"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...."