“Then I’ll announce you as one of us.”
We joined the Bidding Feast.
I motioned my host to precede me into the midst of the party. Now it so happened that we entered with none to observe us, for this door opened beneath an old musicians’ gallery.
We had no sooner entered this shady spot than I placed my hand on Pendleton’s sleeve and put finger to lips, and stood to take in the scene in silence. The head of a cat, with ears singularly set back, made a rest for the hand at the pillared foot of the winding balustrade to the gallery. It had given me a moment’s shock at first, but now I set my fingers along that smooth nose and peered covertly from the concealment of the little staircase. The Bidding Feast, save for floral and evergreen festoons about the Hall, had all the look of two tables of ordinary auction bridge.
But I hardly did more than give a secret glance at the guests before surveying the extent and features of the Hall itself. Flat-ceilinged, its wooden roof supported by braced thirty-foot timbers, a room regular in its right-angularity, it nevertheless gave the impression of spaciousness. It was two storeys in height, full forty feet in length, and obviously of great age, perhaps a bulwark of war, for its ashlar masonry was undisguised by arras, woodwork, or plaster. Somehow, save for the chimney-piece in the wall beyond which the conservatory lay, a fireplace which was massive without being cumbrous, the appointments of the room seemed to me inept. All the Tudor furniture was gone, and in its stead was a collection of mahogany and walnut pieces from the lion-mask period—and later—looking frail and prettified in that ancient stronghold of defence. The woven-backed chairs, the spindly animal-legs of the tables with their claw-feet, the spider’s web marqueterie decorations, were to my mind strongly out of keeping. The waxed floor was in part covered by old English “Turky” carpets. Altogether a medley of anachronisms was the Hall of the Moth, but its walls a-frown and towering chimney-place lent nevertheless a thrill of antique grandeur.
Two of the eight card-players I recognized, of course, Lord Ludlow and Belvoir, who were opposed to each other at the nearer table, where the deal had just been made. Lord Ludlow, who was facing me, lifted his cards from the table, arching his brows above the pince-nez which now clung to his sharp-wedged nose. Satisfaction gleamed from all quarters of his countenance.
“You haven’t the right kind of face for cards,” I thought; then a notion made me mutter, “Or, I wonder?” The old dissembler!
I was impressed by the vague familiarity of the back of Lord Ludlow’s partner, and guessed her to be the hostess of the Bidding Feast. I had known Alberta Pendleton in the early days, and had seen that stately back preceding me up the aisle at her wedding. It had taken on added dignity, if anything, in the intervening years, and I expected, rightly, that her delicate beauty (Pendleton had been ungodly lucky) would have ripened into greater loveliness.
Belvoir, on her right, was opposite a woman I intuitively knew must be his wife, for she might have been his widow. It was not only that she looked older than she was, and gave that impression, for she was gowned in black relieved by grey, and that her cheek was pale, having a worn softness, or that her composed voice, rather full and sweet, seemed full of twilight memories; she had the half-experienced, half-expectant air which bereft females wear. And indeed I supposed it could hardly be otherwise for her, married as she was to a man who seemed without a trace of colour, without a morsel of flesh to him, or a drop of blood, the acme of innocuousness.