Three steps carried me across the lobby to a curtained doorway by which the servant was waiting. I saw that the "shakes" were upon him again. His impatience was so ill concealed that I was not surprised--though I was taken aback--when he dropped the mask altogether, and as I passed him--it being now too late for me to retreat undiscovered, if the room were occupied--laid a trembling hand upon my arm and thrust his face close to mine. "Ask how he is! Say anything," he whispered, trembling, "no matter what, sir! Only, for the love of Heaven, stay five minutes!"
He gave me a gentle push forward as he spoke--pleasant, all this!--and announced in a loud, quavering voice, "Mr. George!" which was true enough. I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that something in the room, a long, dimly lighted room, fell with a brisk, rattling sound, and there was the scuffling noise of a person, still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet in haste.
Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly gentleman, who wore gray mustaches and would have seemed in place at a service club, was still in his chair, regarding me with a perfectly calm, unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me askance. He was five-and-twenty years younger than his companion and as good-looking in a different way. But now his face was white and drawn, distorted by the same expression of terror--ay, and a darker and fiercer terror than that which I had already seen upon the servant's features; it was the face of one in a desperate strait. He looked as a man looks who has put all he has in the world upon an outsider--and done it twice. In that quiet drawing room by the side of his placid companion, with nothing whatever in their surroundings to account for his emotion, his panic-stricken face shocked me inexpressibly.
They were in evening dress; and between them was a chess table, its men in disorder: almost touching this was another small table bearing a tray of Apollinaris water and spirits. On this the young man was resting one hand as if, but for its support, he would have fallen.
To add one more fact, I had never seen either of them in my life.
Or wait; could that be true? If so, it must indeed have been a nightmare I was suffering. For the elder man broke the silence by addressing me in a quiet, ordinary tone that exactly matched his face. "Sit down, George," he said, "don't stand there. I did not expect you this evening." He held out his hand, without rising from his chair, and I advanced and shook it in silence. "I thought you were in Liverpool. How are you?" he continued.
"Very well, I thank you," I muttered mechanically.
"Not very well, I should say," he retorted. "You are as hoarse as a raven. You have a bad cold at best. It is nothing worse, my boy, is it?" with anxiety.
"No, a throat cough; nothing else," I murmured, resigning myself to this astonishing reception--this evident concern for my welfare on the part of a man whom I had never seen in my life.
"That is well!" he answered cheerily. Not only did my presence cause him no surprise. It gave him, without doubt, actual pleasure!