The Great House

by Stanley John Weyman

It was no pleasant task. If he swerved from his course he stumbled over roots, branches swept his cheek, jagged points threatened his eyes, and more than once he found himself in the hedge. Half-way through the wood he came to a circular clearing, some twenty yards across; and here a glimmer of light enabled him to avoid the crumbling stone Butterfly that crouched on its mouldering base in the centre of the clearing—much as a spider crouches in its web. It seemed in that dim light to be the demon of this underworld, a monster, a thing of evil.

The same gleam, however, disclosed the opposite opening, and for another seventy yards he groped his way onward, longing to be clear of the stifling air, and the brooding fancies that dwelt in it, longing to plant his feet on something more solid than this carpet of rotting yew. At last he came to the tall, strait gate, wrought of old iron, that admitted to the pleasance. It was ajar. He passed through it, and with relief he felt the hard walk under his feet, the fresh air on his face. He crossed the walk, and stepping on to the neglected lawn, he halted.

The Great House loomed before him, a hundred yards away. The moon had not risen, but the brightness which goes before its rising lightened the sky behind the monstrous building. It outlined the roof but left the bulk in gloom. No light showed in any part, and it was only the watcher’s memory that pictured the quaint casements of the north wing, or filled in the bald rows of unglazed windows, which made of the new portion a death-mask. In that north wing just eighty years before, in a room hung with old Cordovan leather, the fatal house-warming had been held. The duel had been fought at sunrise within a pace or two of the moss-grown Butterfly that Basset had passed; and through the gate of ironwork, wood-smelted and wrought with the arms of Audley, which had opened at his touch, they had carried the dead heir back to his father. Tradition had it that the servant who bore in the old lord’s morning draught of cool ale had borne also the tragic news to his bedside.

Basset remembered that the hinges of the gate, seldom as it was used, had not creaked, and he felt sure that he was on the right track. He scanned the dark house, and tried to sift from the soughing of the wind any sound that might inform him.

Presently he moved forward and scrutinized with care the north wing, which abutted on the yew-wood. There lay between the two only a strip of formal garden, once set with rows of birds and beasts cut in yew. Time had turned these to monsters, huge, amorphous, menacing, amidst which rank grass rioted and elder pushed. Even in daylight it seemed as if the ancient trees stretched out arms to embrace and strangle the deserted house.

But the north wing remained as dark as the bulk of the house, and Basset uttered a sigh of relief. Ill-humor began to take the place of misgiving. He called himself a fool for his pains and anticipated with distaste a return through the yew-walk. However, the sooner he undertook the passage the sooner it would be over, and he was turning on his heel when somewhere between him and the old wing a stick snapped.

Under a foot, he fancied; and he waited. In two or three minutes the moon would rise.

Again he caught a faint sound. It resembled the stealthy tread of some one approaching from the north wing, and Basset, peering that way, was striving to probe the darkness, when a gleam of light shot across his eyes. He turned and saw in the main building a bright spark. It vanished. He waited to see it again, and while he waited a second stick snapped. This time the sound was behind him, and near the iron gate.

He had been outflanked, and he had now to choose which he would stalk, the footstep or the light. He chose the latter, the rather as while he stood with his eyes fixed on the house the upper edge of a rising moon peeped above the roof.

He stepped back to the gate, and in the shadow of the trees he waited. Two or three minutes passed. The moon rose clear of the roof, outlining the stately chimneys and gables and flooding with cold light the lower part of the lawn. With the rising of the moon the air grew more chilly. He shivered.