"A gentleman in distress," I answered piteously, moving my hands across the door. "For God's sake open and let me in. I am hurt, and dying of cold."
"What brings you here?" the voice asked sharply. Despite its tartness, I fancied it was a woman's.
"Heaven knows!" I answered desperately. "I cannot tell. They maltreated me at the inn, and threw me into the street. I crawled away, and have been wandering in the wood for hours. Then I saw a light here."
Thereon, some muttering took place on the other side of the door, to which I had my ear. It ended in the bars being lowered. The door swung partly open and a light shone out, dazzling me. I tried to shade my eyes with my fingers, and as I did so fancied I heard a murmur of pity. But when I looked in under screen of my hand I saw only one person--the man who held the light, and his aspect was so strange, so terrifying, that, shaken as I was by fatigue, I recoiled a step.
He was a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short scanty jacket and well-darned hose. Unable, for some reason, to bend his neck, he carried his head with a strange stiffness.
And that head! Never did living man show a face so like death. His forehead was bald and white, his cheek-bones stood out under the strained skin, all the lower part of his face fell in, his jaws receded, his cheeks were hollow, his lips and chin were thin and fleshless. He seemed to have only one expression--a fixed grin.
While I stood looking at this formidable creature he made a quick motion to shut the door again, smiling more widely. I had the presence of mind to thrust in my foot, and, before he could resent the act, a voice in the background cried: "For shame, Clon! Stand back. Stand back, do you hear? I am afraid, Monsieur, that you are hurt."
The last words were my welcome to that house; and, spoken at an hour and in circumstances so gloomy, they made a lasting impression. Round the hall ran a gallery, and this, the height of the apartment, and the dark panelling seemed to swallow up the light. I stood within the entrance (as it seemed to me) of a huge cave; the skull-headed porter had the air of an ogre. Only the voice which greeted me dispelled the illusion. I turned trembling towards the quarter whence it came, and, shading my eyes, made out a woman's form standing in a doorway under the gallery. A second figure, which I took to be that of the servant I had seen at the inn, loomed uncertainly beside her.
I bowed in silence. My teeth were chattering I was faint without feigning, and felt a kind of terror, hard to explain, at the sound of this woman's voice.
"One of our people has told me about you," she continued, speaking out of the darkness. "I am sorry that this has happened to you here, but I am afraid that you were indiscreet."