I paused at length, for my narrative was at an end; yet though I had ceased, so absorbed was he in that rapid description, that he still leaned toward me as though he hoped that I would give one touch more to the picture. Then he fell back in his chair absorbed in deep thought, which overlooks all apology for its silence, and peremptorily forbids interruption—sat thus for some minutes—rose and paced the room with rapid and unequal strides, and stood in the end abruptly before me.
“Did you pass through —— on your return?” said he with the tone and manner of one who rather thought the question aloud than uttered it.
I replied that I had, and mentioned in a few words what I had heard in reference to the prisoners, and the result of the proceedings against them.
Again Eagleton paced the room. I watched him with earnest curiosity, but did not by motion or remark interfere with his mood. It was one which must shortly explain itself. His step became gradually calmer and more steady, and at length he quietly sank into his chair. His countenance was grave, but without any manifest traces of agitation or excitement, and he looked steadily at me as he spoke.
“You saw, no doubt,” said he, “in the room we just left, a young man seated by a case. I am about to call him in for a moment. Will you be kind enough to observe him narrowly, and tell me when he is gone whether you have ever seen him before?”
He rose once more, and with an appearance of composure, which was evidently assumed, opened the door through which we had just passed, called to the person who was sitting there, and then quietly resumed his seat. I heard a slow, shuffling step across the floor within, and presently the person called, whoever he was, appeared. I looked at him eagerly.
He was an idiot. I could see that clearly and at a glance. His vacant face gave undoubted evidence of the visitation of that peculiar judgment under whose influence the light within goes out; yet his features were not bad, and if one particle of intelligence had shown in his sunken eye, he might, perhaps, have passed without notice or remark in spite of his wan and unhealthy complexion, his unmeaning expression, and his listless gait and carriage. It was that dull, preternatural stare that made him so melancholy a spectacle.
I recollected well the face of the younger prisoner. It had made a fast and painful impression on my mind. Many a time it had been present with me; seldom as part of the scene in which it first appeared, but coming suddenly and unattended, looking at me as I mused. In my fancies my character had assumed it wholly or in fragments. If I slept I had fitted it to the creatures of my dream. A face alone—nothing else; but a face clearly chiseled, and with every point and line distinct.
If the man before me and he were the same, a fearful change had passed over him. But Eagleton had evidently connected the idiot with my story, and after the eagerness of his manner as I told the result of that last accidental scrutiny of the features of the man at ——, and his subsequent singular request, I should have been dull indeed if I had not seen the drift of his thoughts, though I was in utter ignorance of the precise course they had pursued, and of the remote reasons of his conduct. The robber had an eye full of meaning and evil purpose—the face before me wore no shade of depravity; and yet as I looked resemblances occurred, became gradually more striking and more convincing, fastened themselves upon me with a tenacity that I could not shake off, and at last blended the two faces into one. I became satisfied of their identity as fully as if the awkward figure before me, guarded and manacled, were gazing yet from the window at which years before it had met my eye. It was not mere fancy, or an opinion forced upon me by the circumstances.
And yet I feared that it was, and to dispel any cloud that might rest upon my mental vision, or any nervous delusion which interfered with the correctness of the result at which I aimed, I rose and looked out for a few moments upon some climbing vines and clustered roses that grew by an open door, and then resumed my seat.