My first impression was anything but favourable. I arrived here about half-past six, and was received by—the butler! He showed me to my room in silence, and I did not feel disposed to question him. As he asked me whether I wanted anything, I inquired after the dinner-hour.
"Dinner will be ready, sir, as soon as you are dressed," he replied, and left me.
The house seemed very quiet, but I dressed myself with care, all the time speculating on the cause of my singular reception, or rather, nonreception. By the time I was ready, I had made up my mind that everybody must have been dressing for dinner on my arrival, and that perhaps I had been keeping them waiting half an hour.
I rang, and the servant lighted me down a complicated course of corridors and oak staircases; very sombre, very rococo, but very superb. The wind shook mysterious tapestries. Banners drooped by the side of complete sets of steel armour, looking like prodigiously uncomfortable knights, stiff as steel and the middle ages could make them. Formidable griffins of finely-carved oak glared at me, with heraldic fury, from the balustrades; and endless ancestors, of unheard-of bravery and incorruptibility, looked stiffly at me from their dim canvass; each and all haughtily eyeing me, as if my intrusion on the scene was one of the inexplicable facts of modern progress. In short, I could have fancied myself in a Castle of Otranto some centuries ago, instead of in a gentleman's country house, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty. And I assure you, as the solemn flunky strode before me, his candle throwing but a dubious light amidst all this sombre splendour, I felt quite romantic, and should not have started if, in some gusty movement, the tapestry had opened, and one of the faded-visaged ferocious ancestors had stepped from his frame.
At length I reached the dining-room: there the silent butler condescended to explain to me that the family and visitors were all out at a pic-nic. I was to dine by myself. And never did I sit down to a stranger or more uncomfortable dinner. You know the dinner hour is the period at which I shine; my best stories are inspired by the cheerful scene, the lights, the clatter of glasses, and the sparkle of the champagne. It is then I feel myself possessed of all my faculties. Well, then, fancy me seated at a solitary silent meal, without even the advantages of solitude and silence. The vast saloon, with its carved oak-panels, its high and vaulted roof, its heavy antique furniture, required all its three chandeliers to be properly lighted; instead of which, a massive candelabra threw light just on the table and its immediate neighbourhood, but left the greater part of the room in deep obscurity. In this Rembrandtish picture, which I could have painted with greater gusto had it not disagreeably affected me, you are to fancy me in the light silently eating, and in the surrounding shadows two silent flunkies, silently bringing and taking away the various dishes which represented dinner; as if dining consisted solely in eating.
You often laugh at me, Frank, for my gourmandize—and you, too, such a perfect gourmand—but if you had seen me on that occasion, you would have credited my fundamental maxim, which Brillat Savarin has omitted in his Physiologié du Gout, viz., What the chef de cuisine is to the raw materials, that is the company to the chef de cuisine.
I never ate less, nor with such profound contempt for the process of eating, reduced to the mere satisfaction of hunger. Besides, the sombreness and silence of the scene oppressed me.
I was shown into the drawing-room; a handsome, well lighted, comfortable-looking place, which quite cheered me. A log was blazing joyously in the fire-place, for the autumnal nights down here are keen; and, altogether, the contrast with the dark, grandiose, majestically-uncomfortable dining-room, made this drawing-room delightful.
I threw myself on an ottoman, and tried to amuse myself with a book; but you know, I dare say, how impossible it is to read in such uncertain moments. Expecting the family to arrive every minute, it was in vain I tried to fix my interest in anything I read.
I threw down the book, and gazed thoughtfully at the crackling log. The wind sighed mournfully without, the clock on the mantel-piece ticked with a sort of lively monotony, the embers fell with a cozy familiar sound, and I sank into one of those exquisite reveries wherein the past is curiously enwoven with the future, and, treading the imaginary stage, we play such brilliant parts.