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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Unspeakable Gentleman , by John P.
+Marquand
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Unspeakable Gentleman 
+
+Author: John P. Marquand
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2003  [eBook #10109]
+Most recently updated: May 18, 2008
+
+Language: English
+
+Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN ***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+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 paper 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 safe 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 have 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 out
+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 to me 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 off 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.
+
+"Ah, 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 Mr. Penfield, "as you so aptly put it--indeed. Your ship
+carrying that consignment, had Jason Hill as supercargo, and Ned Aiken,
+that damned parasite of yours, as master. A day out from this port, a
+plank sprung aft, which obliged him to put back to Boston for repairs.
+The cargo was trans-shipped. When it was aboard again, Jason Hill
+happened to examine that cargo. The furs had gone. In their place five
+hundred bales of chips had been loaded in the hold. He went to the master
+for an explanation. Mr. Aiken, who had been drinking heavily, was asleep
+in the cabin, and on the table beside him was a letter, Shelton. You
+remember that letter? It bore instructions from you to scuttle that ship
+ten miles out of Liverpool harbor."
+
+"And," said my father, with another bow, "I was to collect the insurance.
+It was nicely planned."
+
+"If you remember that, you recall what happened next. We called on you,
+Shelton, and accused you of what you had done. You neither confirmed
+nor denied it. We told you then to leave the town. We warned you never
+to return. We warned you that we were through with your trickery. We
+were through with your cheating and your thieving. We warned you,
+Shelton, and now you're back, back, by your own confession, on another
+rogue's errand."
+
+"Not on another's," my father objected mildly. "One of my own, Mr.
+Penfield. The experience you have outlined so lucidly convinced me that
+it was better to stick closely to my own affairs."
+
+"Mr. Shelton," Mr. Penfield went on, regardless of the interruption, "we
+warned you yesterday to leave the town before nightfall, and you have
+failed to take our advice."
+
+"I see no reason why I should leave," replied my father easily. "I am
+comfortable here for the moment. I would not be outside. Even the
+arguments you have given are specious. You got your furs back, and if I
+recall, they proved to be so badly moth eaten that they were not fit for
+any trade."
+
+"Even though you see no reason," said Major Proctor smoothly, "you are
+going to leave, Shelton. You are going to leave in one hour. If you
+delay a minute later, we will come with friends who will know how to
+handle you. We will come in an hour with a tar pot and a feather
+mattress."
+
+"You are not only unwelcome to us on account of your past," said Mr.
+Penfield, "but more recent developments make it impossible, quite
+impossible for you to stay. We have heard your story already from Mr.
+Jason Hill. You are right that it is no concern of ours, except that we
+remember the good of this town. We have a business with France, and we
+cannot afford to lose it. Major Proctor was blunt just now, and yet he is
+right. Give us credit for warning you, at least. You will go, of course?"
+
+My father smiled again, and smoothed the wrinkles of his coat. For
+some reason the scene seemed vastly pleasant. He shrugged his
+shoulders in a deprecatory gesture, walked over to the table, and
+lifted up a glass of ram.
+
+"I remarked before that I was quite comfortable here," he replied after a
+moment's pause. "I may add that I am amused. Since I have returned to the
+ancestral roof, and looked again at the portraits of my family, I have
+had many callers to entertain me. Two have tried to rob me. One has
+threatened me with death. And now six come, and threaten me with tar and
+feathers. Positively, it is too diverting to leave. Pray don't interrupt
+me, Captain Tracy. In a moment you shall have the floor."
+
+He took a sip from his rum glass, watching them over the brim. And then
+he continued, slowly and coldly, yet turning every period with a
+perfect courtesy:
+
+"There is one thing, only one, that you and all my other callers appear
+to have overlooked. You fail for some reason to realize that I do things
+only of my own volition. It is eccentric, I know, but we all have our
+failings."
+
+He paused to place his glass daintily on the table, and straightened the
+lace at his wrist with careful solicitude.
+
+"Once before this morning I have stated that I am not particularly afraid
+of anything. Strange as it may seem, this statement still applies. Or put
+it this way,--I have grown blase. People have threatened me too often.
+No, gentlemen, you are going to lose your trading privileges, I think.
+And I am going to remain in my house quite as long as I choose."
+
+"Which will be one hour," said Major Proctor.
+
+"Be careful, Major," said my father. "You have grown too stout to risk
+your words. Do you care to know why I am going to remain?"
+
+No one answered.
+
+"Then I will tell you," he went on. "Three of my ships are in the harbor,
+and times are troublesome at sea. They are armed with heavy metal, and
+manned by quite as reckless and unpleasant a lot of men as I have ever
+beheld on a deck. Between them they have seventeen guns of varying
+calibre, and there is powder in their magazines. Do I need to go any
+further, or do we understand each other?"
+
+"No," snapped Captain Tracy hoarsely. "I'm damned if we do."
+
+"It sounds crude, as I say it," he continued apologetically, "and yet
+true, nevertheless. As soon as I see anyone of you, or any of my other
+neighbors enter my grounds again, I shall order my ships to tack down the
+river, and open fire on the town. They have sail ready now, gentlemen. My
+servant has gone already to carry them my order."
+
+"And you'll hang for piracy tomorrow morning," laughed the Major
+harshly. "Shelton, you have grown mad."
+
+"Exactly," said my father gently. "Mad, Major. Mad enough to put my
+threat into effect in five minutes, if you do not leave this house; mad
+enough to scuttle every ship in this harbor; mad enough to set your
+warehouses in flames; mad enough even to find the company of you and your
+friends most damnably dull and wearisome; mad enough to wonder why I ever
+suffered you to remain so long beneath my roof; mad enough to believe you
+a pack of curs and cowards, and mad enough to treat you as such. Keep
+off, Tracy, you bloated fool!"
+
+"By God!" Captain Tracy shouted, "We'll burn this house over your head.
+In an hour we'll have you shot against the town hall."
+
+"Perhaps," said my father, "and yet I doubt it. Pray remember that I keep
+my word. Your hats are in the hall, gentlemen. In three minutes now my
+ships weigh anchor. If you do not go, I cannot stop them."
+
+Mr. Penfield had grown a trifle pale. "Captain Shelton," he demanded
+slowly, "are you entirely serious? I almost believe you are. Of course
+you understand the consequences?"
+
+"Perfectly," said my father.
+
+"Let us go, gentlemen," said Mr. Penfield. "You will hear from us later."
+And he turned quickly towards the hall.
+
+As he did so, my father drew back his right arm, and drove his fist into
+Captain Tracy's upturned face. His blow was well directed, for the
+captain staggered and fell. In almost the same motion he wheeled on Major
+Proctor, who had started back, and was tugging at his sword.
+
+"Later, perhaps, Major," he said, without even lifting his voice. "But
+today I am busy. Pray take him away. He was always indiscreet. And you,"
+he added to Mr. Lane, "surely you know well enough not to try conclusions
+with me. Take him away. Your hats are in the hall. I shall show you the
+door myself. After you, gentlemen."
+
+And he followed them, closing the door gently behind him.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Mademoiselle, who had risen from her chair, where she had listened, only
+half understanding the conversation in a tongue foreign from hers, stared
+at the closed door, her lips parted, and her forehead wrinkled.
+
+"What have they been saying?" she asked. "Why are they afraid? Is
+everyone afraid of this father of yours?"
+
+And then, impulsively, she seized me by the arm.
+
+"But it makes no difference. Come, it is our one chance; come quickly,
+Monsieur. I must speak to you, where he will not disturb us."
+
+"But where?" I asked, still staring straight before me; and then I
+noticed a bolt on the morning room door. I sprang toward it and drew it
+hastily. "It will do no good to talk, Mademoiselle. If you had
+understood--" And as I spoke, the enormity of the thing loomed still
+larger before me.
+
+"Mademoiselle, this morning he has robbed my uncle of a fortune, snatched
+it from him here in this very room, and now he has threatened to move
+his ships into midstream, and to open fire on the town! And Mademoiselle,
+he means to do it. I thought once--but he means to do it, Mademoiselle."
+
+She pursed her lips, and looked at me from the corner of her eye.
+
+"Pouf!" she said. "So you are growing frightened also. Yet I can
+understand. The Marquis always said that Captain Shelton could frighten
+the devil himself."
+
+"Frightened!" I echoed, and the blood rushed into my cheeks.
+
+"Mon Dieu! Perhaps you are not. Listen, Monsieur, I am not taunting you.
+I am not saying he will not. He is serious, Monsieur, and you must leave
+him alone, or perhaps I shall not get the paper after all, and remember,
+I must have it. My brother must have it, and he shall, only you must not
+disturb him. He may shoot at the town, if he cares to, or murder your
+uncle. He has often spoken of it at Blanzy, but the paper is another
+matter. You must leave it to me."
+
+"To you!" I cried.
+
+"Precisely," said Mademoiselle. "You--what can you do? You are young. You
+are inexperienced. Pardon me, but you would be quite ineffective."
+
+My cheeks flamed again. Somehow no sarcasm of my father's had bitten as
+deep as those last words of hers. I do not know whether it was chagrin or
+anger that I felt at the bitter sense of my own futility. And she had
+seen it all. As coldly and as accurately as my father, she had watched
+me, and as coldly she had given her verdict. She was watching me now with
+a cool, confident smile that made me turn away.
+
+"Ah," she said, "I have hurt you, and believe me, I did not mean to."
+
+Something in the polite impersonality of her voice gave me a vague
+resentment. She had moved nearer, and yet I could not meet her glance.
+
+"I am sorry" she said, and paused expectantly, but I could only stare at
+the floor in silence.
+
+"Believe me, I am sorry."
+
+It might have been different if I had detected the slightest contrition,
+but instead I seemed only to afford her mild amusement.
+
+"There is no need to be sorry," I replied.
+
+"Ah, but there is!" she said quickly, "Last night you were very kind.
+Last night you tried to help me."
+
+I seemed to see her again, standing pale and troubled, while my
+father watched her, coldly appraising, and Brutus grinned at her
+across the room.
+
+"Mademoiselle" I began, "Anything that I did last night--"
+
+"Was quite unnecessary," she said, "And very foolish."
+
+I drew a sharp breath. The bit of gallantry I had on my mind to speak
+seemed weak and useless now.
+
+"Mademoiselle is mistaken" I lied smoothly, "Nothing that I did last
+night was on her account."
+
+"Nothing!" she exclaimed sharply, "I do not understand."
+
+"No, nothing," I said, "Pray believe me, anything I did, however foolish,
+was solely for myself. I have my own affair to settle with my father."
+
+"Bah!" cried Mademoiselle, tapping her foot on the floor, and oddly
+enough my reply seemed to have made her angry, "So you are like all the
+rest of them, stupid, narrow, calculating!"
+
+"If Mademoiselle will only listen," I began, strangely puzzled and
+singularly contrite.
+
+"Listen to you!" she cried, "No, Monsieur, I have listened to you quite
+long enough to know your type. I see now you are quite what I thought you
+would be. I say you are entirely ineffective, and must leave your father
+alone. You do not understand him. You do not even know him. With me it is
+different. I have seen the world. He is temperamental, your father, a
+genius in his way, and a little mad, perhaps. Leave him to me, Monsieur,
+and it will be quite all right. Last night, it was so sudden, that I was
+frightened for a moment. I should have remembered he is erratic and apt
+to change his mind. I should have guessed why he changed it. It is you,
+Monsieur. You have had a bad effect upon him. You have made him turn
+suddenly grotesque. What did you do to him last evening?
+
+"Do to him?" I asked, stupidly enough. "Why, nothing. I listened to him,
+Mademoiselle, just as I have been listening to him all this morning."
+
+"And yet," she said, "it is your fault. Usually he is most well behaved.
+He is moderate, Monsieur. At Blanzy a glass of wine at dinner was all he
+ever desired. For days at a time, I have hardly heard him say a word. The
+Marquis would call him the Sphinx, and what has he been doing here?
+Drinking bottle after bottle, talking steadily, acting outrageously. What
+is more, he has been doing so ever since he spoke of returning home. I
+tell you, Monsieur, you must keep away from him, or perhaps he will do
+with the paper exactly what he says. Pray do not scowl. Laugh, Monsieur,
+it is funny."
+
+"Funny?" I exclaimed, as stupidly as before. Mademoiselle sighed.
+
+"If the Marquis had only lived--how he would have laughed. It was odd,
+the sense of humor of the Marquis. Strange how much alike they were, the
+Marquis and your father."
+
+"It is pleasant that Mademoiselle and I should have something in
+common," I said.
+
+Her gaze grew very soft and far away.
+
+"Not as much as they had. We never shall. I think it was because they
+both were embittered with life, both a trifle tired and cynical. My
+father thought there should be a king of France, and yet I think he knew
+there could not be one. Your father--it is another story."
+
+"Quite," I agreed. "And yet Mademoiselle will pardon me--I fail to see
+what they had in common."
+
+"You say that," said Mademoiselle, "because you do not know him as well
+as I do. Do you not see that he is a bitter, disappointed man? They were
+both disappointed."
+
+I examined the bolt on the door, and found it firm, despite its age. I
+glanced over the long, low studded room, and moved a chair from the
+center to a place nearer the wall. Her glance followed me inquiringly,
+but I forestalled her question.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I observed, "was pointing out that she found something
+droll in the situation."
+
+"And is it not droll you should have changed him?" she inquired, and yet
+I thought she looked around uneasily. "You have, Monsieur. He was
+cautious before this. He foresaw everything. He was willing to risk
+nothing. He even warned the Marquis against attacking the coach."
+
+I began to perceive why the Marquis honored my father with his
+friendship.
+
+"Was attacking coaches a frequent habit of the Marquis?" I asked.
+
+"Has he not told you?" she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.
+
+"One would hardly call our conversation confidential," I explained. "Is
+that what you find so droll?"
+
+And indeed, she seemed in a rare good humor, and inexplicably gay. A
+curious Mona Lisa smile kept bending her lips and twinkling in her eyes.
+The lowering clouds outside, the creakings of the beams and rafters under
+the east wind, nor even the drab gloom of her surroundings seemed to
+dampen her sudden access of good nature. The events she had witnessed
+seemed also to please her. Was it spite that had made her smile when she
+watched my father and his visitors? Was it spite that made her smile now,
+as she gazed at the room's battered prosperity, and at my grandfather's
+portrait above the mantlepiece, in the unruffled dignity of its
+blackening oils?
+
+"It was the coach," said Mademoiselle, "of Napoleon at Montmareuil. A
+dozen of them set upon the coach. The lead horses were killed, and in an
+instant they were at the doors. They flung them open, but he was not
+inside. Instead, the coach was filled with the consular police. The
+paper, the paper they had signed, was at Blanzy, and your father had
+agreed to rescue it in case of accident. He would not leave me, Monsieur,
+and he would not destroy the paper."
+
+She paused, and regarded me with a frown that had more of curiosity in it
+than displeasure.
+
+"It was all well enough," she added, "until he heard of you, until you
+and he had dinner. It is something you did, something you said, that has
+made it all different. I ask you--what have you done to him? He was our
+friend before he saw you. Or why would he have ridden through half of
+France with Napoleon's police a half a league behind him? Why did he risk
+everything to bring out the paper when he might have burned it? Why did
+he not sell it there? He might have done so half a dozen times. Why does
+he wait till now?
+
+"Do you know what I would say if you were older and less transparent? Do
+you know?"
+
+An imperious, ringing note had entered into her voice, which made me
+regard her with a sudden doubt. About her was the same charm and mystery
+that had held me silent and curious, the same unnatural assurance, and
+cold disregard of her surroundings; but her eyes had grown watchful and
+unfriendly.
+
+"I would say that you had turned him against us, and if you had--"
+
+"Mademoiselle is overwrought," I said.
+
+She tapped her foot on the floor impatiently, and compressed her lips.
+
+"I am never overwrought," said Mademoiselle. "It is a luxury my family
+has not been allowed for many years. I say your father was an honest man,
+as men go, and a brave one too, and that you have changed him, and I warn
+you to leave him alone in the future. You do not know him, or how to deal
+with him. I tell you his trifling about the paper is a passing phase, and
+that you must not disturb him. No, no, do not protest. I know well enough
+you are not to blame. You must leave him to me. That is all."
+
+"It pains me not to do as Mademoiselle suggests," I said.
+
+"You mean you will not?" she flashed back at me angrily.
+
+"I mean I will not," I answered with sudden heat, "No," I added more
+harshly, as she attempted to interrupt, "Now you will listen to me. You
+say I am a fool. You say I can do nothing against him. Perhaps not,
+Mademoiselle, but what I see is this: I see you in a dangerous situation
+through no fault of your own, and whether you wish it or not, I am going
+to get you out of it. He has done enough, Mademoiselle, and this is going
+to be the end. By heaven, if he looks at you again--"
+
+"But you said--" she interrupted.
+
+I did not have the chance to continue, for a hand was trying the latch of
+the door, and then a sharp knock interrupted me. My father was standing
+on the threshold. With a smile and a nod to me, he entered, and proceeded
+to the center of the room, while I closed the door behind him, and bolted
+it again. If he noticed my action, he did not choose to comment. Instead,
+he continued towards the chair where Mademoiselle was seated.
