The Unspeakable Gentleman / Marquand, John P., 1893-1960

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Title: The Unspeakable Gentleman 

Author: John P. Marquand

Release Date: November 17, 2003  [eBook #10109]

Language: English

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THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN

BY J.P. MARQUAND

1922






I


I have seen the improbable turn true too often not to have it disturb me.
Suppose these memoirs still exist when the French royalist plot of 1805
and my father's peculiar role in it are forgotten. I cannot help but
remember it is a restless land across the water. But surely people will
continue to recollect. Surely these few pages, written with the sole
purpose of explaining my father's part in the affair, will not degenerate
into anything so pitifully fanciful as the story of a man who tried his
best to be a bad example because he could not be a good one.

It was my Uncle Jason who was with me when I learned of my father's
return to America. I still remember the look of sympathetic concern on
his broad, good-natured face, as I read my father's letter. There was
anxiety written there as he watched me, for my uncle was a kindly,
thoughtful man. For the moment he seemed to have quite forgotten the
affairs of his counting house, and the inventory of goods from France,
which a clerk had placed before him. Of late he had taken in me an
unaccustomed interest, in no wise allayed by the letter I was holding.

"So he is here," said my Uncle Jason.

"He is just arrived," I answered.

"I had heard of it," he remarked thoughtfully. "And you will see
him, Henry?"

"Yes," I replied, "since she asked me to."

"She had asked you? Your mother? You did not tell me that." His voice
had been sharp and reproachful, and then he had sighed. "After all," he
went on more gently, "he is your father, and you must respect him as
such, Henry, hard as it is to do so. I am sorry, almost, that he and I
have quarreled, for in many ways your father was a remarkable man who
might have gone far, except for his failing. God knows I did my best to
help him."

And he sighed again at the small success of his efforts and returned to
the papers that lay before him on the counting house table. His business
had become engrossing of late, and gave him little leisure.

"Do not be too hard on him, Henry," he said, as I departed.

It was ten years since I had seen my father, ten years when we change
more than we do during the rest of a lifetime. Ten years back we had
lived in a great house with lawns that ran down to the river where our
ships pulled at their moorings. My father and I had left the house
together--I for school, and my father--I have never learned where he had
gone. I was just beginning to see the starker outlines of a world that
has shaken off the shadows of youth when I saw him again.

I remember it was a morning early in autumn. The wind was fresh off the
sea, making the pounding of the surf on the beach seem very near as I
urged my horse from the neat, quiet streets of the town up the rutted
lane that led to the Shelton house. The tang of the salt marshes was in
the wind, and a touch of frost over the meadows told me the ducks would
soon be coming in from shelter. Already the leaves were falling off the
tall elms, twisting in little spirals through the clear October sunlight.

And yet, in spite of the wind and the sea and the clean light of the
forenoon, there was a sadness about the place, and an undercurrent of
uneasy silence that the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the surf
only seemed to accentuate. It was like the silence that falls about a
table when the guests have left it, and the chairs are empty and the
lights are growing dim. It was the silence that comes over all places
where there should be people, and yet where no one comes.

The shrubbery my grandfather had brought from England was more wild and
disordered than when I had seen it last. The weeds had choked the formal
garden that once grew before the front door. And the house--I had often
pictured that house in my memory--with its great arched doorway, its
small-paned windows and its gambrel roof. Once it had seemed to me a
massive and majestic structure. Now those ten years had made it shrink to
a lonely, crumbling building that overlooked the harbor mouth. Clematis
had swarmed over the bricks, a tangle of dead and living vines. The paint
was chipping from the doors and window ledges. Here and there a shutter
had broken loose and was sagging on rusted hinges. Houses are apt to
follow the direction their owners take.

I knew I was being watched, though I cannot tell how I knew it. Yet I saw
nothing until I was nearly at our door. I remember I was noticing the
green stain from the brass knocker on its paneling, when my horse snorted
and stopped dead in his tracks. From the overgrown clump of lilacs that
flanked the granite stone which served as a door-step something was
glinting in the sun, and then as I looked more closely, I saw a face
peering at me from between the twigs, a face of light mahogany with thick
lips that showed the presence of negro blood. It was Brutus, my father's
half-caste servant.

Dark and saturnine as ever, he glided out into the path in front of me,
thrusting something back into the sash around his waist, moved toward me,
and took my horse's head. His teeth shone when I spoke to him, but he
said never a word in return to my greeting. There was a touch of Indian
in his blood that made his speech short and laconic. Nevertheless, he was
glad to see me. He grasped my shoulder as I dismounted, and shook me
gently from side to side. His great form loomed before me, his lips
framed in a cheerful grin, his eyes appraising and friendly. And then I
noticed for the first time the livid welt of a cut across his cheek.
Brutus read my glance, but he only shook his head in answer.

"What do you mean, hiding in those bushes?" I asked him roughly.

"Always must see who is coming," said Brutus. "Monsieur may not want to
see who is coming--you understan'?"

"No," I said, "I don't understand."

His grasp on my shoulder tightened.

"Then you go home," he said, "You go home now. Something happen. Monsieur
very angry. Something bad--you understan'?"

"He is in the house?" I asked.

Brutus nodded.

"Then take this horse," I said, and swung open the front door.

A draft eddied through the broad old hallway as I stepped over the
threshold, and there was a smell of wood smoke that told me the chimneys
were still cold from disuse. Someone had stored the hall full of coils of
rope and sailcloth, but in the midst of it the same tall clock was
ticking out its cycle, and the portraits of the Shelton family still hung
against the white panels.

The long, brown rows of books still lined the walls of the morning room.
The long mahogany table in the center was still littered with maps and
papers. There were the same rusted muskets and small swords in the rack
by the fireplace, and in front of the fire in a great, high-backed
armchair my father was sitting. I paused with a curious feeling of doubt,
surprise and diffidence. Somehow I had pictured a different meeting and a
different man. He must surely have heard my step and the jingling of my
spurs as I crossed the room, but he never so much as raised his head. He
still rested, leaning indolently back, watching the flames dance up the
chimney. He was dressed in gray satin small clothes that went well with
his slender figure. His wig was fresh powdered, and his throat and wrists
were framed in spotless lace. The care of his person was almost the only
tribute he paid to his past.

I must have stood for twenty seconds watching him while he watched the
fire, before he turned and faced me, and when he did I had forgotten the
words I had framed to greet him. I knew he was preparing to meet a hard
ordeal. He knew as well as I there was no reason why I should be glad to
see him. Yet he showed never a trace of uncertainty. His eye never
wavered. His lips were drawn in the same supercilious upward curve that
gave him the expression I most often remembered. Ten years had not done
much to change him. The pallor I had remembered on his features had been
burned off by a tropical sun. That was all. There was hardly a wrinkle
about his eyes, hardly a tell-tale crease in his high forehead. Wherever
he had been, whatever he had done, his serenity was still unshaken. It
still lay over him, placid and impenetrable. And when he spoke, his voice
was cool and impassive and cast in pleasant modulation.

"So you are here," he remarked, as though he were weighing each word
carefully, "and why did you come? I think I told you in my letter there
was no need unless you wished."

There was something cold and unfriendly in his speech. I tried in vain to
fight down a rising feeling of antagonism, a vague sense of
disappointment. For a moment we glanced at each other coldly.

"I think, sir," I answered, "from a sense of curiosity."

Almost as soon as I had spoken, I was sorry, for some sixth sense told
me I had hurt him. With a lithe, effortless grace he rose from his chair
and faced me, and his smile, half amused, half tolerant, curved his
lips again.

"I should have known you would be frank," he said, "Your letter, my son,
refusing to accept my remittances, should have taught me as much, but we
grow forgetful as our feet weary of the path of life."

Yet I remember thinking that few people looked less weary than my father
as he stood there watching me. The primroses, it seemed, had afforded
pleasant footing.

I believe he read my thoughts, for it seemed to me that for an instant
genuine amusement was written in his glance, but there were few genuine
emotions he allowed free play.

"Perhaps," he suggested pleasantly, "it would interest you to know why
I have returned to these rather rigorous and uncongenial surroundings. If
not, I beg you to be frank again, Henry. There's nothing that I dread
more than being stupid."

"Sir," I objected, "I told you I was curious."

"To be sure you did," he admitted. "Can it be possible that I am becoming
absent-minded? Henry, I am going to tell you something very flattering.
Can you believe it? It is largely on your account that I consented to
revisit these familiar scenes!"

"No," I said, "I cannot, sir, since you ask me."

My father shrugged his shoulders. "Far be it from me to overstrain your
credulity, my son," he observed blandly. "Let us admit then there was
also some slight factor of expedience--but slight, Henry, almost
negligible, in fact. It happened that I was in a French port, and that
while there I should think of you."

"Sir," I said, "You startle me!"

But he continued, regardless of my interruption.

"And what should be there also, but the _Eclipse_, ready to set for home!
Quite suddenly I determined to sail her back. I, too, was curious, my
son." For a moment his voice lost its bantering note. "Curious," he
continued gravely, "to know whether you were a man like me, or one of
whom I might have reason to be proud.... So here we are, Henry. Who said
coincidence was the exception and not the rule?"

His last words drifted gently away, and in their wake followed an awkward
silence. The logs were hissing in the fire. I could hear the clock in the
hall outside, and the beating of the vines against the window panes. It
was no sound, certainly, that made me whirl around to look behind
me,--some instinct--that was all. There was Brutus, not two feet from my
back, with my father's cloak over his right arm, and my father's sword
held in his great fist.

"Do not disturb yourself, Brutus," said my father. "We are both
gentlemen, more or less, and will not come to blows. My cloak, Brutus.
I am sorry, my son, that we must wait till later in the day to
exchange ideas. Even here in America affairs seem to follow me. Will
you content yourself till evening? There are horses in the stable and
liquors in the cellar. Choose all or either, Henry. Personally, I find
them both amusing."

He stood motionless, however, even when his dark cloak was adjusted to
his shoulders, as though some matters were disturbing him; and then he
tapped his sword hilt with a precise, even motion of his fingers.

"Brutus," he said slowly, "I shall take my pistols also."

"Your pistols!" I echoed. "You have forgotten you are back in America."

He half turned toward me, and favored me with a serene, incurious glance.

"On the contrary," he said, "I am just beginning to remember."

And so without further words he left me. I followed him through our rear
doorway, out over the crumbling bricks of our terrace, which had been
built to overlook the river, and watched him walk slowly and thoughtfully
down the path with its border of elm trees, to his warehouses, where a
half dozen men had already started work.

The river was dark blue under a cloudless sky. The sunlight was playing
in restless sparkles where the wind ruffled the water's surface. Out near
the channel I could see the _Eclipse_ riding at anchor, her decks
littered with bales and gear, and the _Sun Maid_ and the _Sea Tern_, trim
and neat, and down deep in the water as though ready to put to sea. At
the head of our wharf were bales and boxes stacked in the odd confusion
that comes of a hasty discharge of cargo.

On the terrace where I was standing I could see the other wharves along
the waterfront, and the church spires and roofs of the town reared among
the trees that lined the busy streets. Toward the sand dunes the marshes
stretched away in russet gold into the autumn haze. The woods across the
river were bright patches of reds and yellows, pleasant and inviting in
the sunlight.

But I saw it all with only half an eye. I was still thinking of the dark
hall behind me, and the cold, unwelcome stillness of the shuttered rooms.
I could understand his depression, now that he had come back to it. But
there was something else.... I was still thinking of it when I looked at
the _Eclipse_ again. It would have been hard to find a craft of more
delicate, graceful lines. They often said he had a flair for ships and
women. A shifting current, some freak of the wind and tide, was making
her twist and pull at her anchor, and for a moment the sun struck clean
on her broadside. A gaping hole between decks had connected two of her
ports in a jagged rent.

It was not surprising. My father's ships were often fired on at sea. Nor
was it strange that Brutus had a half-healed scar on his cheek. But why
had my father gone armed to his own wharf? Perhaps I might have forgotten
if I had not visited the stables.

Our carriage harness still hung from the pegs, dried and twisted by the
years, and minus its silver trimmings. The sunlight filtered through
cracks in the roof, and danced through the dust mites to the rows of
vacant stalls. Near the door my horse was feeding comfortably, and beside
him stood two bays that shone from careful grooming. One was carrying a
saddle with a pair of pistols in the pocket. Yet not a hair had been
turned from riding.




II


I rode through town that afternoon, and it was not entirely because time
hung heavily on my hands. We were proud of our town. The houses were as
elegant and substantial as any you could find. Our streets were broad
and even. Our walks were paved with brick. There was not a finer tavern
than ours to the north of Boston, or better dressed men frequenting it.
Men said in those days that we would be a great seaport; that the world
would look more and more to that northern Massachusetts river mouth.
They had spoken thus of many other harbor towns in the centuries that
men have gone down to the sea. I think they have been wrong almost as
often as they had predicted. The ships have ceased to sail over the bar.
No one heeds the rotting planking of the wharves. The clang of hammers
and the sailors' songs have gone, and trade and gain and venture have
gone with them.

Strange, as I recall that afternoon. They were building a new L to the
tavern. Tradespeople were busy about their shops. Coaches newly painted,
and drawn by well-matched horses, rolled by me. Gentlemen in bright new
coats, servants in new family livery, sailors from the docks, clerks from
the counting houses, all gave the street a busy air--lent it a pleasant
assurance of affluence.

