THE IMPOSSIBLE UNCLE ROBERT
"Robert," I made remark to myself after I had with difficulty removed
the tweed coat and the tweed trousers and neatly folded them against
ugly wrinkles of to-morrow, "you must become a sport and not climb
down there and tell that other woman the truth of your lady's estate
and ask her to comfort you with affection. You were born a daredevil
and you must remember those two Indians and a bear that the Grandmamma
Madam Donaldson murdered for safety for herself and her children. That
Mr. G. Slade is just one bear and he's not as dangerous to you as if
you wore 'skirts' anyway. And, also, if you are brave and propitiate
the wicked Uncle, in just a few months you can travel to where the
lovely lady with the blue flower eyes resides, of whom in the morning
you must get the address of home, and can then make confession to her
and know the joy of having her sisterly embraces that seem of so much
sweetness to you now.
"But suppose it is that she arises in the night and leaves the train
for her home!" I said to myself as I suddenly sat up in the dark and
precipitated my head against the roof of the sleeping shelf.
"I will call down to her and ask the one simple question," I made
answer to myself. Then I reached down my head over the edge of my
shelf and called very softly:
"Madam?"
"Yes?" came a soft question in answer and I felt that she arose and
brought her beautiful head which had the odor of violets in the waves
so heavy and black, up very near to mine. I could feel a comfort from
her breath on my cheek.
"I am in fear, Madam, that you should leave the train before I am
awake," I said in a voice under my breath. "I do not want that I lose
you into this great America."
"Oh, I'm not easily lost."
"I am desolated with loneliness and I must know where it is that you
leave the train, immediately, so that I may sleep."
"At Hayesville, Harpeth, you ridiculous boy. Now don't disturb me
again. Go to sleep."
As I sank back on my pillow, happy with a great relief, I thought I
heard two laughs in the darkness, one in a tone of silver from beneath
me and one of the sound of a choke from opposite me where was reposed
that Mr. G. Slade of Detroit.
"It is a good chance for you, Robert, that you go to sleep your first
night in America with the sound of a nice laugh from two persons of
kindness towards you, one of whom is to be with you for a friend in
the same--what was it the gray lady with the pencil and paper called
it?--'tall timbers of Old Harpeth' where all is of such strangeness to
you." And with this remark to myself I fell asleep, "as is," I think
it was that Mr. G. Slade of Detroit called my state of not being
disrobed further than trousers and coat.
After many months in which came to me cruel pain and a long hard fight
for the honor of my beloved, I cannot but remember that feeling of
gratitude that came over me as I went into sleep on that narrow shelf
under which lay the beauty of that Madam Patricia Whitworth.
In the eight years that I had become all of life to my father we had
made many travels into distant lands and had seen all of beauty that
the Old World had to offer seekers after it, but nowhere had I seen
the majestic wonder of this, his own land, that I beheld pass by like
a series of great pictures wrought by a master. All of the morning I
could but sit and gaze with eyes that sometimes dimmed with tears for
him as faster and faster I was carried down into his own land of the
Valley of Harpeth, which he had given up for love of my Mother and
from the cruelness of my wicked Uncle who would not welcome her to his
home. When the great Harpeth hills, in their spring flush from the
rosiness of what I afterwards learned was their honeysuckle and
laurel, shot with the iridescent fire of the pale yellow and green and
purple of redbud and dogwood and maple leaf, all veiled in a creamy
mist over their radiance, came into view, as we arrived nearer and
nearer to Hayesville my hand went forth and grasped closely the hand
of Madam Whitworth. That Mr. G. Slade had left the train before my
awakening and I felt relief from the absence of his eyes and could
express to the beautiful lady the joy that was in my heart.
"And the small homes in the valley, Madam, with the sheep and cattle
and grain and children surrounded, they need never fear the fire of
shell and the roar of the cruel guns. This valley is a fold in the
garment across the breast of the good God Himself and it has His
cherishing. Is it that there will be a home for me in its peace and
for the small Pierre and the old and faithful Nannette?"
