I was surprised to find that it was snowing heavily. And with the snowfall the wind had dropped. Outside, everything was deathly still. There were no lights to be seen; even the snow looked dim. Nor was there a sound inside the house or beyond it.
I decided to switch off the light. If I left it on, it would be discovered by some officious servant, descending early, and the story that was already maturing in my mind depended on my seeing some of the family before the discovery was made. Besides, I was sure Eustace would switch it off. It has always struck me as strange that a man who launches out into his dangerous schemes should have so narrow an imagination. I’ve tested it more than once, and never without a fresh stab of surprise that an ingenuity—I won’t call it a mind—that can evolve these fantastic plans for picking other men’s pockets should be practically blindfolded most of the time.
4
I was fortunate in meeting no one as I crept upstairs. My room was at the end of a corridor. This is an oddly built house, low and L-shaped, the short arm of the L comprising the servants’ quarters and store and box rooms. As I shut my bedroom door, I seemed to shut all my alarm and terrors outside. I put the thought of what I had done behind me. Whatever mistakes I had made, it was too late to rectify them now. I have the same sensation when I finish a picture. I’ve never messed about with a canvas. When it’s done I let it go. If I want to do something better, I start afresh.
Switching on my light, I saw that against the blind in one of the servants’ rooms a light still burned. I took it for a feeble gas-jet, though it might have been a candle. (It’s indicative of the position of the servants in my father’s house that, when electricity was installed, their rooms retained the old-fashioned gas.) I began to wonder why she stayed up so late, considering that to-morrow would be a heavy day. And what she was doing sitting there so quietly at the window when the rest of the house was abed.
This problem, trifling though it was, intrigued me. I walked across to my own window, that I flung open, dislodging a soft shower of snow. The shadow on the blind moved, the blind was shifted, and I saw a white figure lean forward a little. She had no interest in me—I was sure of that. But “She can’t have a lover in this joyless house” I marvelled, and then some quite material explanation occurred to me, such as tooth-ache, or perhaps she was mending clothes, or even, possibly, she was devout, though I found it hard to believe that such devotion would keep her awake until two o’clock.
She pushed aside the blind and stared out at the snow, but it was too dark for me to distinguish her face. On my rare visits here the servants are always new, and I never pay any heed to them—except Moulton, of course, who has been here for twenty years. I could see that the girl had something in her hand, which by its shape I took to be a book. Her dark shadow, the straight lines of her dress, her artless pose, gave her the appearance of some mediæval figure—say, the Spirit of Christmas. She stood there without stirring for some minutes. Then something startled her. Perhaps she caught sight of my light. Anyway the blind dropped back into place, and she disappeared. A moment later the light was extinguished.
The sight of her had excited and stimulated me, not in any physical way, but in my mind. She seemed the antithesis of the body downstairs, even when that body was quick with life. She was young and vigorous, and, if she had been reading, she was sufficiently steeped in life to lay aside all those tiresome duties that held her during the day, and enter into the new world that books do open for one, even the silliest and most dangerous. So that I continued to stand there, forgetting I had been tired and had meant to collapse immediately on to the bed, thinking of her, not as an individual, but as the symbol of a new hope. I was sorry she had gone, but the memory of her pleased and invigorated me.
Then, for a time, I watched the snow. It had already obliterated landmarks that had been familiar to me since childhood, piling itself softly on my sill; I went to the bed presently and lay down, still watching it fall. It fascinated me in its beauty, its silence, and its persistence. There was no light in my room now—I had switched off the electricity—but the reflection of the snow, and by this I could just distinguish the outlines of the severe ramshackle furniture. The events of the evening, though chiefly, I think, the sight of that girl at the window, had kindled the creative flame in me, and I fell to wondering about the furniture—the carved mahogany dressing-table, with its haughty mirror, its curled claw-feet. How much had that glass reflected, what had the drawers held? I pictured to myself all the scenes that had perhaps occurred in this room, the whole gamut of the emotions the walls had witnessed—passion, despair, misery, patience, joy. A procession of dead and gone Grays and all the nameless guests this room had housed, and who would never forget it because of some occasion