I was mistaken when I thought I could ride by as a stranger might. It
seemed to me that there was no one too busy to stop and look, to turn and
whisper a word to someone else. They had learned already that I was my
father's son. I could feel a hot flame of anger burning my cheeks, the
old, stinging passion of resentment I had felt so often when my father's
name was mentioned. They knew me. Their looks alone told that, but never
a nod, or smile of greeting, marked my return.

Though I had never spoken to them, I knew them all--the Penfields, father
and son, tall and lean with bony faces and sandy hair and eyebrows, and
restless, pale blue eyes--Squire Land, small and ascetic, his lips
constantly puckered as though he had tasted something unpleasant. Captain
Proctor, stouter than when I had seen him last, with the benign good
nature that comes of settled affairs and good living. Over them and over
the town, those eight years had passed with a light hand.

But it was not our town I had come to visit. I found Ned Aiken, as I knew
I should, with the _Eclipse_ in harbor. He was seated on his door step by
the river road, as though he had always been planted in that very place.
I remember expecting he would be glad to see me. Instead, he took his
pipe from his mouth, and gazed at me steadily, like some steer stopped
from grazing. Then he placed his pipe on the stone step, and rose slowly
to his feet, squat and burly, his little eyes glinting below his greasy,
unbraided hair, his jaw protruding and ominous. Slowly he loosened the
dirty red handkerchief he kept swathed about his throat, and raised a
stubby hand to push the hair from his heavy forehead. Then his face
relaxed into a grim smile, and he seated himself on the step again.

"You've changed since last I saw you," he said; "changed remarkable, you
have. Why, right now I thought you might be someone else."

Had Brutus also been laboring under the same delusion?

I told him I was glad we were still on speaking terms, and seated
myself beside him. He studied me for a while in silence, leisurely
puffing at his pipe.

"You mistook me for someone?" I asked finally.

"Yes," said Mr. Aiken, and slapped his pipe against the palm of his hand.
"You've been shootin' up, you have, since I set eyes on you."

He paused, seemingly struck by a genial inspiration.

"Yes, shootin' up." Still looking at me he gave way to a hoarse chuckle.

"Why, boy, we've all been doing some shootin'--you, your dad, and me
too--since we seen you last," and he was taken by a paroxysm of
silent mirth.

"Now that's what I call wit!" he gasped complacently, and then he
repeated in joyous encore:

"You shootin'--me shootin'--he shootin'."

"You weren't shooting at anybody?" I asked with casual innocence.

"And why shouldn't we be, I want to know?" he demanded, but his tongue
showed no sign of slipping. His glance had resumed its old stolid
watchfulness, which caused me to remain tactfully silent.

"But we wasn't shootin' at anybody," Mr. Aiken concluded, more genially.
"Not at anybody, just at selected folks."

He stopped to glance serenely about him, and somehow the dusty road, the
river, the trees and the soft sunlight seemed to make him strangely
confiding. His harsh voice lowered in gentle patronage.

"Would you like to know who those folks were?" he asked finally.

I must have been too eager in giving my assent, for Mr. Aiken smiled
broadly and nodded his head with complacent satisfaction.

"I thought you would admire to," said Mr. Aiken; "like as not you'd give
a tooth to know, now wouldn't you? Never do know a tooth is useful till
you lose it. Now look at me--I've had as many as six stove out off an'
on, and now--But you wanted to know who it was we shot at, didn't you? So
you did, boy, so you did. Well, I'll tell you, so I will. Yes, so help me
if I don't tell you, boy." And his voice trailed off in a low chuckle.

"It was folks like you," he concluded crisply; "folks who didn't mind
their own business."

Gleefully he repeated the sentence. Its ringing cadence and the trend of
his whole discourse gave him evident pleasure, and even caused him to
continue further with his rebuke.

"There you have it," said Mr. Aiken, "the Captain's own words, b'Gad.
'Mr. Aiken', he says, 'I fancy we may meet a number of people whose
affairs will not stop them interfering with our own. If you see any,' he
says, 'shoot them, Mr. Aiken'."

He had lapsed into a good-natured, reminiscent mood, and, as he fixed his
gaze on the trees across the road, he was prompted to enlarge still
further on the episode. He seemed to have forgotten I was there as he
continued.

"I wish it had been on deck," he remarked, "instead of a place with
damned gold chairs and gold on the ceiling, and cloth on the walls, and
velvets such as respectable folks use for dress and not for ornament, and
candles in gold sticks, and the floor like a sheet of ice.

"Hell," said Mr. Aiken. "I'd sooner slip on blood than on a floor like
that. Yes, so I would. I wonder why those frog eaters don't make their
houses snug and decent instead of big as a church. Now, though I'm not a
moral man, yet I call it immoral, damned if I don't, to live in a house
like that."

"Yet somehow pleasant," I ventured politely, "surely you have found that
the beauty of most immoral things. They all seem to be pleasant. Am I not
right, Mr. Aiken?"

He looked at me sharply, shrugged his shoulders, and denied me the
pleasure of an answer.

"Not that I meant to puzzle you," I added hastily, "but you have sailed
so long with my father, that I considered you in a position to know. Now
in France--"

Mr. Aiken dropped his pipe.

"Who said anything about France?" he demanded.

"And did you not?" I asked, beginning to enjoy my visit. "Surely you were
speaking just now about a chateau, the scene of some pleasant adventure.
Pray don't let me interrupt you."

A bead of perspiration rolled down Mr. Aiken's brow, and he tightened his
handkerchief about his throat, as though to stifle further conversation.
He sat silent for a minute while his mind seemed to wander off into a
maze of dim recollections, and his eyes half-closed, the better to see
the pictures that drifted through his memory.

"What am I here ashore and sober for," he asked finally, "so I won't
talk, that's why, and I won't talk, so there's the end of it. It's just
that I have to have my little joke, that's all, or I wouldn't have said
anything about the chato or the Captain either.

"Though, if I do say it," he added in final justification, "there ain't
many seafaring men who have a chance to sail along of a man like him."

"And how does that happen?" I asked.

"Because there ain't any more like him to sail with."

He sat watching me, and the gap between us seemed to widen. He seemed to
be looking at me from some great distance, from the end of the road where
years and experience had led him, full of thoughts he could never
express, even if the desire impelled him.

"No, not any," said Mr. Aiken.

The dusk was beginning to gather when I rode home, the heavy purple dusk
of autumn, full of the crisp smell of dead leaves and the low hanging
wood smoke from the chimneys.

My father was reading Voltaire beside a briskly burning fire. Closing
his book on his forefinger, he waved me to a chair beside him.

"My son," he said, "they mix better than you think, Voltaire and
gunpowder. Have you not found it so?"

"I fear," I replied, "that my experience has been too limited. Give me
time, sir, I have only been twice to sea. Next time I shall remember to
take Voltaire with me."

"Do," he advised courteously; "you will find it will help with the
privateers--tide you over every little unpleasantness. Ah yes, it is
advice worth following. I learned it long ago--a little difference of
opinion--and the pages of the great philosopher--"

He raised his arm and glanced at it critically.

"Words well placed--is it not wonderful, their steadying effect--the
deadly accuracy which their logic seems to impart to the hand and eye? A
man can be dangerous indeed with twenty pages of Voltaire behind him."

He took a pinch of snuff, and leaned forward to tap me gently on the
knee, his expression coldly genial.

"I have read all the works of Voltaire, Henry, read them many times."

Unbidden, a picture of him came before me in a room with gilt chairs and
candelabra whose glass pendants sparkled in the mild yellow light--with a
smell of powder mingling strangely with the scent of flowers.

"But why," he concluded, "should I be more explicit than Mr. Aiken? To
fear nothing, say nothing. It is a maxim followed by so many politicians.
Strange that it still stays valuable. Strange--"

And he waved his hand in a negligent gesture of deprecation.

"Why, indeed, be more explicit," I rejoined. "Your sudden interest is
quite enough to leave me overcome, sir, when, after years of neglect, you
see to it I ride out safely of an afternoon."

He tapped his snuff box thoughtfully.

"Coincidence again, Henry, that is all. How was I to know you would be
outside Ned Aiken's house while I was within?"

"And how should I know that paternal care would prompt you to remain
within while I was without?"

For a second it seemed to me that my father was going to laugh--for a
fraction of a second something like astonishment seemed to take
possession of him. Then Brutus appeared in the doorway.

"My son," he said, as I followed him to supper, "I must compliment you.
Positively you improve upon acquaintance."




III


I had remembered him as a man who disliked talk. I had often seen him
sit for hours on end without a word, looking at nothing in particular,
with his expressionless serenity. But on this particular evening the
day's activities appeared to have made his social instincts vividly
assertive, and to arouse him to unusual, and almost unnatural animation.
As we sat at a small round table beside the dining room fireplace, he
launched into a cheerful discourse, ignoring completely any displeasure
I attempted to assume. The great room with its dingy wainscot only half
lighted by the candles on the table before us, was cluttered with a
hundred odds and ends that collect in a deserted house--a ladder, a
stiff, rusted bridle, a coil of frayed rope, a kettle, a dozen sheets of
the Gazette, empty bottles, dusty crockery and broken chairs. He
surveyed them all with a bland, uncritical glance. From his manner he
might have been surrounded by brilliant company. From his conversation
he might have been in a pot house.

I noticed at once what many had been at pains to mention to me
before--that my father was not a temperate man. Nor did our cellar seem
wholly bleak. He pressed wine upon me, and soon had finished a bottle
himself, only to gesture Brutus to uncork a second. And all the while he
regaled me with anecdotes of the gaming table and the vices of a dozen
seaports. With hardly a pause he described a lurid succession of
drinking bouts and gallant adventures. He finished a second bottle of
wine, and was half way through a third. Yet all the while his voice
never lost its pleasant modulation. Never a flush or an increase of
animation came to change him. Politely detached, he discoursed of love
and murder, gambling and chicanery, drawing on the seemingly exhaustless
background of his own experience for illustration. He seemed to have
known the worst men from all the ends of the earth, to have shared in
their business and their pleasures. He seemed to have been in every
discreditable undertaking that came beneath his notice. In retrospect
they pleased him--all and every one.

What he saw when he glanced at me appeared to please him also. At any
rate, it gave him the encouragement that one usually receives from an
attentive listener.

"Brutus, again a bottle. It is at the fourth bottle," he explained, "that
I am at my best. It is the fourth bottle, or perhaps the fifth, that
seems to free me from the restraints that old habits and early education
have wound about me. _In vino veritas_, my son, but the truth must be
measured in quarts for each individual. Some men I know might be drowned
in wine and still be hypocrites, so solidly are their heads placed upon
their shoulders. But my demands are modest, my son, just as modest as I
am a modest sinner."

He called to Brutus to toss more wood upon the fire, leaned back for a
while, holding his glass to the light of the flames, and turned to me
again with his cool, perfunctory smile.

"Strange, is it not, that men through all the ages have sought fools and
charlatans to tell their fortunes, when a little wine is clearer than the
most mystic ball of crystal. Before the bottle the priests of Egypt and
the Delphic oracle seem as faint, my son, as the echoes in a snail shell.
Palmistry and astrology--let us fling them into the whirlpool of vanity!
But give a man wine enough, and any observer can tell his possibilities.
A touch of it--and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded
himself? Another drop, and how futile are all the deceptions which he is
wont to practice upon others! In St. Kitts once I drank wine with a most
respectable merchant, a man who carried the Bible beside his snuff box,
and referred to both almost as frequently as he did to the profit and
balance on his ledger. And would you believe it? The next time he met me,
he blamed me for the loss of many thousands of pounds. He even laid at my
door certain reprehensible indiscretions of his wife, though I could have
told him that night over the glasses that both were inevitable long
before either occurred.

"But pray do not look at me so blankly, my son. It was not clairvoyance
on my part--merely simple reasoning, aided by very excellent and very
heady Madeira. How true it is that there is truth in wine--and money too,
if the grape is used to the proper advantage.

"Again--some men talk of fortune at cards, good luck or bad, but as for
me, I can tell how the luck will run by the number of bottles that are
placed beside the table. A little judgment, and the crudest
reasoning--that is all. But doubtless mutual friends have already
hinted to you of my propensities at cards--and other things. Is it not
so, my son?"

Was it the gentle inflection of the question, or his intent glance that
made me feel, as I had felt before that day, that I was face to face with
an alert antagonist? He called on me to speak, and I was loth to break my
silence. If he had only left me to my own bitter thoughts,--but why
should I have expected him to be tactful? Why should I have expected him
to be different from the gossip that clouded his name?

"Your card playing is still remembered, sir," I told him. "I have heard
of it two months back."

Deliberately he pushed one of the candles aside, so that the light should
stand less between us, poured himself another glass of wine, and flicked
the dust from the bottle off his sleeve.

"Indeed?" was his comment. "Your memory does you credit, even though
youthful impressions are apt to lodge fast. Or shall I say it is only
another proof of the veracity of my man of business? Two months ago, at
a certain little gathering, someone, whose name I have yet to discover,
informed you of certain bad habits I had contracted in games of chance. I
remember being interested at the time that my reputation lasted so well
in my absence. But I beg you--let me confirm the report still further. Am
I mistaken in believing you made some apt retort?"

"Sir," I said in a voice that sounded strangely discordant, "I told
him he lied."

"Ha!" said my father, and for a moment I thought he was going to commend
my act, but instead his eyes moved to the table.

