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She went at last to her rooms. On the dressing-table waxlights burned, but the bedroom was unlit. She seated herself by the window and looked out at the starlit sky, at the darkly-waving trees of the park. "And this is my welcome home," she thought, "to find in my husband's house my rival and enemy, whose first look, whose first words are insults.
Very strangely she looked, the waxlights flickering on her pale, rigid young face, her compressed lips set in one tight line on her soft pearl gray silk, with its point lace collar and diamond star. A bride, alone, forsaken, on her wedding-day! How strange it all was! The thought came to her: was it retributive justice pursuing her for having bartered herself for rank?
But the chimney's huge throat drew in the hall's heavy influences, and when the log was fired not a corner escaped its glow. The man who laid the cloth lighted candles in a silver candelabrum and set it on the table, and carried a brand to waxlights which decorated the buffet. These cheerful preparations for her evening meal recalled Madame La Tour to the garrison's affairs.
He stepped in at an open window, and there he found himself in a beautiful room, hung with cloth of silver and blue, and with chairs and tables of white and gold; dozens and scores of waxlights shone like so many stars, and lit every crack and cranny as bright as day, and there at one end of the room upon a couch, with her eyelids closed and fast asleep, lay the prettiest princess that ever the sun shone upon.
Blocque hastened to receive me, with his most charming smile; I was introduced to the guests, who had all arrived; and ten minutes afterward the folding doors opened, revealing a superb banquet for the word "dinner" would be too common-place. The table was one mass of silver. Waxlights, in candelabra, were already lit; and a host of servants waited, silent and respectful, behind every chair.
"Who was that?" he demands. "Of course Miss Inez knows nothing of this." No one had accused her, but he is unconsciously defending her already. "She must be told at once," he says. "I'll go and tell her myself. Edwards, draw the curtains, will you, and light the candles?" He leaves the room. The valet mechanically does as he is bid the curtains are drawn, the waxlights illumine the apartment.
A cluster of waxlights burned above them, shining full on two pale, worn faces the faces of women to whom suffering and sorrow have long been household words. Both wore deepest mourning the elder a widow's weeds, the hair of the younger thickly streaked with gray. Now and then both raised their eyes from a book and needlework, and glanced expectantly at the clock on the mantel.
The waxlights were then put out, screens divided the camp, and quiet followed. Of all nights in Le Rossignol's life this one seemed least likely to be chosen as her occasion for a flight. The walls were strictly guarded, and at midnight the moon spread its ghostly day over all visible earth.
There you shall see waxlights on the table, and finger-glasses with green leaves, and fine linen and napkins, and plenty of silver even silver wine-coolers, and beakers of fame and beauty, and flowers, flowers everywhere, and fruit of exquisite charm. I have to live in outward seeming as do my neighbours, even to keeping a black footman, gorgeously dressed, with bare legs.
You young chaps don't consider these things, and as long as you have got a rap in the world you go swaggering about, ordering claret and waxlights, and everything wot's expensive, as though you must spend money because you are in an inn. Now, that's all gammon.
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