“A chapel?” I asked.
“It was wonst,” my conductor told me; “but not in my time. We none of us knows nothink about wot’s inside. They do talk about that chapel, folks do. My opinion is, that there’s nothink in it; it just amuses Sir Roderick to tease their curiosity.”
Then a sharp turn and a short drive between thick firwoods brought us to a strange place.
A long, high wall—the wall of a solid building; for there was a porch, a door, and long, narrow windows on either side. If the whole façade had had windows it would have looked like a museum, for on the top there was a balustrade crowned at intervals with small, funereal-looking urns.
The place looked mouldy and dismal even on this glorious summer day.
“Well?” I said, for Thomas drew up before the door.
“Well, sir, if you just give that bell hanging to the right of the door a good pull, they’ll hear you.”
Did Sir Roderick’s eccentricity extend to his living in a semi-tomb? As I pulled the bell, and heard a distant, feeble clang, I looked somewhat disconsolately after the comfortable-looking dogcart driving away, remembering some of the ancient Greek philosophers’ predilections for doing their work among the tombs.
Out of perversity, I daresay, I felt utterly disinclined for philosophical disquisitions in this tomb-like place; in fact, I yearned for a real boyish holiday in those grounds with young, merry companions (I had better be truthful with myself).
What was my dismay when a solemn-looking old servitor in black (he had white hair and a “white choker,” and looked like a major-domo of State funerals) ushered me into a vault-like crypt. There were niches in the walls and more urns. He offered to take my bag. I clutched it tight, expecting some grim jest on the part of my host. When he said, “Will you please walk this way, sir,” and, opening a door, disclosed a long, vault-like passage, I hesitated; but he slouched off at such a rate, and the echo of his footsteps clattering on the stone pavement was so loud, I could not stop him, so I followed in silence—down a flight of stone steps, round a corner, down another darker and narrower staircase (all lighted dimly by tiny yellow-glass windows in the wall), until, when I was emerging into total darkness, I paused.