“I cannot tell who it is,” said the workman; “it is some one who has come into my house without taking the trouble to notice me. I presume therefore that it must be what is called a gentleman.”
The sound of the man’s voice was so pleasant that Sir William did not at first realise the offence in it; and at that moment he was too much absorbed in watching the changes of his son’s countenance to think of anything else.
Paul emerged from the shadow of the staircase, which was like a ladder, his face full of amusement and brightness, entirely at his ease, and familiar with all about him. His hat was on and his coat was off, but that evidently made no difference; neither did he cease to dry his hands with the towel as he came leisurely down stairs. It was clear that he expected no one whose appearance could require any more regard to the decorum of formal life.
When he first caught sight of his father a cloud came over him. Sir William’s face was not visible, but Sir William’s figure and voice were scarcely to be mistaken. The father looked on while the first shadow of fear came over his son’s face; then saw it lighten with a desperate effort not to believe what was too apparent; then darken suddenly and completely with the sense of discovery and of the fate which had overtaken him. To see your child’s bright countenance cloud over at the sight of you, to see the struggle of hope that this may not be you, and despair to find that it is you, what mortal parent can bear this unmoved? It would have half killed Lady Markham.
Sir William was of tougher stuff, and less entirely moved by the affections; but yet he felt it. He saw the same line come into his son’s forehead which all the family knew so well in his own, and that expression of angry displeasure, impatience and gloom, came over his face. This made him too angry, in spite of himself. He said, harshly—
“Yes, Paul, it is I. I am the last person you expected, or evidently wished to see here.”
Paul came down the remaining steps, the very sound of his foot changing; he threw away his towel and took off his hat, and assumed an air of punctilious politeness.
“I do not deny that I am much surprised to see you, sir,” he said, darting a glance aside of annoyed reproach at Fairfax. He had flushed a gloomy red, of shame and annoyance, feeling his very shirt-sleeves to be evidence against him—and looked round for his coat with an inclination to be angry with everybody.
“I had just gone to wash my hands after my work,” he said, with a confused apology. Confronted thus suddenly with his father in all the solemnity of authority and parental displeasure, how could he help feeling himself at a disadvantage? He forgot everything but that his father had found him in circumstances which to him would seem equivocal, perhaps disgraceful; but he was not allowed to forget.
“If you require to apologise, Markham, for being found in my shop or my house, you had better not return here,” said the master of the place, eyeing him over his shoulder from his bench, “any more.”