DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW
Alan, as he looked confusedly and blankly at her, made no attempt to
answer the question she had asked, or to explain. For the moment, as
he fought to realize what she had said and its meaning for himself, all
his thought was lost in mere dismay, in the denial and checking of what
he had been feeling as he entered the house. His silence and
confusion, he knew, must seem to Constance Sherrill unwillingness to
answer her; for she did not suspect that he was unable to answer her.
She plainly took it in that way; but she did not seem offended; it was
sympathy, rather, that she showed. She seemed to appreciate, without
understanding except through her feelings, that--for some
reason--answer was difficult and dismaying for him.
"You would rather explain to father than to me," she decided.
He hesitated. What he wanted now was time to think, to learn who she
was and who her father was, and to adjust himself to this strange
reversal of his expectations.
"Yes; I would rather do that," he said.
"Will you come around to our house, then, please?"
She caught up her fur collar and muff from a chair and spoke a word to
the servant. As she went out on to the porch, he followed her and
stooped to pick up his suitcase.
"Simons will bring that," she said, "unless you'd rather have it with
you. It is only a short walk."
He was recovering from the first shock of her question now, and,
reflecting that men who accompanied Constance Sherrill probably did not
carry hand baggage, he put the suitcase down and followed her to the
walk. As she turned north and he caught step beside her, he studied
her with quick interested glances, realizing her difference from all
other girls he ever had walked with, but he did not speak to her nor
she to him. Turning east at the first corner, they came within sight
and hearing again of the turmoil of the lake.
"We go south here," she said at the corner of the Drive. "Our house is
almost back to back with Mr. Corvet's."
Alan, looking up after he had made the turn with her, recognized the
block as one he had seen pictured sometimes in magazines and
illustrated papers as a "row" of the city's most beautiful homes.
Larger, handsomer, and finer than the mansions on Astor Street, each
had its lawn or terrace in front and on both sides, where snow-mantled
shrubs and straw-bound rosebushes suggested the gardens of spring.
They turned in at the entrance of a house in the middle of the block
and went up the low, wide stone steps; the door opened to them without
ring or knock; a servant in the hall within took Alan's hat and coat,
and he followed Constance past some great room upon his right to a
smaller one farther down the hall.
"Will you wait here, please?" she asked.
He sat down, and she left him; when her footsteps had died away, and he
could hear no other sounds except the occasional soft tread of some
servant, he twisted himself about in his chair and looked around. A
door between the room he was in and the large room which had been upon
his right as they came in--a drawing-room--stood open; he could see
into the drawing-room, and he could see through the other door a
portion of the hall; his inspection of these increased the bewilderment
he felt. Who were these Sherrills? Who was Corvet, and what was his
relation to the Sherrills? What, beyond all, was their and Corvet's
relation to Alan Conrad--to himself? The shock and confusion he had
felt at the nature of his reception in Corvet's house, and the
strangeness of his transition from his little Kansas town to a place
and people such as this, had prevented him from inquiring directly from
Constance Sherrill as to that; and, on her part, she had assumed,
plainly, that he already knew and need not be told.
He got up and moved about the rooms; they, like all rooms, must tell
something about the people who lived in them. The rooms were large and
open; Alan, in dreaming and fancying to himself the places to which he
might some day be summoned, had never dreamed of entering such a home
as this. For it was a home; in its light and in its furnishings there
was nothing of the stiffness and aloofness which Alan, never having
seen such rooms except in pictures, had imagined to be necessary evils
accompanying riches and luxury; it was not the richness of its
furnishings that impressed him first, it was its livableness. Among
the more modern pieces in the drawing-room and hall were some which
were antique. In the part of the hall that he could see, a black and
ancient-looking chair whose lines he recognized, stood against the
wall. He had seen chairs like that, heirlooms of colonial
Massachusetts or Connecticut, cherished in Kansas farmhouses and
recalling some long-past exodus of the family from New England. On the
wall of the drawing-room, among the beautiful and elusive paintings and
etchings, was a picture of a ship, plainly framed; he moved closer to
look at it, but he did not know what kind of ship it was except that it
was a sailing ship of some long-disused design. Then he drew back
again into the smaller room where he had been left, and sat down again
to wait.