"Brutus," he continued, "is my mind becoming cloudy, or is it true the
wine is running low? Open another bottle, Brutus."

There was a silence while he raised his glass to his lips.

"And am I right," he asked, "in recalling that you allowed yourself the
liberty--of punctuating that comment?"

"You have been well informed, sir," I answered. "I struck him in
the face."

He waved a hand to me in a pleasant gesture of acknowledgment, and half
turned in his chair, the better to speak over his shoulder.

"Did I hear aright, Brutus?" he inquired. "There's faith for you and
loyalty! He called the boy a liar who called me a cheat at cards! Ah,
those illusions of youth! Ah for that sweet mirage that used to glitter
in the sky overhead! It's only the wine that brings it back today--called
him a liar, Brutus, and gave him the blow!"

"But pardon," he went on. His voice was still grave and slow, though his
lips were bent in a bitter little smile. His face had reddened, and it
was the wine, I think, that made his eyes dance in the candle light.
"Overlook, I beg, the rudeness of my interruption. The exceptional in
your narrative quite intrigues me, my son. Doubtless your impulsive
action led to the conventional result?"

There he sat, amusedly examining me, smiling at my rising temper. My
reply shaped itself almost without my volition.

"Excuse me, sir," I retorted, "if I say the result was more natural than
your action upon a greater provocation."

"Had it ever occurred to you, my son, that perhaps my self-control was
greater also? Let us call it so, at any rate, and go on with our
adventure."

"As you will, sir," I said. "We all make our mistakes."

He raised his eyebrows in polite surprise, and his hand in a gesture
of protest.

"Our mistakes? Was I not right in believing you had a competent
instructor? I begin to fear your education is deficient. Surely you have
agility and courage. Why a mistake, my son?"

"The mistake," I replied, "was in the beginning and not in the end. I
made the error in believing he told an untruth."

"Indeed?" said my father. "Thank you, Brutus, I have had wine enough for
the evening. Do you not consider your error--how shall we put it--quite
inexcusable in view of the other things you have doubtless heard?"

But I could only stare dumbly at him across the table.

"Come, come," he continued. "How goes the gossip now? Surely there is
more about me. Surely you have heard"--he paused to drain the dregs in
his glass--"the rest?"

I eyed him for a moment in silence before I answered, but he met my
glance fairly, indulging apparently in the same curiosity, half idle,
half cynical, that he might have displayed before some episode of the
theatre. It was a useless question that he asked. He knew too well that
the answer was obvious.

"Yes," I said, "I have heard it."

"So," he exclaimed cheerfully, "my reputation still continues. Wonderful,
is it not, how durable a bad reputation is, and how fragile a good one.
One bounds back like a rubber ball. The other shatters like a lustre
punch bowl. And did the same young man--I presume he was young--enlighten
you about this, the most fatal parental weakness?"

"No," I said, "I learned of it later."

He raised his hand and began gently stroking his coat lapel, his fingers
quickly crossing it in a vain search for some imaginary wrinkle, moving
back and forth with a steady persistence, while he watched me, still
amused, still indifferent.

"And might I ask who told you?" he inquired.

"Your brother-in-law," I replied, "My Uncle Jason."

"Dieu!" cried my father, "but I grow careless."

He was looking ruefully at his lapel. Somehow the threads had given way,
and there was a rent in the gray satin.

"Another coat ruined," he observed, and the raillery was gone from his
voice. "How fortunate it is that the evening is well along, and bed time
is nearly here. One coat torn in the brambles, and one with a knife, and
now--But your uncle was right, quite right in telling you. Indeed, I
should have done the same myself. The truth first, my son. Always
remember that."

And he turned again to his coat.

"I told him I did not believe it," I ventured, but the appeal in my
voice, if there was any, passed him quite unnoticed.

"Indeed?" he said. "Brutus, you will put an extra blanket on my bed, for
I fancy the night air is biting."

I pushed back my chair.

"And now, you will excuse me" I said, "if I take my leave."

I rose a trifle unsteadily, and stood before him, with no particular
effort to hide my anger and contempt. But apparently I had ceased to be
of interest. He was sitting just as I had first seen him that morning,
staring into the embers of the fire. As I watched him, even through my
anger I felt a vague regret, a touch of pity--pity for a life that was
wasted in spite of its possibilities, in boasting and blackguardry. I
began hoping that he would speak, would argue or remonstrate. Instead, he
said nothing, only sat serenely indifferent, his eyes still on the fire.
Stepping around the debris that filled the room, I had placed my hand on
the latch, when I heard a stealthy footstep behind me. Brutus was at my
elbow. There was a tinkle of a wine glass falling on the hearth. I turned
to see my father facing me beside the table I had quitted--the calm
modulation gone from his voice, his whole body poised and alert, as
though ready to spring through the space that separated us.

"No doubt," he said, drawing a deep breath, "you are leaving this house
because you cannot bear to stay under the same roof with a man of my
stamp and accomplishments. Come, is that the reason?"

"Only partly," I answered, turning to face him, and then the words
tripped off my tongue, hot and bitter, before I had wit to check them.
"What right have I to be particular, now that I have found out my
inheritance? Why should I pick my company? Why should I presume to hold
my head up? I can only be blessed now, sir, like the rest of the meek."

I paused to let my final words sink in, and because I knew they would
hurt him, I spoke them with an added satisfaction.

"I shall start at once to acquire merit which the moth cannot corrupt," I
continued. "I am leaving to apologize to the man I fought with because he
called you a cheat--and to my uncle for doubting his word."

My father's fist came down on the table with a crash.

"Then, by God," he shouted, "you'll not leave this room! You'll not take
a single step until you've learned two things, learned them so you'll
never forget. Stand where you are and listen!"




IV


I remember the curious feeling I had that my father was gone, that he had
vanished while my back was turned, leaving me to face someone else. Then,
as I stared at him, still unready and speechless, the light died out of
his eyes, his lips relaxed, and his hand went up to arrange the lace at
his throat.

"Shun my example," he said, "shudder at the life I have led. Call me
dissolute. Call me dangerous company. Say that in every way I'm unfit to
be your father--say that I'm an outcast, suitable only as material for
slander. I will agree with you. I will teach you that your judgment is
correct. Let us only set two limits and do not call them virtues. They
are necessities in the life I lead, nothing more. They--"

The sound at the knocker on the front door broke into my father's speech
and stilled it. In the pause, while the echoes died away, he shrugged his
shoulders negligently, and settled himself back in his chair.

"My son," he sighed, "allow me to point out the misfortune of being a
man of affairs. They will never adjust themselves to the proper time and
place. Brutus, the two gentlemen about whom I was speaking--show them in
at once. And you, my son, there is no need for you to leave. The evening
is young yet."

"Where are you, Shelton?" came a sharp, authoritative voice from the
hallway. "Damn this dark passage."

"Open the door, Henry," my father said.

As I did so, two gentlemen entered. The taller, without bothering to
remove his hat, strode over to my father's chair. The other stood
undecided near the threshold, until Brutus closed the door behind him.
Without rising from his chair, my father gave first one and then the
other, the impartial, casual glance of the disinterested observer.

"This," he remarked politely, "comes near to being unexpected. I had
heard you had come to town, but I had hoped to meet you only in some
desolate waste of purgatory. I fear your visitation finds me singularly
unprepared to do the duties of a host. You found the passage dark? Ah,
Lawton, I fear it will be darker still where you are going."

"That's enough, Shelton," interrupted the first gentleman. "I didn't
come here to hear you talk. I've heard you do that often enough in
the old days. You can talk a woman off her feet, but by God, you
can't talk me."

My father waved his hand negligently, as though disavowing some
compliment.

"The same forceful character," he observed gently, "the same blunt
candor. How refreshing it is, Lawton, after years of intrigue and
dissimulation. My son, this is Mr. Lawton, an old, but he will pardon me
if I do not add--a valued acquaintance."

For a moment Mr. Lawton's pale eyes looked sharply into mine, and I bowed
to him ironically. I saw a high, thin face, resolute and impulsive, a
grim ascetic face, with a long, straight nose that seemed pulled too
close to his upper lip, and a mouth stamped roughly on a narrow, bony
jaw, a mouth, as I looked at it, that seemed ready to utter an
imprecation.

"Mr. Lawton and I have met before," I said.

"Indeed? And our friend in the background," my father continued. "Perhaps
it is my bad memory that permits his identity still to be a revelation?"

The stranger nervously arranged a fold in his sea cloak, while his
little black eyes darted restlessly about the room.

"It's Sims, Captain Shelton," he volunteered, in a gentle, unassuming
voice, "and very much at your service."

"Captain Shelton be damned!" snapped Lawton. "Keep your name to yourself,
Sims, and watch the nigger and the boy. Now, Shelton, for the reason why
I'm here."

"Indeed, I am forced to admit the reason for your visit may have its
pertinence," my father admitted. "The fatigues of a long day, coupled
with the evening's wine--" He stifled a yawn behind the back of his hand,
and smiled in polite deprecation.

Slight as was his speech, Mr. Lawton seemed to take a deep interest in
it. Indeed, even while he backed around the table and seated himself in
the chair I had occupied, my father's slightest expression engaged his
undivided attention. There fell a silence such as sometimes comes at a
game of cards when the stakes at the table are running higher than is
pleasant. Brutus was watching Mr. Sims with a malignant intensity. Mr.
Sims watched Brutus. Mr. Lawton's eyes, as I have said, never left my
father, and my father polished his nails on the sleeve of his coat.

"Did I understand you to say," he asked finally, "that you were planning
to relieve my mind of the burden of speculation?"

"Quite," said Mr. Lawton, with a poor attempt at dryness. "I have come
here tonight to induce or force you to return a piece of stolen property.
I give you the liberty of taking your choice. Either--"

His voice raised itself to a sharp command.

"_Damn you, Shelton, sit still!_"

The picture had changed. Mr. Lawton was leaning across the table,
levelling a pistol at my father's head. With a detached, academic
interest, my father glanced at the weapon, and, without perceptible
pause, without added haste or deliberation, he continued to withdraw the
hand he had thrust into his right coat pocket. Beside me I heard Brutus
draw a sharp breath. I saw Mr. Sims fumble under his cloak and take a
quick step backwards. There was a tense, pregnant silence, broken by Mr.
Sims in fervent expletive. My father had withdrawn his hand. He was
holding in it his silver snuff box, which he tossed carelessly on the
table, where it slid among the wine bottles.

"Why strain so at a gnat, Lawton," he continued in his old conversational
manner. "Though one can kill a sparrow with a five pound shot, is it
worth the effort? Small as my personal regard is for you, a note penned
in three lines would have brought you back your trinket. But when you say
it is stolen--"

With a gesture of exasperation, Mr. Lawton attempted to interrupt.

"When you say it is stolen," my father continued, raising his voice,
"your memory fails you. I won that snuff box from you fairly, because
your horse refused a water jump in Baltimore fifteen years ago."

Mr. Lawton made a grimace of impatience.

"Perhaps I can refresh your memory on a more immediate matter," he
interjected harshly, "a matter rather more in keeping with your
character. Don't, don't move, I beg of you! At a certain chateau in the
Loire Valley, as recently as two months ago, you had an unfortunate
escapade with French government agents."

"Let us err on the side of accuracy," said my father in gracious assent,
"and add that the affair was rather more unfortunate for the agents than
for myself."

"Meaning it was fortunate you ran away, I suppose," suggested Mr. Lawton,
"fortunate, but natural. You escaped, Shelton, in the company of a
certain young lady they were seeking to apprehend. You retained in your
possession a list of names of political importance. It is a part of your
damned blackmail, I suppose. I say you stole that paper!"

"Indeed?" said my father. "In that case, permit me! The snuff is
excellent, Lawton, although the box is commonplace."

"By God!" shouted Mr. Lawton, "I've had enough of your damned simpering
airs? You're a coward, Shelton. Why conceal it from me? A coward, afraid
to demand satisfaction after a public insult--a thief with your theft
still about you. I've come to get that list, to return it to its rightful
owners. Try your drunkard's bragging on stupefied boys, but not on me!
For the last time--will you give that letter up?"

My father's hand that held the snuff box trembled. His glance was almost
furtive as he looked from Mr. Sims back to Mr. Lawton. For a moment he
stared half-puzzled at Mr. Lawton's pistol. Then he moistened his lips.

"Suppose I should refuse?" he asked.

With a wan smile, Mr. Lawton rubbed his left hand over his long chin.

"In that case," he said, "I shall summon five men whom I hold outside.
They will search the house, having searched you first. If they do not
find the letter, I shall give you one more chance to produce it."

"Of course you realize your action is illegal?" my father interrupted.

Mr. Lawton laughed.

"We've beaten about the bush long enough," he said. "Will I have to
remind you again that I didn't come to hear you talk? Come to the point.
Will you give up that paper?"

With a sigh of resignation, my father fumbled in his breast pocket. When
he spoke, it seemed a weak appeal to justify his action.

"Under the circumstances, what else can I do?" he demanded, "though it
seems hard when I had given my word not to part with it."

He produced a long, sealed document, which he handed across the table.
Mr. Lawton's eyes glistened with anticipation as he took it. He held it
over the table to scan the seal.

"Damn all your caution, Sims!" he exclaimed exultantly. "We've got it just
as I said we would! Didn't I tell you--"

His voice choked. He burst into a violent fit of sneezing. My father had
thrown the contents of his snuff box into Mr. Lawton's face.

