"Well, well!" cries he. "You've manners as brief as your memory."
'Twas a vivid recollection that had shorn my manner to the bare. My
uncle had not been quick enough to sweep the lamp from the table: I
remembered this man. 'Twas he who had of that windy night most cruelly
damned me; 'twas he who had struck my uncle.
"I've not forgot you, sir," says I.
He was gray: he was indeed most incredibly gray--gray of hair and eye
and brow and flesh, gray of mood and outlook upon the world, forever
dwelling, as it seemed, in a gray fog of suspicion and irascibility. I
was gone over, from pate to shrinking club-foot, with more intimate
and intelligently curious observation than ever a 'longshore jack or
coast-wise skipper had achieved in the years when I wore rings. Never
before had I suffered a stare more keen and unabashed: 'twas an
assurance stripped of insolence by some tragical need and right. He
sat beyond a broad, littered table, leaning forward upon it, his back
to the riley light, his drawn face nestled within the lean, white
hands of him; and 'twas now a brooding inspection I must bear--an
unself-conscious thing, remote from my feeling, proceeding from eyes
as gray as winter through narrow slits that rapidly snapped shut and
flashed open in spasmodic winking. He was a man of fashion, of
authority, of large affairs, it seemed--a gentleman, according to my
uncle's code and fashion-plates. But he was now by my presence so
wretchedly detached from the great world he moved in that for a moment
I was stirred to pity him. What had this masterful little man, thinks
I, to fear from Dannie Callaway of Twist Tickle?
Enough, as it turned out; but 'twas all an unhappy mystery to me on
that drear, clammy day.
"Come, sir!" says I, in anger. "You've fetched me here?"
He seemed not to hear.
"What you wantin' of me?" I brusquely asked.
"Yes," says he, sighing; "you are here, aren't you?" He fingered the
papers on his table in a way so desultory and weak that once more I
was moved to pity him. Then, with blank eyes, and hopelessly hanging
lip, a lean finger still continuing to rustle the forgotten documents,
he looked out of the window, where 'twas all murky and dismal, harbor
and rocky hill beyond obliterated by the dispiriting fog. "I wish to
warn you," he continued. "You think, perhaps," he demanded, looking
sharply into my eyes, "that you are kin of mine?"
I had no such dreadful fear, and, being an unkind lad, frankly told
him.
"You dream," he pursued, "that you were born to some station?"