And now the door opened and the seven candle-flames bowed to their young master. The man who stood in the doorway, and paused for a moment before entering further, was dressed so soberly, and looked so shy, that you might at first glance have taken him for a servant or a poor relation but that there was something in his eyes betokening authority as well as the habitual kindness that is the visible part of wisdom. He was a smallish man with a round face, a broad nose, and a mouth slightly out of true; bald of crown, but with graying brown hair still copious about the temples; and plump of figure, as befits a man who enjoys a quiet mind and good living. As he stepped forward into the room he shifted his keen gaze from Marden, and, with head a little aslant, seemed to look down the side of his nose at the carpet, as if he saw there the answer to his questing thought. He moved to his chair and laid a hand on the back of it. It was a hand full of character, expressing something, of austerity and spiritual power, that the jolly contours of the face tended to disguise.
‘Well?’ asked Marden, breaking the silence between them.
The priest bowed his head. ‘Our friend is with God.’
‘No!’ The young man had expected this event, but now he must needs deny it. He rose, shading his eyes from the sight of his companion, and moved slowly towards the hearth, where there was warmth, fire, a beacon still unquenched. But in an instant he turned angrily. ‘Why didn’t you call me, sir? It is a day since I saw him.’
‘It was not his wish,’ said the priest. He smiled: not amusedly, but as one smiles in the presence of troubling beauty. ‘Nor did we know he was so near his end. He received the sacrament and died at peace. He said he was sorry to have caused such a parcel of commotion; he thanked us for our pains; and he wished, he said, that it might not prove a trouble to Master Jack.’
Jack Marden looked; then looked away. ‘Not for ten years has he called me that.’