If his chair had been of hot iron, he could not have moved more quickly.
Almost the same moment, Mr. Lawton's pistol was in my father's hand,
cocked and primed and pointed at Mr. Sims.

"Brutus," said my father, "unburden Mr. Sims of his weapons. Lawton, a
breath of night air may relieve you. Let us go to the window and reflect
on the slip that may occur between the container and the nose. My son,
give Mr. Lawton your arm. Assist me to open the shutters. Now Mr. Lawton,
call to your men. Tell them they may go. Louder, louder, Mr. Lawton.
Surely your voice has more strength. My ears have been weary this long
time with its clamor."




V


Even today, as I pen these lines, the picture comes back with the same
intensity, but little mellowed or softened with the years. The gaunt old
room that had entertained so many guests, emptied of its last one, with
nothing but the faint chill that had come through the opened window to
remind one of their presence--the fitful light of the two candles that
had begun spluttering in the tall brass sticks--Brutus with quiet
adroitness clearing away the bottles and the dishes--and a sudden burst
of flame from the back log in the fireplace that made his shadow jump
unevenly over the opposite wall--and my father resting languidly in his
chair again, quite as though nothing had happened--I remember looking
about me and almost doubting that anything out of the ordinary had passed
in the last five minutes. I glanced narrowly at him, but there was
nothing in his manner to betray that he had not been sitting there for
the past hour in peaceful meditation. Was he thinking of the other nights
when the room was bright with silver and candles?

"My son," he remarked presently, "I was saying to you before our callers
interrupted that there are just two things I never do. Do you still care
to know them? I think that one may be enough for tonight. It is that
circumstances oblige me to keep my word."

"You do not care to tell me any more?" I asked him.

"Only that you had better stay, my son. If you do, I can guarantee you
will see me at my worst, which is better, perhaps, than hearing of me
second hand. And possibly it may even be interesting, the little drama
which is starting."

Thoughtfully he balanced the pistol he was still holding on the palm of
his hand, and half unconsciously examined the priming, while I watched
him, half with misgiving, half with a reluctant sort of admiration. When
he turned towards me again, his eyes had brightened as though he were
dwelling on a pleasing reminiscence.

"Indeed," he mused, "it might be more than interesting, hilarious, in
fact, if it were not for the lady in the case."

"The lady!" I echoed involuntarily.

"And why not indeed?" he said with a shrug. "Let us do our best to be
consistent. What drama is complete without a lady in it? It would have
been simpler, I admit, if I had stolen the paper, per se, and not the
lady with it. The lady, I fear, is becoming an encumbrance."

"Am I to understand you brought a woman with you across the ocean?"

He placed the pistol on the table before him, looked at it critically,
and changed its position.

"A lady, my son, not a woman. You will find that the two are quite
different species. I fear she had but little choice. That is a pretty
lock on Mr. Lawton's weapon."

"You mean she is here now?" I persisted. He must surely have been in
jest.

"To be sure!" he acquiesced. "She is, I trust, asleep in the east guest
room, and heaven help you if you wake her. But why do you start, my son,
does it seem odd to you that I should act as squire?"

"Not in the least," I assured him. "I am only astonished that she should
consent to accompany you. You say, sir, that she is a lady?"

"At least," he replied, "I am broadening your education. That in itself,
Henry, quite repays me for any trouble I may have taken--but I fear you
are putting a bad construction on it. I beg of you, do not judge me so
harshly. Launcelot himself--what am I saying?--Bayard himself, up to the
present moment, could only commend my every action."

"Even to bringing her to this house," I suggested coldly.

"Precisely," he replied. "That in itself was actuated by the highest
piece of altruism heaven has vouchsafed humanity--the regard a father has
for his son."

"Do you mean to think," I demanded angrily, "that you can bring me into
this business?"

I was still on my feet, and took a quick step toward him.

"Is it not enough to find you what you are? You've done enough to me
tonight, sir, without adding an insult."

My father nodded, quite as though he were receiving a compliment.
Seemingly still well pleased, he helped himself again to his snuff, and
dusted his fingers carefully with his lace handkerchief.

"You misunderstand me," he said gently. "My present occupation requires a
shrewder head and a steadier hand than yours."

"And a different code of morals," I added, bowing.

"Positively, my son, you are turning Puritan," he remarked. "A most
refreshing change for the family."

I had an angry retort at the tip of my tongue, but it remained unspoken.
For the second time that evening, the dining room door opened. I swung
away from the table. My father leapt to his feet, bland and obsequious. A
girl with dark hair and eyes was standing on the threshold, staring at us
curiously, holding a candle that softened the austerity of her plain
black dress. There in the half light there was a slender grace about her
that made her seem vaguely unreal. In that disordered room she seemed as
incongruous as some portrait from a house across the water, as coldly
unresponsive to her surroundings. I imagined her on the last canvas of
the gallery, bearing all the traits of the family line--the same quiet
assurance, the same confident tilt of the head, the same high forehead
and clear cut features.

Evidently a similar thought was running through my father's mind.

"Ah, Mademoiselle," he said swiftly in the French tongue, "stay where
you are! Stay but a moment! For as you stand there in the shadows,
you epitomize the whole house of Blanzy, their grace, their pride,
their beauty."

She tried to suppress a smile, but only half succeeded.

"I fear the Captain has been drinking again," she said quietly. "Not that
I am sorry. The wine improves you, I think."

"Mademoiselle lures me to a drunkard's grave," exclaimed my father,
bowing low, "but pray be seated. A chair for the lady, my son. Early this
afternoon they told me not to expect you. I trust you have had everything
possible done for your comfort?"

For a moment she favored me with an incurious glance.

"I was unable to see you on the ship, captain, and I wanted to have a
word with you at the first opportunity. Otherwise I would not have
favored you with a tableau of the house of Blanzy. I wanted to speak with
you--alone."

She had declined the chair I offered her, and was standing facing him,
her eyes almost on a level with his.

"This," said my father, bowing again, "is delightfully unexpected! But I
forget myself. This is my son, Henry Shelton. May I present him to Mlle.
de Blanzy?"

"I suppose you may as well," she replied, holding a hand toward me
indifferently. "Let us trust he has your good qualities monsieur, and
none of your bad ones. But I wanted to speak to you alone."

"My son is discretion itself," said my father, with another bow. "Pray
let him stay. I feel sure our discussion will not only interest but
instruct him."

Mademoiselle frowned and tapped an angry foot on the floor.

"You heard what I said, sir. Send him out," she demanded.

"Stay where you are, Henry," said my father gently. "Stay where you are,"
he repeated more loudly, as I started for the door. "I have something
further to say to you before you leave this house."

"Your pardon," he explained, turning again to Mademoiselle, "but my son
and I have had a slight falling out over a question of ethics which I
think directly concerns the matter you wish to discuss. Pray forgive me,
Mademoiselle, but I had much rather he remained."

Mademoiselle glanced at me again, this time with an appeal in her eyes
which I read and understood. It seemed to me a trace more of color had
mounted to her cheeks. She seemed about to speak but paused
irresolutely.

I made a bow which I did my best to render the equal of my father's, and
for the first time I was glad I had entered his house.

"Mademoiselle," I said, "it is a pleasure to render you even so small
a service."

And I turned to my father, and met his glance squarely.

"I cannot see any profit to either of us for me to remain longer," I
observed, "either here or in this house," and I turned to the door.

"Brutus!" called my father sharply. "Stand by the door. Now sir, if you
leave this room before I am ready, my servant shall retain you by force.
Mademoiselle will pardon this domestic scene," he added, "the boy has an
uncertain temper."

I looked to see Brutus' great bulk grinning at me from the doorway. I saw
my father half smiling, and fingering the lace at his throat. I saw
Mademoiselle watching me, partly frightened, but partly curious, as
though she had witnessed similar occurrences. Then my pent up anger got
the better of me. Mr. Lawton's pistol still lay on the table. Before my
father could divine my intention, I had seized it, and held it pointed
at Brutus' head.

"Sir," I said, breathing a trifle faster than usual, "I am not used to
being threatened by servants. Order him to one side!"

My father looked at me almost admiringly, and his hand, that had been
fingering the lace, groped toward an empty bottle.

"Anything but a bottle, father," I said, watching him from the tail of my
eye, "anything but a bottle. It smacks of such low associations."

"Your pardon, Henry," he said quickly, "the movement was purely
unconscious. I had thought we were through with pistols for the evening,
and Mademoiselle must be fatigued. So put down the pistol, Henry, and let
us continue the interview."

"Certainly," I replied, "as soon as you have fulfilled your part of the
contract. As soon as you call off your servant, I shall wish you a very
good evening. Stand where you are, Brutus."

"Come, come," said my father patiently, "we have had enough of the
grotesque this evening. It is growing late, my son. Put down the pistol."

"Brutus," I called, "if you move again, backwards or forwards, I'll
fire," and I backed towards the wall.

"Good," said my father. "Henry, you have an amount of courage and
foresight which I scarcely expected, even in a son of mine, yet not
enough foresight to see that it is useless. Put down the pistol. Put it
down before I take it from you!"

His hand had returned again to his torn lapel, and he was leaning
slightly forward.

"One instant, father!" I said quickly. "If you come a step nearer, I
shall fire on your servant. Pray believe I am serious, father."

"My son!" he cried in mock alarm. "You distress me! Never be serious.
Life has too many disappointments for that. Have you not read Marcus
Aurelius?"

"Have you reloaded your snuff box?" I asked him.

"Not that," he said, shaking his head, "but I know a hundred ways to
disarm a man, otherwise I should not be here witnessing this original
situation. My son, I could have killed you half a dozen times since you
have been holding that weapon."

"Admitted," I answered, "but I hardly think you will go to such lengths.
We all must pause somewhere, father."

"No," he agreed, "unfortunately I am of a mild disposition, and yet--"
he made a sudden move toward me--"Do you realize your weapon is
unprimed?"

"Shall I try it?" I asked.

"Excellent!" said my father. "You impress me. Yes, I have underrated your
possibilities, Henry. However, the play is over--"

He leaned towards the table abruptly and extinguished both the candles.
The glow of embers in the fireplace could not relieve the darkness of the
shuttered room.

"Now," he continued, "Mademoiselle is standing beside me, and Brutus is
between you and me and approaching you. I think it would be safer if you
put the pistol down. One's aim is uncertain in the dark, and, after all,
it is not Mademoiselle's quarrel. Tell him to put down the pistol,
Mademoiselle."

Her voice answered from the darkness in front of me.

"On the contrary," she said lightly, "pray continue. I have not the heart
to stop it--nor the courage to interfere in a family quarrel."

"Quite as one would expect from Mademoiselle," his voice replied, "but
fortunately my son also has not forgotten his manners. Henry, have you
set down the pistol?"

I tossed it on the floor.

"Unfortunately," I said, "I have no woman to hide behind."

I hoped the thrust went home, but my father's voice answered
without a tremor.

"You are right, my son. A woman is often useful, though generally when
you least expect it. The candles, Brutus."




VI


He rubbed his fingernails on his sleeve and glanced about him with a
pleasure he seemed quite unable to conceal. Mademoiselle's cold stare
seemed to react upon him like a smile of gratitude. The contempt on my
face he seemed to read in terms of adulation.

"Brutus, pick up the pistol. My son, you are more amusing than I had
hoped. Indeed, Mademoiselle, perhaps the old saying is right, that the
best is in our door-yard. I have had, perhaps, an exceptional opportunity
to see the world. I have spent a longer time than I like to think
collecting material for enlivening reminiscence, but I cannot recall
having been present before at a scene with so many elements of interest.
You harbor no ill feelings, my son?"

"None that are new," I said. "Only my first impressions."

"And they are--?" He paused modestly. He might have been awaiting
a tribute.

"Father!" I remonstrated. "There is a lady present!"

"You had almost made me forget," he sighed regretfully. "You wished to
have a word with me, Mademoiselle? I am listening. No, no, my son! You
will be interested, I am sure. The door, Brutus!"

But it was not Brutus who stopped me. Mademoiselle had laid a hand on my
arm. As I looked down at her, the bitterness and chagrin I had felt began
slowly to ebb away. Her eyes met mine for a moment in thoughtful
appraisal.

"You have been kind," she said softly, "Kind, and you know you have no
reason--."

She might have continued, but my father interrupted.

"No reason," he said, "No reason? It is only Mademoiselle's complete
disregard of self that prevents her from seeing the reason. A reason," he
added, bowing, "which seems to me as natural as it is obvious."

I turned toward him quickly. From the corner of my eye I could see Brutus
move nearer, and then Mademoiselle stepped between us.

"We have had quite enough of this," said Mademoiselle, and she looked
from one to the other of us with a condescension that was not wholly
displeasing. Then, fixing her eyes on my father, she continued:

"Not that I am in the least afraid of you, Captain Shelton. We have had
to employ too many men like you not to know your type. Your son, I think,
must take after his mother. I fear he thinks I am a damsel in distress. I
trust, captain, that you know better, though for the moment, you seem to
have forgotten."

"Forgotten?" my father echoed, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes," she said, speaking more quickly, "forgotten that you are in the
pay of my family. You had contracted to get certain papers from France,
which were in danger of being seized by the authorities."

Seemingly undecided how to go on, she hesitated, glanced at me covertly,
and then continued.

"I accompanied you because--"

"Because you did not care to share the fate reserved for the papers?" my
father suggested politely.

