A silence fell between the two men. Presently the steward withdrew.
"I'll be seeing after your honour's room," he murmured "and there's others to tell. There's a drop of something left, too, in the cellars, thank God!"
Jocelyn Thew listened to the retreating footsteps and then for a moment pushed open the window. There was the old roar once more, which seemed to have dwelt in his ears; the salt sting, the scream of the pebbles, the cry of a wheeling gull. There was the headland round which he had sailed his yacht, the moorland over which he had wandered with his gun, the meadow round which he had tried the wild young horses. In those few seconds of ecstatic joy, he seemed for the first time to realise all that he had suffered during his long exile.
More and more unreal seemed to grow the world in which Sir Denis Jocelyn Cathley passed that day. Time after time, the great hall in which he had played when a boy, draughty now but still moderately weather-tight, had echoed to the roars of welcome from old associates. But the climax of it all came later on, when he sat at the head of the long, black oak table, presiding over what was surely the strangest feast ever prepared and given to the strangest gathering of guests. The tablecloth of fine linen was patched and mended—here and there still in holes. Some of the dishes were of silver and others of kitchen china. There were knives and forks beautifully shaped and fashioned, mingled with the horn-handled ware of the kitchen; silver plate and common pewter side by side; priceless glass and common tumblers; fragments of beautiful china and here and there white delf, borrowed from a neighbouring farm. The fare was simple but plentiful; the only drink whisky and some ancient Marsala, in dust-covered bottles, produced by Timothy with great pride and served with his own hand. The roar which had greeted the first drinking of Sir Denis' health had scarcely died away when Michael Dilwyn led the way to the final sensation.
"Denis, my boy," he said, "there's a trifle of mystery about you yet. Will you tell me then, why, when I spoke to you at the Savoy Restaurant the other night, you denied your own identity? Told me your name was Thew, or something like it, and I your father's oldest friend, and your own, too!"
A sudden flood of recollection unlocked some of the fears in Denis
Cathley's breast.
"I have not used the name of Cathley for many years," he said. "Was it likely that I should own to it there, in the heart of London, with a price upon my head, and half a dozen people within earshot? I came back to England at the risk of my life, on a special errand. I scarcely dared to hope that I might meet any of you. I just wanted twelve hours here—"
"Stop, lad!" Dilwyn interrupted. "What's that about a price on your head?
You've missed none of our letters, by any chance?"
"Letters?" Sir Denis repeated. "I have had no word from this country, not even from Timothy here, for over three years and a half."
There was a little murmur of wonder. The truth was beginning to dawn upon them.