“In truth, Sir, it was some time ago I last sat to meat,” was my response; “and, whether it be our walk or the night-air, I could almost fancy your father’s father might have shared that meal with me.”
“Well, come, then, to the banquet-hall—the feast is spread, and, for guests, people these shadows with whom you will!” and, taking the rushlight from its socket and hobbling off in front, that strange host of mine led down the corridor to where a great archway led into the main chamber of the house.
It was as desolate and silent as every other place, vast, roomy, blank, and gloomy. All along one side were latticed windows looking out upon that dead garden, and the moonbeams coming through them threw faint reflections of escutcheon and painted glass upon the dusty floor. Here and there the panes were broken, and draughts from these swayed the frayed and tattered hangings with ghostly undulations—ah! and at the top of the room an open door, leading into unknown blackness, kept softly opening and shutting in the current, as though, with melancholy monotony, it was giving admittance to unseen, voiceless company.
But nothing said my friend to excuse all this. He led up the long black table, with rows of seats and benches fit to seat a hundred guests, until at the lonely top he found and lit the four branches of a little oil lamp of green moldy bronze, such as one takes from ancient crypts, and when the four little flames grew up smoky and dim they shone upon a napkin ready laid, a flask, a pitcher, and a plate, flanked by a horn-handled knife and spoon, and an oaken salt-cellar. Then the old carl next went to a cupboard in a niche, and brought out bread on a trencher, a cheese upon a round leaden dish, and a curious flask of old Italian wine. I stared at my host in wonder, for I could have sworn a Saxon hand had trimmed his knife and spoon, his lamp was Etruscan, as truly as I lived, though Heaven only knew how he came by it—and that pitcher—why, Jove! I knew the very Roman pottery marks upon it, the maker’s sign and name—the very kiln that glazed it.
He laid a plate for me, and cut the loaf and filled our tankards, and—“Eat!” he said. “The feast is small, but we have that sauce the wise have told us would make a worse into a banquet.”
“Thanks!” I said. “I have, in truth, sat to wider spreads, yet this is more than I could, a few short hours since, have reasonably hoped for.” And so I began and broke his bread, and turned about the cheese, and poured the wine, and made a very good repast out of such modest provender. But, as you may guess, between every mouthful I could not help looking up and about me—at the wise-mad features of that quaint old man, now far away and visionary, again lost in thought and fantasy; and then out through the broken mullions into that pallid garden of white spectral things and inky shadows lying so death-like in the moonshine; and so once more my eye would wander to the long, somber hall—the stately high-backed chairs all rickety and moth-eaten, and the door that gently opened now and then to admit the sighing of the night-wind, and nothing more!
Well! I will not weary you with experiences so empty. At last the most spectral meal that ever mortal sat to was over, and the old man roused himself, and, like one who comes reluctantly from deep thought, drained out his goblet to the dregs, and turned it down and swept the crumbs into his plate, and standing up, said in somewhat friendly tone: “You will be weary, stranger guest, and mayhap I am to-night but a poor host. If it pleased you, I would show you to a chamber, which, though mayhap somewhat musty, like much else of mine, shall nevertheless be drier than yon couch of yours out there by the hazel thicket.”
“Musty or not, good Sir, I do confess a bed will be welcome. It must be near four hundred years at least—that is to say, it must be very long, my sleepy eyes suggest—since I was lain on one.”
“Come, then!”
“Yet half a minute, Sir, before we go. This garb of mine—I do not deign to advert to its poorness, for my own sake, but it does such small credit to your honor and hospitality. Fortune, in other times, gave me the right to wear the hose and surtout of a gentleman—if you had such a livery by you.”