“You must be cold after your long journey. Sit down and warm yourself,” he said politely, adding another log to the furnace that was blazing in the old brass-mounted grate.
He rubbed his long white hands together and drew back, so as to let the light of the lamp fall on my face.
“And your—a—relatives in America—you left them quite well, I hope? I dare say they resent your desertion of them very bitterly?” He laughed a little.
I made some perfunctory reply, and sat warming one frozen foot after the other, while my uncle stood with his back to the lamp, and surveyed me with guarded intentness.
I had expected him to be perhaps formal, in an old-world, courteous way; but this strained and glacial geniality was a very different thing, and disconcerted me considerably.
“How unlike he is to Willy! I wish he would not stare at me like that. I don’t think he is a bit glad to see me,” I thought, with hasty inconsequence. “Why does he not speak? Well, I will,” and I made an ordinary remark about my journey. My voice seemed to startle him from a reverie. He put his hand to his eyes, and made some alteration in the lamp before replying.
It was a distinct relief when, at this juncture, Willy came in, and offered to show me the way to my room. We passed through the dark entrance-hall, whose depths were inadequately lighted by a cheap lamp, its orange light forming a dingy halo that contended hopelessly with the surrounding gloom. At the end of the hall was a broad flight of stairs, that at the first landing branched into two narrower flights leading to a corridor running round the hall. Passing along one side of this corridor, Willy opened a door at the end of it.
“Here you are,” he said; “and I told them to bring you up a cup of tea; I thought you looked as if you wanted it”—with which he took his departure.
I was grateful for Willy’s unexpected thoughtfulness in the matter of the tea. My uncle’s reception had chilled me. I was tired by my long journey, and the darkness and silence of the house had a depressing effect upon my spirits. For weeks this arrival at Durrus had been constantly in my mind, and now that it was over, the only definite emotions it seemed to have produced were disappointment and dejection.
I looked round me as I sipped my tea, and did not feel enlivened by what I saw. The room was large and bare. The paper and the curtains of the two windows were alike detestable in colour and pattern. The enormous bed had once been a four-poster, but the posts had been cut down, and four meaningless stumps bore witness to the mutilation it had undergone. A colossal wardrobe loomed in a far-off corner; a round table of preposterous size occupied the centre of the room. Six persons could comfortably have dined at the dressing-table. In fact, the whole room appeared to have been fitted up for the reception of a giantess, and was quite out of proportion to my moderate stature of five feet seven.