She came up in a moment or two; listened calmly to his volcanic outburst at her; and proceeded to light the fire. She was the strangest little person I ever remember to have seen; she went on calmly with her work, singing to herself under her breath a sort of melancholy dirge that had no tune nor time about it, but which seemed in some vague way to comfort her, much as a man may suck at an empty pipe, or a baby at a bottle. She took not the faintest notice of Fanshawe, despite all that he said; she only looked at me curiously once or twice before finally quitting the room. By that time my guardian (as I must continue to call him, for want of a better title) was deep in the letter he had found on the table. Finally he thrust it into his pocket, with an exclamation of annoyance, and turned to me.
I suppose the fact of seeing me standing there, huddled as close as I could to the fire, reminded him of something in the past; he looked round the room, and waved his hands, and spoke mockingly.
"Welcome, Charlie Avaline, to my rooms!" he exclaimed. "Perhaps I should say 'room,' because there's only one of 'em. Observe the furniture, the costly appointments, the ease and luxury of it all! To this have we come, Charlie—you and I. Who can say that we haven't done well for ourselves?"
He was on his knees before the fire, stirring it savagely and striving to make it burn, and muttering about it. He looked up at me with that old look of contempt on his face; flung the rusty poker into the grate with a clatter, and got to his feet. He was in a strange mood, and I did not know what to make of him. More than that, I was coming back so slowly to life myself that I did not trouble very much about him; I had just those animal instincts to warm myself, and to get food, and to rest, and nothing more. Whatever old pulses he had stirred in me with his mention of the woman I had loved were dropping back into their old condition. The time was coming when they were to be stirred and shaken, and brought to full and abundant life; but his was not the hand to sweep the strings of my being, and wake any music within me. I had only a dull curiosity concerning him, and that curiosity he presently began to satisfy.
"You're such a bloodless thing—something that has borne a number for years—a slave; one doesn't know how much you understand, or how much you don't," he began, looking at me over his shoulder in that old fashion I dimly remembered.
"I'll try to understand," I replied patiently.
"It is necessary that you should be told certain things; there's work for you to do, and you must remember who you are, and what you have been, before you can undertake it. I've waited a long time for you, on the chance that you might come into my hands again; and I'm getting an old man, and time is precious. Carry your dull mind back, and see if you remember what I was."
I suppose I looked at him in a troubled way, as one not clearly understanding; he beat his fist upon the table, and cried out harshly at me.
"Numbskull! Do you remember what position I occupied?"