The tall bedstead with its red and yellow stamped velvet curtains and carved ebony posts looked like an Indian temple. One might expect to see Buddha squatting on the embroidered counterpane—the work of half a lifetime. When the curtains were drawn back, a huge moth flew out of the darkness, and spun and wheeled round the room with an awful humming noise, and to the superstitious mind might have suggested a human soul embodied in this phantasmal greyness, with power of sound in such excess of its bulk.
“Sir John never used the room after her ladyship’s death,” Reuben explained, “though ’tis the best bed-chamber. He has always slept in the blue room, which is at the furthest end of the gallery from the room that has been prepared for madam. We call that the garden room, and it is mighty pretty in summer.”
In summer! How far it seemed to summer-time in Angela’s thoughts! What a long gulf of nothingness to be bridged over, what a dull level plain to cross, before June and the roses could come round again, bringing with them the memory of last summer; and the days she had lived under the same roof with Fareham, and the evenings when they had sat in the same room, or loitered on the terrace, pausing now and then beside an Italian vase of gaudy flowers to look at this or that, or to watch the mob on the river; and those rare golden days, like that at Sayes Court, which she had spent in some excursion with Fareham and Henriette.
“I hope madam likes the chamber we have prepared for her?” the old man said, as she stood dreaming.
“Yes, my good friend, it is very comfortable. My woman complained of the smoky chimney in her chamber; but no doubt we shall mend that by-and-by.”
“It would be strange if a gentlewoman’s servant found not something to grumble about,” said Reuben; “they have ever less work to do than any one else in the house, and ever make more trouble than their mistresses. I’ll settle the hussy, with madam’s leave.”
“Nay, pray, Mr. Reuben, no harshness. She is a willing, kind-hearted girl, and we shall find plenty of work for her in this big house where there are so few servants.”
“Oh, there’s work enough for sure, if she’ll do it, and is no fine city madam that will scream at sight of a mouse, belike.”
“She is a girl I had out of Oxfordshire.”
“Oh, if she comes out of Oxfordshire, from his lordship’s estate, I dare swear she is a good girl. I hate your London trash; and I think the great fire would have been a blessing in disguise if it had swept away most of such trumpery.”