Incredibly woebegone and lonesome the house would have looked even to
one for whom it contained no memories; all the more because in its
utter dereliction it looked so durable. Some of the stucco had fallen
off the walls of the two wings; thick flakes of it lay on the
discoloured roof of the veranda, and thick flakes of it could be seen
lying in the grass below. Otherwise, there were few signs of actual
decay. The sash-window and the French window of each wing were
shuttered, and, from where I was standing, the cream-coloured paint of
those shutters behind the glass looked almost fresh. The latticed
windows between had all been boarded up from within. The house was not
to be let perish soon.
I did not want to go nearer to it; yet I did go nearer, step by step,
across the wilderness, right up to the edge of the veranda itself, and
within a yard of the front-door.
I stood looking at that door. I had never noticed it in the old days,
for then it had always stood open. But it asserted itself now, master
of the threshold.
It was a narrow door--narrow even for its height, which did not exceed
mine by more than two inches or so; a door that even when it was
freshly painted must have looked mean. How much meaner now, with its
paint all faded and mottled, cracked and blistered! It had no knocker,
not even a slit for letters.
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