“Ask the steward.”
“Where is he?”
In reply he simply pointed to the lodge.
The land steward received me in a glass-enclosed dining room which resembled a conservatory. It opened upon the woods, though the trees were not near enough to shut out the air. An invitation to rest there could not but be most agreeable. I was at once politely invited to drink and smoke, for my host was at the moment filling his pipe, with an open bottle of white wine at his elbow. The sun shone upon his half-filled glass in sparkles of dull gold.
“You see,” he explained, “I have already made my rounds on horseback this morning.”
I too had been in the saddle all the morning, and so I accepted his invitation to fellowship. He was a man of some sixty years, holding himself a little too upright, as if to resist a tendency to stoop. He had the ruddy skin of those who live much in the open air, a colour emphasised by his white hair. One would have taken him, at a first glance, for an old cavalry officer worn out in the service. But he showed nothing of that apparent assurance acquired by the habit of command. His blue eyes had a confiding expression such as one used to see in those of young girls. I was prepared, from our first libation in common, to find a certain familiarity, but not the air of distinction and total absence of pose, the nobility of manner, unobtrusive and innate, that shrouded his simplicity as a tower in ivy. He bore the true hallmark of ancient lineage. In neither his person nor his speech was there anything superficial.
At first he met my request with a refusal. To begin with there was nothing to see in the chateau. But he had hardly made the statement when, as if from an instinctive horror of falsehood, he corrected himself with an exception: perhaps a few old tapestries and pieces of furniture, and a small Italian painting, no bigger than that, representing an Annunciation. At once, I knew not why, perhaps because of his very reserve, a strong desire to see the interior of the chateau took possession of me, and I repeated my request, pleading my acquaintance with M. Cernay.
“That is another thing. I will take you,” he said.
In the avenue I expressed regret that I should not see the owner, adding:
“But he seldom comes here.”