+
+"I had hoped that you might get along more pleasantly, you and my son,"
+he observed. "Surely he has points in his favor--youth, candor, even a
+certain amount of breeding. You have been hard on him, Mademoiselle. Take
+my word for it--he is to blame for nothing."
+
+"So you have been listening," she said.
+
+"As doubtless Mademoiselle expected," said my father. "I had hoped--"
+
+"And so had I," I said.
+
+He turned and faced me.
+
+"Hoped," I continued, raising my voice, "that you might enter here, and
+leave your servant somewhere else. I have wanted to have a quiet talk
+with you this morning."
+
+If he noted anything unusual in my request, he did not show it, not so
+much as by a flicker of an eyelash.
+
+"It has hardly been opportune for conversation," he admitted. "But now,
+as you say, Brutus is gone. He is out to receive a message I am
+expecting, which can hardly be delivered at the front door. You were
+saying--Doubtless Mademoiselle will pardon us--"
+
+"Mademoiselle," I went on, "will even be interested. I have wanted to
+speak to you so that I might explain myself. Since I have been here I
+fear I have been impulsive. You must lay it to my youth, father."
+
+He nodded a grave assent.
+
+"You must not apologize. It has been quite refreshing."
+
+"And yet I am not so young. I am twenty-three."
+
+"Can it be possible?" exclaimed my father. "I had almost forgotten that
+I was so near the grave."
+
+"I came to see you here," I continued, "because, as my uncle said, you
+are my father. I came here because--because I thought--" I paused and
+drew a deep breath, and my father smiled.
+
+"Why I came is aside from the point, at any rate," I said.
+
+"Indeed yes," agreed my father, "and have we not been over the
+matter before?"
+
+"If you had accorded me one serious word, it might have been different,"
+I continued; "but instead, sir, you have seen fit to jest. It is not what
+you have done this morning, sir, as much as your manner towards me, which
+makes me take this step. That you have brought a lady from France and
+robbed her, that you have robbed my uncle, and have threatened to fire on
+the town--somehow they seem no particular affair of mine except for this:
+You seem to think that I am incapable of doing anything to hinder you,
+and frankly, sir, this hurts my pride. You feel that I am going to sit by
+passively and watch you."
+
+I came a step nearer, but he did not draw back. He only continued
+watching me with a patient intentness, which seemed gradually to merge
+into some more active interest. His interest deepened when I spoke again,
+but that was all.
+
+"You feel I am going to be still, and do nothing, even after you
+drugged me last evening. Did you think I would not resent it? You are
+mistaken, father."
+
+My father rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
+
+"I had not thought of it exactly so," he said, "yet I had to keep
+you quiet."
+
+"So, if the tables were turned, and I were you, and you were I, you would
+hardly let matters go on without joining in?"
+
+"Hardly," he agreed. "You have thought the matter out very prettily, my
+son. It is an angle I seem to have neglected. It only remains to ask what
+you are going to do. Let us trust it will be nothing stupid."
+
+"I am glad you understand," I said, "because now it will be perfectly
+clear why I am asking you for the paper, and you will appreciate any
+steps I may take to get it."
+
+He cast a quick glance around the room, and seemed satisfied that we were
+quite alone.
+
+"Do I understand," he inquired, "that you have asked me for the paper?"
+
+I nodded, and his voice grew thoughtfully gentle.
+
+"You interest me," he said. "I have a penchant for mysteries. May I ask
+why you believe I shall give it to you?"
+
+"I shall try to show you," I said, and tossed aside my coat and drew my
+small sword.
+
+He stood rigid and motionless, and his face became more set and
+expressionless than I had ever seen it; but before he could speak,
+Mademoiselle had sprung between us.
+
+"You fool!" she cried. "Put up your sword. Will you not be quiet as I
+told you?"
+
+"Be seated, Mademoiselle," said my father gently. "Where are your senses,
+Henry? Can you not manage without creating a scene? Put up your sword. I
+cannot draw against you."
+
+Mademoiselle, paler than I had seen her before, sank back into her chair.
+
+"I am sorry you find yourself unable," I said, "because I shall attack
+you in any event."
+
+"What can you be thinking of?" my father remonstrated. "Engage me with a
+small sword? It is incredible."
+
+"I have been waiting almost twelve hours for the opportunity," I replied.
+"Pray put yourself on guard, father."
+
+His stony look of repression had left him. The lines about his mouth
+relaxed again. For a moment I thought the gaze he bent upon me was almost
+kindly. Then he sighed and shrugged his shoulders, and began slowly to
+unwind a handkerchief which he had tied about his right hand, disclosing
+several cuts on his knuckles.
+
+"I forgot that Captain Tracy might have teeth," he said. "Positively, my
+son, you become disappointing. I had given you credit for more
+imagination, and instead you think you can match your sword against mine.
+Pray do not interrupt, Mademoiselle," he added, turning to her with a
+bow, "it will be quite nothing, and we have neither of us had much
+exercise."
+
+He paused, and carefully divested himself of his coat, folding it neatly,
+and placing it on the table. When it was placed to advantage, he drew his
+sword, and tested its point on the floor.
+
+"Who knows," he added, bending the blade, "perhaps we may have sport
+after all. Lawton was never bad with the foils."
+
+We had only crossed swords long enough for me to feel the supple play
+of his wrist before I began to press him. I feinted, and disengaged,
+and a second later I had lunged over his guard, and had forced him to
+give back.
+
+"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed my father gaily. "You surprise me. What! Again?
+Damn these chairs!"
+
+A fire of exultation leapt through me. I grinned at my father over the
+crossed blades, for I could read something in his face that steadied my
+hand. My best attack might leave him unscathed, but I was doing more,
+much more, than he had expected. I lunged again, and again he stepped
+back, thrusting so quickly that I had barely time to recover.
+
+"Excellent!" said my father. "You are quick, my son. You even have an
+eye."
+
+"Mademoiselle!" I called sharply. "The paper! In the breast pocket of his
+coat. Take it out and burn it."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed my father.
+
+"You see," I said, "I have my points."
+
+"My son," he said, parrying the thrust with which I ended my last words,
+"pray accept my apologies, and my congratulations. You have a better mind
+and a better sword than I could reasonably have expected. Indeed, you
+quite make me extend myself. But you must learn to recover more quickly,
+Henry, much more quickly. I have seen too many good men go down for just
+that failing. It may be well enough against an ordinary swordsman, my
+son, or even a moderately good one, but as for me, I could run you
+through twice over. Indeed I would, if--"
+
+"The paper, Mademoiselle," I called again. "Have you got it?"
+
+"Exactly," said my father. "The paper. If the paper were in my pocket,
+you, my son, would now be in the surgeon's hands. The paper, however, is
+upstairs in my volume of Rabelais. And now--"
+
+His wrist suddenly stiffened. He made a feint at my throat, and in the
+same motion lowered his guard. As I came on parade, my sword was wrenched
+from my grasp. At the same time I stepped past his point, and seized him
+around the waist.
+
+"You heard, Mademoiselle," I cried. "The door!" and we fell together.
+
+My father uttered something which seemed very near a curse, and clutched
+at my throat. I loosened my grasp to fend away his hand, and he broke
+away from my other arm, and sprang to his feet. Just as he did so there
+was a blow, a splintering of wood. The door was carried off its hinges,
+and Brutus leapt beside him. The floor had not been clean. My father
+brushed regretfully at the smudges on his cambric shirt.
+
+"My coat, if you please, Mademoiselle," he said. "I see you have it in
+your hands. Gad, my son! It was a nearer thing than I expected. On my
+word, I did not know that Brutus was back."
+
+"He is like you, captain," said Mademoiselle, handing the coat to him.
+"You are both stubborn."
+
+For some reason I could not fathom, her good nature had returned. It was
+relief, perhaps, that made her smile at us.
+
+"It is a family trait," returned my father.
+
+As though kicking down the door had been a simple household duty, Brutus
+turned from it with quiet passivity, and adjusted the folds of the blue
+broadcloth with an equal thoroughness, while my father straightened the
+lace at his wrists.
+
+"Huh," said Brutus suddenly. Then I noticed that his stockings were caked
+with river mud, and that he had evidently been running. My father,
+forgetful of his coat for the moment, whirled about and faced him.
+
+"To think I had forgotten," he cried. "What news, you black rascal?"
+
+"Huh," said Brutus again, and handed him a spotted slip of paper. My
+father's lips parted. He seized it with unusual alacrity, read it, and
+tossed it in the fire. Then he sighed, like a man from whose mind a heavy
+weight of care has been lifted. The tenseness seemed to leave his slim
+figure, and for an instant he looked as though the day had tired him, and
+as though another crisis were over.
+
+"He's there?" he demanded sharply.
+
+"Huh," said Brutus.
+
+"Now heaven be praised for that," said my father, with something that was
+a close approach to fervor. "I was beginning to wonder if, perhaps,
+something had happened."
+
+Mademoiselle looked up at him demurely.
+
+"The captain has good news?" she asked.
+
+He turned to her and smiled his blandest smile.
+
+"Under the circumstances," he said, "the best I could expect."
+
+Still smiling, he smoothed his coat and squared his shoulders.
+
+"Our little melodrama, my lady, is drawing to its close."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The sun had finally broken through the clouds, and already its rays were
+slanting into the room, falling softly on the dusty furniture, and
+making the shadows of the vines outside dance fitfully on the wall by
+the fire; and the shadows of the elms were growing long and straight
+over the rain soaked leaves, and the rank, damp grass of our lawn. It
+was the dull, gentle sunshine of an autumn afternoon, soft and kindly,
+and yet a little bleak.
+
+"Yes," said my father, "it is nearly over. It turns into a simple matter,
+after all. I wonder, Mademoiselle, will you be sorry? Will you ever
+recall our weeks on the high-road? I shall, I think. And the Inn in
+Britanny, with Brutus up the road, and Ned Aiken swearing at the post
+boys. At least we were living life. And the _Eclipse_--I told you they
+would never beat us on a windward tack. I told you, Mademoiselle, the
+majority of mankind were very simple people."
+
+"And you still feel so?" she asked him.
+
+"Now more than ever," said my father. "I had almost hoped there would
+be one sane man among the dozens outside, but they all have the brains
+of school boys. No wonder the world moves so slowly, and great men seem
+so great."
+
+And he wound the handkerchief around his hand again.
+
+"The captain has arranged to sell the paper?" asked Mademoiselle.
+
+"Exactly," said my father. "The price has been fixed, and I shall deliver
+it myself as soon as the day grows a little darker. I am sorry, almost.
+It has not been uninteresting."
+
+"No," said Mademoiselle, "it has not been uninteresting."
+
+"You are pale, my son," said my father, turning to me. "I trust you are
+not hurt?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"It is only your pride? You will be better soon. Come, we have always
+been good losers. We have always known when the game was up. Let us see
+if we cannot end it gracefully, as gentlemen should. You cannot get the
+paper. Why not make the best of it? You have tried, and tried not
+unskilfully, but you see now that the right man cannot always win--a
+useful lesson, is it not? I do not ask you to like me for it. You have
+seen enough of me, I hope, to hate me. And yet--let us be philosophical.
+Be seated, my son. Brutus, it is three o'clock. Bring in the Madeira, and
+the noon meal."
+
+I did not reply, and he stood for a moment watching me narrowly. Brutus
+threw another log on the fire, which gave off a brisk crackling from the
+bed of coals. He then stood waiting doubtfully, until my father nodded.
+
+"Take the door out as you go," my father directed. "Mademoiselle,
+permit me."
+
+He pointed out an armchair beside the fire. "And you, my son, opposite.
+So." From the side pocket of his coat he drew a silver mounted pistol,
+which he examined with studious attention.
+
+"Come," he said, slipping it back, "let us be tranquil. Is there any
+reason to bear ill will simply because we each stand on an opposite side
+of a question of ethics? If you had only been to the wars, how
+differently you would see it. There hundreds of men stab each other with
+the best will in the world, none of the crudeness of personal animosity,
+only the best of good nature. In a little time now we shall part, never,
+if I can help it, to meet again. You have seen me as a dangerous,
+reckless man, without any principles worth mentioning. Indeed, I have so
+few that I shall have recourse to violence, my son, if you do not assume
+a more reposeful manner. The evening will be active enough to make any
+further excitement quite superfluous. Have patience. An hour or so means
+little to anyone so young."
+
+There fell a silence while he stood immovably watching us. A gust of wind
+blew down the chimney, and scattered a cloud of dust over the hearth. The
+rafters creaked. Somewhere in the stillness a door slammed. The very lack
+of expression in his face was stamping it on my memory, and for the first
+time its phlegmatic calm aroused in me a new emotion. I had hated it and
+wondered at it before, and now in spite of myself it was giving me a
+twinge of pity. For nature had intended it to be an expressive face,
+sensitive and quick to mirror each perception and emotion. Was it pride
+that had turned it into a mask, and drawn a curtain before the light that
+burned within, or had the light burned out and left it merely cold and
+unresponsive?
+
+"The captain is thinking?" said Mademoiselle.
+
+He smiled, and fixed her with his level glance.
+
+"Indeed yes," he answered briskly. "It is a rudeness for which I can only
+crave your pardon. Strange that I should have tasted your father's
+hospitality so often and should still be a taciturn host."
+
+Mademoiselle bit her lip.
+
+"There is only one thing stranger," she said coldly.
+
+"And that is--?" said my father, bending toward her attentively.
+
+"That you should betray the last request of the man who once sheltered
+you and trusted you, and showed you every kindness. Tell me, captain, is
+it another display of artistic temperament, or simply a lack of
+breeding?"
+
+Her words seemed to fall lightly on my father. He took a pinch of snuff,
+and waved his hand in an airy gesture of denial.
+
+"Bah," he said. "If the Marquis were alive, he would understand. He was
+always an opportunist, the Marquis. 'Drink your wine,' he would say,
+'drink your wine and break your glass. We may not have heads to drink it
+with tomorrow.' I am merely drinking the wine, Mademoiselle. He would
+not blame me. Besides, the Marquis owes me nothing. If it were not for
+me, your brother would be drinking his wine in paradise, instead of
+cursing at the American climate. And you, Mademoiselle--would you have
+preferred to remain with the police?"
+
+He looked thoughtfully into his snuff box.
+
+"Dead men press no bills--surely you recall the Marquis said that also.
+No, Mademoiselle, we must be practical to live. The Marquis would
+understand. The Marquis was always practical."
+
+She caught her breath sharply, but my father seemed not to have perceived
+the effect of his words.
+
+"Ah," he said, "here is Brutus with the meal."
+
+Brutus had carried in a small round table on which were arranged a loaf
+of bread and some salt meat.
+
+"Mademoiselle will join me?" asked my father, rubbing his hands. I do not
+think he expected her reply any more than I did. Indeed, it seemed to
+give him a momentary uneasiness.
+
+"One must eat," said Mademoiselle. "We will eat, captain, and then we
+will talk." I am sorry you have made it necessary, but of course you
+have expected it."
+
+"Mademoiselle has been unnaturally subdued," he replied. "It is pleasant
+she is coming to herself again. And you, my son, you should be hungry."
+
+"As Mademoiselle says, one must eat," I answered.
+
+"Good," he said. "The food is poor, but you will find the wine
+excellent," and he filled the glasses. It was a strange meal.
+
+"Now we shall talk," said Mademoiselle, when it was finished.
+
+My father raised his wine glass to the light.
+
+"It is always a pleasure to listen to Mademoiselle."
+
+"I fear," replied Mademoiselle, "that this will be the exception."
+
+"Impossible," said my father, sipping his wine.
+
+"All this morning I have tried to have a word with you," said
+Mademoiselle, "but your time has been well taken up. I hoped to speak to
+you instead of your son, but he failed to take my advice and remain
+quiet. As I said before, you are both stubborn. Not that it has made much
+difference. You still have the paper."
+
+She caused, and surveyed him calmly.
+
+"Is it not painful to continue the discussion?" my father inquired. "I
+assure you I have not changed my mind since last evening, nor shall I
+change it. Must I repeat that the affair of the paper is finished?"
+
+"We shall see," said Mademoiselle.
+
+"As Mademoiselle wishes," said my father.
+
+"It has been six years since I first saw you in Paris," said
+Mademoiselle. Her voice was softly musical, and somehow she was no longer
+cold and forbidding. My father placed his wine glass on the table, and
+seemingly a little disturbed, gave her his full attention.
+
+"Six years," said Mademoiselle. "I have often thought of you since then.
+
+"You have done me too much honor," said my father. "You always
+have, my lady."
+
+She only smiled and shook her head.
+
+"You are the sort of man whom women think about, and the sort whom women
+admire. Surely you know that without my telling you. A man with a past is
+always more pleasant than one with a future. Do you know what I thought
+when I saw you that evening? You remember, they were in the room,
+whispering as usual, plotting and planning, and you were to have a boat
+off the coast of Normandy. You and the Marquis had ridden from Bordeaux.
+I thought, Captain, that you were the sort of man who could succeed in
+anything you tried--yes, anything. Perhaps you know the Marquis thought
+so too, and even today I believe we were nearly right. We saw you in
+Brussels later, and in Holland, and then at Blanzy this year. I have
+known of a dozen commissions you have performed without a single blunder.
+Indeed, I know of only one thing in which you have definitely failed."
