When I had stared my full, and learned little from the outlook, I donned those clothes that I had borrowed, and they were a happy choice. They fitted me like a lady’s glove, and, as I laced and hooked and belted them before a yellow mirror let into the black panel of my chamber door, I could not but feel they looked a goodly fashion for one of my make and build. I had not seemed so stalwart and so sleek, so straight in limb and broad in shoulder, since I was a Saxon thane. Then I belted on that pretty sword round my nicely tapering middle, and ran my fingers through my black Eastern locks, arranging them trimly inside my high-standing frill, and took another look or two into the glass, and then with a derisive smile—a little scornful at the secret pleasure those fine feathers gave me—I went forth.
Surely never did mortal mason build such a house before! The deepest, densest forest path that ever my hunter’s foot had trodden was simple to those mazes of curly stairs and dim passages and wooden alleys that led by tedious ways to nothing, and creaking, rotten steps that beguiled the wanderer by sinuous repetitions from desolate wing to wing and flight to flight. And all the time that I wrestled with those labyrinthine mazes in the struggle to reach latitudes I knew, not a sign could I see of my host, not a whisper could I catch of human voice or familiar sound in that dusty, desolate wilderness. Such an impenetrable stagnation hung over that empty habitation that the crow of a distant cock or the yelp of a village cur would have been a blessed interruption, but neither broke the vault-like, solemn stillness. From room to room I went, opening countless doors at random, all leading into spacious, moldy chambers, bare and tenantless, feeling my way by damp, neglected wall and dangerous broken floorings to endless cobwebbed windows, unbarring wooden casements and letting in the watery light that only made the inner desolation more ghostly conspicuous, but nothing human could I find, nor any prospect but that same one I had seen before of damp woodlands and marshy water-meadows out beyond.
Perhaps for half an hour had I adventured thus hopelessly, lost in the dusty bowels of that stupendous building; and then—just as I was near despairing of an exit and meditating a leap from a casement on to the stony terraces below—opening one final door, that might well have been but a household cupboard for the storing of linen and raiment, there, at my feet, was the great main staircase leading, by many a turn and staging, to the central hall below! I put, with the point of my sword, a cross upon the outside of that cupboard-door, so that I might know it again if need be, and then descended.
Had you seen me coming down those Tudor steps in that Tudor finery—my hand upon the hilt of my long steel rapier perked behind me, my great ruffle and my curled mustache, my strong soldier limbs squeezed into those sweet-fitting satin hose and sleeves, so stern and grim, so lonely and silent in the white glimmer of the morning shine that came from distant lattice and painted oriel—you well might have thought me scarcely flesh and blood—some old Tudor ancestor of that old Tudor hall stepped from a painter’s canvas just as he was in life, and come with beatless feet to see what cheer his gross descendants made of it where he had once lived so noisy and so jolly.
Down the steps I came, and into the banquet-hall, empty and deserted like all else, and so sauntered to the table head where I had supped the evening before. Not one trace of humankind had I seen since the night, and yet—that little thing quite startled me—the supper had been cleared away, another napkin spread, another plate, put out with fruit and bread, and a large beaker of good new milk stood by to flank them. I stared hard at that simple-seeming meal, and could not comprehend it. I was near sure the old man had not set it—yet, if he had, why was there but one plate, one place, one chair, one beaker? Was it meant for me or him? What fingers had pulled that fruit, or drawn that milk still warm from its source? I would wait, I thought, and strolled off to the windows, and down them all slowly in turn, then back again, to idly hum a favorite tune we had sung yesterday at Crecy. But still nothing came or stirred. Then I went into the hall and examined that trophy of weapons and tried them all, and then unbarred the great door and went out upon the terrace, there to dangle my satin legs over the balustrades during a long interval of gloomy speculation; but not a leaf was moving, not a sign or whisper could I see of that strange old fellow who had brought me hitherto, and now did his duty by his guest so quaintly.
At last I went back to the dining-place, and regarded that mysterious meal with fixed attention. “Now this,” I thought, “is surely spread for me, and if it is not then it should be. The master of a house may get him food how and when he likes; but the guest’s share is put ready to his hand. I have waited a long hour and more, the sun is high, surely that learned pedant could not mean to belay his courtesy by starving a stranger visitor! No, it were certainly affectation to wait longer: at the worst there must be more where these good things came from.” And being hungry, and having thus appeased my conscience, I clapped my sword upon the table and fell to work, and in a short space had made a light though sufficient meal and cleared everything eatable completely from the table.