For a moment she was silent, staring at my father almost incredulously,
while he inclined his head solicitously, as though ready to obey her
smallest wish. Again I started to turn away.

"The door, Brutus," said my father.

"I am beginning to see I made a mistake in not remaining," Mademoiselle
said finally. "Yet you--"

"Contrived to rescue both the papers and Mademoiselle, if I remember
rightly," said my father, bowing, "an interesting and original
undertaking, but pray do not thank me."

"Be still!" she commanded sharply. "You were not paid to be impertinent,
captain. I have only one more request to make of you before I leave this
house tomorrow morning."

He shrugged his shoulders, and glanced at me, as though definitely to
assure himself that I was listening.

"I do not think that Mademoiselle will leave the house at that date," he
said, with a second bow.

"And what does the captain mean by that?" she asked quickly.

"Simply that the house is already watched," said my father, "watched,
Mademoiselle, by persons in the pay of the French government. Do not
start, Mademoiselle, they will not trouble us tonight, I think."

For the first time her surprising self-confidence left her. She turned
pale, even to her red lips, stretched out a hand blindly, and grasped
the table.

"And the paper?" she whispered. "You have destroyed it?"

My father shook his head.

"Then," gasped Mademoiselle, "give it to me now! At once, captain, if
you please!"

"Mademoiselle no longer trusts me?" asked my father, in tones of pained
surprise. "Surely not that!"

"Exactly that!" she flung back at him angrily.

He bowed smilingly in acknowledgment.

"And Mademoiselle is right," he agreed. "I have read the paper. I have
been tempted."

"You rogue!" she cried. "You mean--"

"I mean," he interrupted calmly, "that I have been tempted and have
fallen. The document I carry has too much value, Mademoiselle. The actual
signatures of the gentlemen who had been so deluded as to believe they
could restore a king to France! Figure for yourself, my lady, those names
properly used are a veritable gold mine, more profitable than my Chinese
trade can hope to be! Surely you realize that?"

"So you have turned from cards to diplomacy," I observed. "How versatile
you grow, father!"

"They are much the same thing," my father said.

"And you mean," Mademoiselle cried, "you are dog enough to use those
names? You mean you are going back on your word either to destroy that
list or to place it in proper hands? You mean you are willing to see your
friends go under the guillotine? Surely not, monsieur! Surely you are too
brave a gentleman. Surely a man who has behaved as gallantly as you--No,
captain, I cannot believe it!"

"Mademoiselle," he said blandly, "still has much to learn of the world.
Take myself, for instance. I am a gentleman only by birth and breeding.
Otherwise, pray believe I am quite unspeakable, quite. Do you not see
that even my son finds me so?"

He nodded towards me in graceful courtesy.

"For me," he continued smoothly, "only one thing has ever remained
evident, and well-defined for long, and that, my lady, is money. Nearly
everything else seems to tarnish, but still money keeps its lustre. Ah!
Now we begin to understand each other. Strange you should not realize it
sooner. I cannot understand what actuated so many persons, supposedly
rational, to sign such a ridiculous document. That they have done so is
their fault, not mine. I believe, Mademoiselle, in profiting by the
mistakes of others. I believe in profiting by this one. Someone should be
glad to pay a pretty price for it."

He stopped and shrugged his shoulders, and she stood before him
helpless, her hand raised toward him in entreaty. For a moment my father
glanced away.

"You couldn't! Oh, you couldn't!" she began. "For God's sake, Monsieur,
think what you are doing. I--we all trusted you, depended on your help.
We thought you were with us. We---"

Her voice choked in a sob, and she sank into a chair, her face buried in
her hands. My father looked at her, and took a pinch of snuff.

"Indeed," he said, "I am almost sorry, but it is the game, Mademoiselle.
We each have our little square on the chess board. I regret that mine is
a black one. A while ago I was a pawn, paid by your family. Then it
seemed to me expedient to do as you dictated--to take you out of France
to safety, to deliver both you and a certain pacer to your brother's
care. But that was a while ago. I am approaching the king row now.
Forgive me, if things seem different--and rest assured, Mademoiselle,
that you, at least, are in sate hands as long as you obey my directions."

He made this last statement with a benign complacency, and once more
busied himself with his nails. I took a step toward him, and he looked
up, as though to receive my congratulations.

"So you leave us, my son," he said briskly. "I fear you will meet with
trouble before you pass the lane. But you seem surprisingly able to look
out for yourself. Brutus will help you to saddle."

"You are mistaken," I said. "I am not leaving."

And I bowed to Mademoiselle, who had started at the sound of my voice,
and was staring at me with a tear-stained face.

"I have decided to stay," I cried, "If Mademoiselle will permit me."

But she did not answer, and my father regarded us carefully, as though
balancing possibilities.

"Not leaving!" Whether my statement was surprising or otherwise was
impossible to discern. He raised his eyebrows in interrogation, and I
smiled at him in a manner I hoped resembled his.

"I fear you may tire of my company," I went on, "because I am going to
stay until you have disposed of this paper as Mademoiselle desires. Or if
you are unwilling to do so, I shall take pleasure in doing it myself."

My father rubbed his hands, and then tapped me playfully on the shoulder.

"Somehow I thought this little scene would fetch you," he cried.
"Excellent, my son! I hoped you might stay on."

"And now, sir," I said, "the paper, if you please."

"What!" exclaimed my father, with a gesture of astonishment. "You too
want the paper! How popular it is becoming, to be sure!"

"At least I am going to try to get it," I began gravely, when a sudden
change in his expression stopped me.

"Wait," he said coldly. "Look before you leap, my son. Allow me to make
the situation perfectly clear before you attempt anything so foolish. In
the first place, let us take myself. I am older than you, it is true, but
years and excitement have not entirely weakened me. I have been present
in many little unpleasantnesses. I have fought with Barbary pirates and
Chinese junks, and with assorted Christians. The fact that I am here
tonight proves I am usually successful. Even if I were alone, I doubt if
you could take the paper from me. But you forget another matter--"

He turned and pointed to Brutus in the doorway. Brutus grinned back and
nodded violently, his eyes rolling in pleased anticipation.

"Eight years ago," my father continued, "I saved Brutus from the gallows
at Jamaica. He has a strangely persistent sense of gratitude. I have seen
Brutus only last month kill three stronger men than you, my son. I fancy
the document is safe in my pocket, quite safe."

He half smiled, and took another pinch of snuff.

"But let us indulge in the impossible," he continued. "Suppose you did
get the paper. Let us examine the paper itself."

And slowly he drew it from his pocket, and flicked it flat in the
candle light.

"Come, Henry, draw up a chair, and let us be sensible. Another bottle of
Madeira, Brutus. And now, tell me, what do you know of French politics?"

"Sir," I objected, "it seems to me you are forgetting the point. What
have politics to do with you and me?"

It seemed to me I saw another opportunity. With a sense of elation I did
my best to conceal, I watched him quickly drain his glass, and I thought
his eyes were brighter, and his gestures less careful and alert.

"Politics," he said, "and politics alone, Henry, are responsible for this
evening's entertainment. Surely you have perceived that much. The
glasses, Brutus, watch the glasses! These are parlous times, my son." He
raised his glass again--

"Mademoiselle will tell you as much. We made an interesting journey
through the provinces, did we not, my lady? It is a pity your father, the
Marquis, could not nave enjoyed it with us. He had a penchant for
interesting situations, and in France today anything may happen. In a few
scant months dukes have turned into pastry cooks, and barbers' boys into
generals. Tomorrow it may be a republic, or a monarchy that governs, or
some bizarre contrivance that is neither one nor the other. Just now it
is Napoleon Bonaparte, a very determined little man. Ah, you have heard
of him, my son? I sometimes wonder if he will not go further than many of
us think."

Yes, we had already begun to hear his name in America. We had already
begun to wonder how soon his influence would be overthrown, for it was in
the days before he had consolidated his power. He was still existing in a
maze of plots, still facing royalists and revolutionists, all conspiring
to seize the reins.

"I sometimes wonder, Mademoiselle," he continued thoughtfully, "if your
friends realized the task before them when they attempted to kill
Napoleon. Ah, now you grow interested, my son? Yes, that is what this
paper signifies. Written on this paper are the signatures of fifty
men--signatures to an oath to kill Napoleon Bonaparte and to restore a
king to France. You will agree with me it is a most original and
intriguing document."

"So they didn't kill him," I said.

"Indeed not," he replied; "quite the contrary. They gave him a new
lease of life."

"Then why," I demanded, "didn't they burn the paper. Why--"

"Ah!" said my father, with an indulgent smile. "There you have it, to be
sure. You have hit the root of the whole matter."

"It was the old Marquis's idea. He told me of it at the time. If everyone
in the plot signed the oath, it would be a dangerous thing indeed for
anyone to inform on the rest, because they would immediately produce the
paper which showed him as guilty as they. There are commendable points in
the Marquis's idea, my son. Now that the plot has failed, the existence
of this paper is all that keeps many a man from telling a valuable and
dangerous little story. In these signatures I read names of men above
suspicion, men high in the present government. Somehow Napoleon's police
have learned of the existence of this paper. It has become almost vital
for Napoleon to obtain it. He has tried to get it already. Since it
reposed in the strong box at the Chateau of Blanzy, it has cost him five
men. It has cost me new halliards and rigging for the Eclipse, and Brutus
a disfigured countenance--not that I am complaining. Someone shall pay me
for it. And the game is just beginning, my son. Mr. Lawton--have you
wondered who he is? He is a very reckless man in the pay of France. He
will get that paper if he can, if not by force, by money. Even now his
men are watching the house. Suppose you held the paper in your hands, my
son, you still have Mr. Lawton."

He folded the paper, and replaced it in his pocket.

"It is safer here at present," said my father. "There will be others who
will want it presently, and then, perhaps, we will dispose of it."

"In other words, you intend to sell the people who entrusted you with the
paper to the highest bidder?" I inquired.

He glanced towards Mademoiselle, and back to me again, and smiled
brightly.

"That," he admitted pleasantly, "is one way of looking at it, though it
might be viewed from more congenial angles."

I started to speak, but he raised his voice, and for the second time that
evening became entirely serious.

"The paper," he said, "has nothing to do with your being in this house
tonight. You are becoming more of a hindrance than I expected, but you
are here, and here you will stay for another reason. I have heard much
of the good examples parents set their children. For me to set one is a
patent impossibility. I have never been a good example. But perhaps I can
offer you something which is even better, and that, my son, is why I
asked you to this house. Can you guess what it is?"

"There is no need to guess," I said, "you have been perfectly clear."

Gossip had it that my father always loved the theatre, though perhaps the
Green Room better than the footlights. The marked passages in his library
still attest his propensity. He now looked about him with a keen
appreciation, as though my words were all that he required to round put
his evening. Like a man whose work is finished, and who is pleasantly
fatigued by his exertions, he leaned back in his chair.

"My son," he said, "you have a keenness of wit, and a certain decision,
which I confess I overlooked in you at first--"

The moment must have pleased him, for he paused, as though on purpose to
prolong it.

"You are right," he continued finally. "I am here to set you a bad
example, Henry, and, believe me, it will be no fault of mine if it is
not more effective than a good one. Listen, my son, and you too,
Mademoiselle, I have been many things, tried many things in this life,
most of them discreditable. I have wasted my days and my prospects in
a thousand futilities. I have lost my friends. I have lost my
position. Sneer at me, my son, laugh at me, curse me if you wish. I
shall be the first to commend you for it. I am broad-minded enough to
recognize your position.

"But above all things watch me. Watch me, and remember the things I do.
Recall my ethics and my logic. They are to be your legacy, my son. What
money I may leave you is doubtless tainted. But the things I do--of
course you perceive their value?"

"Only in a negative sense," I replied pushing the bottle toward him.

"You are right again," he said, refilling his glass. "Their value, as you
say, is purely negative. Yet, believe me, it does not impair them. You
have only to place them before you and do exactly opposite. It is the
best way I can think of for you to become a decent and self-respecting
man. And now you have the only reason why I permit you in my society. The
lesson has already started--an original lesson, is it not?"

As though to close the interview, he sprang up lightly, and bowed to
Mademoiselle. It seemed tome he was combating a slight embarrassment, for
he paused, seemingly uncertain how to begin, but only for a moment.
Mademoiselle had regained her self-possession, and was regarding him with
attention, and a little of the contempt which became her so well.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "even the pain of distressing you is lessened by
the unexpected pleasure of your company tonight. I hope you have found
the hour not entirely unprofitable. It has sometimes seemed to me, my
lady--pardon the rudeness of suggesting it--that you may have seen
something romantic, something heroic in me from time to time. I trust you
have been disillusioned tonight. The fight on the stairs, the open
boat--you see them all as they should be, do you not, the necessary parts
of a piece of villainy? Pray forget them--and good night, Mademoiselle."

Suddenly both he and I started, and involuntarily his hand went up to
cover his torn lapel. Mademoiselle was laughing.

"Captain," she cried, "you are absurd!"

"Absurd!" exclaimed my father uncertainly.

"You of all people! You cannot sell the paper!"

He sighed with apparent relief.

"And why not?" he asked.

"Because," said Mademoiselle, "you are one of those who signed it."

"Mademoiselle forgets," said my father, bowing, "that her name and mine
were written at the bottom of the list. It is a precaution I always take
with such little matters. The first thing I did, Mademoiselle, was to cut
both off with my razor. Brutus, light the stairs for the lady."

