Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [653]

Against the uniform sheet of snow and the grayish winter sky the Italian villa loomed up rather grimly; even in summer it kept its distance, and the boldest coleus bed had never ventured nearer than thirty feet from its awful front. Now, as Archer rang the bell, the long tinkle seemed to echo through a mausoleum; and the surprise of the butler who at length responded to the call was as great as though he had been summoned from his final sleep. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 653

Note

The comic deflation — an ‘awful front’ that calls its own boldest flower-bed cowardly, a doorbell that echoes like a mausoleum — does delicate work setting the Skuytercliff tonal register before Ellen’s arrival. The last clause turns the preposterous butler’s ‘final sleep’ into a small gem of deadpan hyperbole.