White Lies. Charles Reade Reade

the temporary irritation of the parent. Then the mother bought fifteen ells of black velvet, and stretched a pall from the knights’ bough across the west side to another branch, and cursed the hand that should remove it, and she herself “wolde never passe the Tre neither going nor coming, but went still about.” And when she died and should have been carried past the tree to the park, her dochter did cry from a window to the bearers, “Goe about! goe about!” and they went about, and all the company. And in time the velvet pall rotted, and was torn and driven away by the winds: and when the hand of Nature, and no human hand, had thus flouted and dispersed the trappings of the mother’s grief, two pieces were picked up and preserved among the family relics: but the black velvet had turned a rusty red.

      So the baroness did nothing new in this family when she hung her chaplet on the knights’ bough; and, in fact, on the west side, about eighteen feet from the ground, there still mouldered one corner of an Atchievement an heir of Beaurepaire had nailed there two centuries before, when his predecessor died: “For,” said he, “the chateau is of yesterday, but the tree has seen us all come and go.” The inside of the oak was hollow as a drum; and on its east side yawned a fissure as high as a man and as broad as a street-door. Dard used to wheel his wheelbarrow into the tree at a trot, and there leave it.

      Yet in spite of excavation and mutilation not life only but vigor dwelt in this wooden shell. The extreme ends of the longer boughs were firewood, touchwood, and the crown was gone this many a year: but narrow the circle a very little to where the indomitable trunk could still shoot sap from its cruse deep in earth, and there on every side burst the green foliage in its season countless as the sand. The leaves carved centuries ago from these very models, though cut in stone, were most of them mouldered, blunted, notched, deformed: but the delicate types came back with every summer, perfect and lovely as when the tree was but their elder brother: and greener than ever: for, from what cause nature only knows, the leaves were many shades richer than any other tree could show for a hundred miles round; a deep green, fiery, yet soft; and then their multitude—the staircases of foliage as you looked up the tree, and could scarce catch a glimpse of the sky. An inverted abyss of color, a mound, a dome, of flake emeralds that quivered in the golden air.

      And now the sun sets; the green leaves are black; the moon rises: her cold light shoots across one half that giant stem.

      How solemn and calm stands the great round tower of living wood, half ebony, half silver, with its mighty cloud above of flake jet leaves tipped with frosty fire!

      Now is the still hour to repeat in a whisper the words of the dame of Beaurepaire, “You were here before us: you will be here when we are gone.”

      We leave the hoary king of trees standing in the moonlight, calmly defying time, and follow the creatures of a day; for, what they were, we are.

      A spacious saloon panelled; dead but showy white picked out sparingly with gold. Festoons of fruits and flowers finely carved in wood on some of the panels. These also not smothered in gilding, but as it were gold speckled here and there, like tongues of flame winding among insoluble snow. Ranged against the walls were sofas and chairs covered with rich stuffs well worn. And in one little distant corner of the long room a gray-haired gentleman and two young ladies sat round a small plain table, on which burned a solitary candle; and a little way apart in this candle’s twilight an old lady sat in an easy-chair, thinking of the past, scarce daring to inquire the future. Josephine and Rose were working: not fancy-work but needle-work; Dr. Aubertin writing. Every now and then he put the one candle nearer the girls. They raised no objection: only a few minutes after a white hand would glide from one or other of them like a serpent, and smoothly convey the light nearer to the doctor’s manuscript.

      “Is it not supper-time?” he inquired. “I have an inward monitor; and I think our dinner was more ethereal than usual.”

      “Hush!” said Josephine, and looked uneasily towards her mother. “Wax is so dear.”

      “Wax?—ah!—pardon me:” and the doctor returned hastily to his work. But Rose looked up and said, “I wonder Jacintha does not come; it is certainly past the hour;” and she pried into the room as if she expected to see Jacintha on the road. But she saw in fact very little of anything, for the spacious room was impenetrable to her eye; midway from the candle to the distant door its twilight deepened, and all became shapeless and sombre. The prospect ended sharp and black, as in those out-o’-door closets imagined and painted by a certain great painter, whose Nature comes to a full stop as soon as he has no further commercial need of her, instead of melting by fine expanse and exquisite gradation into genuine distance, as nature does in Claude and in nature. To reverse the picture, if you stood at the door you looked across forty feet of black, and the little corner seemed on fire, and the fair heads about the candle shone like the St. Cecilias and Madonnas in an antique stained-glass window.

      At last the door opened, and another candle fired Jacintha’s comely peasant face in the doorway. She put down her candle outside the door, and started as crow flies for the other light. After glowing a moment in the doorway she dived into the shadow and emerged into light again close to the table with napkins on her arm. She removed the work-box reverentially, the doctor’s manuscript unceremoniously, and proceeded to lay a cloth: in which operation she looked at Rose a point-blank glance of admiration: then she placed the napkins; and in this process she again cast a strange look of interest upon Rose. The young lady noticed it this time, and looked inquiringly at her in return, half expecting some communication; but Jacintha lowered her eyes and bustled about the table. Then Rose spoke to her with a sort of instinct of curiosity, on the chance of drawing her out.

      “Supper is late to-night, is it not, Jacintha?”

      “Yes, mademoiselle; I have had more cooking than usual,” and with this she delivered another point-blank look as before, and dived into the palpable obscure, and came to light in the doorway.

      Her return was anxiously expected; for, if the truth must be told, they were very hungry. So rigorous was the economy in this decayed but honorable house that the wax candles burned to-day in the oratory had scrimped their dinner, unsubstantial as it was wont to be. Think of that, you in fustian jackets who grumble after meat. The door opened, Jacintha reappeared in the light of her candle a moment with a tray in both hands, and, approaching, was lost to view; but a strange and fragrant smell heralded her. All their eyes turned with curiosity towards the unwonted odor, and Jacintha dawned with three roast partridges on a dish.

      They were wonder-struck, and looked from the birds to her in mute surprise, that was not diminished by a certain cynical indifference she put on. She avoided their eyes, and forcibly excluded from her face everything that could imply she did not serve up partridges to this family every night of her life.

      “The supper is served, madame,” said she, with a respectful courtesy and a mechanical tone, and, plunging into the night, swam out at her own candle, shut the door, and, unlocking her face that moment, burst out radiant, and so to the kitchen, and, with a tear in her eye, set-to and polished all the copper stewpans with a vigor and expedition unknown to the new-fangled domestic.

      “Partridges, mamma! What next?”

      “Pheasants, I hope,” cried the doctor, gayly. “And after them hares; to conclude with royal venison. Permit me, ladies.” And he set himself to carve with zeal.

      Now nature is nature, and two pair of violet eyes brightened and dwelt on the fragrant and delicate food with demure desire; for all that, when Aubertin offered Josephine a wing, she declined it. “No partridge?” cried the savant, in utter amazement.

      “Not to-day, dear friend; it is not a feast day to-day.”

      “Ah! no; what was I thinking of?”

      “But you are not to be deprived,” put in Josephine, anxiously. “We will not deny ourselves the pleasure of seeing you eat some.”

      “What!” remonstrated Aubertin, “am I not one of you?”

      The baroness had attended to every word of this. She rose from her chair, and said quietly, “Both you and he and Rose will be so good as to let me see you eat.”