He was dressed in light in-door costume, and, in spite of the cold, wore neither top-coat nor gloves. His face had a pallor which would have been extraordinary in anyone, but in a man whose cheek was ordinarily so ruddy and robust as Calbot’s, it was almost ghastly. He said nothing for some moments, but seemed to be struggling with an irrepressible and exaggerated physical tremor, resembling St. Vitus’s dance. I must say that my nerves have never been more severely tried than by this unexpected apparition, in so strange a guise, of a friend whom I had always looked upon as about the most imperturbable and common-sensible one I had. He was a young man, but older than his years, clear-headed, practical, clever, an excellent lawyer, and a fine fellow. Eccentricity of any kind was altogether foreign to his character. Something very unpleasant, I apprehended, must be at the bottom of his present profound and uncontrollable agitation.
Of course I jumped up after the first shock, and shook his hand—which, notwithstanding the cold weather and his own paleness, was dry and hot. I fancied Calbot hardly knew where he was or what he was doing; not that he seemed delirious, but rather overwhelmingly preoccupied about something altogether hateful and ugly.
“What’s the matter, John?” I said, instinctively using a sharp tone, and laying my hand heavily on his shoulder. “Are you ill?” Then a thought struck me, and I added: “Nothing wrong about Miss Burleigh, I hope?”
“Drayton,” said my friend—his utterance was interrupted somewhat by the nervous starts and twitches which still mastered his efforts to control them—“something terrible has happened. I wanted to tell you. I can’t fathom it. Drayton, I’ve seen—— May I take a glass of wine?”
He drank two glasses in quick succession. As he hardly ever touched wine, there was no little significance in the act. The rich old liquor evidently did him good. To tell the truth, I would rather have given him some brandy. He was not in a state to appreciate a fine flavour, and my port was as rare as it was good. However, I was really concerned about him, and would gladly have given the whole decanterful to set him right again.
He would not take a chair, but stood on the rug with his back to the fire. As I sat looking up at his tall figure, I caught the painted eye of my priestly ancestor over his shoulder, and it seemed to me to twinkle with saturnine humour.
“Well, what have you seen, Calbot?”
“Some evil thing has come between Miss Burleigh and me, and has parted us. I have seen it—two or three times. She has felt it. It’s killing her, Drayton. As for me.... You know me pretty well, and you know what my life has been thus far. I’ve not been a good man, of course—quite the contrary; I’ve done any quantity of bad things, but I don’t know that I’ve committed any such hideous sin as ought to bring a punishment like this upon me—not to speak of her! I’m not a parricide, nor an adulterer; I never sold my salvation to the devil—did I, Drayton?”
“No, no, of course not, my dear Calbot. You have a fever, that’s all. Don’t get excited. Just lie down on the sofa for half an hour, and quiet yourself a little.”