Norman gasped with astonishment. A huge corridor pierced the wall from side to side and top to bottom,—a corridor at least a hundred feet long and eighty feet high, yet only of a breadth for three men to walk side by side and lit only by a tiny window at the extreme end. Norman having walked over to it saw that the window commanded a sweeping view of the plain of Alsander, the river Ianthe, the sea, the mountains, and also noted that no one could look in through that window whoever might look out, for the wall on that side is built on the top of a sheer precipice of rock. Meanwhile the second key was being applied to another small door half-way down the corridor on the left. It opened groaning; the centre of the corridor was flooded with a shaft of light.
"Enter, my lord," said the mysterious guide. "This is the throne-room."
It was a most presentable type of disjointed majesty, this throne-room, the apotheosis of the ruined summer-house outside, a wreck of what had once been a gorgeous but not entirely tasteless mass of plaster gilding and paint in the style of the late Renaissance. Sham large windows had been let in to hide the little grills in the wall; in the intervening space the two hooks were still visible where once lamps had swung to flood the hall from without with artificial daylight. The ceiling, a false one, for the room went up of old to the height of the wall, like the corridor outside it, was painted with a device in cunning perspective, representing the apotheosis (among very pink angels) of King Basilandron, the same who christened the river Ianthe and was responsible for the disaster of the Bacchic revels. The picture, and indeed the entire room, dated from his lifetime. The wall decorations, however (according to information which Norman subsequently gathered), were added by his son—very tasteful designs of apes and Chinamen—singeries and chinoiseries. Basilandron II evidently disagreed with his father's idealistic tendencies, and held a firm belief that art should not aim at expressing any meaning, not even a lascivious one, but should rather consist of graceful and intricate designs. In this way he anticipated many of the most brilliant modern theorists. Although these panels had suffered considerably owing to the inferior quality of the paint employed, their condition was good compared with the dado, the composition columns, the settees and other accessories of the room. Dust, black, deep and ancient, had settled among those gilded lilies and plaster cupids; part of the work had fallen away, exposing the supporting wires, and part was grievously cracked. It may be because plaster cracks more irregularly than marble, but whatever the reason a noseless plaster Muse, however elegant originally, cannot reassert her loveliness like an antique torso or the armless Aphrodite.
Moreover, the spider, ubiquitous and remorseless, had woven his octagonal mesh in every crevice of the wall, and, more shamelessly still, among the pendants of the great glass chandelier, wherein were still sticking grisly and darkened stumps of candle, the same that had been lit at the requiem of the last King of Alsander twenty years ago. Since then a plain lamp (so portable and so much easier to light) had been deemed sufficient for the service of the Court.
Perhaps the most pitiable objects in the room were the two or three sofas that still remained, their gilt tarnished, their tapestries y mouldy and eaten by the moth. But the hall contained another seat of a far different aspect, impervious to such decay. Beneath the great rose window it stood, at the upper end of the room, strangely out of place, a cold and massive work, the ancient throne of the Kradendas. It was fronted by wide steps, flanked by grotesque yet grand lions, and wrought of granite rock. And if this rude and barbaric throne was anomalous in so artistic a room, still more vivid was the contrast between the majesty of its structure and the majesty of him who sat thereon.
For there sat the imbecile Andrea, with watery grey eyes, with hair and hands unkempt, arrayed in the stifling drapery of his state robes. He was a young man, but he seemed to have been alive five hundred years. His features parodied the portraits of his ancestors. With the heavy iron crown of Alsander on his head, and a great silver sceptre in his hands, he sat immobile; only his mumbling lips seemed to address a phantom and imaginary Court.
[CHAPTER V]
OF THE KNIGHTING OF NORMAN PRICE
Do diddle di do,
Poor Jim Jay
Got stuck fast
In yesterday.
Peacock Pie.