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At first she was frightened; but then she exclaimed with delight from the very bottom of her faithful heart, "The gods be praised!" and from the moment when he could storm, she always declared, Heron's recovery began. The sun was setting when Andreas made his way to Zeno's house a long, white-washed building. The road led through a palm-grove on the Christian's estate.
The long range of cone-shaped mountains, darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in gaping expectancy; the shining, scaly surface of some far-off tarn or river, perceptible only at intervals, owing to the thick clusters of gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, and the light, feathery foliage of the golden laburnum; the undulating meadows, besprinkled with gorse and grotesquely moulded crags of granite; the white, the dazzling white roads, saturated with moonbeams; all all were overwhelmed with stillness the stillness that belongs, and belongs only, to the mountains, and trees, and plains the stillness of shadowland.
I believe of late, that his character has been of a very indifferent odour: and whatever has brought him among the English at Paris those white-washed abominations those 'innocent blacknesses, as Charles Lamb calls chimney sweepers, it does not argue well for his professional occupations.
But I will attempt to explain it, after the manner of ancient times, by means of an apologue. About four hundred years after the Deluge, King Gomer Chephoraod reigned in Babylon. He united all the characteristics of an excellent sovereign. He made good laws, won great battles, and white-washed long streets. He was, in consequence, idolised by his people, and panegyrised by many poets and orators.
He could see the towers of three village churches, and the blurred greys and browns of the houses clustering round them some near, some far. Stone farm-buildings, their white-washed gables glowing under the level sun, caught his eye, one after the other now hidden in wood, now standing out upon the fields or the moorland, with one sycamore or a group of yews to shelter them.
At the head of this square stood a long, low building with white-washed walls and gilded domes, backed by the towering cliff, but at a little distance from it, and surrounded by double walls with a moat of water between them, dug for purposes of defence. This was the palace, which on my previous visit I had only entered once or twice when I was received by the Child of Kings in formal audience.
It will make some of the F.A.N.Y.s smile to hear this, when they think of the neat rows of cars precisely parked up to the dead straight, white-washed line that ultimately became the order of things! The bathing machines had their uses, one near the cook-house acting as our larder, another as a store for spare parts, while several others were adopted by F.A.N.Y.s as their permanent abodes.
Faith, pale and quiet, did as she was bid, stirred the fire, till its ruddy glow brightened every nook of the little white-washed chamber, and made the old crone beside it wince and mutter in her sleep. Having shielded her from its fierce light, she then, with trembling fingers, opened a little penknife which lay upon the table, and cut the twine with which the cover was sewed at the back.
At first sight one might imagine the church which bears the date 1870 was of considerably greater age, but inside one is almost astounded at the ramshackle galleries, the white-washed roof of rough boards discoloured by damp, and the general squalor of the place relieved only by a ponderous altar-piece of classic design.
In time grass hid the little path from view that led to the old school, and a dozen years ago every particle of wood about the building, including the door and the framework of the windows, had been burned by travelling tinkers. The Board would have liked to leave the dominie in his white-washed dwelling-house to enjoy his old age comfortably, and until he learned that he had intended to retire.
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