Having straightway delivered his lordship’s message, Mrs Courthope, wondering a little thereat, proceeded to show him those portions of the house set apart for the servants. He followed her from floor to floor—last to the upper regions, and through all the confused rambling roofs of the old pile, now descending a sudden steep-yawning stair, now ascending another where none could have been supposed to exist—oppressed all the time with a sense of the multitudinous and intricate, such as he had never before experienced, and such as perhaps only the works of man can produce, the intricacy and variety of those of nature being ever veiled in the grand simplicity which springs from primal unity of purpose.
I find no part of an ancient house so full of interest as the garret region. It has all the mystery of the dungeon-cellars with a far more striking variety of form, and a bewildering curiosity of adaptation, the peculiarities of roof-shapes and the consequent complexities of their relations and junctures being so much greater than those of foundation-plans. Then the sense of lofty loneliness in the deeps of air, and at the same time of proximity to things aerial—doves and martins, vanes and gilded balls and lightning-conductors, the waves of the sea of wind, breaking on the chimneys for rocks, and the crashing roll of the thunder—is in harmony with the highest spiritual instincts; while the clouds and the stars look, if not nearer, yet more germane, and the moon gazes down on the lonely dweller in uplifted places, as if she had secrets with such. The cellars are the metaphysics, the garrets the poetry of the house.
Mrs Courthope was more than kind, for she was greatly pleased at having Malcolm for an inmate. She led him from room to room, suggesting now and then a choice, and listening amusedly to his remarks of liking or disliking, and his marvel at strangeness or extent. At last he found himself following her along the passage in which was the mysterious door, but she never stayed her step, or seemed to intend showing one of the many rooms opening upon it.
“Sic a bee’s-byke o’ rooms!” said Malcolm, making a halt. “Wha sleeps here?”
“Nobody has slept in one of these rooms for I dare not say how many years,” replied Mrs Courthope, without stopping; and as she spoke she passed the fearful door.
“I wad like to see intill this room,” said Malcolm.
“That door is never opened,” answered Mrs Courthope, who had now reached the end of the passage, and turned, lingering as in act while she spoke to move on.
“And what for that?” asked Malcolm, continuing to stand before it.
“I would rather not answer you just here. Come along. This is not a part of the house where you would like to be, I am sure.”
“Hoo ken ye that, mem? An’ hoo can I say mysel’ afore ye hae shawn me what the room ’s like? It may be the verra place to tak my fancy. Jist open the door, mem, gien ye please, an lat’s hae a keek intill ’t.”