“Ay,” said Aaron, standing mute and obstinate.
“Did you want anything?” Robert enquired once more.
“Eh?” Aaron looked up. “Me? No, not me.” A sort of inertia kept him rooted. The young people looked at one another and began to laugh, rather embarrassed.
“Another!” said Cyril Scott cynically.
They wished he would go away. There was a pause.
“What do you reckon stars are?” asked the sepulchral voice of Jim. He still lay flat on his back on the grass.
Josephine went to him and pulled at his coat.
“Get up,” she said. “You'll take cold. Get up now, we're going indoors.”
“What do you reckon stars are?” he persisted.
Aaron Sisson stood on the edge of the light, smilingly staring at the scene, like a boy out of his place, but stubbornly keeping his ground.
“Get up now,” said Josephine. “We've had enough.” But Jim would not move.
Robert went with the bicycle lamp and stood at Aaron's side.
“Shall I show you a light to the road—you're off your track,” he said. “You're in the grounds of Shottle House.”
“I can find my road,” said Aaron. “Thank you.”
Jim suddenly got up and went to peer at the stranger, poking his face close to Aaron's face.
“Right-o,” he replied. “You're not half a bad sort of chap—Cheery-o! What's your drink?”
“Mine—whiskey,” said Aaron.
“Come in and have one. We're the only sober couple in the bunch—what?” cried Jim.
Aaron stood unmoving, static in everything. Jim took him by the arm affectionately. The stranger looked at the flickering tree, with its tiers of lights.
“A Christmas tree,” he said, jerking his head and smiling.
“That's right, old man,” said Jim, seeming thoroughly sober now. “Come indoors and have a drink.”
Aaron Sisson negatively allowed himself to be led off. The others followed in silence, leaving the tree to flicker the night through. The stranger stumbled at the open window-door.
“Mind the step,” said Jim affectionately.
They crowded to the fire, which was still hot. The newcomer looked round vaguely. Jim took his bowler hat and gave him a chair. He sat without looking round, a remote, abstract look on his face. He was very pale, and seemed-inwardly absorbed.
The party threw off their wraps and sat around. Josephine turned to Aaron Sisson, who sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand, rather slack in his chair, in his thickish overcoat. He did not want to drink. His hair was blond, quite tidy, his mouth and chin handsome but a little obstinate, his eyes inscrutable. His pallor was not natural to him. Though he kept the appearance of a smile, underneath he was hard and opposed. He did not wish to be with these people, and yet, mechanically, he stayed.
“Do you feel quite well?” Josephine asked him.
He looked at her quickly.
“Me?” he said. He smiled faintly. “Yes, I'm all right.” Then he dropped his head again and seemed oblivious.
“Tell us your name,” said Jim affectionately.
The stranger looked up.
“My name's Aaron Sisson, if it's anything to you,” he said.
Jim began to grin.
“It's a name I don't know,” he said. Then he named all the party present. But the stranger hardly heeded, though his eyes looked curiously from one to the other, slow, shrewd, clairvoyant.
“Were you on your way home?” asked Robert, huffy.
The stranger lifted his head and looked at him.
“Home!” he repeated. “No. The other road—” He indicated the direction with his head, and smiled faintly.
“Beldover?” inquired Robert.
“Yes.”
He had dropped his head again, as if he did not want to look at them.
To Josephine, the pale, impassive, blank-seeming face, the blue eyes with the smile which wasn't a smile, and the continual dropping of the well-shaped head was curiously affecting. She wanted to cry.
“Are you a miner?” Robert asked, de haute en bas.
“No,” cried Josephine. She had looked at his hands.
“Men's checkweighman,” replied Aaron. He had emptied his glass. He put it on the table.
“Have another?” said Jim, who was attending fixedly, with curious absorption, to the stranger.
“No,” cried Josephine, “no more.”
Aaron looked at Jim, then at her, and smiled slowly, with remote bitterness. Then he lowered his head again. His hands were loosely clasped between his knees.
“What about the wife?” said Robert—the young lieutenant.
“What about the wife and kiddies? You're a married man, aren't you?”
The sardonic look of the stranger rested on the subaltern.
“Yes,” he said.
“Won't they be expecting you?” said Robert, trying to keep his temper and his tone of authority.
“I expect they will—”
“Then you'd better be getting along, hadn't you?”
The eyes of the intruder rested all the time on the flushed subaltern. The look on Aaron's face became slowly satirical.
“Oh, dry up the army touch,” said Jim contemptuously, to Robert. “We're all civvies here. We're all right, aren't we?” he said loudly, turning to the stranger with a grin that showed his pointed teeth.
Aaron gave a brief laugh of acknowledgement.
“How many children have you?” sang Julia from her distance.
“Three.”
“Girls or boys?”
“Girls.”
“All girls? Dear little things! How old?”
“Oldest eight—youngest nine months—”
“So small!” sang Julia, with real tenderness now—Aaron dropped his head. “But you're going home to them, aren't you?” said Josephine, in whose eyes the tears had already risen. He looked up at her, at her tears. His face had the same pale perverse smile.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“But why? You're wrong!” cried Josephine.
He dropped his head and became oblivious.
“Well!” said Cyril Scott, rising at last with a bored exclamation. “I think I'll retire.”
“Will you?” said Julia, also rising. “You'll find your candle outside.”
She went out. Scott bade good night, and followed her. The four people remained in the room, quite silent. Then Robert rose and began to walk about, agitated.
“Don't you go back to 'em. Have a night out. You stop here tonight,” Jim said suddenly, in a quiet intimate tone.
The stranger turned his head and looked at him, considering.
“Yes?”