A comfortable fire of cannel coal was burning in this smaller room in a
black fire-basket set in a white marble grate, obviously much older
than the house; there were big easy leather chairs before it, and
beside it there were bookcases. On one of these stood a two-handled
silver trophy cup, and hung high upon the wall above the mantel was a
long racing sweep with the date '85 painted in black across the blade.
He had the feeling, coming quite unconsciously, of liking the people
who lived in this handsome house.
He straightened and looked about, then got up, as Constance Sherrill
came back into the room.
"Father is not here just now," she said. "We weren't sure from your
telegram exactly at what hour you would arrive, and that was why I
waited at Mr. Corvet's to be sure we wouldn't miss you. I have
telephoned father, and he's coming home at once."
She hesitated an instant in the doorway, then turned to go out again.
"Miss Sherrill--" he said.
She halted. "Yes."
"You told me you had been waiting for me to come and explain my
connection with Mr. Corvet. Well--I can't do that; that is what I came
here hoping to find out."
She came back toward him slowly.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
He was forcing himself to disregard the strangeness which his
surroundings and all that had happened in the last half hour had made
him feel; leaning his arms on the back of the chair in which he had
been sitting, he managed to smile reassuringly; and he fought down and
controlled resolutely the excitement in his voice, as he told her
rapidly the little he knew about himself.
He could not tell definitely how she was affected by what he said. She
flushed slightly, following her first start of surprise after he had
begun to speak; when he had finished, he saw that she was a little pale.
"Then you don't know anything about Mr. Corvet at all," she said.
"No; until I got his letter sending for me here, I'd never seen or
heard his name."
She was thoughtful for a moment.
"Thank you for telling me," she said. "I'll tell my father when he
comes."
"Your father is--?" he ventured.
She understood now that the name of Sherrill had meant nothing to him.
"Father is Mr. Corvet's closest friend, and his business partner as
well," she explained.
He thought she was going to tell him something more about them; but she
seemed then to decide to leave that for her father to do. She crossed
to the big chair beside the grate and seated herself. As she sat
looking at him, hands clasped beneath her chin, and her elbows resting
on the arm of the chair, there was speculation and interest in her
gaze; but she did not ask him anything more about himself. She
inquired about the Kansas weather that week in comparison with the
storm which had just ceased in Chicago, and about Blue Rapids, which
she said she had looked up upon the map, and he took this chat for what
it was--notification that she did not wish to continue the other topic
just then.
She, he saw, was listening, like himself, for the sound of Sherrill's
arrival at the house; and when it came, she recognized it first, rose,
and excused herself. He heard her voice in the hall, then her father's
deeper voice which answered; and ten minutes later, he looked up to see
the man these things had told him must be Sherrill standing in the door
and looking at him.
He was a tall man, sparely built; his broad shoulders had been those of
an athlete in his youth; now, at something over fifty, they had taken
on a slight, rather studious stoop, and his brown hair had thinned upon
his forehead. His eyes, gray like his daughter's, were thoughtful
eyes; just now deep trouble filled them. His look and bearing of a
refined and educated gentleman took away all chance of offense from the
long, inquiring scrutiny to which he subjected Alan's features and
figure before he came into the room.
Alan had risen at sight of him; Sherrill, as he came in, motioned him
back to his seat; he did not sit down himself, but crossed to the
mantel and leaned against it.
"I am Lawrence Sherrill," he said.
As the tall, graceful, thoughtful man stood looking down at him, Alan
could tell nothing of the attitude of this friend of Benjamin Corvet
toward himself. His manner had the same reserve toward Alan, the same
questioning consideration of him, that Constance Sherrill had had after
Alan had told her about himself.
"My daughter has repeated to me what you told her, Mr. Conrad,"
Sherrill observed. "Is there anything you want to add to me regarding
that?"
"There's nothing I can add," Alan answered. "I told her all that I
know about myself."
"And about Mr. Corvet?"
"I know nothing at all about Mr. Corvet."
"I am going to tell you some things about Mr. Corvet," Sherrill said.