+
+"Only one? Impossible," said my father.
+
+"Yes, only one, and it seemed simple enough."
+
+A touch of color had mounted to her cheeks, and she looked down at the
+bare table.
+
+"You have done your best, done your best in a hundred little ways to make
+me hate you. You have studied the matter carefully, as you study
+everything. You have missed few opportunities. Even a minute ago, about
+the Marquis--and yet you have not succeeded."
+
+My father raised his hand hastily to his coat lapel.
+
+"Is there never a woman who will not reduce matters to personalities," he
+murmured. "I should have known better. I see it now. I should have made
+love to you."
+
+Though her voice was grave, there was laughter in her eyes.
+
+"I have often wondered why you did not. It was the only method you seem
+to have overlooked."
+
+"There is one mistake a man always makes about women." He smiled and
+glanced at us both, and then back at his wine again. "He forgets they are
+all alike. Sooner or later he sees one that in some strange way seems
+different. I thought you were different, Mademoiselle. Heaven forgive me,
+I thought you even rational. Surely you have every reason to dislike me.
+Let us be serious, Mademoiselle. You do not hate me?"
+
+"I am afraid," said Mademoiselle, "that you have had quite an
+opposite effect."
+
+In spite of myself I started. Could it be that I was jealous? Her eyes
+were lowered to the arm of her chair, and she was intent on the delicate
+carving of the mahogany. It was true then. I might have suspected it
+before, but was it possible that I cared?
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed my father, and pushed back his chair.
+
+Mademoiselle rested her chin on the palm of her hand.
+
+"I told you the interview would not be pleasant," she said. "But you are
+pessimistic, captain. I have not said I loved you. Do not be alarmed. I
+was going to say I pitied you. That was all."
+
+"Mon Dieu," my father murmured. "It is worse." And yet I thought I
+detected a note of relief in his voice. "Surely I am not as old as that."
+
+Mademoiselle, whose eyes had never left his face, smiled and shook her
+head.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," she said. "No, no, captain. It is not the
+beginning of a melodramatic speech. I am not offering pity to the villain
+in the story. Even the first night I met you, I was sorry for you,
+captain. I was sorry as soon as I saw your eyes. I knew then that
+something had happened, and when I heard you speak, I told myself you
+were not to blame for it. I still believe you were not to blame. You see,
+I know your story now."
+
+"Indeed?" said my father. "And you still are sorry. Mademoiselle, you
+disappoint me."
+
+"Yes," said Mademoiselle, "I heard the story, and I believe she was to
+blame, not you. After all, she took you for better or worse."
+
+And then a strange thing happened. In spite of himself he started. His
+race flushed, and his lips pressed tight together. It seemed almost as
+though a spasm of pain had seized him, which he could not conceal in
+spite of his best efforts. With an unconscious motion, he grasped his
+wine glass and the color ebbed from his cheeks.
+
+"Mademoiselle is mistaken," said my father. "Another wine glass, Brutus."
+The stem of the one he was holding had snapped in his hand.
+
+"Nonsense," said Mademoiselle shortly.
+
+My father cleared his throat, and glanced restlessly away, his face still
+set and still lined with the trace of suffering.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said finally, "you deal with a subject which is still
+painful. Pray excuse me if I do not discuss it. Anything which you may
+have heard of my affairs is entirely a fault of mine. You understand?"
+
+"Yes," said Mademoiselle, "I understand, and we shall continue to
+discuss it, no matter how painful it is to you. Who knows, captain;
+perhaps I can bring you to your senses, or are you going to continue to
+ruin your life on account of a woman?"
+
+"Be silent, Mademoiselle," said my father sharply.
+
+But she disregarded his interruption.
+
+"So she believed that you had filled your ship with fifty bales of
+shavings. She believed it, and called you a thief. She believed you were
+as gauche as that. I can guess the rest of the story."
+
+But my father had regained his equanimity.
+
+"Five hundred bales of shavings," he corrected. "You are misinformed even
+about the merest details."
+
+"And for fifteen years, you have been roving about the world, trying to
+convince her she was right. Ah, you are touched? I have guessed your
+secret. Can anything be more ridiculous!"
+
+He half started from his chair, and again his face grew drawn and
+haggard.
+
+"She _was_ right," he said, a little hoarsely. "Believe me, she was
+always right, Mademoiselle."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mademoiselle. "I do not believe it."
+
+My father turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders.
+
+"It is pleasant to remember, is it not, my son, that your mother had a
+keener discernment, and did not give way to the dictates of a romantic
+imagination?"
+
+"Sir," I said, "there is only one reason why I ever came here, and that
+was because my mother requested it. She wanted you to know, sir, that she
+regretted what she said almost the moment you left the house. If you had
+ever written her, if you had ever sent a single word, you could have
+changed it all. In spite of all the evidence, she never came fully to
+believe it."
+
+"Ah, but you believe it," said my father quickly.
+
+I do not think he ever heard my answer. He had turned unsteadily in his
+chair, and was facing the dying embers of the fire, his left hand limp on
+the table before him. Again the spasm of pain crossed his face.
+Mademoiselle still watched him, but without a trace of triumph. Indeed,
+she seemed more kindly and more gentle than I had ever known her.
+
+"Five hundred bales of shavings," she softly. "Ah, captain, there
+are not many men who would do it. Not any that I know, save you and
+the Marquis."
+
+"Brutus," said my father, "a glass of rum."
+
+With his eyes still on the fire, he drank the spirits, and sighed. "And
+now, Brutus," he continued, "my volume of Rabelais."
+
+But when it was placed beside him, he left it unopened, and still
+continued to study the shifting scenes in the coals.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Was it possible that I cared? There she was leaning toward him, the
+flames from the fire dancing softly before her face, giving her dark hair
+a hundred new lights and shadows. Her lips were parted, and in her eyes
+was silent entreaty. I felt a sudden unaccountable impulse to snatch up
+the volume of Rabelais, to face my father again, weapon or no weapon, to
+show her--
+
+"Come, captain," said Mademoiselle gently. "Must you continue this after
+it has turned into a farce? Must you continue acting from pique, when the
+thing has been over for more years than you care to remember? Must you
+keep on now because of a whim to make your life miserable and the lives
+of others? Will you threaten fifty men with death and ruin, because you
+once were called a thief? It is folly, sir, and you know it, utter
+useless folly! Pray do not stare at me. It was easy enough to piece your
+story together. I guessed it long ago. I have listened too often to you
+and the Marquis at wine. Come, captain, give me back the paper."
+
+With his old half smile, my father turned to her and nodded in pleasant
+acknowledgment.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he observed evenly, "I have gone further through the
+world than most men, though to less purpose, and I have met many people,
+but none of them with an intuition like yours."
+
+He paused long enough to refill his glass.
+
+"You are right, Mademoiselle. Indeed, it is quite wonderful to meet a
+woman of your discernment. Yes, you are right. My wife called me a rogue
+and a scoundrel--mind you, I am not saying she was mistaken--but my
+temper was hotter then than it is now. I have done my best to convince
+her she was not in error. And now, Mademoiselle, it has become as much of
+a habit with me as strong drink, a habit which even you cannot break. I
+have been a villain too long to leave off lightly. No, Mademoiselle, I
+have the paper, and I intend to dispose of it as I see fit. Your mother,
+my son, need have had no cause for regret. She was right in everything
+she said. Brutus, tell Mr. Aiken I am ready to see him."
+
+He must have been in the hall outside, for he entered the morning room
+almost as soon as my father had spoken, dressed in his rusty black sea
+cloak. At the sight of Mademoiselle, he bowed ceremoniously, and blew
+loudly on his fingers.
+
+"Wind's shifted southwest," he said. "But we're ready to put out."
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Aiken," said my father. "My son, pour him a little
+refreshment."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Aiken, selecting a chair by the fire, "pour it out, my
+lad--fill her up. It's a short life and little joy 'less we draw it from
+the bottle. And long life and much joy to you, sir, by the same token,"
+he added, raising his glass and tossing the spirits adroitly down his
+throat. Then, with a comfortable sigh, he drew out his pipe and lighted
+it on an ember.
+
+"Yes, she'll be blowing before morning."
+
+"You don't mean," inquired my father, with a glance out of the window,
+"that I can't launch a small boat from the beach?"
+
+"You could, captain, if you'd a mind to," said Ned Aiken, tamping down
+his tobacco, "but there's lots who couldn't."
+
+"Then I shall," said my father languidly. "Brutus and I will board the
+_Sea Tern_ at eight o'clock tonight. You will stand off outside and put
+on your running lights."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Aiken, "it's time we was going."
+
+"You mean they are taking steps?"
+
+"A frigate's due in at midnight," said Mr. Aiken, grinning.
+
+"A frigate! Think of that!" said my father. "At last we seem to be making
+our mark on the world."
+
+"We've never done the beat of this," said Mr. Aiken.
+
+"And everything is quiet outside?"
+
+"All right so far," said Mr. Aiken.
+
+"How many men are watching the house?"
+
+"There's four, sir," he answered.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "and Mr. Lawton still stops at the tavern?"
+
+"Hasn't showed his head all morning," answered Mr. Aiken.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "perhaps he is right in concealing such a useless
+member." And he helped himself from the decanter, seemed to hesitate for
+a moment, and continued:
+
+"And Mr. Jason Hill--he has been to call, Ned. Have you seen him since?"
+
+"He's been walking out in the road, sir, all morning," replied Mr. Aiken.
+"And a schooner of his is anchored upstream. And if you'll pardon the
+liberty, I don't give that for Jason Hill," and he spat into the fire.
+
+"It may please you to know," said my father, "that I quite agree
+with you. I am afraid," he went on, looking at the back of his hand,
+"that Jason does not take me seriously. I fear he will find he is
+wrong. Brutus!"
+
+Brutus, apparently anticipating something pleasant, moved towards my
+father's chair.
+
+"My pistols, Brutus. And it is growing dark. You had best draw the
+shutters and bring in the candles. We're sailing very close to the
+wind this evening. Listen to me carefully, Brutus. You will have the
+cutter by the bar at eight o'clock, and in five minutes you will bring
+out my horse."
+
+"What's the horse for?" asked Mr. Aiken.
+
+My father settled himself back more comfortably in his chair before he
+answered. A few drops of wine had spilled on the mahogany. He touched
+them, and held up his fingers and looked thoughtfully at the stain.
+
+"Because I propose to ride through them," he said. "I propose showing our
+friends--how shall I put it so you'll understand?--that I don't care a
+damn for the whole pack."
+
+"Gad!" murmured Mr. Aiken. "I might have known it. And here I was
+thinking you'd be quiet and sensible. Are you still going on with that
+damned paper?"
+
+The red of the wine seemed to please my father. He dipped his fingers in
+it again and drew them slowly across the back of his left hand.
+
+"Precisely," he said. "I propose to deliver it tonight before I sail. I
+leave it at Hixon's farm."
+
+"He's dead," said Mr. Aiken.
+
+"Exactly," said my father. "Only his shade will help me. Perhaps it will
+be enough--who knows?"
+
+"There'll be half a dozen after you before you get through the gate,"
+said Mr. Aiken dubiously. "You can lay to it Lawton will be there before
+you make a turn."
+
+"That," said my father, "is why I say we're sailing very close to
+the wind."
+
+"Good God, sir, burn it up," said Mr. Aiken plaintively. "What's it been
+doing but causing trouble ever since we've got it? Running gear carried
+away--man wounded from splinters. Hell to pay everywhere. Gad, sir,
+they're afraid to sleep tonight for fear you'll blow 'em out of bed.
+What's the use of it all? Damn it, that's what I say, what's the use? And
+now here you go, risking getting a piece of lead thrown in you, all
+because of a few names scrawled on a piece of paper. Here it's the first
+time you've been back. It's a hell of a home-coming--that's what I say. I
+told you you hadn't ought to have come. Now there's the fire. Why not
+forget it and burn it up, and then it's over just as neat as neat, and
+then we're aboard, and after the pearls again. Why, what must the boy be
+thinking of all this? He must be thinking he's got a hell-cat for a
+father. That's what he must be thinking."
+
+"That will do," said my father coldly, and he rose slowly from his chair,
+and stood squarely in front of me.
+
+"Tie that boy up, Brutus," he commanded. "It is a compliment, my son. My
+opinion of you is steadily rising. Tie him up, Brutus. You will find a
+rope on the chimney piece."
+
+He stood close to me, evidently pleased at the convulsive anger which had
+gripped me. Brutus was still fumbling on the mantlepiece. Ned Aiken's
+pipe had dropped from his mouth. It was Mademoiselle who was the first to
+intervene.
+
+"Are you out of your senses?" she demanded, seizing him by the arm. "It
+is too much, captain, I tell you it is too much. Think what you are
+doing, and send the black man off."
+
+"I have been thinking the matter over for some time," replied my father
+tranquilly, "and I have determined to do the thing thoroughly. If he
+cannot like me, it is better for him to hate me, and may save trouble.
+Tie him up, Brutus."
+
+"Bear away!" cried Mr. Aiken harshly. "Mind yourself, sir."
+
+His warning, however, was late in coming. I had sprung at my father
+before the sentence was finished. It was almost the only time I knew him
+to miscalculate. He must have been taken unaware, for he stepped backward
+too quickly, and collided with the very chair he had quitted. It shook
+his balance for the moment, so that he thrust a hand behind him to
+recover himself, and in the same instant I had the volume of Rabelais. I
+leapt for the open doorway, but Ned Aiken was there to intercept me.
+Brutus was up behind me with his great hands clamping down on my
+shoulders. I turned and hurled the volume in the fireplace.
+
+My father caught it out almost before it landed. With all the
+deliberation of a connoisseur examining an old and rare edition, he
+turned the pages with his slim fingers. There, as he had said, was
+the paper, with the same red seals that I had admired the previous
+evening. He placed it slowly in his inside pocket, and tossed the book
+on the floor.
+
+"Now here's a pretty kettle of fish," said Mr. Aiken.
+
+My father was watching me thoughtfully.
+
+"Take your hands off him, Brutus," he said, "and bring out the horse."
+
+For a second longer we stood motionless, each watching the other. Then my
+father crossed to the long table near which I was standing, picked up the
+pistols that Brutus had left there, and slipped them into his capacious
+side pockets.
+
+"You disappoint me, Henry," he remarked. "You should have used
+those pistols."
+
+"I had thought of them," I answered.
+
+"I am glad of that," he said. "It is a relief to know you did not
+overlook them. You were right, Mademoiselle. I should have known better
+than to treat him so. We have ceased to play the game, my son. It only
+remains to take my leave. I shall not trouble you again."
+
+He was standing close beside me. Was it possible his eyes were a little
+wistful, and his voice a trifle sad?
+
+"I thought I should be glad to leave you," he said, "and somehow I am
+sorry. Odd that we can never properly gauge our emotions. I feel that you
+will be a very blithe and active gentleman in time, and there are not so
+many left in these drab days. Ah, well--"
+
+His sword was lying on the table. He drew it, and tucked the naked blade
+under his arm. In spite of the two candles which Brutus had left, the
+shadows had closed about us, so that his figure alone remained distinct
+in the yellow light, slender and carelessly elegant. I think it pleased
+him to have us all three watching. Any gathering, however small, that he
+might dominate, appeared to give him enjoyment--his leave taking not less
+than the others.
+
+"It is growing dark, Mr. Aiken," he observed, "and our position is not
+without its drawbacks. Call in the men from outside, and take them aboard
+and give them a measure of rum. No one will disturb me before I leave, I
+think. You had better weigh at once, and never mind your running lights
+till it is time for them."
+
+"So you're going to do it," said Mr. Aiken. "I might have known you
+wouldn't listen to reason."
+
+"You should have sailed with me long enough," said my father, "to know I
+never do."
+
+"And you not even dressed for it," added Mr. Aiken. "You might be going
+to a party, so you might."
+
+"I think," replied my father, "the evening will be more interesting than
+a purely social affair. Keep the _Sea Tern_ well off, and we shall meet
+only too soon again.'
+
+"Why don't I take the boy along," Mr. Aiken suggested, eyeing me a little
+furtively. "He'd be right useful where we're going, and the sea would do
+him good, so it would."
+
+"I fancy you'll have enough bother without him," replied my father.
+"Personally I have found him quite distracting during my short visit."
+
+"Hell," said Mr. Aiken, "he wouldn't be no trouble, but he looks fair
+ugly here, so he does, and he knows too much. No offense, sir, but he's
+too up and coming to be left alone with an ignorant nigger."
+
+My father shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Brutus is fond of the boy. He will not hurt him."
+
+"But the boy might hurt the nigger," said Mr. Aiken.
+
+My father nodded blandly toward the hall.
+
+"And you might be seasick," he said.
+
+"Har," roared Mr. Aiken, seemingly struck by the subtle humor of the
+remark. "Damned if you wouldn't joke if the deck was blowing off under
+you. Damned if I ever seen the likes of you now, captain."
+
+Still under the spell of mirth he left us. The house door closed behind
+him, and Brutus glided into the room.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said my father bowing, "I am sorry the cards have fallen
+so we must part. If you had as few pleasant things as I to remember, you
+also might understand how poignantly I regret it, even though I know it
+is for the best. It is time you were leaving such low company."
