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She knotted white fringes for the table covers and curtains, painted the inside of the fireplace red, put some pots, of scarlet geraniums on the window-sills, filled newspaper rack with ferns and tacked it over an ugly spot in the wall, edged her work-basket with a tufted trimming of scarlet worsted, and made an elaborate photograph case of white crash and red cotton that stretched the entire length of the old-fashioned mantelshelf, and held pictures of Mr.
Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap in one corner, suicides from the window-sills above, and some sagging clothes-lines, and a battered watering-pot, and a box or two that might once have held flowers; and yet with all this circumstantial evidence against me I cannot conscientiously believe that this forlorn courtyard ever could have risen to the dignity of a garden.
No smoke, no flames, no sign of human occupance was there: the sea-gull and the pigeon pecked together upon the door-steps or the window-sills, or perched upon the ridges of the high-pitched roofs, and a heron stalked at the outlet of a gutter that ran down the street. The sea, quiet and dull, the east turned from crimson to grey; the mountains streaming with mist
For Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and the cold walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone. The grass began to grow upon the roof, and in the crevices of the basement paving. A scaly crumbling vegetation sprouted round the window-sills.
Clouds of steam fill the air, and through the fog you perceive a fine mêlée of figures, some half dressed, some statuesquely nude, towelling themselves or preparing to wash, or shaving at bits of mirror propped on the window-sills. Pink bodies wallow voluptuously in the deep porcelain-ware tubs, which are of the shape and superb dimensions of Egyptian sarcophagi.
A dash of red for the painted brick walls, and of green for the mangers; a yellow blur for the mote-filled rays of sunshine streaming through the cows' white-curtained windows, and on the flower-pots adorning their window-sills; a trifle more elaboration for the carpet of sawdust stamped with an ornamental pattern, and the quaint design of the cupboard-beds for the stablemen in the wall opposite; a streak here and there for the cords which loop the cows' tails to nails in the ceiling; gorgeous spots of crimson and yellow for the piled cheeses.
The bridge, the houses, the quay, all stood forth with that matutinal sharpness of outline which gives the impression of a new day emerging, luminous and smiling, from the dense mists of the night. From a distance he descried his brother's house, already awake, the open blinds and the flowers on the window-sills. He wandered about some time before he could summon courage to enter.
There are three rooms, with earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows that lift up and down instead of opening outwards.... The walls are covered with rifles, pistols, sabres and whips. The chest of drawers and the window-sills are littered with cartridges, instruments for mending rifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of shot. The furniture is lame and the veneer is coming off it.
"Black," said Martin, "here; all down this road-casual labour, criminals, loafers, drunkards, consumps. Look at the faces!" Thyme raised her eyes obediently. In this main thoroughfare it was not as in the by-street, and only dull or sullen glances, or none at all, were bent on her. Some of the houses had ragged plants on the window-sills; in one window a canary was singing.
Eventually, after much patient wandering and inquiring, he found a house in the Southwark-bridge Road he was attracted to it by the presence of one or two flower-boxes on the window-sills where he was offered a small, fairly neat and clean bedroom for the sum of three-and-sixpence per week.
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