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Page 10
"Yes, I must. I shall not be gone long. Don't wait supper."
"Aren't you going to change the horse?"
"Can't stop. Go right in, Elliot. Clara, look after him."
James Elliot found himself in the house, confronting the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen, as the rapid trot of the doctor's horse receded
in vistas of sound.
James almost gasped. He had never seen such a woman. He had seen pretty
girls. Now he suddenly realized that a girl was not a woman, and no more
to be compared with her than an uncut gem with one whose facets take the
utmost light.
The boy stood staring at this wonderful woman. She extended her hand to
him, but he did not see it. She said some gracious words of greeting to
him, but he did not hear them. She might have been the Venus de Milo for
all he heard or realized of sentient life in her. He was rapt in
contemplation of herself, so rapt that he was oblivious of her. She
smiled. She was accustomed to having men, especially very young men,
take such an attitude on first seeing her. She did not wait any longer,
but herself took the young man's hand, and drew him gently into the
room, and spoke so insistently that she compelled him to leave her and
attend. "I suppose you are Doctor Gordon's assistant?" she said.
James relapsed into the tricks of his childhood. "Yes, ma'am," he
replied. Then he blushed furiously, but the woman seemed to notice
neither the provincial term nor his confusion. He found himself somehow,
he did not know how, divested of his overcoat, and the vision had
disappeared, having left some words about dinner ringing in his ears,
and he was sitting before a hearth-fire in a large leather easy-chair.
Then he looked about the room in much the same dazed fashion in which he
had contemplated the woman. He had never seen a room like it. He was
used to conventionality, albeit richness, and a degree even of luxury.
Here were absolute unconventionality, richness, and luxury of a kind
utterly strange to him. The room was very large and long, extending
nearly the whole length of the house. There were many windows with
Eastern rugs instead of curtains. There were Eastern things hung on the
walls which gave out dull gleams of gold and silver and topaz and
turquoise. There were a great many books on low shelves. There were
bronzes, jars, and squat idols. There were a few pieces of Chinese ivory
work. There were many skins of lions, bears, and tigers on the floor,
besides a great Persian rug which gleamed like a blurred jewel. Besides
the firelight there was only one great bronze lamp to illuminate the
room. This lamp had a red shade, which cast a soft, fiery glow over
everything. There were not many pictures. The rich Eastern stuffs, and
even a skin or two of tawny hue, covered most of the wall-spaces above
the book-cases, giving backgrounds of color to bronzes and ivory
carvings, but there was one picture at the farther end of the room which
attracted James's notice. All that he could distinguish from where he
sat was a splash of splendid red.
He gazed, and his curiosity grew. Finally he rose, traversed the room,
and came close to the picture. It was a portrait of the woman who had
met him at the door. The red was the red of a splendid robe of velvet.
The portrait was evidently the work of no mean artist. The texture of
the velvet was something wonderful, so were the flesh tones; but James
missed something in the face. The portrait had been painted, he knew
instinctively, before some great change had come into the woman's heart,
which had given her another aspect of beauty.
James turned away. Then he noticed something else which seemed rather
odd about the room. All the windows were furnished with heavy wooden
shutters, and, early as it was, hardly dark, all were closed, and
fastened securely. James somehow got an impression of secrecy, that it
was considered necessary that no glimpse of the interior should be
obtained from without after the lamp was lit. They sat often carelessly
at his own home of an evening with the shades up, and all the interior
of the room plainly visible from the road. An utter lack of secrecy was
in James's own character. He scowled a little, as he returned to his
seat by the fire. He was too confused to think clearly, but he was
conscious of a certain homesickness for the wonted things of his life,
when the door opened and the woman re�ntered.
James rose, and she spoke in her sweet voice. It was rather lower
pitched than the voices of most women, and had a resonant quality. "Your
room is quite ready, Doctor Elliot," said she. "Your trunk is there. If
you would like to go there before dinner, I will pilot you. We have but
one maid, and she is preparing the dinner, which will be ready as soon
as you are. I hope Doctor Gordon and Clemency will have returned by that
time, too."
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