Piling some pieces of coal upon the burning wood and drawing the kettle to the edge of the hob, he left the kitchen; and crossing the little hall, impregnated with a thin sickly odor of lamp-oil, he shot back the bolts of the house-door, and let himself out into the morning air.
A flock of starlings fluttered away over the meadow, and from the mist-wreathed recesses of Nevilton House gardens came the weird defiant scream of a peacock.
He glanced furtively, as if such a glance were almost sacrilegious, at the open windows of his brother’s room; and then pushing open the garden-gate emerged into the dew-drenched field. He could not bring himself to leave the neighbourhood of the house, but began pacing up and down the length of the meadow, from the hedge adjacent to the railway, to that elm-shadowed corner, where not so many weeks ago he had distracted himself with Annie and Phyllis. He continued this reiterated pacing,—his tired brain giving itself up to the monotony of a heart-easing movement,—until the sun had risen quite high above the horizon. The great fiery orb pleased him well, in its strong indifference, as with its lavish beams it dissipated the mist and touched the tree-trunks with ruddy colour.
“Ha!” he cried aloud, “the sun is the only God! To the sun must all flesh turn, if it would live and not die!”
Half ashamed of this revival of his spirits he obeyed the beckoning gestures of the station-master’s wife, who now appeared at the door.
The good woman’s sympathy, though not of the silent or tactful order, was well adapted to prevent the immediate return of any hopeless grief.
“’Tis good it were a Saturday when the Lord took him,” she said, pouring out for her lodger a steaming cup of excellent tea, and buttering a slice of bread; “he’ll have Sunday to lie up in. It be best of all luck for these poor stiff ones, to have church bells rung over ’em.”
“I pray Heaven I shan’t have any visitors today,” remarked Luke, sipping his tea and stretching out his feet to the friendly blaze.
“That ye’ll be sure to have!” answered the woman; “and the sooner ye puts on a decent black coat, and washes and brushes up a bit, the better ’twill be for all concerned. I always tells my old man that when he do fall stiff, like what your brother be, I shall put on my black silk gown and sit in the front parlour with a bottle of elder wine, ready for all sorts and conditions.”
Luke rose, with a piece of bread-and-butter in his hand, and surveyed himself in the mirror.