+
+"I have found it pleasant sometimes," she replied a little wistfully. "It
+takes very little to please me, captain."
+
+"Sometimes," he replied, smiling, "anything is pleasant, but only
+sometimes. Your brother has been notified, Mademoiselle. You should hear
+from him in a little while now, when this hurry and bustle is over, and
+when you see him, give him my regards and my regrets. And Mademoiselle"
+--he hesitated an instant--"would you think it insolent if I said I
+sometimes wished--Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, do not take it so. It was
+entirely unpardonable of me."
+
+Mademoiselle had hidden her face in her hands. My father, frowning
+slightly, rubbed his thumb along his sword blade.
+
+"Forgive me, if you can," he said. "I have often feared my manners would
+fail me sometime."
+
+She looked up at him then, and her eyes were very bright.
+
+"Suppose," she said softly, "I told you there was nothing to forgive.
+Suppose I said--"
+
+My father, bowing his lowest, politely and rather hastily interrupted.
+
+"Mademoiselle would be too kind. She would have forgotten that it is
+quite impossible."
+
+"No," said Mademoiselle, shaking her head slowly, "it is not impossible.
+You should have known better than to say that. Suppose--" her voice
+choked a little, as though the words hurt her--"suppose I bade you
+recall, captain, what you said on the stairs at Blanzy, when they were at
+the door and you were going to meet them. Do you remember?"
+
+My father smiled, and made a polite little gesture of assumed
+despair. Then his voice, very slow and cool, broke in on her speech
+and stilled it.
+
+"Good God, Mademoiselle, one cannot remember everything."
+
+Playing with the hilt of his sword, he stepped nearer, still smiling,
+still watching her with a polished curiosity.
+
+"I have said so many little things to women in my time, so many little
+nothings. It is hard to remember them all. They have become confused now,
+and blended into an interesting background, whose elements I can no
+longer separate. Your pardon, my lady, but I have forgotten, forgotten so
+completely that even the stairs seem merely a gentle blur."
+
+And he pressed his hand over his brow and sighed, while he watched her
+face flush crimson.
+
+"You lie!" she cried. "You have not forgotten!"
+
+My father ceased to smile.
+
+"And suppose I have not," he said. "What is it to Mademoiselle? What are
+the words of a ruined man, the idle speech of a fool who fancied he
+would sup that night in paradise, and what use is it to recall them now?
+Is it possible you believe I am touched by such trivial matters? Because
+everyone had done what you wish, do you think I shall also? Do you think
+you can make me give up the paper, as though I were a simpering, romantic
+fool in Paris? Do you think I have gone this far to turn back?
+Mademoiselle seems to forget that I have the game in my own hands. It
+would be a foolish thing to throw it all away, even--"
+
+He paused, and bowed again.
+
+"Even for you, Mademoiselle. I have arrived where I am today only for one
+reason. Can you not guess it? It was a pleasure to take you from Blanzy.
+It is business now, and they cannot be combined.
+
+"Listen, Mademoiselle," he continued. "Not three miles off the harbor
+mouth is a French ship tacking back and forth, and not entirely for
+pleasure. Around this house at present are enough men to run your
+estates at Blanzy. A sloop has come into the harbor this morning, and
+has landed its crew for my especial benefit. A dozen of Napoleon's
+agents are waiting to spring at my throat. I have succeeded so that
+there is not a man in town who would not be glad to see me on a yard
+arm. And yet they are waiting, Mademoiselle. Is it not amusing? Can you
+guess why they are waiting?"
+
+He took a pinch of snuff and dusted his fingers.
+
+"Because they fear that I may burn the paper if they disturb me.
+They believe if they keep hidden, if I do not suspect, that I may
+venture forth. They hope to take me alive, or kill me, and still
+obtain the paper. Indeed, it is their one hope. It would be a pity
+to disappoint them."
+
+His lips had parted, and his eyes were shining in the candle light.
+
+"There are few things which move me now, my lady. All that I really enjoy
+is an amusing situation, and this one is very amusing. Do you think I
+have crossed the ocean to deliver this document, and then I shall stop?
+No, Mademoiselle, you are mistaken."
+
+He bowed again, and stepped backwards towards the door.
+
+"Pray do likewise, Mademoiselle, and forget," he said. "There is nothing
+in this little episode fit for you to remember. It is not you they are
+after, and you will be quite safe here. I have made sure of that. My son
+will remain until your brother arrives, and will dispense what
+hospitality you require.
+
+"I trust," he added, turning to me, "you still remember why you have
+been here?"
+
+"Indeed, yes," I answered.
+
+"Then it is good-bye, Henry. I shall not bother to offer you my hand.
+Brutus, you will remain with my son until a quarter to seven."
+
+Even now I cannot tell what made a mist come over my eyes and a lump in
+my throat any more than I can explain my subsequent actions on that
+evening. Was it possible I was sorry to see the last of him? Or was it
+simply self pity that shortened my breath and made my voice seem broken
+and discordant?
+
+"And after that?" I asked.
+
+He looked at me appraisingly, tapping his thin fingers on his sword hilt.
+
+"After that--" He stared thoughtfully at the shadows of the
+darkened room. Was he thinking as I was, of the wasted years and
+what the end would be?
+
+"After that," he repeated, half to himself, "come, I will make an
+appointment with you after that--on the other side of the Styx, my son.
+I shall be waiting there, I promise you, and we shall drink some corked
+ambrosia. Surely the gods must give a little to the shades, or at any
+rate, Brutus shall steal some. And then perhaps you shall tell me what
+happened after that. I shall look forward--I shall hope, even, that it
+may be pleasant. Good-bye, my son."
+
+I think he had often planned that leave taking. Surely it must have
+satisfied him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+He was gone, like the shades of which he had spoken, and Mademoiselle and
+I were left staring at the black rectangle of the broken door. I drew a
+deep breath and looked about me quickly. It seemed somehow as though a
+spell were broken, as though the curtain had lowered on some final act in
+the theatre. Slowly my mind seemed to free itself from a hundred
+illusions, and to move along more logical paths. Brutus went to the arms
+rack in the corner, and selected a rusted cutlass from the small arms
+that still rested there, thrust it at me playfully and grinned. For a
+minute or even more, the single log that was still burning in the
+fireplace hissed drowsily, and I could hear the vines tapping gently on
+the windows. Then I heard a pistol shot, followed by a hoarse cry.
+Mademoiselle started to her feet, and then sank back in her chair again,
+and from where I was standing I could see that her face was white and her
+hands were trembling. So she loved him. My hand gripped hard against the
+back of a chair. Why should I have hoped she did not?
+
+"God!" she gasped. "I have killed him!"
+
+"You?" I cried, but she did not answer.
+
+"Huh!" said Brutus, and his grin grew broader. "Monsieur's pistol. He
+kill him."
+
+"Indeed," I said, for the sense of unreality was still strong upon me.
+"And whom did he kill, Brutus?"
+
+Brutus cocked his head to one side, and listened. Somewhere behind came a
+confusion of shouts and the thudding of horses' hoofs.
+
+"He kill Mr. Jason Hill," said Brutus.
+
+"Are you sure?" Mademoiselle demanded sharply.
+
+Brutus nodded, and the dull, fixed look went out of her eyes, and slowly
+a touch of color returned to her cheeks.
+
+And then there was a clamor of voices and a tramp of feet and a crash on
+the door outside.
+
+Brutus looked about him in wild indecision.
+
+"We have callers," I observed, doing my best to keep my voice calm. "Who
+are they, Brutus?"
+
+Brutus, however, had forgotten me, and had sprung into the hall. At
+almost the same instant, someone must have discovered that the door was
+unlocked, for a sudden draught eddied through the passage. Then there
+was a confused babel of voices, to which I did not listen. I was busy
+swinging up the sash of the nearest window.
+
+"Quickly, Mademoiselle!" I whispered.
+
+"Damn it!" someone shouted from the hall. "There's another of 'em!" And
+there came the crack of a pistol that echoed loudly in the passage.
+
+"It is time we were going," I said. "Out of the window, Mademoiselle!"
+
+In my haste I almost pushed her from the sill to the lawn, and was
+leaning towards her.
+
+"Mademoiselle, listen! The stables are straight to the left. Can you
+saddle a horse?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"The first stall to the right. I shall be there in an instant!" For I
+remembered my sword, and sprang back into the room to get it.
+
+"Get that man!" someone was shouting. "In after him, you fools! Don't
+shoot in the dark!"
+
+I had a glimpse of Brutus darting through the passage and making a leap
+for the stairs. Then there was a crash of glass.
+
+"Begad!" came a hoarse voice. "He's jumped clean through the window!"
+And another pistol exploded from the landing above me.
+
+"Five hundred dollars for the man who gets him." I could swear I had
+heard the voice before. "Damn it! Don't let him go! Out the door, all of
+you! Out the door, men! Out the door!"
+
+There was a rush of feet through the passage. I had a glimpse of men
+running past, and then I was half out the window.
+
+"Stop!" someone shouted. I took a hasty glance behind me to find that my
+Uncle Jason had entered the morning room, his clothing torn and
+disarranged, the good nature erased from his face, and a gash on his left
+cheek that still was bleeding.
+
+"Stop!" he shouted again, "or I fire!"
+
+Then I was out on the lawn with the cool air from the river on my face,
+and running for the stable. I wonder what would have happened if the
+evening had been less far advanced, or the sky less overcast, or
+Mademoiselle less adroit than providence had made her. She had bridled
+the horse and was swinging the saddle on him when I had reached the
+stable's shadow. I could hear my uncle shouting for assistance as I
+tightened the girths, but Brutus must have led his men a pretty chase.
+
+I mounted unmolested, as I somehow knew I should, and helped her up
+behind me. Somehow with that first crash on our front door, I knew that
+the game had turned. I knew that nothing would stop me. An odd sense of
+exaltation came over me, and with it a strange desire to laugh. It would
+be amusing enough when I met my father, but I wondered--I wondered as I
+clapped my heels into my horse's flanks.
+
+What had my uncle to do in this affair?
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+It was just that time in an autumn day when the light is fading out of
+the sky. The thick, heavy mists that the cold air encourages were rolling
+in chill and heavy from the river and leveling the hollow places in the
+land. The clouds were still a claret colored purple in the west, but in
+another few minutes that color would be gone. The shapes around us were
+fast losing their distinctiveness, and their outlines were becoming more
+and more a matter for the memory, and not the eye. And it seems to me
+that I never knew the air to seem more fresh and sweet.
+
+We had broken into a sharp gallop down the rutted lane. The house, gaunt
+and spectral, and bleaker and more forbidding than the darkening sky,
+was behind us, and ahead were the broad level meadows, checkered with
+little clumps of willow and cedars, as meadows are that lie near the
+salt marshes. I had feared we might be intercepted at our gate, but I
+was mistaken. We had swerved to the left and were thudding down the
+level road, when an exclamation from Mademoiselle made me turn in my
+saddle. My look must have been a somewhat blank interrogation, for
+Mademoiselle was laughing.
+
+"To think," she cried, "I should have said you resembled your mother!
+Where are we going, Monsieur?"
+
+But I think she knew without my answering, for she laughed again, and I
+did not entirely blame her. It was pleasant enough to leave our house
+behind. It was pleasant to feel the bite of the salt wind, and to see the
+trees and the rocks by the roadside slip past us, gaunt and spectral in
+the evening. I knew the road well enough, which was fortunate, even when
+we turned off the beaten track over a trail which was hardly as good as a
+foot path. I was forced to reduce our pace to a walk, but I was confident
+that it did not make much difference. Once on the path, the farm was not
+half a mile distant, just behind a ridge of rocks that was studded by a
+stunted undergrowth of wind beaten oak. I knew the place. I could already
+picture the gaping black windows, the broken, sagging ridge pole, and the
+crumbling chimney. For years the wind had blown sighing through its
+deserted rooms, while the rain rotted the planking. It was not strange
+that its owners had left it, for I can imagine no more mournful or
+desolate spot. Our own house, three miles away, was its nearest neighbor,
+and scarcely a congenial one. Around it was nothing but rain sogged
+meadows that scarcely rose above the salt marshes that ran to the dunes
+where the Atlantic was beating.
+
+As I stared grimly ahead, I could picture her there behind me, the wind
+whipping the color to her cheeks and playing with her hair, her eyes
+bright and gay in the half-light. Save for the steady plodding of the
+horse, it was very still. I fancied that she had leaned nearer, that her
+shoulder was touching mine, that I could feel her breath on my cheek.
+Then she spoke, and her voice was almost a whisper.
+
+"It was good of you to take me with you," she said.
+
+"Surely, Mademoiselle," I replied, "You did not think that I would
+leave you?"
+
+"I should, if I had been you," she answered, "I was rude to you,
+Monsieur, and unjust to you this morning. You see I did not know."
+
+"You did not know?"
+
+"That the son would be as brave and as resourceful as the father. You
+are, Monsieur, and yet you are different."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"And I am glad, glad," said Mademoiselle.
+
+"And I am sorry you are glad," I said.
+
+"You are sorry?"
+
+"Perhaps, Mademoiselle," I replied with a tinge of bitterness I could not
+suppress, "if I had seen more of the world, if my clothes were in better
+taste, and my manners less abrupt--you would feel differently. I wonder.
+But let us be silent, for we are almost there."
+
+As we drew near, making our way through damp thickets, a sense of
+uneasiness came over me. Somehow I feared we might be too late, though I
+knew that this was hardly possible. I feared, and yet I knew well enough
+it was written somewhere that we should meet once more. With six men
+after him he would not have ridden straight to the place. We should meet,
+and it would be different from our other meetings. I wished that it was
+light enough to see his face.
+
+At a turn of the path I reined up and listened. It was very still.
+Already the light had gone out of the sky, and little was left of the
+land about us, save varying tones of black. Had he gone?
+
+I cautiously dismounted. In a minute we should see. In a minute--Then
+Mademoiselle interrupted me, and I was both astonished and irritated, for
+my nerves were more on edge than I cared to have them. She was right. She
+was never overwrought.
+
+"We are there?" she inquired.
+
+"Softly, Mademoiselle," I cautioned her. "If you will dismount, you can
+see the place. It is not three hundred feet beyond the thicket. So! You
+will admit it is not much to look at. If you will hold the horse's head,
+I will go forward."
+
+I did not listen to an objection that she was framing, but slipped
+hastily through the trees. As the ugly mass of the house took a more
+certain shape before me, I felt my pulse beat more rapidly, and not
+entirely through elation. Even today when I look at a place that men have
+built and then abandoned, something of the same feeling comes over me,
+but not as strongly as it did that evening. It was another matter that
+made me hesitate. From the shadow of the doorway I heard a sound which
+was too much like the raising of a pistol hammer not to make me remember
+that a sword was all I carried.
+
+"There is no need to cock that pistol," I said, in a tone which I hoped
+sounded more confident than my state of mind. I halted, but there was no
+answer and no further sound.
+
+"I said," I repeated, raising my voice, "there is no need to cock that
+pistol. It is a friend of Captain Shelton who is speaking."
+
+"So," said a voice in careful, precise English. "Walk three paces
+forward, if you please, and slowly, v-e-r-y slowly. Now. You are a friend
+of the captain?"
+
+"In a sense," I replied. "I am his son. I have come to you with a
+message."
+
+"So," said the voice again, and I saw that a man was seated before me on
+the stone that had served as a doorstep, a man who was balancing a pistol
+in the palm of his hand.
+
+"I fear I have been rude," he said, "but I find this place--what shall I
+say?--annoying. Your voices are alike, and I know he has a son. You say
+you bring a message?"
+
+I had thought what to say.
+
+"It is about the paper," I began. "The captain was to bring it to you
+here, and now he finds he cannot."
+
+"Cannot?" he said, with the rising inflection of another language than
+ours. "Cannot?"
+
+"Rather," I corrected myself hastily, "he finds it more expedient to meet
+you elsewhere."
+
+"Ah," he said, "that is better. For a moment I feared the captain was
+dead. So the paper--he still has it?"
+
+"He not only has it," I said, "but he is ready to give it to you--at
+another place he has named. You are a stranger to the country here?"
+
+My question was not a welcome one.
+
+"Absolute!" he replied with conviction. "Do you take me for a native of
+these sink holes? Mon Dieu! Does your mud so completely cover me? But
+surely it must be this cursed darkness, or you would have said
+differently. Where is this other place?"
+
+I was glad it was too dark for him to see my smile.
+
+"Unfortunately I cannot guide you there," I said, "for I am to stop here
+in case I am followed. We have had to be careful, very careful
+indeed--you understand?"
+
+Impatiently he shifted his position.
+
+"For six months," he replied irritably, "I have been doing nothing
+else--careful--always careful. It becomes unbearable, but where is this
+place you speak of--in some other bog?"
+
+I pointed to the left of the trees where Mademoiselle was standing.
+
+"I quite understand," I said politely, "even a day with this paper is
+quite enough, but it is not a bog and you can reach it quite easily. You
+see where I point? Simply follow that field in that direction for half a
+mile, perhaps, and you will come to a road. Turn to your right, and after
+three miles you will see a house, the first house you will meet, in fact.
+It has a gambrel roof and overlooks the river. Simply knock on the door
+so--one knock, a pause, and three in succession. It will be understood.
+You have a horse?"
