University of Virginia Library

13. XIII.

Catherine had kept her own rooms for about five
weeks, — for sometimes she lacked the inclination
and sometimes the courage to go down, nor had
Dr. Ruthven, still maintaining his fiction, yet
given his consent that she should do so, — when
Candlemas came — came to break the back of the
winter, as some one said. The January thaw had
just passed over all the white world, and the
snow-covered expanse of the long lawn and level
field beneath her windows had been washed with
the rain, and flooded and frozen in an icy glare.
Beaudesfords and Gaston sat round the little tea-table
with Catherine, having left Mrs. Stanhope
and Rose with enough upon their hands below.
There came a rap upon the lower door, and May,
the gardener's little daughter, entered timidly and
presented Mrs. Beaudesfords with an offering from
her father, — a single scarlet blossom, the offshoot
of a rare plant that the gardener had been secretly

fostering and urging for a surprise; since Mrs.
Beaudesfords in her floral fury, as her husband
used to call it, had often worked with McRoy in
the conservatory, and had established with him
a pleasanter acquaintance than with her other
servants.

She took the fiery flower, and set it in a glass
before her, where it seemed to throw a lustre
round the table, while Beaudesfords detained May
with a shower of little silver pieces, and set her
to singing her particular gypsy ballad which was
always such a delight to him for its oblivion of
the laws of prosody and ballad-making in general,
and which the child sang with such an abandonment
to the tune and want of understanding of
the burden that the effect reached that one step
from the sublime. Beaudesfords and Gaston,
leaning back in their chairs, laughed a choral
accompaniment, which, however, in nowise disconcerted
the little girl, who, with her eyes
fastened on the scarlet flower, still sang on
unconcerned, — an old ballad, once perhaps in the
Scottish manner, but which, in its passage through
the memory of May's grandmothers and great-grandmothers,
had lost much of its rhyme and
nearly all its reason.

All this poured forth to a charming tune, and
with a voice like a bird's. Gaston and Beaudesfords
saw only subject for merriment in song and
singer. But Catherine leaned back, all hurt and
humbled, while she sang, as if the hand of innocence
had touched her guilt.

It was just at that moment that a thousand
lights seemed suddenly to strike up the ceiling
and drown the soft radiance of the shaded lamp
in a myriad dancing flashes; and before Catherine
knew what had happened, Beaudesfords had
wrapped her great fur mantle close about her and
had thrown open the casement, and she was leaning

over the balcony's edge with May beside her,
and was gazing down where all the lawn and
level field were alive with twinkling sparks, ruby
and emerald, azure and golden, that, borne by
almost viewless shadows, circled and recircled
and wove a tracery of brilliant flourishes till the
whole field was brocaded with trailing lines of
light. It was Candlemas; and Beaudesfords was
keeping it in this fantastic way, having marshalled
guests, tenants, and servants into his use for the
pretty spectacle.

“How lively, how beautiful, how silent!” cried
Catherine.

“It is the `dance of the dædal stars,'” said
Gaston.

“It is the Feast of the Purification of the
Blessed Virgin,” said little May, using the phrase
she had caught from a servant's lips.

As Catherine heard the simple words last
spoken, she shivered despite herself. How remote
from her were beauty and purity, the festivals
of holy people, the worship of holy women!
All at once she was forlorn as some lost soul
might be when gazing from the outside of a
star upon the world of happy people moving
there.

“You are cold?” exclaimed Gaston, and he
reached his arm across to gather about her the
heavy cloak that had slipped down where its rich
fur was unconsciously trampled by May's clumsy
little feet. He gave it a sudden wrench to set it
free, without thinking what he did: the child,
leaning half over the low railing in her eagerness,
lost her balance, pitched forward, and throwing
up her hands with a sharp scream plunged head-long
down upon the ice below, that glittered
harder and colder than a rock.

As Catherine sprung forward to snatch at her,
and snatch in vain, she was caught back herself
with a smothered word; and for an instant her
forehead felt the fierce pulsation of Gaston's heart
as it rocked beneath, while he too bent to learn
the fate of the thing that lay in a little quiet heap
below, and to which Beaudesfords, springing
across the rail and swinging himself down, had
dropped in less time than it takes to tell.

But as soon as Catherine had comprehended
the thing, — it was but a half-dozen seconds first,
— she broke from that restraining grasp, and
sweeping through her room like the wind, was
down the stairs, and out upon the ice with Beaudesfords,
and in again, the child in her arms;

while Gaston, moved by some impulse new to
him, had started for the Doctor.

“O my God!” she cried. “If I had not been
keeping my room, this would not have happened!
If Gaston had not pulled up my cloak for me, it
could not have happened! Am I a murderer, a
murderer — with all?”

It was Beaudesfords that heard her, too sorry,
too much agitated, too busy in getting splints and
bandages from the maids and Mrs. Stanhope and
the housekeeper, to heed the meaning of any
exclamations at such a time as that.