And so, at Frederik's frightened demand, "Who came into the room?" the Dead Man stood among his own again. Before him was the nephew he had loved. Nearby were the husband and wife whose follies and harmless affectations he had forgiven with a laugh of amusement, for the sake of their goodness and for the devotion they bore himself. Lounging in the chair that had been his own was the lawyer who had been his dear friend and adviser. The friends he had cared for, the nephew on whom his every hope had been set.
With a wistful half-smile, Peter Grimm surveyed the group.
And, as Marta brought in one lighted lamp and then bustled about lighting another, he stood in clear view of them all. Clad in the same old-fashioned garb with which they were so familiar, he was unchanged, save that all age and all care lines were wiped from his face.
He was not a wraith, no grisly spectre, no half-nebulous Shape. He was Peter Grimm, rugged, homespun, the man whose iron individuality had undergone and could undergo no change.
He stood there in the lamplight, plainly visible—to such as had eyes to see him.
The dog, with that sense which God gives to all animals and withholds from all humans, had had no more difficulty in recognising him than when Peter Grimm had walked the earth in the flesh.
The faculty which makes a sleeping dog awake, raise its head, wag its tail and follow with its eyes the movements of some invisible form that moves from place to place in a room,—which makes a flock of chickens scatter squawking and fluttering when no human being can discern cause for their flight—which makes a horse shy violently when travelling a patch of road, apparently barren of anything to alarm him,—which makes a cat suddenly arch its back and spit and strike at the Unseen, or else rub purringly against an invisible hand—this faculty made Peter Grimm very real to his blear-eyed, asthmatic old collie.
But the inmates of the room, being but human, had seen and heard nothing. Frederik, it is true, being in a constant state of nervous tension that rendered his senses less dense and earthy than usual, had fancied he heard—or felt—some one enter the room. But at the disclaimers of the rest, the notion vanished as such notions do. And the warm flood of lamplight dispelled whatever of the psychic may have brooded over the little group, bringing back their comfortable materialism with a rush.
Wherefore, in his old home and among his own, Peter Grimm stood unseen; that deprecatory half-smile on his square, ageless face.
The lighting of the lamps and Marta's noisy return to her own culinary domain served as signals to break up the group about the desk. Mr. Batholommey crossed the room and took his hat and coat from the rack, passing within a hand's-breadth of the smiling, expectant Peter Grimm as he did so.