+
+"What is left of him," he replied, "though the good God knows how he has
+carried me along this far. Yes, he is attached to a post. Well, we are
+off, and may the paper stay still till we get it. You wait here?"
+
+"In case we are followed," I said.
+
+He pointed straight before him.
+
+"I have been hearing noises over there, breaking of branches and shouts."
+
+"Then in the name of heaven ride on," I said, and added as an
+afterthought, "and turn out to the side if you see anyone coming."
+
+The pleasure I took in seeing him leave was not entirely unalloyed. As I
+walked to the oak thicket where Mademoiselle was waiting, I even had some
+vague idea of calling him back, for I do not believe in doing anyone a
+turn that is worse than necessary. Yet there was only one other way I
+could think of to keep him silent, besides sending him where he was
+going. She was feeding the horse handfuls of grass.
+
+"It is quite all right, Mademoiselle," I said. "Let us move to the house.
+It may be more comfortable in the doorway."
+
+We stood silently for a while, listening to the wind and the dull
+monotonous roar of the surf, while the night grew blacker. I listened
+attentively, but there was no sound. Surely he was coming.
+
+"Tell me, Monsieur," said Mademoiselle, "what sort of woman was
+your mother?"
+
+Unbidden, a picture of her came before me, that seemed strangely
+out of place.
+
+"She was very beautiful," I said.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"And very proud," said Mademoiselle.
+
+"Yes, very proud. Why did she call him a thief, Monsieur?"
+
+But I did not answer.
+
+"You are certain your father is coming?" she asked finally.
+
+"I think there is no doubt," I told her. "I have seen him ride,
+Mademoiselle. It would take more than a dozen men to lay hands on him.
+They should have known better than let him leave the house. Listen,
+Mademoiselle! I believe you can hear him now."
+
+My ears were quicker in those days. For a minute we listened in silence,
+and then on the wind I heard more distinctly still the regular thud of a
+galloping horse. So he was coming, as I knew he would. I knew he would be
+methodical and accurate.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," I continued, "my father has many accomplishments,
+but this time even he may be surprised. Who knows, Mademoiselle? Pray
+step back inside the doorway until I call you."
+
+But she did not move.
+
+"No," said Mademoiselle, "I prefer to stay where I am. I have seen too
+much of you and your father to leave you alone together."
+
+"But surely, Mademoiselle," I protested, "you forget why we have come."
+
+"Yes," she answered quickly, "yes, you are right. I do forget. I have
+seen too much of this, too much of utter useless folly--too many men
+dying, too many suffering for a hopeless cause. I have seen three men
+lying dead in our hall, and as many more wounded. I have seen a strong
+man turned into a blackguard. I have seen a son turned against his
+father, and all for a bit of paper which should never have been written.
+I hate it--do you hear me?--and if I forget it, it is because I choose. I
+forget it because--" She seemed about to tell me more, and then to think
+better of it. "Surely you see, surely you see you cannot. He is your
+father, Monsieur, the man who is coming here."
+
+"Mademoiselle," I replied, "you are far too kind. I hardly think he or I
+have much reason to hold our lives of any particular value, but as you
+have said, my father was a gentleman once, and gentlemen very seldom kill
+their sons, nor gentlemen's sons their fathers. Pray rest assured,
+Mademoiselle, it will be a quiet interview. I beg you, be silent, for he
+is almost here."
+
+I was not mistaken. A horse was on the path we followed, running hard,
+and crashing recklessly through the bushes. Before I had sight of him I
+heard my father's voice.
+
+"Ives!" he called sharply. "Where the devil are you?"
+
+And in an instant he was at the door, his horse breathing in hard,
+sobbing breaths, and he had swung from the saddle as I went forward
+to meet him.
+
+"Here," he said, "take it, and be off. Those fools have run me over half
+the state. In fact," he continued in the calm tones I remember best, "in
+fact, I have seldom had a more interesting evening. I was fired on before
+I had passed the gate, and chased as though I carried the treasures of
+the Raj. I have your word never to tell where you got it. Never mind my
+reasons, or the thanks either. Take it Ives. It has saved me so many a
+dull day that it has quite repaid my trouble."
+
+There he was, half a pace away, and yet he did not know me. I think it
+was that, more than anything else, which robbed me of my elation. To him
+the whole thing seemed an ordinary piece of business. I saw him test his
+girth, preparatory to mounting again, saw him slowly readjust his cloak,
+and then I took the paper he handed me and buttoned it carefully in my
+inside pocket. He turned to his horse again and laid a hand on his
+withers, but still he did not mount. I think he was staring into the
+night before him and listening, as I had been. Then he turned again
+slowly, and half faced me. On the wind, far off still, but nevertheless
+distinct, was the sound of voices.
+
+"It is time we were going," said my father. "I only gave them the slip
+five minutes back. It was closer work than I had expected."
+
+And then he started, and looked at me more intently through the darkness.
+
+"Name of the devil!" said my father. "How did you get here?"
+
+But that was all. He never even started. His hand still rested tranquilly
+on the reins and he still half faced me. Had it been so on that other
+night long ago, when his world crumbled to ruins about him? Did he always
+win and lose with the same passive acquiescence? Did nothing ever
+astonish him? There was a moment's silence, and I felt his eyes on me,
+and suddenly became very cautious. I knew well enough he would not let it
+finish in such a manner, but what could he do? The game was in my hands.
+
+"Quite simply," I told him. "My horse was in the stable."
+
+When he spoke again his voice was still pleasantly conversational.
+
+"And Brutus?" he asked. "Where the devil was Brutus? Surely the age of
+miracles is past. Or do I see before me--" he bowed with all his old
+courtesy--"another David?"
+
+"Brutus," I replied, "jumped through a second story window."
+
+"Indeed?" he said. "He always was most agile."
+
+"He was," I replied. "Not five minutes after you left, Uncle Jason
+arrived."
+
+My father removed his hand from the reins and looped them through his
+arm.
+
+"Indeed?" he said. "He came in heels first, I trust?"
+
+"No," I said, "he is alive and well."
+
+"The devil!" said my father, and sighed. "I am growing old, my son. I
+know my horse spoiled my aim, and yet he fell, and I rode over him. I
+had hoped to be finished with your Uncle Jason. You say he entered
+the house?"
+
+"And told me to stop," I said.
+
+"And you did not?"
+
+"No," I replied. "I succeeded in getting out of a window also."
+
+And then, although I could not see him, I knew he had undergone a
+change, and I knew that I was facing a different man.
+
+His hand fell on my shoulder, and to my surprise, it was trembling.
+
+"God!" he cried, in a voice that was suddenly harsh and forbidding. "Do
+you mean to tell me you left Mademoiselle, and never struck a blow? You
+left her there?"
+
+"Not entirely," I replied.
+
+My father became very gentle.
+
+"Will you be done with this?" he said, "The lady, where is she now?"
+
+And then, half to himself he added.
+
+"How was I to know they would break in the house after I had gone?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," I replied, "is not fifteen feet away."
+
+His hand went up to the clasp of his cloak, and again his voice became
+pleasantly conversational.
+
+"Ah, that is better," said my father. "And so you got the paper after
+all. Yes, I am growing old, my son. I appear to have bungled badly. Do
+you hope to keep the paper?"
+
+In the distance I heard a voice again, raised in a shout. Surely he
+understood.
+
+"They are coming," I said. "Yes, I intend to keep the paper."
+
+"Indeed?" said my father. "Perhaps you will explain how, my son. I have
+had an active evening, but you--I confess you go quite ahead of me."
+
+"Because," I said, "you are not anxious to go back to France, father, and
+you are almost on your way there."
+
+"No, not to France," he answered, and I knew he saw my meaning.
+
+"And yet they are coming to take you. If you so much as offer to touch me
+again, I shall call them, father, and we shall go back together. Your
+horse is tired. He cannot go much further."
+
+He was silent for a moment, and I prudently stepped back.
+
+"You might shoot me, of course," I added, "but a pistol shot would be
+equally good. Listen! I can hear them on the road."
+
+But oddly enough, he was not disturbed.
+
+"On the road, to be sure," said my father. "You are right, Henry, you may
+keep the paper. But tell me one thing more. Was there no one here when
+you arrived?"
+
+"There was," I said, "but I sent him away--to our house, father."
+
+He sighed and smoothed his cloak thoughtfully.
+
+"I fear that I have become quite hopeless. As you say, if I fire a
+pistol, they will come, and now I can hardly see any reason to keep them
+away. So you sent him to the house, my son? And Jason is still alive? And
+you have got the paper? Can it be that I have failed in everything?
+Strange how the cards fall even if we stack the deck. Ah, well, then it
+is the pistols after all."
+
+There was a blinding flash and the roar of a weapon close beside me, and
+I heard Mademoiselle scream. My father turned to quiet his horse.
+
+"Do not be alarmed, Mademoiselle," he said gently, "we are not killing
+each other. I am merely using a somewhat rigorous method of bringing my
+son to his senses."
+
+He paused, reached under his cloak, drew a second pistol and fired again.
+From the road there came a sound that seemed to ring pleasantly to my
+father's ears.
+
+"Nearer than I thought," he said brightly. "They should be here in three
+minutes at the outside. Shall we sit a while and talk, my son? It is
+gloomy here, I admit, but still, it has its advantages. They thought my
+rendezvous was ten miles to the north. Lord, what fools they were!
+Lawton bit at the letter I let him seize as though it were pork. Ah, if
+it had not been for Jason! Well, everything must have an ending."
+
+He threw his bridle over his arm, and was walking toward the doorstep,
+lightly buoyant, as though some weight were lifted from his mind. Hastily
+I seized his arm.
+
+"Stop!" I cried. "What is to become of Mademoiselle? We cannot leave her
+here like this. Have you forgotten she is with us?"
+
+Seemingly still unhurried, he paused, and glanced toward the road, and
+then back at me, and then for the first time he laughed, and his
+laughter, genuine and care-free, gave me a start which the sound of his
+pistol had not. The incongruity of it set my nerves on edge. Was there
+nothing that would give him genuine concern?
+
+"Good God, sir!" I shouted furiously. "There's nothing to laugh about!
+Don't you hear them coming?"
+
+"Ah," said my father, "I thought that would fetch you. So you have come
+to your senses then, and we can go on together? Untie your horse, Henry,
+while I charge the pistols."
+
+My hand was on the bridle rein, when a shout close by us made me loosen
+the knot more quickly than I intended. I could make out the black form of
+a horseman moving towards us at full gallop.
+
+"It must be Lawton," observed my father evenly. "He is well mounted, and
+quite reckless. I suppose we had better be going. I shall help
+Mademoiselle, if she will permit. No, it is not Lawton. I am sorry."
+
+He raised his arm and fired. My horse started at the sound of his
+shot, and as I tried to quiet him, I saw my father lift Mademoiselle
+to the saddle.
+
+"Yes," he said again, "I think it is time to be going. These men seem to
+have a most commendable determination. Ha! There are two more of them.
+Put your horse to the gallop, my son. The tide is out, and we can manage
+the marsh."
+
+"The marsh!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Quite," he replied tranquilly. "If Brutus is alive, he will have a boat
+near the dunes opposite. It seems as though we might be obliged to take
+an ocean voyage."
+
+It seemed to me he had gone quite mad. The marsh, he knew as well as I,
+was as full of holes as a piece of cheese. Even in the daytime one could
+hardly ride across it. And then I knew that what he said was true, that
+he would stop at nothing; and suddenly a fear came over me. For the first
+time I feared the quiet, pleasant man who rode beside my bridle rein, as
+though we were traversing the main street of our town.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "it is pleasant to have a little exercise. Give him
+the spurs Henry. We shall either get across or we shall not. There is no
+use being cautious."
+
+I put my horse over a ditch, and straight ahead, I may have ridden four
+hundred yards with the even beating of his horse behind me, before what I
+feared happened. My horse stumbled, and the pull of my bridle barely got
+him up again. I gave him the spur, but he was failing. In a quarter of a
+minute he had fallen again, and this time the bridle did not raise him. I
+sprang free of him before he had entirely slipped down in the soft sea
+mud. He was lashing about desperately, nor could I get him to answer when
+I pulled at the bridle. My father reined up beside me and dismounted.
+
+"His leg is broken," he said. "It is inopportune. Ah, they are still
+after us." And he turned to look behind him.
+
+"Why are you waiting?" I cried. "Ride on, sir!"
+
+"And leave you here with the paper in your pocket?" said my father. "The
+fall has quite got the better of you. The other pistol, Mademoiselle, if
+you have finished loading it. Here they come, to be sure. Would you not
+think the fools would realize I can hit them?"
+
+He fired into the darkness and a riderless horse ran almost on top of us.
+With a snort of fright, he reared and wheeled, and a second shot answered
+my father's.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "they always will shoot before they can see. The
+pistol from the holster, if you please, Mademoiselle."
+
+They had not realized we had halted, for the last rider charged past us
+before he could check himself. I had a glimpse of his face, white against
+the night, and I saw him tug furiously at his bit--an unfortunate matter,
+so it happened, for the footing beneath the marsh grass was bad, and his
+horse slewed and fell on top of him.
+
+"Pah!" exclaimed my father. "It is almost sad to watch them. Let us go,
+Henry. He is knocked even more senseless than he was before. Keep the
+saddle, Mademoiselle, and we will lead you across. I fancy that is the
+last of them for a moment."
+
+So we tumbled through the mud at a walk, slipping noisily at every step,
+but my father was correct in his prophecy. Only the noise of our
+progress interrupted us. The sand dunes were becoming something more than
+a shadow. My father walked in tranquil silence at the bridle, while I
+trudged beside him.
+
+"Are you hurt, Captain?" Mademoiselle demanded.
+
+"Indeed not," he replied. "What was there to hurt me? I was thinking.
+That is all; but why do you ask, my lady?"
+
+"Only," said Mademoiselle, "because you have been silent for the past
+five minutes, and you never are more gay than when you embark on an
+adventure. I never heard you say two words, Captain, until that night on
+the Loire."
+
+"Let us forget the Loire," replied my father. "Shall I be quite frank
+with you, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"It would be amusing," she admitted, leaning from the saddle towards him,
+"if it were only possible," she added.
+
+"Then listen, Mademoiselle," he continued, "and I shall be very frank
+indeed. It must be the sea air which makes me so. I seldom talk unless I
+feel that my days for talking are nearly over, and at present they seem
+to stretch before me most interminably. In a moment we shall see the
+boat, and in a moment the _Sea Tern_. I fear I have been very foolish."
+
+"Father," I inquired, "will you answer me a question?"
+
+"Perhaps," said my father.
+
+"What has my uncle to do with the paper?"
+
+"My son," said my father, "may I ask you a question?"
+
+"Perhaps," I replied.
+
+"How much money did your mother leave you at her death?"
+
+"She had none to leave," I replied quickly.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "have you ever wondered why?"
+
+"You should be able to tell me," I answered coldly.
+
+"Indeed," said my father. "But here we are at the dunes. The boat, my
+son, do you see it?"
+
+I scrambled up ahead through the sand and beach grass, and the white line
+of the beach, which even the darkest night can never hide, lay clear
+before me. A high surf was running, and beyond it I could see three
+lights, blinking fitfully in the black and nearer on the white sand was
+the shadow of a fishing boat, pulled just above the tide mark. A minute
+later Brutus came running toward us.
+
+My father was evidently used to such small matters. Indeed, the whole
+affair seemed such a part of his daily life as to demand nothing unusual.
+He glanced casually at the waves and the boat, tossed off his cloak on
+the sand, carefully wrapped his pistols inside it, and placed the bundle
+carefully beneath a thwart.
+
+"The rocket, Brutus," said my father. "If you will get in, Mademoiselle,
+we will contrive to push you through the breakers. Best take your coat
+off, my son, and place it over the pistols."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Brutus had evidently kept a slow match burning, for with a sudden flare a
+rocket flashed into the wind. In the momentary glare of the light I could
+see my father, his lips pressed together more tightly than usual, but
+alertly courteous as ever, helping Mademoiselle over the side, and there
+was Brutus grinning at me. Then the light died, and my father continued
+giving his directions.
+
+"Stand by Master Henry at the stern, Brutus. I shall stay here amidships.
+Now into the water when I give the word. Pray do not be alarmed,
+Mademoiselle. There is quite nothing to bother."
+
+A breaker crashed down on the beach ahead of us.
+
+"Now!" he shouted, and a moment later we were up to our waists in water
+that was stinging in its coldness.
+
+"Get aboard," said my father. "The oars, Brutus."
+
+Drenched and gasping, I pulled myself over the side just as we topped a
+second wave. My father was beside me, as bland and unconcerned as ever.
+
+"You see, Mademoiselle," he said, "we are quite safe. The _Sea Tern_ is
+standing in already. While Brutus is rowing, my son, we had better load
+the pistols."
+
+"Surely we are through with them," I said. The boat was tossing wildly,
+and Brutus was using all his strength and skill to keep it in the wind.
+
+"Still," said my father, kneeling on the grating beside me, "let us load
+them. Look, Henry, I think we got off in very good time."
+
+A knot of horsemen were galloping down the beach we had just quitted.
+
+"They must have taken the old wagon road," he said. "I had thought as
+much. It becomes almost tiresome, this running away."