Without another glance at either of us, she walked slowly away, her chin
tilted, her slender fingers clenched. I knew that anger, fear, and
disappointment were walking there beside her, and yet she left the room
as proudly as she had entered it.

I stood listening to her step on the stairs.

"Ah," said my father, "there is a woman for you."

The last few minutes seemed to have wearied him, for he sank back heavily
in his chair. For a minute we were silent, and suddenly a speech of his
ran through my memory.

"May I ask you a question?" I inquired.

"It is my regret if I have not been clear," he said.

"It is not that," I assured him, "but you have appeared to allow yourself
a single virtue."

He raised his eyebrows.

"You have admitted," I persisted, "that circumstances force you to keep
your word."

"That," my father said, "is merely a necessity--not a virtue."

"Possibly," I agreed. "Yet, in your conversation with Mr. Lawton you
stated that you had given your word not to surrender this paper. My
question is--how can you reconcile this with your present intentions?"

For almost the only time I can remember, my father seemed puzzled for an
answer. He started to speak, and shook his head--drew out his
handkerchief and passed it over his lips.

"Circumstances alter even principles," he answered finally, "and this,
my son, is one of the circumstances. Brutus, the boy has been trying to
get me drunk long enough. Show him to his bedroom, and bring me my cloak
and pistols."

Brutus lifted one of the candlesticks, grinned at me, and nodded.

"A very good night to you, Henry," said my father tranquilly.

I bowed to him with courtesy which perhaps was intuitive.

"Be sure," I told him, "to keep your door locked, father."

"Pray do not worry," he replied. "I have thought out each phase of
my visit here too long for anything untoward to happen. Until
morning, Henry."

"I am not worrying," I rejoined. "Merely warning you--pardon my
incivility, father--but I might grow tired watching you be a bad example.
Did you consider that in your plans?"

My father yawned, and placed his feet nearer the coals.

"That is better," he said, "much better, my son. Now you are speaking
like a gentleman. I had begun to fear for you. It has seemed to me you
were almost narrow-minded. Never be that. Nothing is more annoying."

I drew myself up to my full height.

"Sir--" I began.

He slapped his hand on the table with an exclamation of disgust.

"And now you spoil it! Now you begin to rant and become heroic. I know
what you're going to say. You cannot see a woman bullied--what? Well, by
heaven, you can, and you will see it. You cannot stand an act of
treachery? Come, come, my son, you have better blood in you than to pose
as a low actor. All around us, every day, these things are happening.
Meet them like a man, and do not tell me what is obvious."

I felt my nails bite into my palms.

"Your pardon, father," I said. "I shall behave better in the future."

He glanced at me narrowly for a moment.

"I believe," he said, "we begin to understand. A very good night to you,
Henry. And Henry--"

A change in his tone made me spin about on my heel.

"I am going to pay you a compliment. Pray do not be overcome. I have
decided to consider you in my plans, my son, as a possible disturbing
factor. Brutus, you will take his pistols from his saddle bags."

In silence Brutus conducted me into the cold hall and up the winding
staircase, where his candle made the shadows of the newel posts dance
against the wainscot. I paused a moment at the landing to look back, but
I could see nothing in the dark pit of the hall below us. Was it possible
I could remember it alight with candles, whose flames made soft halos on
the polished floor? Brutus touched my shoulder, and the brusque grasp of
his hand turned me a trifle cold.

"Move on," I ordered sharply, "and light me to my room."

My speech appeared to amuse him.

"No, no--you first," said Brutus. "I go--perhaps you be angry. See?"

And he became so involved in throes of merriment that I hoped he might
extinguish the candle.

I thought better of an angry command, which I knew he would not obey, and
turned through the arched moulding that marked the entrance to the upper
hall, and at his direction opened a door. As I paused involuntarily on
the threshold, Brutus deftly slipped past, set the candle on a stand, and
bent over my saddle bags. Still chuckling to himself, he dropped my
pistols into his shirt bosom. Then his grin died away. His low forehead
became creased and puckered. He shifted his weight from one foot to the
other irresolutely, and drew a deep breath.

"Mister Henry--" he began.

"Well," I said.

"Something happen. Very bad here. You go home."

His sudden change of manner, and the shadowy, musty silence around me
threatened to shake the coolness I had attempted to assume. Unconsciously
my hand dropped to the hilt of my travelling sword. I looked across at
him through the shadows.

"You go home," said Brutus.

"Something _will_ happen, or something _has_ happened?" I asked.

But Brutus only shook his head stupidly.

"Very bad. You go home," he persisted.

"You go to the devil," I said, "and leave that candle. I won't burn down
the house."

He moved reluctantly towards the door.

"Monsieur very angry," said Brutus.

"Shut the door," I said, "the draft is blowing the candle."

He pulled it to without another word, and I could hear him fumbling
with the lock.

For the last ten years I doubt if anything had been changed in that room,
except for the addition of three blankets which Brutus had evidently laid
some hours before on the mildewed mattress of the carved four post bed.
My mother must have ordered up the curtains that hung over it in yellowed
faded tatters. The charred wood of a fire that had been lighted when the
room was new, still lay over the green clotted andirons. The dampness of
a seaside town had cracked and warped the furniture, and had turned the
mirrors into sad mockeries. The strange musty odor of unused houses hung
heavy in the air.

I sat quiet for a while, on the edge of my bed, alert for some sound
outside, but in the hall it was very still. Then my hand fell again on
the hilt of my travelling sword. That my father had overlooked it
increased the resentment I bore him.

Slowly I drew the blade and tested its perfect balance, and limbered my
wrist in a few idle passes at the fringe of the bed curtain. Then I
knotted it over my hand, tossed a blanket over me, and blew out the
light. From where I lay I could see the running lights of the Shelton
ships swaying in a freshening breeze, three together in port for the
first time in ten years. The sky had become so overcast that every
shape outside had merged into an inky monotone. I could hear the low
murmur of the wind twisting through the branches of our elms, and the
whistle of it as it passed our gables. Once below I heard my father's
step, quick and decisive, his voice raised to give an order, and the
closing of a door.

Gradually the thoughts which were racing through my mind, as thoughts
sometimes do, when the candle is out, and the room you lie in grows
intangible and vast, assumed a well-balanced relativity. I smiled to
myself in the darkness. There was one thing that evening which my father
had overlooked. We both were proud.

He still seemed to be near me, still seemed to be watching me with his
cool half smile. If his voice, pleasant, level and passionless, had
broken the silence about me, I should not have been surprised. Strange
how little he had changed, and how much I had expected to see him
altered. I could still remember the last time. The years between seemed
only a little while. We had been very gay. The card tables had been out,
and he had been playing, politely detached, seemingly half-absorbed in
his own thoughts and yet alertly courteous. I could see him now, pushing
a handful of gold towards his right hand neighbor, and the clink of the
metal and its color seemed to please him, for he ran his fingers lightly
through the coins. And then, yes, Brutus had lighted me to my room. Could
it have been ten years ago?

As I lay staring at the blackness ahead of me, my thoughts returned to
the room I had quitted. Had she been about to thank me? I heard his
slow, cynical voice interrupting me, and felt her hand drop from my arm.
Then, in a strange, even cadence a sentence of his began running through
my memory.

"It might be interesting, hilarious, in fact, if it were not for the lady
in the case...."




VII


Something was pressing on my shoulder, thrusting me slowly into
consciousness. Half awake, I wrenched myself free, snatching for my sword
as I did so. It was a chill and cloudy morning, and Brutus was standing
by my bed, holding a bowl of chocolate between a thumb and forefinger,
that made the piece of china look as delicately fragile as a flower.

"Eleven o'clock," he said. "You sleep late."

I looked at him blankly, still trying to shake off the drowsiness that
crowded upon me. It seemed only a few minutes back that he had lighted
me to that room. He must have detected a shade of suspicion in the look
I gave him.

"Too much wine," said Brutus quickly.

But when he spoke, I knew it was not wine that made me sleep the whole
night through. He thrust the bowl he was holding nearer to me.

"And now you poison me," I remarked, but he shook his head in
emphatic negation.

"Hah!" he grunted, and emitted a curious chuckle that caused me to give
him my full attention.

"You find the morning amusing, Brutus?" I asked.

He gulped and nodded in assent.

"Last night you kill me. Now I give you chocolate. He! He!"

I glanced at him over the edge of the chocolate bowl. It was the first
time I had heard anyone laugh at so truly a Christian doctrine.

"Monsieur sends compliments," he said.

"Brutus," came my father's voice across the hall, "tell him I will see
him as soon as he has finished dressing."

He was sitting before his fire, wrapped in a dressing gown of Chinese
silk, embroidered with flowers. By the tongs and shovel lay a pair of
riding boots, still so wet and mud-spattered that he must have pulled
them oft within the hour. A decanter of rum was near him on a stand. On
his knee was a volume of Rabelais, which was affording him decorous
amusement.

Brutus was busy gathering up the gray satin small clothes of the previous
day, which had been tossed in a careless heap on the floor, and I
perceived that they also bore the marks of travel. Careful mentors, who
had taken a lively pleasure in their teaching, had been at pains to tell
me that he was a man of irregular habits. Yet with indulgent politeness
he remained blandly reticent. For him the day seemed to have started
afresh, independent and unrelated to other days. It had awakened in him a
genial spirit, far brighter than the morning. He greeted me with a gay
wave of the hand and a nod of invitation towards the rum. My refusal
served only to increase his courteous good nature.

"A very good morning to you, my son," he said. "So you have slept. Gad,
how I envy you! It is hard to be a man of affairs and still rest with any
regularity."

He waved me to a chair in a slow, sweeping gesture, timed and directed so
that it ended at the rum decanter.

"You will pardon my addressing you through Brutus," he continued
confidentially, "but it is a habit of mine which I find it hard to break.
I am eccentric, my son. I never speak to anyone of a morning till I have
finished my cup of chocolate. I have seen too many quarrels flare up over
an empty stomach."

He stretched a foot nearer the blaze, and smiled comfortably at the
hissing back log.

"And it would be a pity to have a falling out on such a morning as this,
a very great pity, to be sure."

The very thought of it seemed to give him pause for pleased, though
thoughtful contemplation, for he sipped his rum in silence until the
tumbler was half empty.

"Once in Bordeaux," he volunteered at last, "there was a man whom I fear
I provoked quite needlessly--all because I was walking in the garden with
a headache, and my chocolate was late--Lay out the other shirt, Brutus, I
must be well dressed today. What was it I was saying?"

"That you were walking in the garden with a headache," I reminded him.
"Surely you had something better to walk with near at hand?"

He shrugged his shoulders, drained his glass, and wiped his fingers
carefully on a cambric handkerchief.

"Either that or my conscience," he replied, "and oddly enough, I
preferred the headache. He might have been alive today if I had had my
chocolate. Poor man!" he sighed.

"You wanted to see me?" I asked, "or simply to impress me?"

He raised a hand in shocked denial.

"Pray do not believe I am so vulgar," he replied. "Yes, I wished to see
you, Henry, for two reasons. First, I was absentminded last evening. I
find I do not know the name of the gentleman with whom you had the
falling out. If you tell me--who knows--the world is small."

He waited expectantly, and I smiled at him. I had hoped he would ask me.

"You really care to know his name?"

"It might be useful," he confessed. "As I said--who knows? Perhaps we may
have something in common--some little mutual interest."

"I am sure you have," I told him. "The man I fought with was Mr.
Lawton--at my uncle's country house."

For a fraction of a second I thought he was astonished. I thought that
the look he gave was almost one of respect, but it was hard to tell.

"And you wounded him?" he asked quickly.

"I hardly think Mr. Lawton expected it," I acknowledged.

"I fear," he mused, "that the years are telling on Mr. Lawton--and your
Uncle Jason knew of this unpleasantness?"

"Not until afterwards."

"Of course he was shocked?"

I nodded. "You had another reason for seeing me?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "a simple one. I did not want you to go downstairs
till I went with you. Another cup of chocolate, Brutus. This morning, my
son, I am consuming two cups of chocolate instead of one."

"You expect to find me irritable?" I suggested.

He shook his head in smiling contradiction.

"It is because I have a surprise in store for you. Who do you think has
come to see me?"

"I am utterly at a loss," I said, bowing, "unless it is the constable."

"On the contrary," he replied, "it is the man I hate more than anyone
else in the world."

Only his words, however, hinted that the contingency was unpleasant. His
tone was one of pleased anticipation. He hummed a little tune, as Brutus
knelt before him to help him on with a new pair of top boots, spotless
and shining.

A few minutes later he stood before his mirror critically examining a
coat of blue broadcloth. It evidently satisfied him, for he smiled back
indulgently at his image in the glass, and watched complacently while
Brutus smoothed its folds.

"A gentleman should always have twenty coats," he remarked, turning
toward me. "Personally, I never travel with less than twenty-five--a
point in my favor, is it not, my son?"

"And when we remember the lady who accompanies the coats--" I bowed, and
he turned slowly back to the mirror.

"Let us trust," he replied coldly, "you will not be obliged to remind
yourself often that she is a lady, and that she shall be treated as one
both by you and by me as long as she remains beneath this roof."

I felt a pleasing sense of triumph at the success of my remark, and
abruptly determined to drive it home.

"Sir," I said, "You astound me."

