What did Pearson mean? What was the matter? He had said it over and over again, and then had sunk into a hopelessly bewildered mood, and had sat huddled in his dressing-gown staring at the fire.Pearson had been so harrowed by the situation that it had been his own idea to suggest to his master that all possible requirements should be provided.There were occasions when it appeared that the cloud over him lifted for a passing moment, and a gleam of light recalled to him some familiar usage of his past.When he had finished dressing, Pearson had been almost startled by the amount of effect produced by the straight, correctly cut lines of black and white.The mere change of clothes had suddenly changed the man himself--had "done something to him," Pearson put it.After his first glance at the mirror he had straightened himself, as if recognizing the fault of his own carriage.
When he crossed the room it was with the action of a man who has been trained to move well.The good looks, which had been almost hidden behind a veil of uncertainty of expression and strained fearfulness, became obvious.He was tall, and his lean limbs were splendidly hung together.His head was perfectly set, and the bearing of his square shoulders was a soldierly thing.It was an extraordinarily handsome man Tembarom and Pearson found themselves gazing at.Each glanced involuntarily at the other.
"Now that's first-rate! I'm glad you feel like coming," Tembarom plunged in.He didn't intend to give him too much time to think.
"Thank you.It will be a change, as you said," Strangeways answered.
"One needs change."
His deep eyes looked somewhat deeper than usual, but his manner was that of any well-bred man doing an accustomed thing.If he had been an ordinary guest in the house, and his host had dropped into his room, he would have comported himself in exactly the same way.
They went together down the corridor as if they had passed down it together a dozen times before.On the stairway Strangeways looked at the tapestries with the interest of a familiarized intelligence.
"It is a beautiful old place," he said, as they crossed the hall.
"That armor was worn by a crusader." He hesitated a moment when they entered the library, but it was only for a moment.He went to the hearth and took the chair his host offered him, and, lighting a cigar, sat smoking it.If T.Tembarom had chanced to be a man of an analytical or metaphysical order of intellect he would have found, during the past month, many things to lead him far in mental argument concerning the weird wonder of the human mind--of its power where its possessor, the body, is concerned, its sometime closeness to the surface of sentient being, its sometime remoteness.He would have known--awed, marveling at the blackness of the pit into which it can descend--the unknown shades that may enfold it and imprison its gropings.The old Duke of Stone had sat and pondered many an hour over stories his favorite companion had related to him.What curious and subtle processes had the queer fellow not been watching in the closely guarded quiet of the room where the stranger had spent his days; the strange thing cowering in its darkness; the ray of light piercing the cloud one day and seeming lost again the next; the struggles the imprisoned thing made to come forth-- to cry out that it was but immured, not wholly conquered, and that some hour would arrive when it would fight its way through at last.Tembarom had not entered into psychological research.He had been entirely uncomplex in his attitude, sitting down before his problem as a besieger might have sat down before a castle.The duke had sometimes wondered whether it was not a good enough thing that he had been so simple about it, merely continuing to believe the best with an unswerving obstinacy and lending a hand when he could.A never flagging sympathy had kept him singularly alive to every chance, and now and then he had illuminations which would have done credit to a cleverer man, and which the duke had rubbed his hands over in half-amused, half- touched elation.How he had kept his head level and held to his purpose!
T.Tembarom talked but little as he sat in his big chair and smoked.
Best let him alone and give him time to get used to the newness, he thought.Nothing must happen that could give him a jolt.Let things sort of sink into him, and perhaps they'd set him to thinking and lead him somewhere.Strangeways himself evidently did not want talk.He never wanted it unless he was excited.He was not excited now, and had settled down as if he was comfortable.Having finished one cigar he took another, and began to smoke it much more slowly than he had smoked his first.The slowness began to arrest Tembarom's attention.
This was the smoking of a man who was either growing sleepy or sinking into deep thought, becoming oblivious to what he was doing.Sometimes he held the cigar absently between his strong, fine fingers, seeming to forget it.Tembarom watched him do this until he saw it go out, and its white ash drop on the rug at his feet.He did not notice it, but sat sinking deeper and deeper into his own being, growing more remote.
What was going on under his absorbed stillness? Tembarom would not have moved or spoken "for a block of Fifth Avenue," he said internally.The dark eyes seemed to become darker until there was only a pin's point of light to be seen in their pupils.It was as if he were looking at something at a distance--at a strangely long distance.
Twice he turned his head and appeared to look slowly round the room, but not as normal people look-- as if it also was at the strange, long distance from him, and he were somewhere outside its walls.It was an uncanny thing to be a spectator to.
"How dead still the room is!" Tembarom found himself thinking.
It was "dead still." And it was a queer deal sitting, not daring to move--just watching.Something was bound to happen, sure! What was it going to be?
Strangeways' cigar dropped from his fingers and appeared to rouse him.