+
+He reached for his cloak, placed it over Mademoiselle's shoulders, and
+seated himself in the stern beside her, apparently forgetful that he was
+drenched from head to foot.
+
+"You are not afraid, Mademoiselle?" he asked.
+
+"Afraid? Indeed not," I heard her reply, in a voice that was muffled by
+the wind. "It is a luxury, Captain, which you have made me do without
+too long."
+
+"Good," said my father, a motionless shadow beside her. "If you cannot
+trust yourself, there are plenty of other things to trust in--God, for
+example, or the devil, if you prefer, or even in circumstances. How
+useless it is to be afraid when you remember these! Put the boat up a
+little more, Brutus."
+
+And he sat silent, watching the lights of the ship towards which we were
+moving with each tug that Brutus gave the oars. The ship also was drawing
+nearer. We could make out the spars under shortened sail, and soon we
+were hailed from the deck. My father called back, and then there came the
+snapping of canvass as they put up the helm and the ship lost way tossing
+in the wind.
+
+Wet and shivering, I watched her draw toward us. So this was the end
+after all, and I was glad it was over--glad that I would soon be quiet
+and alone with my thoughts. Could it have been only yesterday that I had
+turned my horse and passed between the sagging posts that marked the
+entrance to his house? Was it only a day ago I had first seen him leaning
+back idly in his arm chair by the fire?
+
+My father leaned forward and thrust something into my hand.
+
+"A pistol, Henry," he said. "Put it inside your shirt. It will be a
+souvenir for you when you are home again."
+
+We could hear the waves slapping against the vessel's sides, and the
+orders from the deck above us. As I looked, it seemed a perilous
+distance away.
+
+"Alongside, Brutus," said my father.
+
+Two lanterns cast a feeble glow on the sheets of water that rolled under
+us, shouldering our frail boat impatiently in their haste to move along.
+Brutus pulled an oar sharply. I saw a ladder dangling perilously from the
+bulwarks. I saw Brutus seize it, and then our boat, arrested and
+stationary, began to toss madly in ill-concerted effort. My father sprang
+up, balancing himself lightly and accurately against each sudden roll.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle," he said, "we will get on deck. Brutus will carry you
+up quite safely. Hold the ladder, Henry, hold to it, or we may be in the
+water again."
+
+His voice was still coldly precise, not raised even to a higher pitch.
+
+"You are chilled, my son?" he asked. "Never mind, we will have brandy in
+a moment."
+
+Strange how the years make the path seem smooth and mellow. As I look
+back on it today, boarding the ship seems a light enough matter, though I
+know now that every moment we remained by the ladder, eternity was
+staring us in the face. Even now, when I look back on it, the water is
+not what I see, nor Brutus grasping at the dangling rope, but rather my
+father, standing watching the ladder, detached from the motion and
+excitement around him, a passive onlooker to whom what might happen
+seemed a matter of small concern. Brutus, holding Mademoiselle on one
+arm, managed the ladder with ready adroitness, and I followed safely, but
+not before I had been hurled against the side with a force that nearly
+drove away my breath. I reached the deck to find a lantern thrust into my
+face, and stared into it, for the moment quite blinded.
+
+"It is the son," remarked a voice which I thought I remembered, and then
+my father followed me.
+
+"We are on board, Mr. Aiken," he called. "Never mind the boat. Get your
+men on the braces, or we'll blow on shore."
+
+"Yes, Captain Shelton," said the voice again. "You are on board, to be
+sure, and very prettily done. I have been waiting for you all evening.
+
+"Indeed," said my father, in his old level tone, "and who the
+devil are you?"
+
+"Mr. Sims, Captain," came the reply. "I managed to seize your ship before
+it left the river. It is hard, after so much trouble, but you are my
+prisoner, Captain Shelton."
+
+My eyes had become accustomed to the light. I looked about me to find we
+were in the center of a group of men. Mr. Sims, small and watchful, his
+face a pale yellow in the glow, was standing beside a tall man who held
+the lantern at arm's length. My father was facing him about two paces
+distant, his hand on the wet and bedraggled lapel of his coat, his glance
+vague and thoughtful, as though he was examining at his leisure some
+phenomenon of nature. Brutus, looking as unpleasant as I had ever seen
+him, had half thrust Mademoiselle behind his back, and stood half
+crouching, his eye on my father's hand, his thick lips moving nervously.
+My father patted his coat gently and sighed.
+
+"I must admit," he said, "that this is surprisingly, indeed, quite
+delightfully unexpected. I hope you have been quite comfortable."
+
+Mr. Sims permitted himself to smile.
+
+"I told them you were a man of sense," he said. "Is it not odd that only
+you and I should have imagination and ingenuity? I knew you would see
+when the game is over. My compliments, Captain Shelton. You deserve to
+have done better."
+
+"Of course," said my father, with a slow nod of assent, "I see when the
+game is over."
+
+"I knew you would be reasonable," said Mr. Sims. "When it is finished,
+you and I stop playing, do we not? I am sorry we were not on the same
+side, but I have been commissioned to take you, captain, for a little man
+whom you and I both knew back in Paris. I have a dozen men aboard now,
+who will get us to the harbor. You are a prisoner of France, as you have
+doubtless guessed. We shall all be trans-shipped to Mr. Jason Hill's
+schooner, which has been waiting for you; and now you may go below."
+
+Still staring thoughtfully before him, my father rested his chin in the
+palm of his hand.
+
+"I remember you now," he said. "And may I add it is a pleasure to have
+met you? It is still a pleasure, much as I resent being taken on board a
+ship I own."
+
+Mr. Sims bowed ironically.
+
+"And now, Captain, the document, if you please, unless you care to be
+searched."
+
+I thought my father had not heard, for he still looked quite blandly at
+the lantern.
+
+"Would you mind telling me," he inquired, "what became of my crew? You
+bribed them, I suppose."
+
+"There was only an anchor watch on deck when we came on board," said Mr.
+Sims. "We drove them below quite easily. The only man who gave us any
+trouble was your master. We had to hit him over the head when he reached
+the deck."
+
+My father nodded slowly, seemed to lose his balance on the rolling deck,
+recovered himself, and set his feet a trifle wider apart.
+
+"I am sincerely sorry for you, Mr. Sims," he said.
+
+But if Mr. Sims ever asked why, it was in another life than ours. I
+recall his sudden bewilderment, but I never have understood exactly how
+it happened. I remember Brutus' eyes on my father's hand, as it moved so
+gently over his coat. It must have been some gesture, smooth and
+imperceptible. For suddenly, my father's languor left him, suddenly his
+lips curled back in a smile devoid of humor, and he leapt at the lantern.
+He leapt, and at the same instant, as perfectly timed as though the whole
+matter had been carefully rehearsed, Brutus' great bulk had streaked
+across the deck, crashing towards Mr. Sims like an unleashed fury. The
+speed of it, the unexpectedness, the sheer audacity, held the men around
+us motionless. Mr. Sims had barely time to level the pistol he was
+holding; but when he fired the deck was in darkness.
+
+"This way, Mademoiselle," came my father's voice, and I ran towards it.
+"Hold them off, Brutus," he was calling. "Ha! It is you, my son."
+
+While he was speaking, he darted lightly aft, and I followed. Behind me
+came the confused babel of struggling men. Someone was calling for a
+light, and someone was shrieking for help. A man with a lantern was
+running forward. I tripped him and we fell together, and then I felt a
+hand on my collar. It dragged me to my feet. I struck at it blindly,
+while I felt myself being half pulled, half carried through the black.
+And then I heard my father's voice again, close beside me, as slow and
+cold as ever.
+
+"Close the door, Brutus," he said. "Listen to them. They must think we
+are still there."
+
+And then I knew what had happened. Brutus had dragged me with him, and we
+were in a cabin. I heard my father fumbling about in the dark.
+
+"Ah," he said, "here is the powder. Load these pistols, Brutus. Gently,
+you fool! Do you want to kill me?"
+
+"You are hurt, captain," cried Mademoiselle.
+
+"It is not worth troubling over," said my father. "And you, my lady, you
+are quite all right? I fear I handled you roughly. I was afraid for a
+moment we might be inconvenienced."
+
+"And now," I said sarcastically, speaking into the darkness before me, "I
+suppose our troubles are over."
+
+"I think so," replied my father. "Now that Brutus has thrown Mr. Sims
+overboard. It might be different if he were still with us. He seemed to
+be a determined and resourceful man. We are in the after cabin, Henry,
+quite the pleasantest one on the ship, and not ten paces from the wheel."
+
+Still out of breath, still confused, I tried to look, but could see
+nothing. I could only smell the pungent odor of tarred rope and stale
+tobacco smoke. Having finished speaking, I could hear my father still
+moving about deliberately and moderately, seemingly well pleased at the
+place where we had been driven.
+
+"Yes," he said again, "not ten paces from the wheel, and now we will
+finish it."
+
+"Will you never be serious, sir?" I cried. "Do you suppose they are going
+to let you take charge of the ship?"
+
+"I think so," replied my father. "But first, I must take a swallow from
+my flask. There is nothing like a drink to rest one. Open the port by the
+door, Brutus."
+
+And I felt him groping his way past me.
+
+"Brutus," he said, "pass the flask to my son, and give me a pistol, and
+steady, me with your arm--so. Ah, that is better--much better...."
+
+He fired, and the sound of his pistol in the closed room made my ears
+ring, and then the ship lurched, so that I had nearly lost my balance. We
+were rolling heavily, in the trough of the sea, and outside the canvas
+was snapping like a dozen small arms, and then I knew what had happened.
+My father had shot the man at the helm--shot him where he stood, so that
+the wheel had broken from his grasp, so that the ship was out of
+control, and the wind was blowing it on shore. Had he thought of the plan
+while he was watching Mr. Sims in the light of the lantern? I half
+suspected that he had not, but I never knew.
+
+"Open the door, Brutus," said my father, and suddenly his voice was
+raised to a shout that rose above the wind and the sails.
+
+"Keep clear of that wheel! If a single man touches it--do you hear
+me?--Stand clear!" And he fired again, and the _Sea Tern_ still lurched
+in the trough of the sea.
+
+I ran to the door beside him. Ten paces away the light of the binnacle
+was burning, and by it I saw two men lying huddled on the deck, and the
+ship's wheel whirling backwards and forwards as the waves hit the rudder.
+
+"Get the wheel!" someone was shouting frantically. "Get the wheel! She's
+being blown on the bar. Get the wheel!"
+
+"Stand clear, you dogs," called my father. "We're all going on the bar
+together."
+
+"Brutus," he added, "go forward and open the forecastle, and tell my
+men to clear the decks. If any of these fools notice you, kill them,
+but they won't, Brutus, they won't. Their minds are too much set on a
+watery grave."
+
+The ship heeled far over on her side as another gust of wind took her.
+Six men were clinging to the rail to keep their balance, staring at my
+father with white faces, while sea after sea swept over the bulwarks.
+Three of them were edging toward us, when a wave caught them and sent
+them sprawling almost to his feet.
+
+"Your sword, Henry," called my father. I ducked under his arm, and
+stepped out on the swaying deck, but they did not wait.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "here they come. Brutus was quicker than I could
+have hoped."
+
+"Aiken!" he shouted, "are you there? Put up that helm, or we'll be
+drowned. Put up that helm and get your men on the braces. D'you hear me?
+Get some way on the ship."
+
+A hoarse voice bellowed out an order, and another answered.
+
+"Good," said my father. "It was a nearer thing than I expected. You can
+hear the breakers now. Give me your arm, my son. A lantern, Brutus."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+And so it was over, over almost before I could grasp what had happened.
+
+The light that Brutus was holding showed me the white walls of the cabin,
+with charts nailed upon them. A table was secured to the deck, with two
+chairs beside it. These, two lockers and a berth made up the cabin's
+entire furnishings. But I hardly took the time to look about me, for the
+sight of my father gave me a start of consternation. His blue coat,
+wringing wet with sea water, and still stamped with splashes of mud, was
+half ripped from his shoulders. A piece of lace dangled like a dirty
+ribbon from his neck. The powder in his hair was clotted in little
+streaks of white. His face was like a piece of yellow parchment. His left
+arm hung limp by his side, and in his right hand he still clutched an
+empty pistol. He tossed it carelessly to the floor, and gripped the back
+of the nearest chair, staring straight at Mademoiselle, who was standing
+opposite, his cloak still about her. Slowly he inclined his head, and
+when he looked up he was smiling.
+
+"You are quite all right, my lady?" he asked anxiously. "I am sorry you
+have been startled. Believe me, I did not realize this little surprise
+would be waiting for us. It was careless of me not to have thought, very
+careless. Help her to a chair, Henry."
+
+"Will you always be polite?" she cried, with a little catch in her voice.
+"Will you never think of yourself? You are wounded, Captain. And what are
+you staring at?" she cried, turning to me. "Come here, sir, and help me
+with his coat."
+
+My father sank into a chair, and his pale lips relaxed.
+
+"Pray do not concern yourself," he replied gravely. "I think of myself,
+Mademoiselle, of myself always, and now I am very fortunate, but the blue
+from my coat is running on your dress. Brutus will see to me,
+Mademoiselle. He is quite used to it. The rum, Brutus. You will find it
+in the starboard locker."
+
+But it was Mademoiselle who found the bottle and poured him a glass. He
+drank it quickly.
+
+"Again, if you please," he said, and a shade of color returned to his
+cheeks. "The water was uncommonly cold tonight. How much better the sea
+would be, if the Lord had mixed in a dash of spirits. There is a coat in
+the locker, Brutus, and you may find some splints and a piece of twine. I
+fear my arm is broken."
+
+Mademoiselle had taken Brutus' knife and was cutting away his sleeve,
+half soaked with blood. He sighed and smiled a little sadly.
+
+"So Sims hit me after all," he said. "It must be age. I was not so clumsy
+once. The bandages, Brutus."
+
+He watched us with a mild interest, and then his mind turned to other
+matters, and he seemed regardless of the pain we caused him.
+
+"My son," he said, turning to me, "you made a statement a while ago which
+interested me strangely. I was preoccupied, and perhaps I did not hear
+you aright, but it seemed you said I should know what had become of your
+mother's money. What am I to understand by that?"
+
+"You are hurt, sir," I replied. "Why go into a painful matter now?
+We have kept it quiet long enough. Only three people knew that it
+happened, and one of them is dead. Let us forget it, father. I am
+willing if you are."
+
+My father raised his eyebrows, and it seemed to me that pain had made
+his face look older, and not even the smile on his lips concealed little
+lines of suffering.
+
+"And what are we to forget?" he asked.
+
+"Surely you know," I said.
+
+"No," said my father, "I do not. Out with it--what are we to forget?"
+
+Was he still acting? Was it ever possible to understand him? Perhaps even
+now he was turning the situation into a jest, and smiling to himself as
+he watched me. And yet somehow I had ceased to hate him.
+
+"Do you mean," I asked "that you never took it?"
+
+Slowly my father's body straightened in his chair, and his lips, drawn
+tight together, seemed to repress an exclamation.
+
+"So he told you that," he said. "He told you that I made off with her
+fortune? Gad! but he was clever, very, very clever."
+
+He paused, and refilled his glass, and held it steadily before him.
+His voice, when he spoke, was gentle, and, like his face, strung taut
+with pain.
+
+"No wonder she never sent me word," he murmured.
+
+"Do you mean," I asked, "that you never took it?"
+
+For a second he did not reply--only looked thoughtfully before him, as
+if he saw something that we would never see.
+
+"Why go into a painful matter now?" said my father at length. "Brutus,
+call in Mr. Aiken."
+
+He lurched into the cabin a half a minute later. His sea cloak was gone.
+His shirt, none too white the previous afternoon, was torn and scraped as
+though it had scrubbed the deck, and he had transferred his red
+handkerchief from his neck to his head, so that his tangled hair waved
+around it like some wild halo. His heavy hands, bruised and scarred, were
+working restlessly at his sides. He glanced at my father's bandaged arm,
+and his jaw thrust forward.
+
+"I warned 'em, captain," he cried hoarsely. "By heaven, I warned 'em.
+'Damn you,' I says, 'hell will break loose when the captain climbs
+aboard,' and it did, so help me. There was fifteen of 'em and now there's
+six, and the crew has 'em in the forecastle now, beating 'em, sir! And
+now, by thunder, we'll sling 'em overboard!"
+
+"That would be a pity," said my father. "Let them sail with us. I shall
+make it more unpleasant than drowning. Which way are we heading, Ned?"
+
+"Due east by south," said Mr. Aiken, "and we're ready to show heels to
+anything. I can drop a reef off now if you want it."
+
+"Good," said my father. "Put on all the sail she will carry."
+
+Mr. Aiken grinned.
+
+"I thought you'd want to be moving," he said.
+
+"Quite right," said my father, "and put about at once and head back up
+the river."
+
+Mr. Aiken whistled softly.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" he muttered.
+
+"I shall want ten men with me when I land," my father continued. "I've
+done my best to keep the crew out of my private affairs, but now it seems
+impossible."
+
+"They'd all like to go," said Mr. Aiken. "They've been hoping for
+excitement all day, sir."
+
+"Ten will be quite enough," said my father.
+
+"What is it you are saying?" Mademoiselle asked sharply.
+
+"Quite nothing," he replied, "except that we are going back."