I was the better for it, yet this strange solitude began to weigh upon me. But a few hours since—surely it was no more—I had been in a busy camp, bright with all the panoply of war, active, bustling; and here—why, the white mists seemed creeping through me, it was so damp and melancholy, the tawny mildew of these walls seemed settling down upon my spirit. Jove! I felt, by comparison of what I had been and was, already touched with the clammy rottenness of this place, and slowly turning into a piece of crumbling lumber, such as lay about on every hand—a tarnished, faded monument to a life that was bygone. Oh! I could not stand the house, and, taking my cap and sword, strolled down the garden, full of pensive thoughts, morose, uncaring, and so out into the woods beyond, and over hill and dale, a long walk that set the stagnant blood flowing in my sleepy veins, and did me tonic good.
Leaving the hall where so strange a night had been spent, I strode out strongly over hill and dale for mile after mile, without a thought of where the path might lead. I stalked on all day, and came back in the evening; yet the only thing worthy of note upon that round was a familiarness of scene, a certain feeling of old acquaintance with plain and valley, which possessed me when I had gone to the farthest limit of the walk. At one hilltop I stopped and looked over a wide, gently swelling plain of verdure, with a grassy knoll or two in sight, and woods and new wheat-fields shining emerald in the April sunlight, while far away the long clouds were lying steady over the dim shine of a distant sea. I thought to myself, “Surely I have seen all this before. Yonder knoll, standing tall among the lesser ones—why does it appeal so to me? And that distant flash of water there among the misty woodlands a few miles to westward of it? Jove! I could, somehow, have sworn there had been a river there even before I saw the shine. Some sense within me knows each swell and hollow of this fair country here, and yet I know it not. They were not my Saxon glades that spread out beneath me, and the distant stream swept round no such steep as that castled mount wherefrom I had set out for Crecy.” I could not justify that spark of vague remembrance, and long I sat and wondered how or when in a wide life I had seen that valley, but fruitlessly. Yet fancy did not err, though it was not for many days I knew it.
Then, after a time, I turned homeward. Homeward, was it? Well, it was as much thitherward as any way I knew, though, indeed, I marveled as I went why my feet should turn so naturally back to that gloomy mansion peopled only by shadows and the smell of sad suggestions. Perhaps my mind just then was too inert to seek new roads, and accepted the easiest, after the manner of weak things, as the inevitable. Be this as it may, I went back that wet, misty afternoon, alone with my melancholy listlessness through the damp dripping woods and coppices, where the dead ferns looked red as blood in the evening glow. I was so heedless I lost my way once or twice, and, when at length the dead front of the old house glimmered out of the mist ahead, the early night was setting in, and that lank, dejected garden, those ruined terraces, and hundred staring, empty windows frowning down on the grave-green courtyard stones seemed more forsaken, more mournful-looking even than it had the night before.
I found the front door ajar, exactly as it was left, and, groping about, presently discovered the tinder and steel. I made a light, and laughed a little bitterly to think how much indeed I was at home; then, in bravado and mockery, unsheathed my sword and went from room to room, in the gathering dusk, stalking sullen and watchful, with the gleam of light held above my head, down each clammy corridor and vault-like chamber; rapped with my hilt on casement and panels, and, listening to the gloomy echo that rumbled down that ghoulish palace, I pricked with my rapier-point each swelling, rotting curtain; I punctured every ghostly, swinging arras, and stabbed the black shadows in a score of dim recesses. But nothing I found until, in one of these, my sword-point struck something soft and yielding, and sank in. Jove! it startled me. ’Twas wondrous like a true, good stab through flesh and bone; and my fingers tightened upon the pommel, and I sent the blade home through that yielding, unseen “something,” and a span deep into the rotten wall beyond; then looked to see what I had got. Faugh! ’twas but a woman’s dress left on a rusty nail, a splendid raiment once—such as a noble girl might wear, and a princess give—padded and quilted wondrously, with yards of stitching down the front, wherefrom rude hands had torn gold filigree and pearl embroideries, and where the wearer’s heart had beat those rough fingers had left a faded rose still tied there by a love-knot on a strand of amber silk—a lovely gown once on a time, no doubt, but now my sword had run it through and through from back to bosom. Lord! how it smelled of dead rose, and must, and moth! I shook it angrily from my weapon, and left it there upon the rotten boards, and went on with my quest.