Much wondering, Ned crossed an indifferent bridge—long ceased, it would appear, from its uses of draught—and found himself facing the massive stone portal of the chateau.
“There is a canker hath gnawed here since my uncle’s day,” thought he, and laid hold of a long iron bell-pull. The thing came down reluctant, and leapt sullenly from his grasp, and the clank of its answer called up a whole mob of echoes.
The door was opened by an unliveried young fellow—a mere peasant of the fields by his appearance.
“M. de St Denys? But, yes; monsieur would be at home to receive—unless, indeed, he were not yet out of bed.”
Ned recalled a figure prostrate on the wreck of a guitar.
“Convey this letter to your master,” said he; “and show me where I may wait.”
He entered a high, resounding hall. A boar’s head set at him from above a door in a petrified snarl. Opposite, a great dark picture—fruit, flowers, game—by Jan de Heem, made a slumberous core of richness in the gloom. These, with a heavy chair or two, were the only furniture.
The man conducted him to a waiting-room near as desert and ill-appointed as the vestibule. The whole house seemed a vast and melancholy barrow—an imprisoned vacancy containing only the personal harness and appointments of some lordly dead. Its equipments would appear to have conformed themselves to its service, and that was reduced to a minimum.
Ned heard the sound of a listed footfall, and turned to meet the master of Méricourt.
M. de St Denys came in with the visitor’s letter in his hand. He was in a yellow morning wrapper that was in cheerful contrast with his sombre surroundings, and a tentative small smile was on his lips. He wore his own hair, bright brown and unpowdered, and tied into a neck ribbon. A little artificial bloom, like the meal on a butterfly’s wing, was laid upon his cheeks to hide the ravages of dissipation, but the injected eyes above were significant of fever. He was, nevertheless, a pretty creature of his inches (and they might have run to seventy or so)—exhilarating, forcible, convincing as a man. Only, as to that, his mouth was the hyperbolic expression, justifying his sex rather by force of appetite than of combativeness.