"Astound you?" He left his neckcloth half undone, and stepped toward
me, alertly courteous. "You mean you take exception to what I have
just said?"

"Indeed not," I replied, with another bow. "I find you changed this
morning--into a good example instead of a bad one."

And then before he could reply, I leaned over the chair he had quitted.
Lying in the corner of the faded upholstery was an oval of gold. Before
he perceived my intention, I had picked it up, and almost at the same
moment his hand fell on my arm. I looked up quickly. His face was close
to mine, closer than I had ever seen it, placid still, but somehow
changed, somehow so subtly different that I wrenched myself free, and
stepped a pace away. Brutus dropped the coat he was folding, and shuffled
forward hastily.

"How careless of me to have left it there," said my father gently. "Hand
me the locket, if you please, my son, and many thanks for picking it up."

The jewelled clasp was under my thumb I pressed it, and the gold locket I
was holding flew open, but before I could look further, he had struck a
sharp blow at my wrist, and the locket fell from my hand.

"Pick it up, Brutus," he said, his eyes never leaving mine, and we
watched each other for a second in silence.

"Come," he said, "let us go down stairs. You may find it instructive to
see how I treat my enemies."

"I am afraid," I said slowly, "that you will do better without me."

Slowly the thin line of his lips relaxed, and he raised his hands to
adjust his neckcloth.

"Your episode with Mr. Lawton makes me quite sure of it," he answered, in
a tone he might have used to an ambitious school boy. "But you forget.
You are still pursuing part of your education. Never, never neglect an
opportunity to learn, my son. Something tells me even now you will be
repaid for your trouble. Come, we are late already."

So I followed him down the, creaking stairs to the morning room. I could
not suppress a start as I passed over the threshold. In front of our
heavy mahogany table, attentively examining some maps and charts that had
been scattered there, was my Uncle Jason.




VIII


Of all the people I had expected to see that morning he was the last.
Almost unconsciously I recalled the little kindnesses he had rendered me.
Busy as he had been with commercial ventures, there was never a time when
he had not stood ready with his help. And even my father's name--he had
never recalled it, except with regretful affection in his sad little
reminiscences of older, pleasanter days.

I thought I detected a trace of that affection, a trace of appeal,
almost, in the look he gave us as we entered. They made a strange
contrast, my uncle, and my father, in his gay coat and laces, his
slender, upright figure, and his face, almost youthful beneath his
powdered hair. For my uncle was an older man, and years and care had
slightly bowed him. The wrinkles were deep about his mouth and eyes. His
brown hair, simply dressed, was gray already at the temples. His plain
black coat and knee breeches were wrinkled from travel. As he often put
it, he had no time to care for clothes. Yet his cheeks glowed from quiet
living, and there was a sly, good humored twinkle in his brown eyes
which went well with his broad shoulders and his strongly knit body. His
reputation for genial good nature was with him still.

He stretched forth a hand, but the moment was inopportune. My father had
given his undivided attention to the shutters on the east windows. He
walked swiftly over and drew them to, snapping a bolt to hold them in
place. Then he turned and rubbed his hands together slowly, examining my
uncle the while with a cool, judicial glance, and then he bowed.

"You are growing old, Jason," he said, by way of greeting.

"An, George," said my uncle, in his deep, pleasant voice. "It does me
good to see the father and the son together."

My father joined the tips of his fingers and regarded him solemnly.

"Now heaven be praised for that!" he exclaimed with a jovial fervor,
"though it is hard to believe, Jason, that anything could make you better
than you are. It was kind of you not to keep my son and me apart."

My father came a pace nearer, his eyes never for a moment leaving the
man opposite. His last words seemed to make a doubtful impression on my
uncle. He looked quickly across at me, but what he saw must have
relieved him.

"Ah, that wit!" he laughed. "It has been too long, George, too long since
I have tasted of it. It quite reminds me of the old days, George--with
the dances, and the races and the ladies. Ah, George, how they would
smile on you--and even today, I'll warrant! Ah, if I only had the receipt
that keeps you young."

"Indeed? You care to know it?" My father quite suddenly leaned forward
and tapped him on the shoulder. As though the abruptness of the gesture
startled him, my uncle drew hastily back. And still my father watched
him. Between them was passing something which I did not understand. The
silence in the room had become oppressive before my father spoke again.

"Lead a life of disrepute," he said gravely. "I cannot think of a better
cosmetic."

"George!" cried my uncle in quick remonstrance. "Remember your son is
with you?"

"And seems amply able to look out for himself--surprisingly able, Jason.
Have you not found it so?"

"Thank heaven, yes!" he laughed, and glanced hastily at me again.

My father's coat lapel was bothering him. He straightened it
thoughtfully, patted it gently into place, and then said:

"Surely, Jason, you did not come here to discuss the past."

"Perhaps not," Uncle Jason replied with another laugh, which seemed
slightly out of tune in the silence that surrounded him, "but how can I
not be reminded of it? This room and you--indeed Henry here is all that
brings me back. He is like you, George, and yet--" he paused to favor me
with another glance--"he has his mother's eyes."

My father flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve.

"Suppose," he suggested, "we leave your sister out of the discussion. Let
us come down to practical matters and leave the dead alone."

It was the first time he had mentioned her. His voice was coldly aloof,
but his hand began moving restlessly again over his coat in search of an
imaginary wrinkle.

"You understand me?" he inquired gently after a second's pause. "Pray
remember, Jason, I have only two cheeks, and I can recall no biblical law
to follow if you should strike again."

"God bless me!" gasped my uncle in blank amazement. "I did not come here
to quarrel. I came because you are in trouble. I came as soon as I had
heard of it, because you need my help--because--" he had regained his
cordial eloquence from the very cadence of his words. He paused, and I
thought his eye moistened and his voice quavered, "because blood is
thicker than water, George."

At the last words my father inclined his head gravely, and was
momentarily silent, as though seeking an adequate reply.

"I thought you would come," he said slowly. "In fact, I depended
upon it before I set sail from France. Ha! That relieves you, does
it not, Jason?"

Yet for some reason the statement seemed to have an opposite effect. My
uncle's heavy brows knitted together, and his mouth moved uneasily.

"See, my son, how the plot thickens," said my father, turning to me with
a pleasant smile. "And all we needed was a hero. Who will it be. I
wonder, you or your uncle?"

But my uncle did not laugh again. Instead, he squared his shoulders and
his manner became serious.

"It is not a time to jest, George," he said ominously. "Don't you
understand what you have done? But you cannot know, or else you would not
be here. You cannot know that the house is watched!"

If he had expected to surprise my father, he must have felt a poignant
disappointment; but perhaps he knew that surprise was a sentiment he
seldom permitted.

"I know," replied my father, "that since my arrival here I have been the
object of many flattering attentions. But why are you concerned, Jason? I
have broken no law of the land. I have merely mixed myself up in French
politics."

Uncle Jason made an impatient gesture.

"You have mixed yourself up in such an important affair, in such a
ridiculous way, that every secret agent that France has in this country
will be in this town in the next twelve hours. That's all you have
done, George."

My father tapped his silver snuff box gently.

"I had hoped as much," he remarked blandly. "When one is the center of
interest, it is always better to be the very center. You must learn to
know me better, Jason, and then you will understand that I always seek
two things. I always seek profit and pleasure. It seems as though I
should find them both in such pleasant company."

Then, as if the matter were settled, he looked again at the shuttered
window, and leaned down to place another log in the fire.

"Come, George," urged my uncle. "Let us be serious. Your nonchalance and
irony have been growing with the years. Surely you recognize that you
have reached the end of your rope. I tell you, George, these men will
stop at nothing."

"Has it ever occurred to you," returned my father, "that I also, may stop
at nothing?"

My uncle frowned, and then smiled bleakly.

"No, George," he said, in a voice that dropped almost to a whisper.
"You are too fond of life for that. Suppose for a moment, just suppose,
they had means of taking you back to France. Just suppose there was a
boat in the harbor now, manned and victualled and waiting for the tide,
with a cabin ready and irons. They would admire to see you back in
Paris, George, for a day, or perhaps two days. I know, George. They
have told me."

"Positively," said my father, stifling a yawn behind his hand,
"positively you frighten me. It is an old sensation and tires me. Surely
you can be more interesting."

Jason's face, red and good-natured always, became a trifle redder.

"We have beat about the bush long enough," he said, with an abrupt lack
of suavity. "I tell you, once and for all, you are running against forces
which are too strong for you--forces, as I have pointed out, that will do
anything to gain possession of a certain paper. They know you have that
paper, George."

My father shrugged his shoulders.

"Indeed?" he said. "I hardly admire their perspicacity."

"And they will prevent your disposing of it at any cost. I tell you,
George, they will stop at nothing--" again his voice dropped to a
confidential monotone--"and that is why I'm here, George," my uncle
concluded.

My father raised his eyebrows.

"I fear my mind works slowly in the early morning. Pardon me, if I still
must ask--Why are you here?"

Quite suddenly my uncle's patience gave way in a singular manner to
exasperation, exposing a side to his character which I had not till then
suspected.

"Because I can save your neck, that's why! Though, God knows, you don't
seem to value it. I have interceded for you, George, I have come here to
induce you to give up that paper peacefully and quietly, or else to take
the consequences."

Evidently the force he gave his words contrived to drive them home, for
my father nodded.

"You mean," he inquired, "that they propose to take me to France, and
have me handed over to justice, a political prisoner?"

"It is what I meant, George, as a man in a plot to kill Napoleon--" then
his former kindliness returned--"and we cannot let that happen, can we?"

"Not if we can prevent it," my father replied. "If the trouble is that I
have the paper in my possession, I suppose I must let it go."

Uncle Jason smiled his benignest smile.

"I knew you would understand," he said, with something I took for a sigh
of relief. "I told them you were too sensible a man, George, not to
realize when a thing was useless."

My father drew the paper from his breast pocket, and looked at it
thoughtfully.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I suppose I must let it go."

"Good God! What are you doing?" cried my uncle.

My father had turned to the fireplace, and was holding the paper over the
blaze. But for some reason my uncle was not relieved. He made an
ineffectual gesture. His face became a blotched red and white. His eyes
grew round and staring, and his mouth fell helplessly open.

"Stop!" he gasped. "For God's sake, George--"

"Stay where you are, Jason," said my father. "I can manage alone, I think.
I suppose I should have burned it long ago."

He withdrew the paper slightly, as if to prolong the scene before him. If
my uncle had been on the verge of ruin, he could not have looked more
depressed.

"Don't!" he cried. "Will you listen, George? I'll be glad to pay
you for it."

My father slowly straightened, placed the paper in his pocket,
and bowed.

"Now," he said pleasantly, "we are talking a language I understand.
Believe me, Jason, one of my chief motives in keeping this document was
the hope that you might realize its intrinsic qualities."

Uncle Jason moistened his lips. His call was evidently proving upsetting.

"How much do you want for it?" he asked, with a slight tremor in
his voice.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars seems a fair demand," said my father, "in
notes, if you please."

"What!" my uncle shouted.

My father seated himself on the edge of the table, and surveyed his
visitor intently.

"Be silent," he said. "Silent and very careful, Jason. You seem to forget
that I am a dangerous man." And he flicked an imaginary bit of dust from
his cuff. My uncle gave a hasty glance at the half opened door.

"And now listen to me," my father continued, his voice still gently
conversational. "You have tried to frighten me, Jason. You should have
known better. Of all the people in the world I fear you least. You forget
that I am growing old, and all my senses are becoming duller--fear along
with the rest. You have tried to cheat me of the money I have demanded,
and it has tried my patience. In fact, it has set my nerves quite on
edge. Pray do not irritate me again. I know you must have that paper, and
I know why. The price I offer is a moderate one compared with the
unpleasantness that may occur to you if you do not get it. Never mind
what occurrence. I know that you have come here prepared to pay that
price. The morning is getting on. You have the money in your inside
pocket. Bring it out and count it--twenty-five thousand dollars."

Hesitatingly my uncle produced a packet that crackled pleasantly.

"There! I said you had them," remarked my father serenely. "All perfectly
negotiable I hope, Jason, in case you should change your mind."

I stood helplessly beside him, beset with a hundred useless impulses.
Silently I watched Jason Hill hold out the notes.

"And now the paper," said my uncle.

My father, examining the packet with a minute care, waved his
request aside.

"First you must let me see what you are giving me. I fear your hands are
trembling too much, Jason, for you to do justice to it. Twenty-five
thousand dollars! It seems to me I remember that a similar sum once
passed between us. In which direction? seem to have forgotten--Yes,
strangely enough they are quite correct. A modest little fortune, but
still something to fall back on."

"And now the paper!" demanded my uncle.

"Ah, to be sure, the paper," said my father, and he swung from the table
where he had been sitting, and smiled brightly.

"I have changed my mind about the paper, Jason, and business presses. I
fear it is time to end our interview."

"You mean you dare--"

"To accept a sum from you in payment of damage you have done my
character? I should not dare to refuse it. Or let us put it this way,
Jason. The paper is merely drawing interest. Positively, I cannot afford
to give it up."

The red had risen again to my uncle's face, giving his features the color
of ugly magenta. For a moment I thought he was going to leap at the
slighter man before him, but my father never moved a muscle, only stood
attentively watching him, with his hand folded behind his back.