"A home and--and other things, boy--when you ask for them," she
answered me with a very beautiful look of affection that while it
pleased me greatly also made for me an unreasonable embarrassment.
"Is it that you think I will obtain the affection of my Uncle, the
General Robert Carruthers, Madam Whitworth?" I asked of her with a
great wistfulness, for I had told her of his summons to me and she
knew already the story of his hardness of heart against my mother.
"The General is a very difficult person," she made answer to me, and I
saw that softness of her beautiful mouth become as steel as she spoke
of him. "To a woman he is impossible, as I have found to my cost, but
all men adore him and follow him madly, so I suppose his attitude
towards them is different from his attitude towards women. My husband
and I disagree utterly about the General. In fact, the old gentleman
and I are at daggers' points just now and I am afraid--afraid that he
will make it difficult for you to be--be friends with me as I--I want
you to be."
"Neither the General Carruthers nor any man, Madam, dictates in
matters of the heart to the Marquise de--that is, to Robert Carruthers
of Grez and Bye, if that is the way I must so name myself now," I
answered in the manner of the old Marquis of Flanders, tinged with the
_grande dame_ manner of the beautiful young Marquise of Grez and
Bye whom I had murdered and left in that room of the great hotel of
Ritz-Carlton in New York.
"It will be delicious to watch his face as you and I alight from this
train together, boy. It will be worth the trouble of this hurried trip
to New York to be introduced to a person who disappeared suddenly in a
tug boat in the open ocean when he should have landed at the docks
with the propriety that would have been expected of him." And as she
spoke I could see that something had happened in New York which had
brought much irritation to the beautiful Madam Whitworth.
"It would seem that it is one of the customs of these great ships to
send out passengers from them in those very funny small tug boats," I
remarked as I leaned forward to catch a last fleeting glimpse of a
lovely girl standing in the doorway of an ancient farmhouse, giving
food to chickens so near the course of the railroad train that it
would seem we should disperse them with fright. "I wept when I must
see my good friend, Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, depart from our
ship in one of those tug boats. It was a pain in my breast that he
must leave me to go into the wildness of Canada."
"Oh, then he went to Canada first?" exclaimed that Madam Whitworth as
she leaned back on her seat as if relieved from some form of a great
anxiety about the departure of that Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles.
"Is it that you are also a friend of my Capitaine?" I demanded with a
great eagerness of pleasure if it should be so.
"Oh, no, no, indeed!" exclaimed the beautiful Madam Whitworth. "I was
speaking of my own friend who might have taken a Canadian line instead
of the American. She is so careless about instructions. Now look; we
are beginning to wind down into the very heart of the Harpeth Valley,
and by the time you make very tidy that mop of hair you have on your
head and I powder my nose, we will be in Hayesville to face the
General in all of his glory. Mind you kiss my hand so he can see you!
I want to give him that sensation in payment of a debt I owe him. Now
do go and smooth the mop if it takes a pint of water to do it. That
New York tailor has turned you out wonderfully, but even those very
square English tweeds do not entirely disguise the French cavalier.
You're a beautiful boy and the girls in Hayesville will eat you up--if
the General ever lets them get a sight of you--which he probably
won't. Now go to the mop!"
For many years, since the lonely day just after the death of my
mother, when my father took me into the furthest depths of his sad
heart and told me of his exile from the place in which he had been
born, and about the elder brother who had hated my beautiful mother,
who hated all women, I had spent much time erecting in my mind a
statue that would be the semblance of that wicked and cruel Uncle. I
had taken every disagreeable feature of face and body that I had
beheld in another human, or in a picture, or had read of in the tales
of that remarkable Mr. Dickens, who could so paint in words a
monstrous person to come when the lights are out to haunt the
darkness, and had carefully patched them one upon another so as to
make them into an ideal of an old Uncle of great wickedness. On that
very ship itself I had beheld a man, who came upon the lower deck from
the engine, who had but one eye and a great scar where that other eye
should have been placed. Immediately my image of the General Robert
Carruthers lost one of the wicked eyes I had given him from out the
head of the stepfather who did so cruelly stare at the poor young
David Copperfield, and became a man with only one eye which still held
the malevolence that was hurled at that small David. And with this
squat, crooked, evil image of the General Robert Carruthers in my
heart I alighted from the train into the City of Hayesville, which is
the capital of the great American State of Harpeth. The black man had
swung himself off with my bags and that of the beautiful Madam
Whitworth, who with me was the last of the passengers to descend from
the steps of the car.
