Mr. Tuke sprang up into a sitting posture, with an oath.
“What the devil!” he cried. “Are you to begin by disputing my orders?”
“But——”
“Leave the room, sir.”
When he was alone—“Mr. Whimple,” muttered he, “you must have that hang-dog mouth muzzled if you are to stop.”
He looked forth through the broad-latticed casement. It was a fair, still morning, and the sun made idyllic glory of what had overnight appeared so haunted and so sombre. The house lay, so far as he could make out, in a wide basin of ground cut out of the heart of a thronging woodland, and must from its position be very private and remote. Before him was stretched a noble lawn, with a couple of gnarled and buttressed oaks to break its greenness; but the grass was a foot long, and so weighted with dew that a kilderkin of sweet water might have been gathered from it.
To his right he saw the opening of the drive by which he had come to his own. This, so far as he could see down it, was less an avenue than a passage driven through a wood, and all over its mossy floor the light fell in brilliant smears and patches, as if the branches dripped green fire.
Elsewhere, on every side visible, were trees; but with, here and there, scant openings in them. They closed in the further line of the lawn; they packed the hollows and mounted the slopes; in every direction they filled the prospect with an ardent leafiness.
The gazer turned and pursued his inquiries into the room. He found little to reward his curiosity, beyond the general beauty of an ancient interior; for the chamber was panelled in oak, like the other where he had supped, and the window was a fine oriel, with heraldic devices in stained glass in its topmost squares. For furniture there were the great bed, whose posts were richly carved in antique foliage; a wardrobe no less generously designed; a washhand-stand and chairs of plain solid oak, and an oak table in the embrasure of the window, with a cracked mirror of old repoussé brass work standing on it. This, indeed, was the one exception to that tasteful substantiality of accessory with which a mysterious destiny seemed to have supplied his needs. Else there were no pictures, no carpet, no curtains, no adornments of any kind—only a severe simplicity, in which was suggested a certain methodical cleanliness which, it pleased the man of fashion to think, was far remote from the systems of society with its accumulations of glittering rubbish.
He went through his toilet singing, and, opening his door, found himself on a broad landing, wherefrom half-a-dozen other doors gave access to as many rooms. Into each of these In order he peeped. They were empty, one and all—dusty, spider-haunted; and not a room of them, it appeared, but had had, at some remote period, its oak flooring roughly jarred up, and as roughly thrown and stamped into place again. In one or two, moreover, bricks, dislodged from the chimneys, were cast pell-mell upon the hearths; or fissures gaped in the walls or in the plaster of the ceilings.