The Unspeakable Gentleman Part 9

"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 s.h.i.+rt bosom. Then his grin died away. His low forehead became creased and puckered. He s.h.i.+fted 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 a.s.sume. 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 pa.s.sed 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, a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sionless, 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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."