His mother endeavoured to soothe him by changing the subject. But neither
husband nor son encouraged her. A gloomy silence fell over the tea-table.
Presently Brand moved, and with halting step went to the little horsehair
sofa, and stretched himself full length upon it. Such an action on his
part was unheard of. Both wife and son stared at him without speaking.
Then Mrs. Brand got up, fetched an old shawl, and put it over her husband
who had closed his eyes. Will left the room, and sitting on a stool
outside the cottage door, with the old gun between his knees, he watched
the sunset as it flushed the west, and ran along the fell-tops, till
little by little the summer night rose from the purple valley, or fell
softly from the emerging stars, and day was done.
* * * * *
A fortnight later, Mr. Louis Delorme, the famous portrait painter,
arrived at Duddon Castle. Various guests had been invited to meet him.
Two guests--members of the Tatham family--had invited themselves, much to
Lady Tatham's annoyance. And certain neighbours were coming to dine;
among them Mrs. Penfold and her daughters.
Dinner was laid in a white-pillared loggia, built by an "Italianate" Lord
Tatham in the eighteenth century on the western side of the house,
communicating with the dining-room behind it, and with the Italian garden
in front. It commanded the distant blue line of the Keswick and Ullswater
mountains, and a foreground of wood and crag, while the Italian garden to
which the marble steps of the loggia descended, with its formal patterns
of bright colour, blue, purple, and crimson, lay burning in the afterglow
of sunset light, which, in a northern July, will let you read till ten
o'clock.
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