Then he fell to a little gravity.
“By the way,” he said, “Sant hasn’t come home yet, and they don’t expect him at the rectory till this afternoon.”
It was the first little damper on my serenity.
“O, well!” I said, with a sigh; “we shall be out for the day anyhow; and it don’t make much difference if we can only get hold of him this evening. You saw Rampick last night?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Bother Rampick for this day at least!”
We ran up in good spirits to Joshua, and in a little while were launched upon our explorations. Our odd dry old companion was quite excited, too, in his way. It was the most novel, most wonderful experience to him, I think, thus to chaperon a couple of lively lads, and be their favoured charge and mentor in one. He kept himself acrid and reserved—it was the habit of his life; but a certain glistening in his pale eyes, a spot of colour that established itself in his lean cheek, spoke of some spark reawakening in those long-chilled ashes of his soul underneath. There was even some glow of self-marvelling enthusiasm in that haunting gaze of his, of which I found myself from time to time the cynosure. It was like the glare of a remorseful ghost coveting recognition in heaven’s nursery by its own child’s happy spirit. “What human sympathy have I foregone and realized too late!” it seemed to express.
We betook ourselves in the first place—by Joshua’s rather insistent wish, but, secretly, against our own—to the ruins, and for an hour poked about among them wearily, loitering after our guest, and supplying, scarcely volunteering, all that of their history with which we were acquainted—impersonally, that is to say. The truth is, the place had become odious to us—as full of sordid significances as is a house in which a murder has been committed, when we know ourselves subpoena’d to give evidence on the crime. But naturally our companion felt none of this, and was only absorbed and interested, so far as appeared, in the archaeological testimony. Once, at the end, he paused, as fatality would have it, close by the plinth and the encumbered thicket. I glanced at Harry. A second time, patiently and scrupulously, had the hole been stopped, and the traces of our visit effaced.
What did the man mean? Did he, in his diseased imagination, think thus to convince us in the face of our actual experience? It was like enough. His unnerving dreams are so real to the drunkard, he cannot but think that others must see what he sees and be blind to what he has successfully hidden from himself. He is like the ostrich in his amazing digestion of both facts and fables, Whether he puts fire in his stomach or his head in the sand, he is equally the confident and incurable dupe of his own imagination.
Suddenly Joshua, after a prolonged reverie, half turned to us.
“Are there any legends of crypts, underground vaults, anything that we have not seen about here?” he demanded.