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The haggard head floated up the dark staircase, and softly descended nearer to the floor outside the outer door of the chambers. The doors of the rooms within, appeared to be standing open. There were rays of candlelight from one of them, and there was the sound of a footstep going about. There were two voices. The words they uttered were not distinguishable, but they were both the voices of men.
Sitting on humble stools, in stocking feet, shabby clothes, and dishevelled hair, weeping in chorus, and wringing their hands, as if it was but yesterday that the sacred edifice fell and they were in the very dust and ashes of the ruin, the women looked to me enviously wretched and pious. I joined the circle in the candlelight.
The heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering what mankind and candlelight could have to do in these haunts at this untoward hour. "What a plague those creatures are staring at me so!" he said, and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued as before.
The test of existence was not so hard down there; he might be wholly able to hold Virginia's respect and love, and make her happy. Such was Bill's last prayer. They were nearing the cabin now. They saw the candlelight, like a pale ghost, in the window. Virginia was still up, reading, perhaps, before the fire. She didn't guess what happiness Bill was bringing her across the snow.
There were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in my candlelight. A waiting stillness was over everything. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly.
Thence to my wife, and calling at both the Exchanges, buying stockings for her and myself, and also at Leadenhall, where she and I, it being candlelight, bought meat for to-morrow, having never a mayde to do it, and I myself bought, while my wife was gone to another shop, a leg of beef, a good one, for six pense, and my wife says is worth my money. So walked home with a woman carrying our things.
The steady glow of the candlelight filled the room. On the mantel above the blackened fireplace he saw a small, white framed mirror. A forgotten pair of gloves lay beside it, and two or three hairpins. He picked up the gloves, slapped them against his leg to rid them of accumulated dust, and then stuck them into his coat pocket. They were long and slim and soiled by wear.
To make even this tawdry room look beautiful, with firelight and candlelight, dark amber wine in the glasses, tall pink lilies spilling their saffron, exuding their hot perfume he and even himself must look their best. And with a weight as of lead on her heart, she managed that for him, letting him strew her with flowers and crush them together with herself.
Some of these valses are trivial, artificial, most of them are bred of candlelight and the swish of silken attire, and a few are poetically morbid and stray across the border into the rhythms of the mazurka.
Farther away, on the right and left, the light was dim, and near the side walls the darkness was as intense as in a real tomb. On the smooth porphyry columns, the glittering black marble and serpentine here, there, and everywhere flickered the wavering reflection of the candlelight.
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