The dark man had risen now and stood waiting quietly for them to join him by the fire. He was a handsome fellow of perhaps thirty-five, though he may have been older, thin perhaps from the hardships of war. And in the olive skin were set the strangest pair of gray eyes, which looked on now with an expression of mild amusement. They were eyes which fascinated you, which you were certain had the power of seeing things which other eyes had not.
“Richard,” said Ellen, “this is my brother Fergus ... Mr. Callendar.”
Her voice trembled a little with excitement. It may have been that this was the moment for which she had returned. She had them together now, with her, in the very same room, the two men—indeed, the two persons—whom she cherished above all others in the world. She had not been, after all, too late.
It must have been clear to Fergus, even in the disappointment of the moment, that he had stumbled awkwardly into the midst of some queer situation. He understood now why she had sent Augustine off to bed. It explained too the excitement of her manner and the sudden falling away of the reserve which she had always held before her as a warrior his shield. She still blushed, and she lighted a cigarette with a comically obvious air of covering her confusion. It was amazing to find in this woman who was by nature so self-possessed, so cold, a sudden air of school girl coquetry. This was an Ellen whom her brother had never seen, whom perhaps no one had seen until now.
And the stranger? He still stood with his feet well apart, finishing the last of his Chartreuse, balancing himself lightly on his toes, quite calm and smiling a little in a fashion that would have been warm and friendly save for the expression in the gray eyes. In their obscure, blank depths, there lay something sinister ... “catlike” was the word. They were eyes like those of a cat, proud, sensual, indifferent, aloof, and incapable of smiling.
They sat down and for a moment Fergus was tempted to blurt out sharply that he had spied upon them unwittingly, that he knew exactly the mood into which he had blundered so clumsily. It would perhaps have shattered the tension and cleared the air, reducing them to a common ground of meeting upon which they might laugh and talk like old friends. It did not occur to him that Callendar might be his sister’s lover because, in spite even of her blushes and confusion, he knew that such a thing was impossible. Besides, their manner toward each other was not that of lovers; it lacked the hidden intimacies which come of only one experience. They were a little formal, a little strange. The flame that leapt between them was not quite clear and white and unhindered; there were obstructions, misunderstandings. It was a complicated relationship, one could see at a glance, and a little ridiculous. Even Callendar, so clearly a man of the world, so clearly a man who was neither an innocent nor a yokel, was not at his ease.
“Mr. Callendar,” said Ellen, “is an old friend of mine. Until the other day I had not seen him for years.”
But for Fergus this could have been no explanation. It told nothing of all that passed in those missing years, nothing of the intriguing of old Thérèse, nothing of the slow passion, fed upon absence and memories that instead of dying had, as Thérèse knew, gained strength. It revealed nothing of all the forces, conscious or blundering and obscure, which had been at work weaving the slow web that was now near to its end. Fergus alone guessed how nearly it was finished. It came to him in a return of that sudden flight of clairvoyance which had seized him in the dark street outside the door. He understood with an unearthly certainty that this was the man whom fate (that nonsensical force) had marked for his sister. This was the man destined to know all the tempestuous sweep of her fierce energy, her vast capacity for devotion, all the forces that until now had lain buried and dormant. This perilous man ... (It was strange that strong women were likely to be unhappy in love, to make so often a choice which all the world, even the stupidest fellow, could have told her was wrong.)
It was this current of thought which ran beneath the surface of all their polite conversation, made so scrupulously, with such labor in defiance of that strain which none—not even Callendar, who perhaps chose to make no such effort—could dissipate. For Ellen’s moment had passed swiftly as such moments, awaited so long, are likely to pass. There had been a quick flare of delight in the possession of them both and then this confused disappointment and sense of ill-ease clouding everything.
The tension lessened a little when Fergus, seeking in his amiable way one subject after another to pierce the indifference of the stranger, stumbled upon Loos and Amiens which Callendar knew as thoroughly from the ground as Fergus knew them from the air. But this led to nothing because it was now Ellen who found herself thrust outside the pale and left to grow sulky while they talked of this sector and of that one, each discovering with a swift heightening of interest that they had taken part in the same drive.