The House in the Mist | Page 3

up
every interval of silence. By this clock it was just ten minutes to eight
when two gentlemen (I should say men, and coarse men at that) crossed
the open threshold and entered the house.
Their appearance was more or less noteworthy--unpleasantly so, I am
obliged to add. One was red-faced and obese, the other was tall, thin
and wiry and showed as many seams in his face as a blighted apple.
Neither of the two had anything to recommend him either in
appearance or address, save a certain veneer of polite assumption as
transparent as it was offensive. As I listened to the forced sallies of the
one and the hollow laugh of the other, I was glad that I was large of
frame and strong of arm and used to all kinds of men and--brutes.
As these two new-comers seemed no more astonished at my presence
than the man I had met at the gate, I checked the question which
instinctively rose to my lips and with a simple bow,--responded to by a
more or less familiar nod from either,--accepted the situation with all
the sang-froid the occasion seemed to demand. Perhaps this was wise,
perhaps it was not; there was little opportunity to judge, for the start
they both gave as they encountered the eyes of the picture before
mentioned drew my attention to a consideration of the different ways in
which men, however similar in other respects, express sudden and
unlooked-for emotion. The big man simply allowed his astonishment,
dread, or whatever the feeling was which moved him, to ooze forth in a
cold and deathly perspiration which robbed his cheeks of color and cast
a bluish shadow over his narrow and retreating temples; while the thin
and waspish man, caught in the same trap (for trap I saw it was),
shouted aloud in his ill-timed mirth, the false and cruel character of

which would have made me shudder, if all expression of feeling on my
part had not been held in check by the interest I immediately
experienced in the display of open bravado with which, in another
moment, these two tried to carry off their mutual embarrassment.
"Good likeness, eh?" laughed the seamy-faced man. "Quite an idea,
that! Makes him one of us again! Well, he's welcome--in oils. Can't say
much to us from canvas, eh?" And the rafters above him vibrated, as
his violent efforts at joviality went up in loud and louder assertion from
his thin throat.
A nudge from the other's elbow stopped him and I saw them both cast
half-lowering, half-inquisitive glances in my direction.
"One of the Witherspoon boys?" queried one.
"Perhaps," snarled the other. "I never saw but one of them. There are
five, aren't there? Eustace believed in marrying off his gals young."
"Damn him, yes. And he'd have married them off younger if he had
known how numbers were going to count some day among the
Westonhaughs." And he laughed again in a way I should certainly have
felt it my business to resent, if my indignation as well as the ill-timed
allusions which had called it forth had not been put to an end by a fresh
arrival through the veiling mist which hung like a shroud at the
doorway.
This time it was for me to experience a shock of something like fear.
Yet the personage who called up this unlooked-for sensation in my
naturally hardy nature was old and, to all appearance, harmless from
disability, if not from good will. His form was bent over upon itself like
a bow; and only from the glances he shot from his upturned eyes was
the fact made evident that a redoubtable nature, full of force and
malignity, had just brought its quota of evil into a room already
overflowing with dangerous and menacing passions.
As this old wretch, either from the feebleness of age or from the
infirmity I have mentioned, had great difficulty in walking, he had

brought with him a small boy, whose business it was to direct his
tottering steps as best he could.
But once settled in his chair, he drove away this boy with his pointed
oak stick, and with some harsh words about caring for the horse and
being on time in the morning, he sent him out into the mist. As this
little shivering and pathetic figure vanished, the old man drew, with
gasp and haw, a number of deep breaths which shook his bent back and
did their share, no doubt, in restoring his own disturbed circulation.
Then, with a sinister twist which brought his pointed chin and
twinkling eyes again into view, he remarked:
"Haven't ye a word for kinsman Luke, you two? It isn't often I get out
among ye. Shakee, nephew! Shakee, Hector! And now who's