“Don't touch it,” he commanded with such momentarily fierce authority that her protest died away and she sat as still as a cowed child.
She saw him take from his pocket a small glass tube in which there appeared to be two or three tiny slivers of wood. He took out the stopper and pressed the mouth of the tube to the lobe of her ear where it smarted. At the same time he recited in a loud voice something in the same incomprehensible jargon that she had heard when he drew the circle round her in the wood and lit the candles on the Christmas−tree. Now, he seemed to speak over her head, out to the cold night through the open window. He plucked the tube away and released her, stepping back and laughing softly.
“There, it's over. Did I hurt you?”
She felt her ear and, bringing away her hand, saw a tiny smear of blood on her finger. She looked wonderingly at his hands, but the phial had disappeared into his pocket again.
It had hurt for a moment and it still smarted slightly, but she did not mind. It was a queerly pleasurable smart. She smiled and shook her head. “No. At least—yes— but it doesn't matter.”
He shut the window and pushed the catch firmly home.
“Now,” he said, “the puppet−show. Let me make you comfortable. I shall have to leave you.”
While she still had not brought her thoughts and feelings into sufficient order to enable her to ask what he had done to her ear, he gathered a few cushions together in the window−seat and bade her sit still there and watch through the window.
“But on no account try to open it,” he instructed her. “And don't make any noise. I shall turn the lamp out because otherwise you won't be able to see what goes on outside, and don't light it again until I come back.”
He drew the thick curtain again, shutting her in the window recess as it were in a little room. Then he turned out the lamp and she heard the faint sounds of his climbing out through the skylight.
She gave all her attention now to what lay beyond the window. The moon had risen high enough to throw its light down into the steep−sided hollow that enclosed the old Captain's miniature park, but at the same time the tops of the rock walls and the trees that crowned them were lost in the dark blue gloom of the night, so that the illusion of looking into a distant valley surrounded by tremendous cliffs was complete. Over all tonight lay the pure snow on which the frost−fires glinted palely under the moon; the undulations of the landscape were smooth under that white coat, and the ancient trees upheld on crown and branch a white burden. Clare let her eyes wander slowly over the whole prospect, charmed by that white quietude and the delicate radiance of cold
lights reflected. The coppices were etched in grey and sepia against the white field, and the thicker wood in the distance was a grey cloud; behind it, barely distinguishable against the shadow of the cliff, was the denser darkness of that rough pile she called the Castle. Tonight, distincter than it had been in the daylight when the mossy sward was all green, she noticed below the far slope that led up to the thick wood a pond whose frozen surface blinked like steel in the moonlight.
Shut between the heavy curtain and the tightly−closed window Clare could hear no sound of movement either inside or outside the house. She wished Niall had not left her alone—although common sense promptly reminded her that he could not sit with her and work his puppets at the same time. It was not that she was afraid—or not exactly so, she told herself; but she was constantly looking for Niall nowadays, and missing him was as strong as a simple physical want like hunger or thirst. The need to have him near her had become doubly strong tonight since his firm holding of her head to inflict that swift, small wound on her. The wound itself had ceased to smart but she felt a kind of general, tingling excitement that verged on fear—that needed him to calm it.
She pressed her forehead against the cold panes, aware that she had been musing a long time. She wondered how long still it would be before the show began, and then, with a start, she saw that it had begun already.
Some tiny yellow points of light had appeared in the black mass of the Castle behind the wood. They remained steady, as though they were lamp−lit windows; but some others winked and flitted within the wood itself, exactly like those she had seen that first night of all in Brackenbine wood, but more than this, there was movement by the pond at the foot of the snowy slope. Figures were moving there, very small and distant, gliding and turning across the frozen pond with the unmistakable motions of skaters. In the deceptive moonlight the effect was perfect; the action of the little figures was as smooth as that of living persons. She stared and stared, trying to make out the details more plainly, but the motion and the faintness of the light defeated her. Sometimes she fancied that she could discern the lift and flow of a flared skirt and a swinging of long hair as a figure pirouetted, but she could not in the end have surely said whether the figures were male or female; all she could be certain of was that they were moved with consummate skill; but, again, how, and from where, she could not possibly make out. Before she had fairly begun to think about the mechanics of the show her attention was distracted from the skaters by more lights. These began to shine among the thinner woods and coppices on the left of her view. She remembered now that in the daylight she had noticed a drive coming down in that direction, and in a little while she saw that these new lights were lanterns borne by some kind of procession moving through the trees obliquely towards her. Soon, dim shapes were visible crossing zones of snow between the trees, appearing and disappearing. Then a group definitely emerged from the trees and turned, moving as if it would cross the open field of snow immediately in front of her window.
It came nearer and she could not suppress an exclamation of amazement and delight. It was a perfect little sleigh drawn by two horses which trotted and tossed their heads and swished their tails—or appeared to do so— with all the freedom of living animals; two lamps threw a mellow splash of light upon the snow and above them sat a tophatted driver holding whip and reins. Behind him, in the boat−like body of the sleigh, there seemed to be two figures warmly muffled up in furs. Clare gave them but a hasty glance, for more wonders followed: a cavalcade of riders, and then more sleighs. The riders were the most wonderful of all, for not only did their horses trot with as convincing an action as the sleigh horses, but the riders themselves moved in their saddles, lifted their arms, appeared to incline towards one another, as if conversing together. Their motions were indeed so life−like that Clare could almost fancy she heard faint voices and laughter mingling with the crunch of hooves and the jingle of sleigh−bells.
The light from the lanterns some of them carried, from the sleigh−lamps and from the half−moon, was strong enough to show Clare the details of these figures' dresses, though, again, too uncertain for her to distinguish the mechanism of their motion. They were gorgeously dressed, some in scarlet, some in blue coats, some with three−cocked hats laced with silver, some with black peaked caps like a huntsman's, some in white breeches and boots, some with great shining black jack−boots that came half−way up their thighs like and eighteenth−century cavalryman's. Their horses were as diverse in colour as their own costumes: black, grey, bay and chestnut and skewbald. They kept no particular order but rode sometimes in a bunch behind the leading sleigh and sometimes separated into twos and threes to accompany the other three or four sleighs.