Ravenshoe

by Henry Kingsley

He entered a beautiful flagged hall, frescoed and gilded. There were vases of flowers round the walls, and strips of Indian matting on the pavement. It was lit by a single chandelier, which was reflected in four great pier-glasses reaching to the ground, in which Charles's top-boots and brown face were re-duplicated most startlingly. The tout ensemble was very beautiful; but what struck Charles was the bad taste of having an entrance-hall decorated like a drawing-room. "That is just the sort of thing they do in these places," he thought.

There were only two hats on the entrance table; one of which he was rejoiced to recognise as that of his most respected master. "May the deuce take his silly noddle for bringing me to such a place!" thought Charles.

This was evidently the front hall spoken of by Hornby; and he remembered his advice to pretend to go to sleep. So he lay down on three hall-chairs, and put his hat over his eyes.

Hall-chairs are hard; and, although Charles had just been laughing at the proprietor of the house for being so lavish in his decorations, he now wished that he had carried out his system a little further, and had cushions to his chairs. But no; the chairs were de rigueur, with crests on the back of them. Charles did not notice whose.

If a man pretends to go to sleep, and, like the Marchioness with her orange-peel and water, "makes believe very much," he may sometimes succeed in going to sleep in good earnest. Charles imitated the thing so well, that in five minutes he was as fast off as a top.

Till a night or two before this, Charles had never dreamt of Ravenshoe since he had left it. When the first sharp sting of his trouble was in his soul, his mind had refused to go back further than to the events of a day or so before. He had dreamt long silly dreams of his master, or his fellow-servants, or his horses, but always, all through the night, with a dread on him of waking in the dark. But, as his mind began to settle and his pain got dulled, he began to dream about Ravenshoe, and Oxford, and Shrewsbury again; and he no longer dreaded the waking as he did, for the reality of his life was no longer hideous to him. With the fatal "plasticity" of his nature, he had lowered himself, body and soul, to the level of it.

But to-night, as he slept on these chairs, he dreamt of Ravenshoe, and of Cuthbert, and of Ellen. And he woke, and she was standing within ten feet of him, under the chandelier.

He was awake in an instant, but he lay as still as a mouse, staring at her. She had not noticed him, but was standing in profound thought. Found, and so soon! His sister! How lovely she was, standing, dressed in light pearl grey, like some beautiful ghost, with her speaking eyes fixed on nothing. She moved now, but so lightly that her footfall was barely heard upon the matting. Then she turned and noticed him. She did not seem surprised at seeing a groom stretched out asleep on the chairs—she was used to that sort of thing, probably—but she turned away, gliding through a door at the further end of the hall, and was gone.

Charles's heart was leaping and beating madly, but he heard another door open, and lay still.

Adelaide came out of a door opposite to the one into which Ellen had passed. Charles was not surprised. He was beyond surprise. But, when he saw her and Ellen in the same house, in one instant, with the quickness of lightning, he understood it all. It was Welter had tempted Ellen from Ravenshoe! Fool! fool! he might have prevented it once if he had only guessed.