"My dear Jeff!" exclaimed my so lovely new friend as she raised her
veil for a very seemly kiss from a tall and quite broad gentleman with
a very wide hat and long mustachios that dropped far down with want of
wax that it is the custom to use for their elevation in France, as I
well know from my father's wrathy remarks to his valet if he made a
too great use of it upon his. "And this is General Carruthers' nephew
who came down on the train with me. My husband, Mr. Carruthers of Grez
and Bye!" with which introduction she confronted me with the
gentleman.
"Glad to know you, young man; glad to know you," he answered as he
took my hand and gave it an embrace of such vigor that I almost made
outcry. "There's the General over there looking for you. Come to see
us sometime. Come on, Patsy!"
"Good-bye, Mr. Carruthers. I'll see you soon," said the beautiful
Madam Whitworth as she held out her hand to me. "Do it now; there
comes the General! Quick, kiss my hand!"
I bent and did as she bade me and as I had promised her to do, and as
I raised myself she slipped away quickly after her husband with a
salutation of great coolness to a person over my shoulder and a "How
do you do, General Carruthers" remark as she went.
Instantly I turned and faced the materialization of the ogre it had
taken me years to build up into my wicked Uncle. And what did I see?
My eyes looked straight into eyes of the greatest kindness and wisdom
I had ever before beheld, and it was with difficulty I restrained
myself from flinging myself and my suit of English tweed straight into
the strong arms and burying my head on the broad deep chest that
confronted me as the huge old gentleman, with as perfect a mop of
white hair as is mine of black, rioting over his large head, towered
over me.
"You gallivanting young idiot, where did you pick up that dimity?" he
demanded of me as he laid a large hand with long strong fingers on my
shoulders and gave me a slight shake. "Don't tell me it was over Pat
Whitworth you had that ruckus at the Ritz-Carlton day before
yesterday!"
"No, Monsieur, it was not," I answered, looking him straight in the
eyes and feeling as if I was looking into kind eyes that I had seen
close to me forever in the old convent in France, and as I spoke I
could not help it that I raised my arm in its covering of a man's
tweed and let my woman's fingers grasp one of the long fingers on my
shoulder and cling to it as I had done other long fingers just like
them that had guided my first footsteps down the sunny garden paths of
the old Chateau de Grez.
"I'm your Uncle Robert, sonny, and don't you ever forget that, sir,"
he answered as he gave me another shake and I could see a longing for
the embrace, which I so desired, in his keen eyes that had softened
with a veil of mist in the last second. "Lord, I'm glad you're not a
woman! And from now on just stop knowing the creatures exist--Pat
Whitworth and her kind. None of that tea-throwing in Hayesville, sir!
We've got work to do to put out a fire--fire of dishonor and
devastation. No time for tea-fighting here. Come on to my car over
there; we've no time to waste."
"What is it that you say about that throwing of tea which occurred
only the day before yesterday in the City of New York many hundreds of
miles from here? How did that knowledge arrive here, my Uncle Robert?"
I questioned.
"Associated Press, sir. The greatest power in this America. Associated
Press! Full account, you and me, titles and all, printed in this
afternoon's paper. Any money left of that thousand?"
"No, my Uncle Robert," I faltered. "It was necessary that I spend--"
"Don't tell me about it. I sent it to you so you could get as much as
possible out of your system. The hussies! I've got work for you to do
here. Forget 'em! Hop in!" And he motioned me into a very large blue
touring car that stood beside the station platform.
"Drive to the Governor's Mansion and don't sprout grass under your
wheels," he commanded the black chauffeur. "The Governor's Mansion,
private door on Sixth Street."