The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton | Page 4

of childish bravado, in sitting there puffing
my cigarette-smoke into the face of such a past.
I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol--I was new to Brittany, and
Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day before--but
one couldn't as much as glance at that pile without feeling in it a long
accumulation of history. What kind of history I was not prepared to
guess: perhaps only the sheer weight of many associated lives and
deaths which gives a kind of majesty to all old houses. But the aspect
of Kerfol suggested something more--a perspective of stern and cruel
memories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of
darkness.
Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with
the present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to the
sky, it might have been its own funeral monument. "Tombs in the
chapel? The whole place is a tomb!" I reflected. I hoped more and more

that the guardian would not come. The details of the place, however
striking, would seem trivial compared with its collective
impressiveness; and I wanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the
weight of its silence.
"It's the very place for you!" Lanrivain had said; and I was overcome
by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being
that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible that any one could
NOT see--?" I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was
undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning
to want to know more; not to SEE more--I was by now so sure it was
not a question of seeing-- but to feel more: feel all the place had to
communicate. "But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper," I
thought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge and tried
the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the tunnel formed by the
thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther end, a wooden
barricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it I saw a court
enclosed in noble architecture. The main building faced me; and I now
discovered that one half was a mere ruined front, with gaping windows
through which the wild growths of the moat and the trees of the park
were visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. One
end abutted on the round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel,
and in an angle of the building stood a graceful well-head adorned with
mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper
window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias.
My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my
architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a desire to
explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court, wondering in
which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrier and
went in. As I did so, a little dog barred my way. He was such a
remarkably beautiful little dog that for a moment he made me forget the
splendid place he was defending. I was not sure of his breed at the time,
but have since learned that it was Chinese, and that he was of a rare
variety called the "Sleeve-dog." He was very small and golden brown,
with large brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked rather like a large
tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: "These little beasts always

snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute."
The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing: there
was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came no
nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed that
another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up. "There'll be
a hubbub now," I thought; for at the same moment a third dog, a
long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the
others. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound
came from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled
paws, still watching me. "At a given point, they'll all charge at my
ankles: it's one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up on
one," I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither large nor
formidable. But they let me wander about the court as I pleased,
following me at a little distance--always the same distance--and always
keeping their eyes on me. Presently I looked across at the ruined facade,
and saw that in one