The sky was very clear and pale and sparkled with light. As yet no one had trodden the great white bank that ran up from the road to the horizon. As Brand watched, a robin completed the Christmas-card effect by perching delicately on the snow that lay heaped on the sill. It was a young bird, its feathers puffed out because of the cold. In this simple romantic setting, the happenings of the night became fantastic. He could scarcely persuade himself they were true. At length, however, he was definitely aroused by a sound of voices under his windows; standing with bare feet on the chill oilcloth, he saw the women of the family in a little group by the gate, setting off for the early celebration. Most noticeable was his grandmother, an ancient aristocrat in weedy black; she was, as usual, absurdly ill dressed for the occasion. She wore a thin black gown and a black silk coat. As Brand watched, he saw her imposingly flap away the obsequious maid who came forward with shawls and furs. The woman persisted; old Mrs. Gray became haughty and remote. The maid, submissive and unmoved, sank into the background, burdened with prayer-books, umbrellas, a black shawl, and a heavy cloak for emergencies.
“I suppose if she didn’t make that protest, my grandmother would dismiss her instantly. It’s just a ritual, like two-thirds of life.”
Olivia had observed to her husband, “I suppose I may as well go. If I don’t, father will make a personal triumph of it. And you can never tell. Ten thousand pounds is a mere flea-bite compared with the miracle we’re supposed to be celebrating.”
Ruth had not been with this contingent—with wary suspicious Amy, with her neat sturdy figure and sharp eyes that noticed who ate most ham and was most extravagant with butter; Isobel, still young, with her pale unhappy face, her coronet of pale gold plaits, her lovely hands, the air of remoteness that had clung to her since her little girl died; Laura in a fur coat that would have attracted attention in a far more sophisticated neighbourhood. But as the maid, hampered by her burdens, struggled with the catch of the gate, finally opening it with a vigour that shook a shower of soft dry snow on to Amy, and brought down a curt rebuke for her carelessness, the front door opened again and Ruth and Miles came out. The lawyer, looking up, saw his brother-in-law at the window, and waved a friendly hand. Ruth’s lips shaped the words “Merry Christmas.”
Brand smiled back. He felt serene and light-hearted. The old English word jocund came back to him. He supposed his sense of continuity was broken. He simply could not link up that tumbled body under the library window with his own future. He put it behind him, like some disagreeable experience on which he preferred not to brood, and that had become a part of his past. He experienced a sense of liberty as he had done last night, of anticipation even. He could scarcely wait for the opening of this new phase of his existence, so fraught with hope, so powerful with intent.
To strengthen that conviction, he took up the sketch he had made in the library a few hours earlier, and examined it critically. He had been prepared to discount the artist’s enthusiasm of the previous night, and discover the thing to be a hotch-potch of blemishes and false values. But, to his delight, he found that morning sustained the earlier judgment. More, it added to his satisfaction. The picture enthralled him in its clean economy of detail, its strength and assurance, its purity of line, its massive simplicity. It was ridiculous, it was pathetic, it was abominably wrong that a man capable of such work should be grinding out his life in a draughtsman’s office. The buoyancy in the atmosphere, the sharp clean air, and the sense of fresh beginnings found its counterpart in his responsive breast. He was aware of hope and of unbounded horizons. Poverty and the obligations of his wretched domestic life had crippled but not wholly deformed him. Already he recognised a new power in his brain and hand; the challenge, to which he had been compelled to stop his ears for so long, tantalised him anew. Space, leisure, opportunity—he saw all these at length within his grasp. He would make his home among the hard, resolute, one-idea’d men with whom he had lived for a time before his crazy marriage.
Dreaming thus, he was amazed to discover, by the sound of voices outside, that he had brooded an hour away. Hastily he examined his position in the family’s regard. And at once the composure on which he plumed himself fell apart like a pack of cards, disclosing excitement, alarm, the realisation (at last) of the alternative to the life he had been occupied in picturing to himself. Now that the moment was upon him, it found him dry-mouthed and bright-eyed, repeating over and over again the story he had to tell. Fortunately it was very short and involved him in no admission of any importance, so far as he could see. Even his family would probably believe it, delighted though they might be to see him taken for the crime. His passion for detail in his own work helped him, and he became quite cool-headed as he memorised the story, experiencing even a kind of pleasure in allotting to each occurrence its true share of significance. His imagination, indeed, suggested to him problems so fantastic