"Show him the door, Brutus," he said briskly, "and as you go, Jason,
remember this. I know exactly what dangers I am running without your
telling me. For that reason I have ordered my servant to keep a fire
burning in every room I occupy in this house. I make a point of sitting
near these fires. If you or any of your friends so much as raise a finger
against me, the paper is burned. And as for you--"

With a quick, delicate motion, he raised a hand, and drew a finger
lightly across his throat.

"And as for you, Jason, even the slightest suspicion that you, or your
paid murderers, are interfering in any way with my affairs, will give me
too much pleasure. I think you understand. Pray don't make me overcome
with joy, Jason; and now I wish you a very good morning."

But Uncle Jason had recovered from the first cold shock of his surprise.
He drew himself up to his full height. His jaw, heavy and cumbersome
always, thrust itself forward, and I could see the veins swell
dangerously into a tangled, clotted mass on his temples. His fingers
worked convulsively, as though clawing at some unseen object close
beside him, and then his breath whistled through his teeth.

"You fool," he shouted suddenly, his temper bursting the weakened
barriers of control. "You damned, unregenerate fool!"

And then, for an instant, my father's icy placidity left him. His lips
leapt back from his teeth. There was a hissing whir of steel. His small
sword made an arc of light through the yard of space that parted them.
His body lunged forward.

"So you will have it, will you?" His words seemed to choke him. "Take it,
then," he roared, "take it to hell, where you belong."

It was, I say, the matter of an instant. In a leaden second he stood
poised, his wrist drawn back, while the eyes of the other stared in
horror at the long, thin blade. And then the welts of crimson that had
mounted to his face, disfiguring it into a writhing fury, slowly effaced
themselves. His lips once more assumed a thin, immobile line. Again his
watchful indolence returned to him, and slowly, very slowly, he lowered
the point to the floor's scarred surface. His voice returned to its
pleasant modulation, and with his words returned his icy little smile.

"Your pardon, Jason," he said. "I fear I have been too much myself this
morning. Thank your God, if you have one, that I was not entirely
natural. Take him away, Brutus, he shall live a little longer."

But Brutus had no need to obey the order. My father stood, still smiling,
watching the empty doorway. Then I realized that I was very cold and
weak, and that my knees were sagging beneath me. I walked unsteadily to
the table and leaned upon it heavily. Thoughtfully my father sheathed his
small sword.




IX


"The morning begins auspiciously, does it not, my son?" he said. "And
still the day is young. Indeed, it cannot be more than eleven of the
clock. The rum decanter, Brutus."

The lines about his mouth softened as his gaze met mine, and his smile
grew broader.

"I pride myself," he went on, "that my example is all I promised. I fear
I shall fall down in only one respect. Perhaps you have observed it?"

"If I have," I answered, "I have forgotten."

"My table manners," he said. "I fear they are almost impeccable." And
he walked over to the window, taking care, I noticed, not to stand in
front of it.

"Sad, is it not, that I should fail in such a trivial matter? But it
happened so long ago while I was courting your mother, to be exact. My
father-in-law, rest his soul, was an atrocity at table. The viands, my
son, scattered from his knife over the board, like chaff before the
flail. Yet, will you believe it? Any time he chose to speak his mouth
was always full. I watched him, watched him with wonder--or was it
horror?--I cannot remember which. And I resolved to go, to go
anywhere, but never to do likewise. The result today is perhaps
unfortunate. Yet watch me, my son, even in that you see the practical
value of a bad example."

"Yes," I said, "I am watching you."

He seemed about to turn from the window, and then something outside held
his attention.

"Ha!" he said. "A sloop is coming in--a clumsy looking vessel. Whose is
it, Henry?"

I walked to the window to get a better look, but he reached out and drew
me near him.

"Let us be careful of the windows this morning. The light is bad, and we
have very much the same figure. There. Now you can see it--out by the
bar. It carries too much canvas forward and spills half the wind. Have
you seen it before, Henry?"

The sun had been trying to break through the clouds, and a few rays had
crept out, and glanced on the angry gray of the water, so that it shone
here and there like scratches in dull lead. The three ships near our
wharf were tossing fitfully, and on all three, the crews were busy with
the rigging. Out further towards the broad curve of the horizon was the
white smear of a sail, and as I looked, I could see the lines beneath
the canvas. He was right. It was a sloop, running free with the tide
pushing her on.

"Yes," I said, "I know the boat, though I do not see why she is
putting in."

"Ah," said my father, "and do you not? And whose boat may she be, Henry?"

"Two days ago she sailed from Boston for France. She belongs to Jason
Hill," I told him; and, a little puzzled, I looked again at the low dunes
and the marshes by the harbor mouth.

"I think," my father murmured half to himself, "that perhaps after all I
should have killed him. Brutus!"

Brutus, who had watched the scene with the same aloof politeness that he
might have watched guests at the dinner table, moved quickly forward.

"Has no word come yet?"

Brutus grinned and shook his head.

"The devil," said my father. "Aiken was here last evening, and got the
message I left him?"

Brutus nodded, and my father compressed his lips. Apparently deep in
thought, he took a few unhurried steps across the room, and glanced
about him critically.

"A busy day, my son," he said, "a very busy day, and a humorous one as
well. They think they can get the paper. They think--but they are all
mistaken."

"You are sure?" I inquired.

"Perfectly," said my father. "I shall dispose of it in my own way. I am
merely waiting for the time."

"Huh!"

Brutus cupped his great hand behind his ear, and nodded violently. My
father stepped toward the hallway, and listened. Above the hissing of the
fire I heard a voice and footsteps. He straightened the lace about his
wrists, and his features lost their strained attention. As he turned
towards Brutus, he seemed younger and more alertly active than I had ever
known him.

"Ah, what a day," he said, "what a day, to be sure. They are coming,
Brutus. Gad, but the years have been long since I have waited for them!
Place the glasses on the table, Brutus. We still must be hospitable."

The knocker on our front door sent a violent summons, but my father did
not seem to hear it. With graceful deliberation he was filling six
glasses from the decanter.

"Keep to the back of the room, my son," he said, "and listen. Who do you
think is coming? But you never can guess. Our neighbors, my son, our
neighbors. First your uncle, and then our neighbors. We are holding a
distinguished salon, are we not?"

But before I could answer or even conjecture why he should receive such a
visit, my father gave a low exclamation, partly of surprise, and partly
of well concealed annoyance, and stepped forward, bowing low.
Mademoiselle, bright-eyed, but very pale, had run into the morning room.

"The paper, captain," she cried, "are they coming for the paper? For, if
they are, they shall not have it. You--"

My father looked at her sharply, almost suspiciously.

"How are you here?" he demanded quickly, "Did not Brutus lock your door?"

"The lock was very rusty," she answered.

"Indeed?" said my father, "And how long ago did you find it out?"

"Only a minute back," she said, and again he glanced at her narrowly,
and finally shrugged his shoulders. As I look back on it, it was his
first mistake.

"Then I fear you have not seen much of the house," he said suavely, but
she disregarded his remark.

"Pray do not be alarmed, my lady," "At almost any time I am glad to see
you, but just at present--" he raised his voice to drown the din of the
knocker--"just at present your appearance, I fear, is a trifle
indiscreet. It is not the paper they wish, Mademoiselle. It is merely
myself, your humble servant, they require. But pray calm yourself and
rest assured they shall get neither. Let in our callers, Brutus."

He took her hand and bowed over it very low, and looked for an instant
into her eyes, with a faint hint of curiosity.

"And you?" she asked. "You have it still?"

"Temporarily, yes," he answered. "Show Mademoiselle a chair, my son, over
there behind me, where you both can witness the little drama. Perhaps it
is as well she came, after all."

Brutus had not forgotten his days as a house servant. Erect and
uncompromising he entered the room, facing toward us by the door.

"Mr. Penfield!" he called. "Captain Tracy! Captain Brown! Major Proctor!
Mr. Lane! Captain Dexter!"

"So," said Major Proctor, "you still have your damned party manners."

They had entered the room, and stood in a group before my father. Their
faces were set grimly. Their manner was stern and uncompromising, as
befitted men of unimpeachable position and integrity. As I watched them,
I still was wondering at their errand. Why should they, of all people
have paid this call? There was not one who did not own his ships and
counting house, not one who was not a leading trader in our seaport. In
all the years I had known them, not one had looked at me, or given me a
civil word, and indeed, they had little reason to give one. And yet, here
they were calling on my father.

It was an odd contradiction of the lesson books that of all the men in
the room, he should appear the most prepossessing. Though many of them
were younger, his clothes were more in fashion, and time had touched him
with a lighter hand. If I had come on them all as strangers, I should
have expected kindness and understanding from him first of any. His
forehead was broader, and his glance was keener. Indeed, there was none
who looked more the gentleman. There was no man who could have displayed
more perfect courtesy in his gravely polite salute.

"This," said my father, smiling, "is indeed a pleasure. I had hoped for
this honor, and yet the years have so often disappointed me that I had
only hoped."

Captain Tracy, short and squat, his hands held out in the way old sailors
have, as though ready instinctively to grasp some rope or bulwark, thrust
a bull neck forward, and peered at my father with little, reddened eyes,
opened in wide incredulity.

"You what?" he demanded hoarsely.

"I said, Captain Tracy, that I hoped,"--and my father helped himself to
snuff--"Will you be seated, gentlemen?"

"No," said Major Proctor.

"I have always noted," my father remarked, "that standing is better for
the figure. The climate, Major, has agreed with you."

Major Proctor launched on a savage rejoinder, but Mr. Penfield leaned
towards him with a whispered admonition.

"I take it," he said to my father, "that you did not read our letter. You
made a mistake, Mr. Shelton, a grave mistake, in not doing so."

"I am fond of reading," said my father, "and I found your letter--pardon
my rudeness--but I must be frank--I found your letter most amusing."

Mr. Lane stretched a claw-like hand toward him.

"You always did laugh," he cried shrilly.

"Never now, Mr. Lane," replied my father. "Yet I must admit, if
laughter were my habit--" he paused and surveyed Mr. Lane's pinched and
bony figure.

"You found the letter amusing, eh?" snapped Captain Tracy. "You found it
funny when we ordered you out of this town, did you? I suppose you
thought we were joking, eh? Well, by Gad, we weren't, and that's what
we've come to tell you. Heaven help us if we don't see you out on a rail,
you damned--"

"Gently, gently," interjected Mr. Penfield, in a soothing tone. "Let us
not use any harder words than necessary. Mr. Shelton will agree with us,
I am sure. Mr. Shelton did not understand. Perhaps Mr. Shelton has
forgotten."

"My memory," said my father, "still remains unimpaired. I recall the last
time I saw you was some ten years ago in this very house. I recall at
the time you warned me never to return here. In some ways, perhaps, you
were right, and yet at present I find my residence here most expedient.
Indeed, I find it quite impossible to leave. Frankly, gentlemen, the
house is watched, and it is as much as my life is worth to stir outside
the doors."

"Good God!" cried Mr. Lane, in the shrill voice that fitted him so well.
"We might have known it!"

There was a momentary silence, and Major Proctor whispered in Mr.
Penfield's ear.

"Captain Shelton," said Mr. Penfield, "I see your son and a woman are in
the room. It might be better if you sent them away. Your son, I have
heard, has learned to behave himself. There is no need for him to hear
what we have to say to you."

There was a note of raillery in his voice that must have offended
my father.

"Mr. Penfield is mistaken. I fear closed shutters make the room a trifle
dark to see clearly. It is a lady, Mr. Penfield, who is with us."

Captain Tracy laughed. My father's hand dropped to his side. For a moment
no one spoke. Captain Tracy moved his head half an inch further forward.

"Well?" he asked.

"Let us leave the matter for a moment," said my father. "It can wait.
Pray continue, Mr. Penfield. My son will be glad to listen."

Mr. Penfield cleared his throat, and looked at the others uncertainly.

"Go on, Penfield," said the Major.

"Mr. Shelton," began Mr. Penfield stiffly, "ten years ago you were a
gentleman."

"Could it have been possible?" said my father with a bow.

"Ten years ago you were a man that every one of us here trusted and
respected, a friend of several. In the War of the Revolution you
conducted yourself like a man of honor. You equipped your own brig with a
letter of marque, and sailed it yourself off Jamaica. You fought in three
engagements. You displayed a daring and bravery which we once admired."

"Could it have been possible?" my father bowed again. "I do recall I
failed to stay at home," he added, bowing again to Mr. Penfield.

Mr. Penfield frowned, and continued a little more quickly:

"And when you did return, you engaged in the China trade. You were a
successful man, Mr. Shelton. We looked upon you as one of the more
brilliant younger men of our seaport. We trusted you, Captain Shelton."

"Could it have been possible!" exclaimed my father.

"Yes," said Mr. Penfield in a louder tone, "we trusted you. You have only
to look at your books, if you have kept them, to remember that."

"My books," said my father, "still contrive to balance."

"In the year 1788," Mr. Penfield went on, "you remember that year, do you
not? In that year the six of us here engaged in a venture. From the north
we had carried here five hundred bales of fur, valued at fifty dollars to
the bale. You contracted with us, Captain Shelton, to convey those bales
to England. It would have been a nice piece of business, if your
supercargo had not been an honest man. He knew you, Shelton, if we did
not. He knew the game you had planned to play, and though he was your
brother-in-law, he was man enough to stop it."

Mr. Penfield's voice had risen, so that it rang through the room, and
his words followed each other in cold indictment. The others stood
watching my father with strained attention.

"Indeed," he said.

"Yes," said M