Part 2

The man at the piano turned round, showing a handsome and melancholy face, and eyes that looked as if they were tired, having seen too many men and deeds and cities.

"I make myself at home, you see," he said, "as I hope you will some day in my studio, when you visit me at Kensington."

Uniacke smiled, and laid his hand on a bell which tinkled shrewishly.

"It is a great treat for me to hear music and a voice not my own in this room," he answered. "Are you ready for tea?"

"Thank you, I painted till it was dark. I was able to paint."

"I'm glad of that."

"When it was too dim to see, and too cold to feel the brush between my fingers, I came back in the twilight to my new roof tree. I am thankful to be out of the inn, yet I've stayed in worse places in Italy and Greece. But they were gilded by the climate."

He sat down by the fire and stretched his limbs. Uniacke looked at him rather curiously. To the lonely clergyman it was a novel experience to play host to a man of distinction, to a stranger who had filled the world with his fame years ago. Three days before, in one of his island walks, Uniacke had come upon a handsome bearded man in a lane full of mud, between bleak walls of stone. The man stopped him courteously, asked if he were not the clergyman of the Isle, and, receiving an affirmative reply, began to make some enquiries as to lodging accommodation.

"My name is Sir Graham Hamilton," he said presently.

Uniacke started with surprise and looked at the stranger curiously. He had read much of the great sea painter, of his lonely wanderings, of his melancholy, of his extraordinary house in Kensington, and, just recently, of his wretched condition of health, which, it was said, had driven him suddenly from London, the papers knew not whither.

"I thought you were ill," he blurted out.

"I am not very well," the painter said simply, "and the inn here is exceedingly uncomfortable. But I want to stay. This is the very home of the sea. Here I find not merely the body of the sea but also its soul."

"There are no good lodgings, I am afraid," said the clergyman. "Nobody ever wants to lodge here, it seems."

"I do. Well, then, I must keep on at the inn."

"Come to stay with me, will you?" Uniacke suddenly said. "I have a spare room. It is scarcely ever occupied. My friends find this island a far cry, except in the height of summer. I shall be glad of your company and glad to make you as comfortable as I can."

"You are very kind," said the painter, hesitating. "But I scarcely--"

"Come as my guest," said the clergyman, reddening slightly.

"Thank you, I will. And some day you must come to me in London."

Now the painter was installed at the Vicarage, and blessed, each hour, his happy escape from the inn, whose walls seemed expanded by the forcible and athletic smell of stale fish.

Uniacke's servant girl brought in the tea. The two men had it by the fire. Presently Hamilton said:

"Nightfall is very interesting and curious here."

"I find it so almost everywhere," Uniacke said.

"Yes. It can never be dull. But here, in winter at least, it is extraordinarily--" he paused for the exactly right word, in a calm way that was peculiar to him and that seemed to emphasise his fine self-possession--"pathetic, and suggestive of calamity."

"I have noticed that, indeed," Uniacke answered, "and never, I think, more than to-night."

Hamilton looked across at him in the firelight.

"Where did you see it fall?" he asked.

"I was by the wall of the churchyard."

"It was you, then, whom I saw from the window. It seemed to be a mourner looking at the graves."