Alice thought of his safety. And she suggested that they might as well go into the shop. As they entered, she noted that there was a fire and the same preparations for tea he had made the day before.
He took her jacket, made her comfortable, prepared the tea and served her. Alice, with a sense of relief that was like happiness, leaned back in her chair and watched him admiringly. She had never known a man to be so deft, and gazing at his hands she noticed that, though the skin was hard and rough and they must have done the work of a labourer, they were the long, sensitive, slender hands of the sculptor or musician—probably the latter. And suddenly her lips puckered in an involuntary smile.
“What pleases you, if I may ask?” he said wonderingly. He himself was very serious,—sad, almost. There was no hint now of the whimsicality that made him so young—nor of the youthful impulsiveness with which he had met her to-day.
Alice looked into his eyes ingenuously. “I wouldn’t dare tell anyone else of the thought that came to me and made me smile,” she declared. “They would mob me, I am quite sure. You see everyone in this village—or everyone I happen to know—is simply mad about Reuben Cartwright. Honestly, I believe they consider him perfect—incapable of doing anything that’s not exactly the right thing. And I have heard so much raving about him that I believe I am catching the madness, or whatever you call it. Just now as you were handling the cups so skilfully it came suddenly to me that your hands were like Reuben’s—and mind you, I never saw the boy!”
He did not smile. He only looked at her curiously. Then he sat down opposite her.
“It wouldn’t be strange if they were alike,” he said quietly. “It’s odd, but you have led up to the explanation I was about to make. I feel, Miss Lorraine, that I owe it to you to tell you who I really am. You trusted me without a shred of evidence of my integrity, and you granted my wish for secrecy. I ought to have told you, anyhow. But having lost my temper and made shockingly uncivil remarks to you, I cannot do otherwise. The reason I fired up when you were ready to believe ill—the worst—of Dick Cartwright is the same reason that Reuben Cartwright’s hands and mine may look alike, though I trust his aren’t so calloused and generally bunged up. I am Reuben Cartwright’s father.”
It wasn’t, of course, the same shock to Alice Lorraine the announcement would have been to one who had known Richard Cartwright or his son Reuben. But the girl paled.
“But I thought he was dead—you, I mean,” she said so naively that he smiled.
“I may be lean and lank, but I am a right husky ghost for all that,” he said. Then he grew serious. “You were right in thinking so. I wanted everyone to believe me dead, and now I feel the same, except for you. It wasn’t only because I wouldn’t seem so rude if you understood that I wanted you to know, Miss Lorraine; but you seemed to think I was such a bad lot that I wanted you to know the truth. Not that I wasn’t a bad lot, you know, only I wasn’t quite such a scoundrel as you apparently think. Do you mind telling me just what impression Mr. Langley gave you of me? I believe under the circumstances you have the right to speak freely.”
Alice complied briefly. Cartwright wiped his brow more than once.