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Updated: June 11, 2025
The curtains were close-drawn; the paraffin lamp flared on the table, and as the savoury smell of the hare and onions on the fire filled the kitchen, the whole family gathered round watching for the moment of eating.
She tried to make her feel the shy charm of the place, that almost subjective beauty, which those to the manner born are so keenly aware of in old-fashioned New England villages; but she found that the girl was not only not looking at the sad-colored cottages, with their weather-worn shingle walls, their grassy door-yards lit by patches of summer bloom, and their shutterless windows with their close-drawn shades, but she was resolutely averting her eyes from them, and staring straightforward until she should be out of sight of them altogether.
The endless, straight lines of the dykes protecting Schouwen and Tholen from the terrible power of the sea, stretched like close-drawn ranks of devoted soldiers each stone a knight in armor defending their liege ladies from an invading giant, hiding the besieged damsels' beauty behind their shields, so that the monster's appetite might not be whetted by their charms.
The rest of the time, locked in his room, with the window-curtains close-drawn, he spent in thinking. "Ten days," Arsene Lupin had said. Beautrelet, striving to forget all that he had done and to remember only the elements of the pamphlet and the document, aspired eagerly to keep within the limit of those ten days.
And as he gripped himself and raised his head he had a vision of another horseman mounted on a frenzied trampling roan that, apparently out of control and mad with excitement, was charging down upon them, a horseman whose fluttering close-drawn headgear shaded features that were curiously Mongolian and then he went down in a welter of men and horses.
Before he could rally his wits to answer the question, he was asked: 'And what have you done with your necktie and collar? He touched his throat. 'I am rather nervous to-day, I forgot Elizabeth, he said, sending his fingers in a dotting run of wonderment round his neck. Lady Camper smiled with a triumphing humour on her close-drawn lips.
He saw close-drawn curtains over the cabin windows, indicating that the passengers were still asleep. Then, as he stood there, heavy-hearted, drooping with fatigue, his wet body chilled by the morning's breath, The Grande Dame glided past, and he found the shell beneath his feet rocking in her wake. As he turned shoreward George Balt hailed him, and brought his own launch alongside.
At first he cursed himself for being so much concerned for Sylvia or her actions to waste a minute, but flattering himself that it was not love to her, but pure curiosity to know the man who was made the next fool to himself, though the more happy one, he waited all night; and when he began to see the day break, which he thought a thousand years; his eye was never off from the door, and wondered at their confidence, who would let the day break upon them; 'but the close-drawn curtains there, cried he, 'favour the happy villainy. Still he walked on, and still he might for any rival that was to appear, for a most unlucky accident prevented Brilliard's coming out, as he doubly intended to do; first, for the better carrying on of his cheat of being Octavio; and next that he had challenged Octavio to fight; and when he knew his error, designed to have gone this morning, and asked him pardon, if he had been returned; but the amorous lover over night, ordering himself for the encounter to the best advantage, had sent a note to a doctor, for something that would encourage his spirits; the doctor came, and opening a little box, wherein was a powerful medicine, he told him that a dose of those little flies would make him come off with wondrous honour in the battle of love; and the doctor being gone to call for a glass of sack, the doctor having laid out of the box what he thought requisite on a piece of paper, and leaving the box open, our spark thought if such a dose would encourage him so, a greater would yet make him do greater wonders; and taking twice the quantity out of the box, puts them into his pocket, and having drank the first with full directions, the doctor leaves him; who was no sooner gone, but he takes those out of his pocket, and in a glass of sack drinks them down; after this he bathes and dresses, and believes himself a very Hercules, that could have got at least twelve sons that happy night; but he was no sooner laid in bed with the charming Sylvia, as he thought, but he was taken with intolerable gripes and pains, such as he had never felt before, insomuch that he was not able to lie in the bed: this enrages him; he grows mad and ashamed; sometimes he had little intermissions for a moment of ease, and then he would plead softly by her bed-side, and ask ten thousand pardons; which being easily granted he would go into bed again, but then the pain would seize him anew, so that after two or three hours of distraction he was forced to dress and retire: but, instead of going down he went softly up to his own chamber, where he sat him down, and cursed the world, himself and his hard fate; and in this extremity of pain, shame and grief, he remained till break of day: by which time Antonet, who was almost as violently afflicted, got her coats on, and went to her own chamber, where she found her lady more dead than alive.
Within the villas, behind the close-drawn curtains, they drew about the fire, and wondered at the violence of the storm, listening for each great gust as it gathered far away, and rocked the trees, and at last rushed with a huge shock against their walls as if it were the coming of the sea.
"I wouldn't advise you to try it. I have lived longer than you and I was never beaten, but I know the feeling you speak about. I have it now." His eyes roved rapidly up and down the other's form, noting the lean thighs and close-drawn belt which lent the appearance of spareness, belied only by the neck and shoulders.
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