They went through the echoing rooms, and looked out of the low, spider-hung casements, where young ivy-leaves, soft and vivid, had edged their way through the cracks. They stood under ceilings dark with the smoke of fires and lamps that had been lit unnumbered years ago for some old pathetic revelry. In cupboards left ajar by a hurried hand that had long been still, hung gowns with flower-stains or wine-stains on their faded folds. The doors creaked and sighed after them, the floors groaned, and all about the house, though the summer air was so light and low, there was a moaning of wind. It was as if all the storms that had blown round it, the terror that had been felt in it, the tears that had fallen in it, had crept like forgotten spirits into its innermost recesses and now made complaint there for ever. A lonely listener on a stormy night might hear strange voices uplifted—the sobbing of children; songs of feasters; cries of labouring women; young men's voices shouting in triumph; the long intonations of prayer; the death-rattle.
And as Reddin and Hazel—surely the most strangely met of all couples that had owned and been owned by this house—went through the darkening rooms, they were not, it seemed, alone. A sense of witnesses perturbed Hazel, a discomfort as from surveillance. A soft rumour, as of a mute but moving multitude crept along the passages in their wake.
'Be there ghosses?' she whispered. 'I'd liefer sleep under the blue roof-tree. I feel like corn under a millstone in this dark place.'
'It's said to be haunted, but I don't believe it.' He glanced over his shoulder.
'Who by?'
'People that failed. Weaklings. Men that lost their money or their women, and wives and daughters of the family that died young.'
'What for did they fail?'
'Silly ideas. Not knowing what they wanted.'
'Dear now! Foxy and me, we dunna allus know what we want.'
'You want me.'