+
+His arm must have given him a twinge, for his face had grown very white.
+
+"Surely you have done enough," she said, and her voice became a soft
+entreaty. "Here we are on board your ship. If I told you I was not
+entirely sorry, would you not go on? If I told you, captain, I did not
+care about the paper--?"
+
+My father waved his hand in graceful denial.
+
+"Not go back? Ah, Mademoiselle," he added in grave rebuke, "can it be
+possible after all, in spite of all this--let us say regrettable
+melodrama--you are forgetting I am the villain of this piece, and not a
+very pleasant one? Even if I wished, my lady, my sense of hospitality
+would forbid it. My brother-in-law is waiting for me under my roof
+tonight, and I could not leave him alone. He would be disappointed, I
+feel sure, and so would I. I have had a strenuous evening. I need
+recreation now. Load the pistols, Brutus."
+
+And he fell silent again, his eyes on the blank wall before him, his
+fingers playing with his glass.
+
+The _Sea Tern_ had need to be a fast ship, and she lived up to
+requirements. The easterly wind sent her lightly before it, cutting sheer
+and quick through the roughened sea. With his arm in a sling of white
+linen, my father sat motionless, apparently passive and regardless of the
+flight of time. It was only when we veered in the wind and orders were
+shouted from forward that he looked about him.
+
+"Your arm, Brutus," he said.
+
+On deck the crew was at work about the long boat, and over the port rail,
+perhaps a quarter of a mile away, I could see our house, with a light
+burning in the window, flickering through the waving branches of the elms
+that half hid it. Nearer lay our wharf, a black, silent shadow. My father
+watched without a word. The anchor chain growled out a sharp complaint,
+and the anchor splashed into the tide.
+
+"Mr. Aiken," said my father, "give orders to get under way in half an
+hour. When we land, the men will wait at the wharf, and be ready to enter
+the house when you call them. You shall come with me, my son. I can still
+show you something amusing and instructive."
+
+"And I?" Mademoiselle demanded. "Shall you leave me here?"
+
+He seemed to hesitate for a moment.
+
+"Earlier in the evening, Mademoiselle," he replied, "I had given orders
+for my sloop to carry you to New Orleans. Your boxes will be taken from
+the house, and you will be taken on board from here. May you have a
+pleasant journey, and may your friends be well when you arrive."
+
+"You mean it is good-by?" she asked, and her voice had a sound that
+reminded me of tears. "You mean we shall not meet again?"
+
+He bowed low over her hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle will be relieved to know we shall not," said my father
+gravely. "Let me hope you may always have more pleasant company."
+
+She seemed about to speak again, but she did not. Instead, she turned
+silently away and left him, and a second later I saw her disappear in the
+shadow of the main-mast.
+
+"Ah," said my father, "there is a woman for you. My son, in the side
+pocket of my coat you will find a snuff box. Would you kindly open it for
+me and permit me to take a pinch? And you, perhaps? No? It is a pleasant
+sedative."
+
+He took a step nearer the rail, and the men about the long boat stiffened
+to attention.
+
+"Get them into the boat, Mr. Aiken," he said, "You and I will sit in the
+stern, my son. Your arm, Brutus, so."
+
+"Stand by to lower away," directed Mr. Aiken in a harsh undertone; and
+the blocks creaked and we were in the river.
+
+The oars had been muffled, so that we moved to the wharf in silence.
+
+"Land the men, and tell them to wait," said my father. "You shall come
+with us, Mr. Aiken, and you, my son, and you, Brutus."
+
+We walked silently up the path, with Brutus and my father in the lead.
+Once he paused and listened, and then proceeded forward.
+
+"I believe," said my father, "he is quite alone. Ha!"
+
+He had stopped dead, and Brutus had leapt forward, crashing into a dense
+thicket of overgrown bushes.
+
+"Put up your pistol, Ned," said my father. "Brutus has him."
+
+There was a moment's silence, followed by a faint cry.
+
+"Bring him here, Brutus," said my father. The bushes cracked again, and
+Brutus was back.
+
+"Now who the devil may you be?" inquired my father, striding towards the
+figure that Brutus was holding, and then he paused, and in the dark I
+fancied he was reaching for his coat lapel.
+
+"Lunacy, thy name is woman," said my father softly. "Will they never
+stay where they are placed?"
+
+It was Mademoiselle whom Brutus had thrust before him.
+
+"I came in the boat," she stammered brokenly. "I--"
+
+"You wanted to see the end, my lady?" my father inquired. "Surely you
+should have known better, but it is too late now. You are going to be
+present at a harrowing scene, which I hoped to save you. Mr. Aiken, help
+the lady over the path."
+
+And we proceeded to the house together. A minute later we made our way
+over the rough, unkempt grass which once marked our brick terrace.
+Brutus opened the door and we were in the dark hall, lighted by a square
+of candle light from the morning room. He paused again and listened, and
+then strode across the threshold. A blaze was burning high in the
+morning fireplace, and six candles were lighted on the center table, and
+seated before it, examining my father's papers, were my Uncle Jason and
+Mr. Lawton.
+
+"Ha!" cried Mr. Lawton, springing to his feet and eyeing my father
+intently. "So you are here, Shelton, and every card in the deck."
+
+He paused to nod and rub his hands.
+
+"Yes, b'gad! There's the girl and there's the boy and there's the nigger.
+It was Sims' idea your getting on the boat. He's bright as a trap, Jason.
+I told you he was."
+
+My father sighed a little sadly.
+
+"He was indeed," he admitted.
+
+My uncle surveyed him with his broadest smile, and his eyes twinkled with
+a malign amusement, that was not wholly pleasant.
+
+"So here you are, George," he cried in a voice that seemed to shake
+with excitement. "God help you, but I won't or your son either, no, or
+the lady."
+
+"Indeed?" inquired my father. "Pray go on, Jason. I had forgotten you
+were diverting, or is it one of your latest virtues."
+
+A slight crease appeared between my uncle's eyes, and his face became a
+trifle redder.
+
+"So you still are jovial," he said. "I admire you for it, George. Yes, I
+admire you, because of course you know what is going to happen to you,
+George, and to your son also. Perhaps you will wipe away that smirk of
+yours when a French firing squad backs you against a wall."
+
+My father adjusted the bandage on his arm, and smiled, but his eyes had
+become bright and glassy.
+
+"So you have quite decided to send me to France, Jason?" he inquired
+pleasantly. "Of course, I suspected it from the first. I knew you hated
+me, and naturally my son. I knew you never felt the same after our
+little falling out, when I found you forging--what am I saying?--reading
+the letter I sent to Mr. Aiken. Gad! but your face was pasty then, you
+sly dog--"
+
+He paused and took a step toward him. He was a different man when he
+continued. It seemed as though some resistance in him was breaking down,
+as though the years of repression were falling away. A hot, dull red had
+come into his cheeks, and burned there like a fever. His whole body
+trembled, shaken by some emotion which I could not fathom. His voice grew
+sharp and discordant, his words hot and triumphant.
+
+"Almost as pasty as when you challenged me to produce those damned bales
+of fur. Do you remember, Jason? The party here at this house--the music,
+the flowers? Oh, they were all there! And of course I had put the
+shavings on my boat. You could prove it, and you could too, Lawton, do
+you remember? And you could swear to it, and you could swear I had
+cheated you before, that I had stolen your card money. Oh, you caught me.
+You brought the wolf to bay and drew the sword of justice!"
+
+Mr. Lawton half started from his seat.
+
+"Be still, Shelton," he snapped, "or I'll have them gag you."
+
+My father clenched his fist, drew a deep breath, and his voice lost its
+strident note.
+
+"Ah, Lawton, Lawton," he said. "Will you always be impetuous? Will you
+never be subtle, but always crude, always the true rough diamond with the
+keen edge? No, you won't gag me, Lawton.
+
+"And so you will send me to France, Jason, and my son too, criminals to
+justice. It is thoughtful of you to think of justice, but tell me, Jason.
+Is it I you hate, or my wife's money that you love? Tell me, Jason, I
+have often wondered."
+
+My uncle's face also became a flaming red; the veins stood out on his
+temples. He tried to speak, but his words choked him.
+
+"Sims," shouted Mr. Lawton. "Sims! Take him out! Take him away!"
+
+My father raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed.
+
+"Ah Lawton," he said. "Is it possible that you did not know it? Can it
+be that you do not understand? Poor Sims is dead, Lawton, a brave man,
+but not of good physique. The evening was quite too much for him. Do not
+take it so hard, man! We all must die, you among the rest. You should
+have known me better, Lawton. You should have known I would not allow
+myself to be taken prisoner."
+
+"What!" shouted Mr. Lawton. "What the devil are you then?"
+
+The scene appeared to move my father, for he sighed again, and paused,
+the better to enjoy it.
+
+"Only a poor man," he said, "only a poor chattel of the Lord's, a poor
+frail jug that has gone too often to the well. A poor man of a blackened
+reputation, who has been set upon by spies of France, and threatened in
+his own house, but who has managed to escape--" and his voice became
+sharp and hard.
+
+"Take Mr. Lawton's pistol, Ned."
+
+There fell a moment's silence in the room while my father, a little in
+advance of the rest of us, stared fixedly into my uncle's eyes.
+
+"Set upon by spies," he said, "persecuted and driven. It has set me
+thinking, Jason. As I walked back here tonight, I still was thinking, and
+can you imagine what was on my mind? It was you, Jason, you and Lawton.
+And as I thought of you, my mind fell, as it naturally would, on holy
+things, and a piece of the Scripture came back to me. Think of it, Jason,
+a piece of the Holy Writ. Would you care to hear it?"
+
+My father paused to adjust a wrinkle in his coat, and then his voice
+became solemn and sonorous, and he spoke the words with metrical
+precision.
+
+"'To everything'," said my father, "there is a season, and a time to
+every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die'."
+
+He paused long enough to nod from one to the other.
+
+"'A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted'."
+
+He raised his eyes to the ceiling again, and placed the tips of his
+fingers together.
+
+"And 'a time to kill'," he concluded gently. His words died softly away
+in the quiet room.
+
+"I have often thought of that passage," he continued. "Many and many a
+night I have repeated it to myself, under stars and under roof, and
+sometimes I have prayed, Jason. Oh yes, we all pray sometimes. Sometimes
+I have prayed for the time to come."
+
+The red had gone out of my uncle's face, and Mr. Lawton was sitting rigid
+in his chair, his eyes glued on the slender figure before him.
+
+"And now," said my father, in a tone that was as near to the pious as I
+ever heard him utter, "now it is here, and I thank thee, Lord."
+
+"Good God!" gasped Mr. Lawton, in a voice that rose only a little above a
+whisper. "Do you mean to murder us?"
+
+My father still stood motionless, but when he spoke again his voice had
+relapsed to its old genial courtesy.
+
+"What a word for gentlemen to use!" he exclaimed in polite rebuke.
+"Murder you? Of course not, Lawton. I am simply about to propose a game.
+That is all, an exciting little game. Only one of us will die. Clear the
+large table of the papers, Ned. Toss them on the floor."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Of all the people in the room, my father alone retained his
+self-possession. My uncle's cheeks had sagged, and perspiration made them
+moist and shiny, and Mr. Lawton seemed bent and as wrinkled as though he
+had aged a dozen years.
+
+"Brutus," said my father, "place the pistols on the table, the ones I
+gave you as we came on shore. Side by side, Brutus. The silver mountings
+look well against the dark mahogany. Do they not cheer you, Jason? And
+now, Brutus, a pack of cards from the bookshelves. It will be a pretty
+game, Lawton, as pretty a game as you have ever played."
+
+"Good God! What are you going to do, Shelton?" stammered Mr. Lawton, and
+he raised a trembling hand to his forehead.
+
+"You grow interested?" my father inquired. "I thought you would, Lawton,
+and now stand up and listen! And you too, Jason. Stand up, you dog! Stand
+up! The world is still rolling. Are you ill?"
+
+And indeed, my uncle seemed incapable of moving.
+
+"Perhaps you would prefer to sit," said my father politely. "I have
+known people who find it steadies them to fire across the table while
+seated in a chair. Your attention, then, and I will tell you the game. On
+the table are three pistols. One of them is loaded. The question
+is--which? They are all made by the same smith. And yet one is different.
+We shall find out which it is in a few minutes. Shuffle the cards,
+Lawton. You and Jason shall draw. The low number selects the first
+pistol, and is first to fire, and then the next. I shall take the last
+pistol, and we shall stand across the table, you and Jason where you are,
+while I stand over here. Brutus, give the cards to Mr. Lawton."
+
+My father smiled and bowed. From his manner it might have been some treat
+he was proposing, some pleasant bit of sport that all knew ended in
+hilarity. Still smiling, he glanced from one to the other, and then
+towards Mademoiselle and me, as though seeking our approbation. Even with
+his bandaged arm and weather stained clothes, he carried himself with a
+gaiety and grace.
+
+"Always trust in chance, my son," he said.
+
+My uncle leaned forward, and drew his hand across his lips, his eyes
+blank and staring.
+
+"And if you get the pistol?" he demanded hoarsely.
+
+"In that case," replied my father, "Your troubles will be over, Jason.
+Pray rest assured--I shall attend to that. And then, when that is
+finished Brutus shall bring two other pistols, and Lawton and I shall
+draw again."
+
+Mr. Lawton grasped the cards uncertainly.
+
+"You give us the first two choices?" he demanded.
+
+"The host naturally is last," said my father. "One must always be
+polite."
+
+"Then you're mad," said Mr. Lawton bluntly. "Come, Shelton, step outside,
+and we'll finish it on the lawn."
+
+"And I should undoubtedly kill you," said my father. "Pray do not tempt
+me, Lawton."
+
+"I tell you, you're mad," said Mr. Lawton.
+
+"I have been told that once before today," said my father. "And still I
+am not sure. I have often pictured this little scene, Lawton. We have
+only one thing to add to it. Now tell me if I'm mad."
+
+My father had reached up to his throat, and was fumbling at his collar.
+When he drew away his hand, something glittered between his fingers.
+Silently he placed his closed fist on the table, opened it, and there was
+the gold locket which I had perceived in the morning. He pressed the
+spring, and the lid flew free. Mr. Lawton leaned forward, glanced at the
+picture inside, and then drew back very straight and pale.
+
+"Come, Lawton," said my father gravely. "Which is it now--madness or an
+appeal for justice and retribution? With her picture on the table,
+Lawton, I have wondered--I have often wondered, Lawton--who will be the
+lucky man to draw the loaded pistol? Let us leave it there, where we can
+watch it before we fire. I have often thought that she would like it so.
+And now--" he nodded again and smiled,--"surely you will oblige me.
+Shuffle the cards, Lawton, and let the game go on."
+
+Mr. Lawton bit his lower lip, fingered the cards uncertainly, and then
+tossed them in the fire.
+
+"Come, come, Lawton," said my father sharply. "Where are your manners?
+Surely you are not afraid, not afraid of a picture, Lawton?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Lawton, "I am not afraid."
+
+"Ah," said my father, "I thought I knew you better. Another pack of
+cards for Mr. Lawton, Brutus. Let us trust, Lawton, that these will suit
+you better."
+
+"You misunderstand me," said Mr. Lawton simply. "I am not going to play."
+
+"Not going to play?" exclaimed my father, raising his eyebrows.
+
+Slowly Mr. Lawton shook his head.
+
+"You are far too generous, Shelton," he said. "If you shot me where I
+stand, you would only be giving me my fair deserts. If I had been in your
+place and you in mine, both you and Jason would have been dead ten
+seconds after I had entered the door."
+
+"Don't be a fool, Lawton," cried my father, raising his hand. "Think what
+you are saying!"
+
+"I have thought," he replied sharply. "The game is over, Shelton, and I
+know when I am beaten. We have not got the paper, Jason, and you remember
+what I said. If you failed to get it, I should tell the whole story, and
+now, by heaven, I will. Every man in town will know it tomorrow morning.
+I told you I would be shut out of this business, and I mean it, Jason."
+
+On my father's face came something closer to blank astonishment than I
+had ever seen there. Something in the situation was puzzling him, and for
+the moment he seemed unable to cope with it.
+
+"Lawton," he said slowly, "shuffle those cards, or I'll shoot you where
+you stand."
+
+Mr. Lawton placed the cards on the table, and adjusted them thoughtfully.
+
+"No, you won't," he replied. "I know you better than that. You would
+never draw a weapon on any man unless he had an equal chance, and I
+haven't, Shelton."
+
+I had stepped forward beside him. Was there someone else at the bottom of
+the whole wretched business? Was it possible that my father had no hand
+in it? A glance at Mr. Lawton answered a half a hundred questions which
+were darting through my mind.
+
+And my father was still staring in a baffled way, eyeing Mr. Lawton in
+silent wonder.
+
+"So," he said, "you think I'll forgive you? Is it possible you are
+relying on my Christian spirit?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Lawton, "I do not ask you to forgive me. I am saying I
+have stopped. That is all--stopped, do you understand me? I should nave
+stopped when Jason commissioned me to kill your son. I should have, if
+this affair with France was not beginning. Even then the business
+sickened me. What did I care about the money he stole from her? I did not
+want her money. What did I care if the boy suspected you had not stolen
+it, but that Jason had it all the time? I couldn't have killed him,
+because he had some slight glimmerings of sense."