"I had reason--I do not want to explain just yet what that reason
was--for thinking you could tell us certain things about Mr. Corvet,
which would, perhaps, make plainer what has happened to him. When I
tell you about him now, it is in the hope that, in that way, I may
awake some forgotten memory of him in you; if not that, you may
discover some coincidences of dates or events in Corvet's life with
dates or events in your own. Will you tell me frankly, if you do
discover anything like that?"
"Yes; certainly."
Alan leaned forward in the big chair, hands clasped between his knees,
his blood tingling sharply in his face and fingertips. So Sherrill
expected to make him remember Corvet! There was strange excitement in
this, and he waited eagerly for Sherrill to begin. For several
moments, Sherrill paced up and down before the fire; then he returned
to his place before the mantel.
"I first met Benjamin Corvet," he commenced, "nearly thirty years ago.
I had come West for the first time the year before; I was about your
own age and had been graduated from college only a short time, and a
business opening had offered itself here.
"There was a sentimental reason--I think I must call it that--as well,
for my coming to Chicago. Until my generation, the property of our
family had always been largely--and generally exclusively--in ships.
It is a Salem family; a Sherrill was a sea-captain, living in Salem,
they say, when his neighbors--and he, I suppose--hanged witches; we had
privateers in 1812 and our clippers went round the Horn in '49. The
_Alabama_ ended our ships in '63, as it ended practically the rest of
the American shipping on the Atlantic; and in '73, when our part of the
_Alabama_ claims was paid us, my mother put it in bonds waiting for me
to grow up.
"Sentiment, when I came of age, made me want to put this money back
into ships flying the American flag; but there was small chance of
putting it--and keeping it, with profit--in American ships on the sea.
In Boston and New York, I had seen the foreign flags on the deep-water
ships--British, German, French, Norwegian, Swedish, and Greek; our flag
flew mostly on ferries and excursion steamers. But times were booming
on the great lakes. Chicago, which had more than recovered from the
fire, was doubling its population every decade; Cleveland, Duluth, and
Milwaukee were leaping up as ports. Men were growing millions of
bushels of grain which they couldn't ship except by lake; hundreds of
thousands of tons of ore had to go by water; and there were tens of
millions of feet of pine and hardwood from the Michigan forests.
Sailing vessels such as the Sherrills had always operated, it is true,
had seen their day and were disappearing from the lakes; were being
'sold,' many of them, as the saying is, 'to the insurance companies' by
deliberate wrecking. Steamers were taking their place. Towing had
come in. The first of the whalebacks was built about that time, and we
began to see those processions of a barge and two, three, or four tows
which the lakemen called 'the sow and her pigs.' Men of all sorts had
come forward, of course, and, serving the situation more or less
accidentally, were making themselves rich.
"It was railroading which had brought me West; but I had brought with
me the _Alabama_ money to put into ships. I have called it sentiment,
but it was not merely that; I felt, young man though I was, that this
transportation matter was all one thing, and that in the end the
railroads would own the ships. I have never engaged very actively in
the operation of the ships; my daughter would like me to be more active
in it than I have been; but ever since, I have had money in lake
vessels. It was the year that I began that sort of investment that I
first met Corvet."
Alan looked up quickly. "Mr. Corvet was--?" he asked.
"Corvet was--is a lakeman," Sherrill said.
Alan sat motionless, as he recollected the strange exaltation that had
come to him when he saw the lake for the first time. Should he tell
Sherrill of that? He decided it was too vague, too indefinite to be
mentioned; no doubt any other man used only to the prairie might have
felt the same.
"He was a ship owner, then," he said.
"Yes; he was a shipowner--not, however, on a large scale at that time.
He had been a master, sailing ships which belonged to others; then he
had sailed one of his own. He was operating then, I believe, two
vessels; but with the boom times on the lakes, his interests were
beginning to expand. I met him frequently in the next few years, and
we became close friends."
Sherrill broke off and stared an instant down at the rug. Alan bent
forward; he made no interruption but only watched Sherrill attentively.
