I stared at him as if he were mad.
‘Muffin!’ I whispered.
‘That was the name he gave, sir,’ he exclaimed, astonished by my amazement.
‘Muffin!’ I repeated, scarce crediting my hearing; ‘describe him, Mr. Cork.’
‘A clean, yellow-faced man, sir, hair of a coal-blackness, looks down when he speaks, sir, seems a bit shaky in the ankles; a gentleman’s servant, I should say, sir.’
‘Show him up, Mr. Cork!’ I exclaimed, doubting the description as I had the name, so impossible did it seem that this person could be Wilfrid’s valet.
In a few moments the door was opened, and in stepped Muffin!—the Muffin of the ‘Bride,’ Muffin the ventriloquist, Muffin the whipped and ducked, and, as I could have solemnly sworn, Muffin the drowned! He stood before me with the old familiar crook of the left knee, holding his hat with both hands against his stomach, his head drooped, his lips twisted into their familiar grin of obsequious apology. His yellow face shone, his hair was as lustrous as the back of a rook; he wore large loose black-kid gloves, and he was attired in a brand new suit of black cloth. I know nothing in the way of shocks severer for the moment, that tells more startlingly upon the whole nervous system, than the meeting with a man whom one has for months and months believed dead. I was unable to speak for some moments. I shrank back in my chair when he entered, and in that posture eyed him whilst he stood looking downwards, smiling and suggesting in his attitude respectful regret for taking the liberty of intruding.
‘Well,’ said I, fetching a deep breath, ‘and so you are Muffin indeed, eh? Well, well. Why, man, I could have sworn we left you a corpse floating close to a volcanic island near the equator.’
‘So I suppose, sir!’ he exclaimed, ‘but I am thankful to say, sir, that I was not drowned.’
I motioned him to sit; he put his hat under the chair, crossed his legs, and clasped his hands over his knee. A sudden reaction of feeling, supplemented by his strange appearance, produced a fit of laughter in me. The image of his radish-shaped form, half naked, quivering down the ranks of the seamen, with Cutbill grotesquely apparelled compelling him to keep time, recurred to me.