The November night settled gloomily on Foundryville. Mist swathed the hill-tops and rolled along the slopes, the rain fell monotonously, and the river, invisible in the darkness, mingled its melancholy music with the fitful soughing of the wind. Lights gleamed in the windows of the houses; occasionally a great glare illuminated the whole village; the withered foliage glowed in the shaft of crimson fire; far below, the water twinkled and rippled as if reflecting a conflagration: it was the hour of casting at the foundry, when the chimney belched its volumes of smoke, and the molten iron poured forth in rivulets, like a lava torrent, in the black void of the vast building.
Up in the master’s home a single feeble ray was visible in the inhabited wing. Henry Denvil had fallen asleep in his chair. He awoke, looked at his watch, and rose. Eight o’clock. He caught a glimpse of his own face in the glass; it was pale and worn. He resumed his chair. The clock ticked in-doors; the rain fell steadily out-of-doors. The lamp had been so placed that its rays fell on a portrait opposite his chair. This portrait represented his daughter Cecilia at the age of ten—a charming blonde head, skilfully treated by the artist, and the large eyes were turned full upon him with a frank intelligence. Henry Denvil was not of an imaginative temperament; his prime had been too fully occupied for idle reveries; but now solitude was rendering him sensitive to morbid influences. When he awoke he became vividly, intensely conscious of the gaze of this picture fixed on himself. He sat motionless, and studied it, instead of going out. Nine o’clock. A tap at the door, and M. Jacques Robin stood on the threshold, deferential in manner, wet as to garments, having awaited his guest for an hour. Henry Denvil laughed loudly, almost roughly, seized his hat, and sought the village tavern.
The play was reckless that night. The visitor was in the mood for high stakes. Monsieur Robin lost and won without the quiver of an eyelash or a change of hue in the dull opacity of his complexion. Henry Denvil lost and won with the veins growing knotted and prominent in forehead and temple, and his color deepening from red to crimson. Madame Robin, cool and quiet, crocheted little threads of silk together into a golden mesh with a sharp and slender needle, and from time to time served the gentlemen with wine.
Eleven o’clock. Some person tapped Henry Denvil on the shoulder. He glanced up impatiently, with bloodshot eyes. The landlord of the tavern gave him a telegram, while the official who had brought it waited at the door. He read:
“Come to us immediately. Cecilia has been run over. Tell me what to do.—Augusta Denvil.”
Then he was standing outside in the dark night, the rain, chill and dreary as destiny, beating on his bare head, while the clouds rolled low, and the river sent up its murmur from the valley below. His little girl would be dead, he felt convinced, before he could reach her.
III.
“The nest of the blind bird is made by God.”—Armenian Proverb.
Christmas-day at Rome, as cold and crisp as any Northern festival, with a piercing Tramontane wind sweeping across the piazza, the Alban Hills snow-crested, as if cut in alabaster, and the fountains fringed with icicles.