"It was one of the great advantages of the West, I think--and
particularly of Chicago at that time--that it gave opportunity for
friendships of that sort," Sherrill said. "Corvet was a man of a sort
I would have been far less likely ever to have known intimately in the
East. He was both what the lakes had made him and what he had made of
himself; a great reader--wholly self-educated; he had, I think, many of
the attributes of a great man--at least, they were those of a man who
should have become great; he had imagination and vision. His whole
thought and effort, at that time, were absorbed in furthering and
developing the traffic on the lakes, and not at all from mere desire
for personal success. I met him for the first time one day when I went
to his office on some business. He had just opened an office at that
time in one of the old ramshackle rows along the river front; there was
nothing at all pretentious about it--the contrary, in fact; but as I
went in and waited with the others who were there to see him, I had the
sense of being in the ante-room of a great man. I do not mean there
was any idiotic pomp or lackyism or red tape about it; I mean that the
others who were waiting to see him, and who knew him, were keyed up by
the anticipation and keyed me up....
"I saw as much as I could of him after that, and our friendship became
very close.
"In 1892, when I married and took my residence here on the lake
shore--the house stood where this one stands now--Corvet bought the
house on Astor Street. His only reason for doing it was, I believe,
his desire to be near me. The neighborhood was what they call
fashionable; neither Corvet nor Mrs. Corvet--he had married in
1889--had social ambitions of that sort. Mrs. Corvet came from
Detroit; she was of good family there--a strain of French blood in the
family; she was a schoolteacher when he married her, and she had made a
wonderful wife for him--a good woman, a woman of very high ideals; it
was great grief to both of them that they had no children.
"Between 1886, when I first met him, and 1895, Corvet laid the
foundation of great success; his boats seemed lucky, men liked to work
for him, and he got the best skippers and crews. A Corvet captain
boasted of it and, if he had had bad luck on another line, believed his
luck changed when he took a Corvet ship; cargoes in Corvet bottoms
somehow always reached port; there was a saying that in storm a Corvet
ship never asked help; it gave it; certainly in twenty years no Corvet
ship had suffered serious disaster. Corvet was not yet rich, but
unless accident or undue competition intervened, he was certain to
become so. Then something happened."
Sherrill looked away at evident loss how to describe it.
"To the ships?" Alan asked him.
"No; to him. In 1896, for no apparent reason, a great change came over
him."
"In 1896!"
"That was the year."
Alan bent forward, his heart throbbing in his throat. "That was also
the year when I was brought and left with the Weltons in Kansas," he
said.
Sherrill did not speak for a moment. "I thought," he said finally, "it
must have been about that time; but you did not tell my daughter the
exact date."
"What kind of change came over him that year?" Alan asked.
Sherrill gazed down at the rug, then at Alan, then past him. "A change
in his way of living," he replied. "The Corvet line of boats went on,
expanded; interests were acquired in other lines; and Corvet and those
allied with him swiftly grew rich. But in all this great development,
for which Corvet's genius and ability had laid the foundation, Corvet
himself ceased to take active part. I do not mean that he formally
retired; he retained his control of the business, but he very seldom
went to the office and, except for occasional violent, almost pettish
interference in the affairs of the company, he left it in the hands of
others. He took into partnership, about a year later, Henry Spearman,
a young man who had been merely a mate on one of his ships. This
proved subsequently to have been a good business move, for Spearman has
tremendous energy, daring, and enterprise; and no doubt Corvet had
recognized these qualities in him before others did. But at the time
it excited considerable comment. It marked, certainly, the beginning
of Corvet's withdrawal from active management. Since then he has been
ostensibly and publicly the head of the concern, but he has left the
management almost entirely to Spearman. The personal change in Corvet
at that time is harder for me to describe to you."
Sherrill halted, his eyes dark with thought, his lips, pressed closely
together; Alan waited.
"When I saw Corvet again, in the summer of '96--I had been South during
the latter part of the winter and East through the spring--I was
impressed by the vague but, to me, alarming change in him. I was
reminded, I recall, of a friend I had had in college who had thought he
was in perfect health and had gone to an examiner for life insurance
and had been refused, and was trying to deny to himself and others that
anything could be the matter. But with Corvet I knew the trouble was
not physical. The next year his wife left him."
