After leaving Mr. Balliboy’s car and paying his shilling to the guardian of the gate, Mr. Hayhoe stept hurriedly through the lordly grounds and reached the mansion.
He would have preferred to have gone, as Parson Adams would have gone, in another century, to the back door, but as the cloth is supposed to be held in greater honour now than then, Mr. Hayhoe went to the front entrance.
He could not help feeling a little ashamed—for he knew that he was not much to look at—when he pulled the bell-rope, and he was aware that the great door looked contemptuously at him. This door had evidently taken into its oaken heart the spirit of pride, and was become like its owner. Looking at the outer world, as a proud door would look, it seemed to dare with its oaken frown any tramp or poor man—other than my lord’s proper servants—to approach within a hundred paces of its power and might. The appearance of this door proclaimed it to be only the splendid portal that led to grander things within.
“Behind my strength and majesty,” it said, pompously, “the highest gentility in the land have ever lived, secure and safe. The great lord is even now resting upon a golden chair in the throne room, and quaffing wine from a huge goblet. And, if my lord be absent, my lady will still be there, in her best attire.”
The door, having spoken thus, was in no hurry to open. Mr. Hayhoe had already pulled the bell twice, and there had been no response to his ringing.
“To venture at all,” he thought, “into so huge a fastness was bad enough, but to have to pull a great iron bell until your hand hurt, in order to get there, was worse.”
Mr. Hayhoe pulled the bell again.
After waiting for a few more moments, the great door was cautiously opened by inches, for the footman supposed that one of the unwelcome visitors into the gardens had wandered by chance that way to ask for a glass of water.
Perceiving a clergyman, he permitted him, in a manner that suggested a very special favour, to follow where he led, and so guided Mr. Hayhoe to a little room in which Lord Bullman received his tenants or gave orders to his steward. Leaving Mr. Hayhoe there, and without inviting him to sit down—a common politeness that one servant should yield to another—the man withdrew, whistling.
To walk upon thick carpets, which he had been forced to do in order to reach that little room, had always alarmed Mr. Hayhoe. Because his feet made no noise, he might well doubt whether his own presence were there at all, and fear that he might be dreaming. But the little room pleased him better when he reached it than the lordly carpeted chambers through which he had passed. To his humble senses this apartment was more real than the greater and more spacious halls.
“It is evidently,” thought Mr. Hayhoe, “out of consideration to my feelings that my lord has bid his servant to lead me here. He would have been kinder still had he directed all poor clergy to the kitchen.”
Mr. Hayhoe, having nothing else to do—for his presence appeared to be entirely ignored in the great house—began to admire the pictures that were hung in the little room.
In each picture the painter had portrayed the gay doings of the huntsmen and the hounds. In one, the hounds were shown in the final scene of pouncing upon the fox; while, in the next, the grand master of the ceremonies was holding up to the view of all who wished to see the brush of the defeated victim, having just cast the carcass to the dogs. The fine gentleman held a large whip in one hand and the tail in another. A dog looked up at him with holy veneration. In the third picture there was shown a finely attired huntsman, well mounted, whose steed was in the very act and climax of leaping over a five-barred gate.
Mr. Hayhoe shook his head at that picture. All art, he believed, should be inspired by the love of truth, and although he was well aware that the poets lie, he had hoped that painters followed the truth more nearly.
“That fine gentleman in the red coat,” murmured Mr. Hayhoe, as he studied the picture, “should have been portrayed, not flying over a gate, but humbly—though perhaps unsuccessfully—trying to open one. For, alas, the monstrous sin of pride is fed by all untrue representation.”
After looking at the pictures, Mr. Hayhoe took the liberty—an extreme one, it seemed, in that house—of taking a chair, and sitting himself down, he brought out from his pocket a book that he opened at these words: “‘This must be a most inconvenient sitting-room for the evening in summer: the windows are full west.”
Mr. Hayhoe looked at the windows, and shook his head. He thought the room rather pleasant. He read on, and forgot where he was.