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A shop-boy was wiping the fog from the window-panes of the Amour peintre, while curious passers-by threw a look at the prints in vogue, Robespierre squeezing into a cup a heart like a pumpkin to drink the blood, and ambitious allegorical designs with such titles as the Tigrocracy of Robespierre; it was all hydras, serpents, horrid monsters let loose on France by the tyrant.
On such a night the wind howled in the street without, beat upon the window-panes, and rustled through the trees, which stood, tall and leafless, in the big garden over the way. Little Peter did not trouble his head on the subject. He sat indoors on a little footstool, near the fire, and close also to his mother, who was busy cutting up parsnips for next day's dinner.
Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against the window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside. Surely my fate is hard, that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my bosom night, and storm, and solitude, instead of wife and children. Peace, murmurer! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the hearth, though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images.
Ah Minga, the "boy" in flowing pantalets and stiffly starched blouse, came silently along the wide veranda, with a cup of tea and a plate of opened mangosteens. I roused myself, and the dreams of sleighbells and ice on window-panes, that had been fleeting through my mind at the first mention of New Year's Day by the syce, vanished.
The eight souls left behind had one common gospel Cleanliness. Very little dust found its way thither; but the salt, spray-laden air kept them constantly polishing window-panes and brass-work. To wash, to scour, to polish, grew into the one absorbing business of life.
All the same, sometimes, as she sat, day in day out, on her high stool, looking down on familiar aspects of life's fermentation as it manifests in public restaurants, or peering out of the windows to catch tantalizing glimpses of its freer, ampler, and alas! more recondite phases sometimes Sofia wondered whether there were not grimly cynic innuendo in those three words which the mystery of choice had affixed to the window-panes and graven so deep into her soul.
Many of the window-panes, besides, were broken; and indeed this was so common a feature in that house, that I believe my uncle must at some time have stood a siege from his indignant neighbours perhaps with Jennet Clouston at their head. Meanwhile the sun was shining outside; and being very cold in that miserable room, I knocked and shouted till my gaoler came and let me out.
So I was left alone with my dead friend, and with a host of bitterest thoughts. The room had not been cleaned; there were spider-webs on the beams, and the dust stood so thick on the window-panes as to shut out half the light. The dust was on everything: on chairs and tables, save on the trestle-table where he lay.
Day after day the water came down in streams, and at night it could be heard pattering on the window-panes, and dripping from the eaves, every time one woke. At first the rain came for a long time from the south-west, but there was nothing wonderful in that, for the south-west is a rainy quarter.
She it is who, as wife, mother, sister, or, perhaps, maiden-aunt, picks up the hat or gloves Mamie has carelessly left on the drawing-room table, wipes the tiny finger smears from the window-panes at which baby stood to wave his hand to papa this morning, dusts the rungs of the chair neglected by the parlor-maid, and mends the ripped coat which Johnny forgot to mention until it was nearly time to start for school.
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