第67章 ETHELBERTA'S HOUSE (continued) - THE BRITISH M

On his reaching home Faith was not in the house, and, in the restless state which demands something to talk at, the musician went off to find her, well knowing her haunt at this time of the day. He entered the spiked and gilded gateway of the Museum hard by, turned to the wing devoted to sculptures, and descended to a particular basement room, which was lined with bas-reliefs from Nineveh. The place was cool, silent, and soothing; it was empty, save of a little figure in black, that was standing with its face to the wall in an innermost nook. This spot was Faith's own temple; here, among these deserted antiques, Faith was always happy. Christopher looked on at her for some time before she noticed him, and dimly perceived how vastly differed her homely suit and unstudied contour--painfully unstudied to fastidious eyes--from Ethelberta's well-arranged draperies, even from Picotee's clever bits of ribbon, by which she made herself look pretty out of nothing at all. Yet this negligence was his sister's essence; without it she would have been a spoilt product. She had no outer world, and her rusty black was as appropriate to Faith's unseen courses as were Ethelberta's correct lights and shades to her more prominent career.

'Look, Kit,' said Faith, as soon as she knew who was approaching.

'This is a thing I never learnt before; this person is really Sennacherib, sitting on his throne; and these with fluted beards and hair like plough-furrows, and fingers with no bones in them, are his warriors--really carved at the time, you know. Only just think that this is not imagined of Assyria, but done in Assyrian times by Assyrian hands. Don't you feel as if you were actually in Nineveh;that as we now walk between these slabs, so walked Ninevites between them once?'

'Yes. . . . Faith, it is all over. Ethelberta and I have parted.'

'Indeed. And so my plan is to think of verses in the Bible about Sennacherib and his doings, which resemble these; this verse, for instance, I remember: "Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah did Sennacherib, King of Assyria, come up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah, King of Judah, sent to the King of Assyria to Lachish," and so on. Well, there it actually is, you see. There's Sennacherib, and there's Lachish. Is it not glorious to think that this is a picture done at the time of those very events?'

'Yes. We did not quarrel this time, Ethelberta and I. If I may so put it, it is worse than quarrelling. We felt it was no use going on any longer, and so--Come, Faith, hear what I say, or else tell me that you won't hear, and that I may as well save my breath!'

'Yes, I will really listen,' she said, fluttering her eyelids in her concern at having been so abstracted, and excluding Sennacherib there and then from Christopher's affairs by the first settlement of her features to a present-day aspect, and her eyes upon his face.

'You said you had seen Ethelberta. Yes, and what did she say?'

'Was there ever anybody so provoking! Why, I have just told you!'

'Yes, yes; I remember now. You have parted. The subject is too large for me to know all at once what I think of it, and you must give me time, Kit. Speaking of Ethelberta reminds me of what I have done. I just looked into the Academy this morning--I thought Iwould surprise you by telling you about it. And what do you think Isaw? Ethelberta--in the picture painted by Mr. Ladywell.'

'It is never hung?' said he, feeling that they were at one as to a topic at last.

'Yes. And the subject is an Elizabethan knight parting from a lady of the same period--the words explaining the picture being--"Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou know'st thy estimate."The lady is Ethelberta, to the shade of a hair--her living face; and the knight is--'

'Not Ladywell?'

'I think so; I am not sure.'

'No wonder I am dismissed! And yet she hates him. Well, come along, Faith. Women allow strange liberties in these days.'