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."