+
+A dozen dim suspicions clashed suddenly together into fact. I looked
+sharply at my father. He was nodding, with some faint suspicion of
+amusement.
+
+"And so you did not," he said gently. "Your scruples do you credit,
+after all."
+
+"It was just as well," said Mr. Lawton. "I thought the news your son was
+attacked would fetch you over. Jason did his best to hush it up, but I
+knew you would suspect. And you know what it would have meant to me if I
+could have sent you back to France."
+
+And yet, for some reason, my father was strangely ill at ease. Like
+someone detected in a falsehood, he looked restlessly about him. For the
+moment his adroitness seemed to have left him. He made a helpless little
+gesture of annoyance.
+
+"You say you have stopped?" inquired my father. "Then why not do so,
+Lawton, and stop talking. Do you think what you say interests me? Do you
+think I do not know the whole damnable business, without your raking it
+up again? Why should Jason have wished to be rid of me except for her
+money? Why should you have helped him, except--At least it was not for
+money, Lawton."
+
+But Mr. Lawton did not heed my father's voice. His glance had come to
+rest again upon the locket on the table, and the hard lines about his
+mouth had vanished.
+
+"And she never spoke to me, never looked at me again," he said.
+
+My father started and looked at him quickly.
+
+"Lawton," groaned my uncle, "are you out of your mind?"
+
+Mr. Lawton turned sharp around and faced him with a scowl.
+
+"I told you," he said harshly. "I told you to get me the paper, and I
+told you what would happen if you did not, and it is happening already,
+Jason. I am going to tell the story."
+
+My uncle moved convulsively to his feet, and his voice was sharp and
+malignant.
+
+"Do you suppose anyone will believe you?" he cried. "Do you fancy they
+will take your word against mine?"
+
+"We will try it," said Mr. Lawton. "There are still people who wonder
+why Shelton stooped to the thing you accused him of. We certainly
+will try it."
+
+"And if you do," said my uncle, "I will show it was she who did it--that
+it was she who urged him on. I'll tell them! D'you hear me? I'll tell
+them, and they'll take my word for it. They'll take my word!"
+
+"God!" cried Mr. Lawton. "So that's the reason! So that's the trick you
+played. You dog! If I had only known--"
+
+His face had become blanched with passion, and my uncle staggered back
+before his upraised hand, but Mr. Lawton did not strike. For a moment he
+stood rigid, and when he spoke he had regained his self-control.
+
+"You will never tell it, Jason," he said slowly, and then he turned to my
+father, and inclined his head very gravely, and his voice was no longer
+harsh and strident.
+
+"I often wondered why you left her so," he said, "and why you did not
+face it. You feared her name might be dragged in the mire! Because he
+threatened to bring her into that miserable business, you never raised a
+hand. I always knew you were a gentleman, but I did not know you were Don
+Quixote de la Mancha."
+
+For the first time since the two had spoken, my father moved. He leaned
+across the table, picked up the locket very gently, and placed it in his
+coat. His eyes rested on Lawton, and returned his bow.
+
+"Rubbish!" said my father. "One liar is bad enough, but why listen to
+two? We will leave her name out of the conversation. Perhaps I had other
+reasons for going away. Did they ever occur to you, Lawton? Perhaps, for
+instance, I was sick of the whole business. Did you ever think I might
+have found it pleasant to leave so uncongenial an atmosphere, that I was
+relieved, delighted at the opportunity to leave lying relatives, and
+friends who turned their backs? Faugh! I have kept the matter quiet for
+fifteen years, merely because I was too indolent to stand against it. I
+was too glad to see the cards fall as they did to call for a new deal.
+There I was, tied up to a family of sniveling hypocrites. Look at Jason,
+look at him. Who wouldn't have been glad to get away?"
+
+And he bowed to my uncle ironically.
+
+"Positively, I was glad to hear the crash. 'Very well,' I said, 'I am a
+thief, since it pleases you to think so.' Thieves at least are a more
+interesting society, and I have found them so, Lawton, not only more
+interesting, but more honest."
+
+But somehow there was no ring of conviction to his words. His voice
+seemed unable to assume its old cynicism, and his face had lost its
+former placidity. It had suddenly become old and careworn. Pain and
+regret, sharp and poignant, were reflected there. His eyes seemed
+strained and tired, the corners of his mouth had drooped, and his body
+too was less erect and resolute. Something had been broken. For a moment,
+his mask and his mantle had dropped where he could not find them. And
+then, as he stood looking ahead of him at the shadows, he ended his
+speech in a way that had no logic and no relation to the rest.
+
+"If she had only said she did not believe them--Why did she not say it?"
+
+And then he squared his shoulders and tried again to smile.
+
+"But what difference does it make now? The road has turned too long ago
+for us to face about."
+
+"She never spoke to me, never looked at me again!" repeated Mr. Lawton.
+
+My father's fist crashed down on the table, but when he spoke his words
+were precise and devoid of all emotion.
+
+"And why the devil should she," he answered. "We are not questioning her
+taste. And you, Jason," he added. "No one will doubt your word, or
+believe this little romance. Do you wonder why? They will never have the
+opportunity. Brutus, take them down to the boat."
+
+Brutus stepped forward and laid a hand on my uncle's shoulder. He
+shrank back.
+
+"George," he cried, "you shall have the money. I swear it, George. I have
+wronged you, but--"
+
+"Yes," said my father, "I shall have the money, and you too, Jason. I
+shall have everything. Take them along, Brutus," and they left the room
+in silence, while my father watched them thoughtfully, and arranged the
+lapel on his coat.
+
+"Ned," said my father, "the rum decanter is over on the bookshelves. Good
+God, where is he going?" for Mr. Aiken had darted into the hall, and was
+running up the staircase.
+
+"Is the man mad? Is--"
+
+My father stopped, and was looking at the table. I followed his glance,
+and started involuntarily. There had been three pistols lying side by
+side on the polished mahogany, and now there were only two.
+
+"My son," said my father, "the rum decanter is on the bookshelves. The
+glasses--"
+
+A shout from the hall interrupted him.
+
+"B'gad, captain!" Mr. Aiken was roaring. "Damme! Here's another of
+'em! You would bite me, would you! Hell's fire if I don't cut your
+gullet open."
+
+"What an evening we are having, to be sure," said my father, turning to
+the doorway.
+
+Mr. Aiken was pushing a man before him into the room, and holding a dirk
+at his throat.
+
+"Ives!" shrieked Mademoiselle.
+
+"She is right," said my father. "It is Ives de Blanzy. I had forgotten
+you had sent him to the house."
+
+The man Mr. Aiken was holding wrenched himself free, and sprang forward,
+shaking a fist in my father's face.
+
+"Forgotten!" he shouted. Was it you who sent me here and had me tied in
+the cellar, and left me chewing at the rope, and set this pirate on me?
+Mother of God! Captain Shelton! Is this a joke you are playing--"
+
+"Only a very regrettable error," said my father. "A mistake of my son's.
+Pray calm yourself, Ives. It is quite all right. My son, this is
+Mademoiselle's brother."
+
+"Her brother!" I cried.
+
+"And who the devil did you think I was?" He walked slowly towards me.
+"Have you no perceptions?"
+
+He would have continued further, if my father had not laid a hand
+on his arm.
+
+"Gently, Ives," he said. "You know I would not treat you so. Give him the
+paper, my son. He is the one who should have it."
+
+I stared at my father in blank astonishment, but before I could speak, he
+had continued.
+
+"I know what you are thinking. What was the use of all this comedy? Why
+should I have deceived you? I was only running true to form, my son,
+which is the only thing left to do when life tastes bitter. Do you not
+understand? But you do not. Your palate is unused yet to gall and
+wormwood. Only wait, my son--"
+
+He raised his hand slowly, as though tilting an imaginary glass to his
+lips.
+
+"Only wait. They will offer you the cup some day, and we were always
+heavy drinkers. Pray God that you will stand it with a better grace than
+I--that you will forget the sting and rancor of it, and not carry it with
+you through the years."
+
+His eyes grew brighter as he spoke, and his features were suddenly mobile
+and expressive.
+
+"She said she believed it. She threw their lies in my face. She lashed me
+with them, and my blood was hotter then than now. She would not listen,
+and I forgot it was a woman's way. How was I to know it was only impulse?
+I ask you--how was I to know? Was I a man to crawl back, and ask her
+forgiveness, to offer some miserable excuse she would not credit? And
+you, brought into manhood to believe I was a thief--was I to stand your
+flinging back my denial? Was I to pose as the picture of injured
+innocence, and beg you the favor of believing? I would not have expected
+it of you, my son. By heaven, it would have stuck in my throat. I had
+gone my way too long, and the draught still tasted bitter. It burned,
+burned as I never thought it would again, when I first saw you standing
+watching me. Indeed it is only now that its taste has wholly gone--only
+now that I see what I have done, now when the lights are dim, and it is
+too late to begin again."
+
+He stopped and squared his shoulders and the harshness left his voice.
+
+"You understand, I hope," he added "Give him the paper, Henry." And he
+nodded towards Ives de Blanzy.
+
+I drew it from my pocket, and handed it to him in silence.
+
+"Now what is the meaning of this?" said Ives de Blanzy harshly. "This is
+not the paper! The cursed thing is blank inside!"
+
+My father snatched it from his hands.
+
+"Blank!" he muttered. "Blank! Clean as the driven snow! Is it possible I
+have failed in everything?"
+
+Mademoiselle had moved forward, and touched his arm. He glanced at her
+quickly, and slowly his frown vanished.
+
+"Naturally it is blank, captain," said Mademoiselle. "I took the real one
+from you this morning when you left it in your volume of Rabelais. I
+thought that you might place it there. I am sorry, captain, sorry now
+that you made me take you seriously."
+
+The paper dropped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor, but
+strangely enough he did not appear chagrined. His gallantry was back with
+him again, and with it all his courtesy.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle," he said, "I should have known you better. Will there
+always be a woman where there is trouble?"
+
+"And you have not made me hate you, Captain," Mademoiselle continued.
+
+"But you, my son," said my father, "you understand?"
+
+I felt his glance, but I could not meet it.
+
+"Yes," I said, "I understand."
+
+"Good," said my father. "Here comes Brutus. And now we shall have our
+rum."
+
+"I understand," I said, and my voice seemed unsteady, "that you are a
+very brave and upright gentleman."
+
+"The devil!" cried my father.
+
+And then he started and whirled toward the door.
+
+"Ned! Ives!" he called sharply. "What the devil is going on outside?" and
+the three of them had darted into the hall.
+
+Clear and distinct through the quiet night had come a shriek and the
+report of a pistol.
+
+I started to follow them, but Mademoiselle had laid a hand on my arm,
+and was pointing to the table. I lifted first one and then the other
+of the two pistols that were lying there. Neither was primed. Neither
+was loaded.
+
+"The third one," she said quietly, "Mr. Lawton took. No, no," she
+added, as I started toward the door, "Stay here, Monsieur. It is not
+your affair."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+She still stood looking at the pistols on the table. Was she thinking,
+as I was, of the irony, and the comedy and the tragedy that had been
+so strangely blended in the last hour? Slowly she turned and faced me,
+her slender fingers tugging aimlessly at her handkerchief. For a
+moment her eyes met mine. Then she looked away, and the color had
+deepened in her cheeks.
+
+"So," said Mademoiselle, "It is almost over. Are you not glad, Monsieur,
+that it is finished?"
+
+The wick of a candle had dropped to the wax, and was spluttering
+fitfully. Mechanically I moved to fix it.
+
+"No," I said, "I am not glad."
+
+"Not glad? Surely you are glad it has ended so. Surely you are glad
+your father--"
+
+"No," I said, and my voice was so much louder than I had intended that
+the sound of it in the quiet room made me stop abruptly. She looked up at
+me, a little startled.
+
+"At least Monsieur is frank," she said. "Do you know--have you thought
+that you are the only one of us who has been wholly so, who has not had
+something to conceal? Pray go on, Monsieur. It is pleasant to hear
+someone who is frank again. Continue! You must be glad for something.
+Every cloud must have--do you not say--a silver lining? If it is not your
+father--surely you are glad about me?"
+
+She made a graceful little gesture of interrogation.
+
+"Come, come," she went on, "You are not yourself tonight. Never have I
+seen you look so black. Think, Monsieur! The men are on deck and the wind
+is fair. Soon I shall be going. Soon you will forget."
+
+"No," I said, "Mademoiselle is mistaken. I shall not forget."
+
+"Nor I," she said gravely, "I wonder, Monsieur, if you understand--but
+you cannot understand what it has meant to me. I have tried to tell you
+once before, but you are cold, like your father. I have seen many men who
+have said gallant things, but only you two of all I know have done them."
+
+"I have done nothing," I said. "You know I have done nothing."
+
+"But it has not been your fault," she answered. "And was it nothing to
+protect a stranger from a strange land, when you had nothing to gain from
+it and everything to lose?"
+
+"Mademoiselle forgets," I said, "that I had nothing to lose. It was
+lost already."
+
+"Then surely," she replied lightly, "surely you must be glad I am going?"
+
+"You know better than that," I answered. "Ah, Mademoiselle, do you not
+see? I hoped I might show you that I did not always blunder. I hoped I
+might show you--"
+
+The words seemed to choke me.
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle," I cried, "if I had only been on the stairs at
+Blanzy!"
+
+"Blanzy!" she echoed, "Pray what has Blanzy to do with you and me?"
+
+Even now I do not know what made me speak, save that she was going. The
+very ticking of the clock was bringing the moment nearer, and there she
+was, staring at me, wide-eyed, half puzzled and half frightened. It
+seemed already as though she were further away.
+
+"Do you not see?" I said. "It is not like you not to understand. Nor is
+it very kind. How can I see you go and be glad? How can I be glad you
+love my father?"
+
+"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed suddenly startled, "Your father! I care for
+your father!"
+
+I bowed in quick contrition.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "I fear I have been very rude, and, as usual,
+very gauche. I beg you to forgive me."
+
+"But I tell you," she cried, "I do not love him!"
+
+I bowed again in silence.
+
+"You do not believe me?"
+
+"Mademoiselle may rest assured," I replied gently, "that I
+understand--perfectly."
+
+"You!" I started at her sudden vexation, started to find that her eyes
+were filled with tears.
+
+"You understand quite nothing! Never have I seen anyone so cruel,
+so stupid!"
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "I have been awkward, but forgive me--the cabin
+of the _Sea Tern_, where you asked him to sail on, and when you bade him
+recall what he said on the stairs at Blanzy.... Your pardon! I have been
+very blunt."
+
+And now she was regarding me with blank astonishment.
+
+"Surely he told you," she murmured, "Surely he told you what the Marquis
+had intended."
+
+Then she stopped, confused and silent.
+
+"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed suddenly, "But he has told you nothing!"
+
+"No," I said dully, "He has been most discreet. But does it make any real
+difference, Mademoiselle, except that I know now that the Marquis was a
+man of very keen discrimination?"
+
+"Are you mad?" cried Mademoiselle, "I tell you it is not your father. I
+tell you I--"
+
+Her face had grown scarlet. She bowed her head, and tugged more violently
+than ever at the corner of her handkerchief.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said unsteadily, "Mademoiselle, what was it he told you
+at Blanzy?"
+
+"I cannot tell you if you do not know," she answered, "Indeed I cannot."
+
+"But you will!" I cried. "You will, Mademoiselle! You must!
+Mademoiselle--"
+
+Her eyes had met mine again.
+
+"They were breaking in the door," she began, "and he was going down to
+meet them. I told him--I told him to go, to leave me, and take the paper.
+He said--"
+
+She paused again, watching me in vague embarrassment.
+
+"He said he'd be damned if he would, Monsieur. He said he would do what
+the Marquis had directed, if he had to swing for it. That he would take
+the paper and me to America--that I ... Mon Dieu! Do you not know what he
+said! Can you not guess?... He said that I was to marry his son."
+
+A smile suddenly played about her lips.
+
+"And I told him," she continued breathlessly, "I told him I'd be damned
+if I would, Monsieur. That neither he nor the Marquis would make me marry
+a man I did not know, much less a son of his!"
+
+"And when you asked him to recall it--Mademoiselle, when you asked him to
+recall it, did you mean--tell me, Mademoiselle!"
+
+"Ah," she whispered, "but it is too soon, and you are too rough,
+Monsieur! I beg of you--be careful! Besides--someone is coming."
+
+And then I heard a soft footstep behind me.
+
+"Huh!" said Brutus, "I go tell the captain. No. It is all right. I tell
+the captain. He is happy. It will please him. Huh!" His long speech
+seemed to have taken his breath, for he paused, grinning broadly.
+
+"Huh!" he said finally. "Mr. Lawton shoot Mr. Jason. Shoot him with
+pistol off the table. The captain is happy."
+
+But before Brutus could turn to go, my father was in the doorway,
+smoothing the bandage on his arm.
+
+"Let us say relieved, Brutus," he answered smoothly. "It is dangerous
+ever to use superlatives."
+
+Then he glanced from Mademoiselle to me, and his smile broadened.
+
+"Very much relieved," he said, "and yet--and yet I still feel thirsty.
+The rum decanter, Brutus."
+
+
+
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