Leaving the candle burning on the dressing-table, and carrying his lantern as before, he led the way again with heavy steps; and Bayre found himself in another room, large and bare, a state bedroom of an old-fashioned type, with a ponderous wooden bedstead hung with faded damask curtains. Through this room they passed with leisurely steps, the old man always in front, raising his lantern ostentatiously from time to time, and asking every few minutes, in a jeering tone, whether his visitor saw anything he should like to examine further.
And from this room they passed into a corridor, with windows on the one side and a row of doors on the other.
Old Mr Bayre tried the handles of all these and found some open, in which case he insisted on his guest’s entering and making such investigations as he pleased. Sometimes they were locked, and there was much searching for keys, some of which the old man professed to have mislaid, on which occasions he would ask, with elaborate civility, if it was his nephew’s pleasure that he should go and look for them.
But whenever they went into a room they found no trace of any living creature within. Nothing but bare-looking apartments furnished in the taste of a past day—funereal bedsteads, ponderous wardrobes, polished floors, and a mouldy smell of little-frequented, closely-shut-up rooms, where the air remained stagnant for weeks.
Sometimes a rat would scurry across the polished floor, slipping and sliding as he ran in unaccustomed terror, or a loud squeaking and scampering behind the skirting-boards of the room would denote a panic among the mice at the disturbance.
So they went on, not indeed examining every room, but getting a general impression of dead hospitality and of vanished state.
But all the time, as they walked along or when they stood still, Bayre was haunted by the belief that he could hear the pattering of lighter feet than theirs not far off, stopping when they stopped, going on again when they went on.
Again and again he would turn quickly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fancied companion. But the lantern threw no light behind, and if anyone followed them or preceded them he could not discover the fact.
His guide grew jocose at last, humming to himself in a cracked old voice, and making jesting remarks upon his disappointment.
“Young folk love a mystery,” said he, throwing the words over his shoulder, as it were, as he went on, swinging his lantern and clanking his keys along the passages. “Especially if they can manufacture it round the figure of a woman. Now I’ve always hated mysteries and mystery-mongers myself, even when I was a young man. And as for women, I can only say I had nothing to do with them till late in life, and I sincerely wish I had never had anything to do with them at all.”