Annie began to sniff, and Vassie bade him, in an angry undertone, be quiet. Tom obeyed, but it was an odd quietness as of something waiting its time. Conversation drooped as though a blight had fallen upon it, and once or twice Tom might have been observed to glance towards the window.
"I'll have a drink if I won't eat," he declared at last. "I must drink the young un's health on an occasion like this, after all. Here, mother, fill up."
Killigrew leapt to intercept Annie and fetch her the big cider jug from the dinner-waggon, and giggling like a girl she took it from him and filled the glasses. Some faint return of gaiety, the sense of it being Ishmael's evening, returned, and he sat as they raised glasses to him, in a sudden brightening. As she was tilting hers to her lips, Annie gave a sudden cry, so sharp everyone stopped, glass in hand. A shadow had fallen across the window, barring the flow of the westering light, and towards it Annie was staring. The others followed her gaze.
Bearded, brown, roughly clad in a big coat hunched about his ears, Archelaus stood looking in. He continued to stand, motionless, after he had been seen. Annie cried out again and, almost dropping her tumbler on to the table, rushed from the room, knocking against the door-frame in her blundering way as she went. The others stood bewildered a moment, not taking it in, not recognising the bearded figure that stayed motionless, itself giving no sign of recognition. It was Ishmael, who had not seen his brother since he himself was very little, who yet knew him the first, warned by some instinct. He got up and went out, followed by the others, who all talked at once though he stayed silent.
In the yard Annie was clinging around Archelaus, and the big man suffered it with a better grace than in the old days, though with a careless good-nature. Tom, smiling, stood a little behind the two of them. Not to Archelaus's primitive if cunning mind belonged that scheme for returning the evening of Ishmael's party; it was Tom who for two days had held him in reluctant seclusion at Penzance so as to spring the surprise at the least convenient moment. It was characteristic of Tom to scheme, even when there was nothing to gain by it but a little malicious gratification, as in this case.
Not for nothing, however, had Ishmael been trained as he had, and his voice, so unmistakably that of a gentleman as to strike them with a sense of something alien, came quietly if a little tremulously for the first few words.
"Hullo, Archelaus!" he said, shaking hands before the other's slower wits had decided whether to proffer the salute or no. "Come along in! You're just in time for my supper-party…." No speech could have robbed the conspirators of their little triumph more completely—it offered a welcome as from one who had the best of rights to invite a guest in, and at the same time accepted the place as the home of both. Archelaus stood glowering, thought of nothing to say in reply, and found himself following his young brother into the house.
After that the evening ceased to be Ishmael's and became a background for Archelaus. He had dug for gold in Australia, and if he had not had the luck of many others who had struck richer claims, he yet brought home money to fling round upon his fancies. For years he had wandered over the far places of the earth, so that his skin was tanned darker than his bleached hair, and his limited vocabulary had enriched itself with strange and coloured words. He was indeed a man. Even Ishmael felt that, as he sat in the dim kitchen where they had all gone to see Archelaus eat a vast meal and listen to his talk. Annie was entranced; the rare colour burnt on her cheekbones, her fingers rolled and unrolled her apron ceaselessly; she had relapsed into kitchen ways in a flash and, swathed in sacking, waited on her big son herself. Vassie tilted a superior nose and in the intervals tried to impress Archelaus by the remarkable progress of his family during his absence; but Phoebe, who had planned for Ishmael, fluttered all spontaneously for Archelaus. It seemed to her that he was like a demi-god as he sat there, thrusting the food into his mouth, golden beard dripping with golden cider, careless limbs outflung. Vassie only saw the inelegance, for he was her brother, but to Phoebe his very scorn of dainty ways made him more god-like because more man-like.
When darkness crept over the kitchen so that the hero could no longer be seen properly, Annie went into the parlour and returned carrying the elegant lamp, with its globe of frosted glass, that Vassie, when it was lit, proceeded to cover with a sort of little cape of quilled pink paper edged with flowers made of the same material. The room being thus too dimmed for Annie's fancy, she tilted the shade to one side so that a white fan of light threw itself upon Archelaus, making his tangled beard and crisp hair gleam and showing the warm colour brimming in his face up to the line of white across his untanned brow. So Ishmael saw him as he rose and went out to cool his own heated cheeks upon the cliff, and so he saw him as he lay in bed that night, flaring out in a swimming round of light against the darkness.