the middle of it lay a rug of the yellow of saffron.
The old attic was now so rich of hue and yet so stiffly chaste that Noll almost rubbed his eyes to see if he were awake.
It was indeed a handsome room; and yet——
Some faint whisper of the how and the why these things had chanced flashed through Noll’s consciousness. Here Julia had put the savings of her hard-won earnings. A tidy mind frets at the ordered disorder of the workshop. She was of a precise habit that has a ruthless distaste for chips. She had secretly consulted the old lady, who had grimly advised her to “let the man’s room be”; but he who takes to the council of war a decided intention is irked by opposition, and smiles away the wisdom of older heads as the mere caution of senility. And indeed there was something of the poetic intention behind her gentle obstinacy, as there was behind everything she did; for (and she knew it in her secret heart to be not wholly without a little of such jealous venom as her gentle blood could hold) she had been passionately set upon bringing into this man’s life a fresh influence, a fragrance that she was sure he had not known—she was aglow with the glamour of the love-mood to be the all-in-all in the atmosphere of her lover’s day. And as the rich crave ever to be more rich, so she, queening it in her little parish, was blind to the simple fact that all the subtle and gracious tenderness of her gentle womanhood had won her a larger empire over her lover than any she could hope to win by petty endeavour. The old lady, her wise old eyes seeing that the other had come to consult the oracle with the answer rather than the question, had nodded her willingness, after the first demur, to comply with the younger woman’s whim. And the nod of surrender once given, she had addressed herself, during their absence on the honeymoon, to carrying out the young wife’s instructions to the uttermost detail, even employing no small sum out of her own small income to the perfecting of it.
And, be it remembered, for her the doing had been no light ordering—it was a flagellation of her own nakedness with cruel whips; for, as each change obliterated a footprint of the past, the atmosphere in which the boy and man had wrought their career swiftly vanished—the very hint of an early struggle had departed from the place.
Noll felt how the room must have struck Netherby in the face as he leaped up the stair and flung open the door to be welcomed to its old genial comradeship after his journey and absence from his beloved things.