Billings and I had paused, half-way to the landing. It looked as though the elder Billings was amply capable of handling the occasion now. He had backed the youth against the wall behind, and his language was of a kind I hated to have my darling hear. Every time the other offered to expostulate, his father broke out again.
"You are a disgrace to an honored name!" he roared. "And the only explanation left for me to offer our guests is that you are drunk and don't know where you are!"
"Oh, father!" faltered the boy. And then he turned his black shrouded figure to the pale marble against which he leaned, and it seemed to me his very heart would sob away.
"What's the matter, dad?" came a voice from the head of the stairway. "What in thunder is all the row about?"
"By George!" gasped Billings. Everybody looked upward--one of the women screamed. For there, slowly advancing down the angle leading to the landing, his yellow mop of hair shining above the dark collar of a dressing-robe, was the duplicate of the youth cowering under the elder Billings' wrath.
And out of a dead, tense silence, came his voice again:
"Can't any of you speak?" He touched the figure on the shoulder. "Who are you?" he asked in an odd, strained voice.
The black figure turned toward him a face agonized in grief.
"I--I don't know," came a voice pitifully--his voice, it seemed.
The cub just stood like a statue for a moment--stood as we all stood. Then slowly his hand went out and touched the hand of his double. Slowly his fingers swept the face, the hair; gradually his eyes closed, as though he were sensing by touch alone.
Suddenly a loud cry leaped from his throat.
"Sister!" he shouted. And he swept the black figure to him.
Then, tossing back his head, the youth faced us with blazing, angry eyes, looking as David must have, when he faced old what's-his-name.
"If there's a man among you, I'd like to know what this means?" he cried.
There was a blank silence for an instant, and then--
And up the stairway advanced Professor Doozenberry.
In fact, it was almost bedtime. Frances and I sat before the hearth in the library, looking silently into the red heart of the dying embers of fragrant pine cones. For in the heights of the Pocantico Hills it often is chilly on summer nights.