Haward swung himself out of the saddle, tossed the reins to a negro, and, with Juba at his heels, climbed the five low stone steps and entered the wide hall running through the house and broken only by the broad, winding stairway. Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle all was in darkness; the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his tread. On either hand squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of large, empty rooms, and down the stair came a wind that bent the weak flame. The negro took the light from the hand of the man who had opened the door, and, pressing past his master, lit three candles in a sconce upon the wall.
"Yo' room's all ready, Marse Duke," he declared. "Dere's candles enough, an' de fire am laid an' yo' bed aired. Ef you wan' some supper, I kin get you bread an' meat, an' de wine was put in yesterday."
Haward nodded, and taking the candle began to mount the stairs. Half way up he found that the man in the sad-colored raiment was following him. He raised his brows, but being in a taciturn humor, and having, moreover, to shield the flame from the wind that drove down the stair, he said nothing, going on in silence to the landing, and to the great eastward-facing room that had been his father's, and which now he meant to make his own. There were candles on the table, the dresser, and the mantelshelf. He lit them all, and the room changed from a place of shadows and monstrous shapes to a gentleman's bedchamber,—somewhat sparsely furnished, but of a comfortable and cheerful aspect. A cloth lay upon the floor, the windows were curtained, and the bed had fresh hangings of green and white Kidderminster. Over the mantel hung a painting of Haward and his mother, done when he was six years old. Beneath the laughing child and the smiling lady, young and flower-crowned, were crossed two ancient swords. In the middle of the room stood a heavy table, and pushed back, as though some one had lately risen from it, was an armchair of Russian leather. Books lay upon the table; one of them open, with a horn snuffbox keeping down the leaf.
Haward seated himself in the great chair, and looked around him with a thoughtful and melancholy smile. He could not clearly remember his mother. The rings upon her fingers and her silvery laughter were all that dwelt in his mind, and now only the sound of that merriment floated back to him and lingered in the room. But his father had died upon that bed, and beside the dead man, between the candles at the head and the candles at the foot, he had sat the night through. The curtains were half drawn, and in their shadow his imagination laid again that cold, inanimate form. Twelve years ago! How young he had been that night, and how old he had thought himself as he watched beside the dead, chilled by the cold of the crossed hands, awed by the silence, half frighted by the shadows on the wall; now filled with natural grief, now with surreptitious and shamefaced thoughts of his changed estate,—yesterday son and dependent, to-day heir and master! Twelve years! The sigh and the smile were not for the dead father, but for his own dead youth, for the unjaded freshness of the morning, for the world that had been, once upon a time.
Turning in his seat, his eyes fell upon the man who had followed him, and who was now standing between the table and the door. "Well, friend?" he demanded.
The man came a step or two nearer. His hat was in his hand, and his body was obsequiously bent, but there was no discomposure in his lifeless voice and manner. "I stayed to explain my presence in the house, sir," he said. "I am a lover of reading, and, knowing my weakness, your overseer, who keeps the keys of the house, has been so good as to let me, from time to time, come here to this room to mingle in more delectable company than I can choose without these walls. Your Honor doubtless remembers yonder goodly assemblage?" He motioned with his hand toward a half-opened door, showing a closet lined with well-filled bookshelves.
"I remember," replied Haward dryly. "So you come to my room alone at night, and occupy yourself in reading? And when you are wearied you refresh yourself with my wine?" As he spoke he clinked together the bottle and glass that stood beside the books.
"I plead guilty to the wine," answered the intruder, as lifelessly as ever, "but it is my only theft. I found the bottle below, and did not think it would be missed. I trust that your Honor does not grudge it to a poor devil who tastes Burgundy somewhat seldomer than does your Worship. And my being in the house is pure innocence. Your overseer knew that I would neither make nor meddle with aught but the books, or he would not have given me the key to the little door, which I now restore to your Honor's keeping." He advanced, and deposited upon the table a large key.
"What is your name?" demanded Haward, leaning back in his chair.
"Bartholomew Paris, sir. I keep the school down by the swamp, where I impart to fifteen or twenty of the youth of these parts the rudiments of the ancient and modern tongues, mathematics, geography, fortifications, navigation, philosophy"—