For, as I mused thus, the calm of the summer afternoon was disturbed by a sudden loud knocking at my door. The door was flung open. On the threshold a man stood. No learned brother fellow, no ordinary gownsman; but, with his pride of bearing, his air of fashion, the finest young fine gentleman I had ever seen—in long drab driving coat, smartly outstanding from the waist, and white top hat with rakish up-curled brim.
For an instant I gazed in stupid amazement. Then, as the door closed behind him and he came from out the shadow, I sprang to my feet and ran forward, with a cry. And, almost before I knew what was happening, his two hands gripped my shoulders, and he backed me into the full light of the window, holding me away from him at arms’ length and looking down into my face. He was a good half head taller than I.
‘Dearest Brownlow—my dear old man, my dear old man,’ he repeated, and his grip tightened while his voice was tender as a girl’s.
Then, while I stammered in my excitement and surprise, he gave a naughty little laugh.
‘Oh! I am no ghost,’ he said. ‘You needn’t be afraid. I’m very solid flesh and blood; worse luck for you, perhaps, old man. Gad, but it’s good, though, to see you once again.’
He threw down his hat among the papers on the table, tossed his gloves into it, and drew me on to the window-seat beside him.
Already the spell began to work, the spell of his extraordinary personal charm. Already he captivated me, firing my somewhat sluggish imagination. Already I asked nothing better than to devote myself to him, spend myself for him, stamp out the evil and nourish the good in him, at whatever loss or disadvantage to myself.
I inquired what had brought him to Cambridge.
‘I am in trouble, Brownlow,’ he answered simply, while his face hardened. ‘It’s an ugly sort of trouble, which I have not the pluck to meet single-handed. I cannot see my way through or out of it. I tell you, it was beginning to make me feel rather desperate. And I remembered your wisdom of old’—
He smiled at me, patting my knee.