Having looked at the card, Emily put her first question to the servant.
“Did you tell Mr. Morris what your orders were?” she asked.
“Yes, miss; I said I was to have shown him in, if you had been at home.
Perhaps I did wrong; I told him what you told me when you went out this
morning--I said you had gone to read at the Museum.”
“What makes you think you did wrong?”
“Well, miss, he didn’t say anything, but he looked upset.”
“Do you mean that he looked angry?”
The servant shook her head. “Not exactly angry--puzzled and put out.”
“Did he leave any message?”
“He said he would call later, if you would be so good as to receive
him.”
In half an hour more, Alban and Emily were together again. The light
fell full on her face as she rose to receive him.
“Oh, how you have suffered!”
The words escaped him before he could restrain himself. He looked at her
with the tender sympathy, so precious to women, which she had not seen
in the face of any human creature since the loss of her aunt. Even the
good doctor’s efforts to console her had been efforts of professional
routine--the inevitable result of his life-long familiarity with sorrow
and death. While Alban’s eyes rested on her, Emily felt her tears
rising. In the fear that he might misinterpret her reception of him, she
made an effort to speak with some appearance of composure.
“I lead a lonely life,” she said; “and I can well understand that my
face shows it. You are one of my very few friends, Mr. Morris”--the
tears rose again; it discouraged her to see him standing irresolute,
with his hat in his hand, fearful of intruding on her. “Indeed, indeed,
you are welcome,” she said, very earnestly.
In those sad days her heart was easily touched. She gave him her hand
for the second time. He held it gently for a moment. Every day since
they had parted she had been in his thoughts; she had become dearer to
him than ever. He was too deeply affected to trust himself to answer.
That silence pleaded for him as nothing had pleaded for him yet. In
her secret self she remembered with wonder how she had received his
confession in the school garden. It was a little hard on him, surely, to
have forbidden him even to hope.
Conscious of her own weakness--even while giving way to it--she felt the
necessity of turning his attention from herself. In some confusion, she
pointed to a chair at her side, and spoke of his first visit, when he
had left her letters at the door. Having confided to him all that she
had discovered, and all that she had guessed, on that occasion, it
was by an easy transition that she alluded next to the motive for his
journey to the North.
“I thought it might be suspicion of Mrs. Rook,” she said. “Was I
mistaken?”
“No; you were right.”
“They were serious suspicions, I suppose?”
“Certainly! I should not otherwise have devoted my holiday-time to
clearing them up.”
“May I know what they were?”
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” he began.
“But you would rather not answer my question,” she interposed.
“I would rather hear you tell me if you have made any other guess.”
“One more, Mr. Morris. I guessed that you had become acquainted with Sir
Jervis Redwood.”
“For the second time, Miss Emily, you have arrived at a sound
conclusion. My one hope of finding opportunities for observing Sir
Jervis’s housekeeper depended on my chance of gaining admission to Sir
Jervis’s house.”
“How did you succeed? Perhaps you provided yourself with a letter of
introduction?”
“I knew nobody who could introduce me,” Alban replied. “As the event
proved, a letter would have been needless. Sir Jervis introduced
himself--and, more wonderful still, he invited me to his house at our
first interview.”
“Sir Jervis introduced himself?” Emily repeated, in amazement. “From
Cecilia’s description of him, I should have thought he was the last
person in the world to do that!”
Alban smiled. “And you would like to know how it happened?” he
suggested.
“The very favor I was going to ask of you,” she replied.
Instead of at once complying with her wishes, he paused--hesitated--and
made a strange request. “Will you forgive my rudeness, if I ask leave to
walk up and down the room while I talk? I am a restless man. Walking up
and down helps me to express myself freely.”
Her face brightened for the first time. “How like You that is!” she
exclaimed.
Alban looked at her with surprise and delight. She had betrayed an
interest in studying his character, which he appreciated at its full
value. “I should never have dared to hope,” he said, “that you knew me
so well already.”
“You are forgetting your story,” she reminded him.
He moved to the opposite side of the room, where there were fewer
impediments in the shape of furniture. With his head down, and his hands
crossed behind him, he paced to and fro. Habit made him express himself
in his usual quaint way--but he became embarrassed as he went on. Was he
disturbed by his recollections? or by the fear of taking Emily into his
confidence too freely?
“Different people have different ways of telling a story,” he said.
“Mine is the methodical way--I begin at the beginning. We will start, if
you please, in the railway--we will proceed in a one-horse chaise--and
we will stop at a village, situated in a hole. It was the nearest place
to Sir Jervis’s house, and it was therefore my destination. I picked out
the biggest of the cottages--I mean the huts--and asked the woman at
the door if she had a bed to let. She evidently thought me either mad
or drunk. I wasted no time in persuasion; the right person to plead my
cause was asleep in her arms. I began by admiring the baby; and I ended
by taking the baby’s portrait. From that moment I became a member of the
family--the member who had his own way. Besides the room occupied by
the husband and wife, there was a sort of kennel in which the husband’s
brother slept. He was dismissed (with five shillings of mine to comfort
him) to find shelter somewhere else; and I was promoted to the vacant
place. It is my misfortune to be tall. When I went to bed, I slept with
my head on the pillow, and my feet out of the window. Very cool and
pleasant in summer weather. The next morning, I set my trap for Sir
Jervis.”
“Your trap?” Emily repeated, wondering what he meant.
“I went out to sketch from Nature,” Alban continued. “Can anybody (with
or without a title, I don’t care), living in a lonely country house, see
a stranger hard at work with a color-box and brushes, and not stop to
look at what he is doing? Three days passed, and nothing happened. I was
quite patient; the grand open country all round me offered lessons of
inestimable value in what we call aerial perspective. On the fourth
day, I was absorbed over the hardest of all hard tasks in landscape
art, studying the clouds straight from Nature. The magnificent moorland
silence was suddenly profaned by a man’s voice, speaking (or rather
croaking) behind me. ‘The worst curse of human life,’ the voice said,
‘is the detestable necessity of taking exercise. I hate losing my time;
I hate fine scenery; I hate fresh air; I hate a pony. Go on, you brute!’
Being too deeply engaged with the clouds to look round, I had supposed
this pretty speech to be addressed to some second person. Nothing of the
sort; the croaking voice had a habit of speaking to itself. In a minute
more, there came within my range of view a solitary old man, mounted on
a rough pony.”
“Was it Sir Jervis?”
Alban hesitated.
“It looked more like the popular notion of the devil,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Morris!”
“I give you my first impression, Miss Emily, for what it is worth. He
had his high-peaked hat in his hand, to keep his head cool. His wiry
iron-gray hair looked like hair standing on end; his bushy eyebrows
curled upward toward his narrow temples; his horrid old globular eyes
stared with a wicked brightness; his pointed beard hid his chin; he
was covered from his throat to his ankles in a loose black garment,
something between a coat and a cloak; and, to complete him, he had a
club foot. I don’t doubt that Sir Jervis Redwood is the earthly alias
which he finds convenient--but I stick to that first impression which
appeared to surprise you. ‘Ha! an artist; you seem to be the sort of man
I want!’ In those terms he introduced himself. Observe, if you please,
that my trap caught him the moment he came my way. Who wouldn’t be an
artist?”
“Did he take a liking to you?” Emily inquired.
“Not he! I don’t believe he ever took a liking to anybody in his life.”
“Then how did you get your invitation to his house?”
“That’s the amusing part of it, Miss Emily. Give me a little breathing
time, and you shall hear.”