I was not particularly interested in these details that my landlord had to tell me. Though, after all, there was an indefinable 34 curiosity in my mind regarding everything that concerned Carson Wildred. 34 I got away from the man's animated gossip in the course of half-an-hour or so. I had a walk of a mile to take, having dismissed my fly, and meaning, after I had paid my rather aimless visit, to tramp all the way back to Marlow again. As I started, a clock on the inn table struck four. There was a long streak of gold along the horizon of the otherwise dull grey sky, and a rising wind moaned drearily among the bare lower branches of the trees. The scene looked indescribably desolate, and yet there was a certain beauty in it, too. I had been told exactly how to reach the House by the Lock, and when, after passing the somewhat weedy-looking lock, I began skirting along a species of backwater, and came in sight of a long, low-browed house close to the river, I knew I had reached my journey's end. The place had the appearance of being only a restored remnant of an ancient abbey fallen into decay. 35Indeed, at one end of the house a ruined wall jutted out, with a row of stone window-frames, half filled in with sombre trails of ivy; then in the middle came the habitable part of the old house, with an imposing front door, which might have belonged to some big Gothic Church; magnificent windows, that reminded me of a certain dear old college at Oxford, well-known in younger days; and beyond, to the left, was the wing evidently added by Wildred. It was in wretched taste, I thought, with its pretentiousness and its huge round tower at the end, utterly out of keeping with the rest. Then, as I criticised, my eye was caught by a puff of fiery smoke that suddenly rose above the battlements of the hideous tall tower. 35 I could not quite understand this phenomenon, for the tower, so far as I could see, had been merely built with the mistaken idea of being ornamental. Though new, it was intended to present the effect of being ruinous, having little dark chinks in lieu of windows. Still, the smoke was there, belching out sparks not only from the apex of the tower, 36 but stealing in a belated puff or two from the chinks in the wall nearest the top.
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