midnight
To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation ; to cross the silent hall , to ascend the darksome staircase , to seek my own lonely little room , and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax , and spend the long winter evening with her , and her only , was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk , -- to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence ; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating . What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life , and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined ! Yes , just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a `` too easy chair '' to take a long walk : and just as natural was the wish to stir , under my circumstances , as it would be under his . I lingered at the gates ; I lingered on the lawn ; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement ; the shutters of the glass door were closed ; I could not see into the interior ; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house -- from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells , as it appeared to me -- to that sky expanded before me , -- a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud ; the moon ascending it in solemn march ; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops , from behind which she had come , far and farther below her , and aspired to the zenith , midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance ; and for those trembling stars that followed her course ; they made my heart tremble , my veins glow when I viewed them . Little things recall us to earth ; the clock struck in the hall ; that sufficed ; I turned from moon and stars , opened a side - door , and went in . The hall was not dark , nor yet was it lit , only by the high-hung bronze lamp ; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak staircase . This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room , whose two - leaved door stood open , and showed a genial fire in the grate , glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons , and revealing purple draperies and polished furniture , in the most pleasant radiance .