"The year of--?" Alan asked.
"That was 1897. We did not know at first, of course, that the
separation was permanent. It proved so, however; and Corvet, I know
now, had understood it to be that way from the first. Mrs. Corvet went
to France--the French blood in her, I suppose, made her select that
country; she had for a number of years a cottage near Trouville, in
Normandy, and was active in church work. I know there was almost no
communication between herself and her husband during those years, and
her leaving him markedly affected Corvet. He had been very fond of her
and proud of her. I had seen him sometimes watching her while she
talked; he would gaze at her steadily and then look about at the other
women in the room and back to her, and his head would nod just
perceptibly with satisfaction; and she would see it sometimes and
smile. There was no question of their understanding and affection up
to the very time she so suddenly and so strangely left him. She died
in Trouville in the spring of 1910, and Corvet's first information of
her death come to him through a paragraph in a newspaper."
Alan had started; Sherrill looked at him questioningly.
"The spring of 1910," Alan explained, "was when I received the bank
draft for fifteen hundred dollars."
Sherrill nodded; he did not seem surprised to hear this; rather it
appeared to be confirmation of something in his own thought.
"Following his wife's leaving him," Sherrill went on, "Corvet saw very
little of any one. He spent most of his time in his own house;
occasionally he lunched at his club; at rare intervals, and always
unexpectedly, he appeared at his office. I remember that summer he was
terribly disturbed because one of his ships was lost. It was not a bad
disaster, for every one on the ship was saved, and hull and cargo were
fully covered by insurance; but the Corvet record was broken; a Corvet
ship had appealed for help; a Corvet vessel had not reached port....
And later in the fall, when two deckhands were washed from another of
his vessels and drowned, he was again greatly wrought up, though his
ships still had a most favorable record. In 1902 I proposed to him
that I buy full ownership in the vessels I partly controlled and ally
them with those he and Spearman operated. It was a time of
combination--the railroads and the steel interests were acquiring the
lake vessels; and though I believed in this, I was not willing to enter
any combination which would take the name of Sherrill off the list of
American shipowners. I did not give Corvet this as my reason; and he
made me at that time a very strange counter-proposition--which I have
never been able to understand, and which entailed the very obliteration
of my name which I was trying to avoid. He proposed that I accept a
partnership in his concern on a most generous basis, but that the name
of the company remain as it was, merely Corvet and Spearman.
Spearman's influence and mine prevailed upon him to allow my name to
appear; since then, the firm name has been Corvet, Sherrill, and
Spearman.
"Our friendship had strengthened and ripened during those years. The
intense activity of Corvet's mind, which as a younger man he had
directed wholly to the shipping, was directed, after he had isolated
himself in this way, to other things. He took up almost feverishly an
immense number of studies--strange studies most of them for a man whose
youth had been almost violently active and who had once been a lake
captain. I cannot tell you what they all were--geology, ethnology,
nearly a score of subjects; he corresponded with various scientific
societies; he has given almost the whole of his attention to such
things for about twenty years. Since I have known him, he has
transformed himself from the rather rough, uncouth--though always
spiritually minded--man he was when I first met him into an educated
gentleman whom anybody would be glad to know; but he has made very few
acquaintances in that time, and has kept almost none of his old
friendships. He has lived alone in the house on Astor Street with only
one servant--the same one all these years.
"The only house he has visited with any frequency has been mine. He
has always liked my wife; he had--he has a great affection for my
daughter, who, when she was a child, ran in and out of his home as she
pleased. He would take long walks with her; he'd come here sometimes
in the afternoon to have tea with her on stormy days; he liked to have
her play and sing to him. My daughter believes now that his present
disappearance--whatever has happened to him--is connected in some way
with herself. I do not think that is so--"
Sherrill broke off and stood in thought for a moment; he seemed to
consider, and to decide that it was not necessary to say anything more
on that subject.
"Recently Corvet's moroseness and irritability had very greatly
increased; he had quarreled frequently and bitterly with Spearman over
business affairs. He had seemed more than usually eager at times to
see me or to see my daughter; and at other times he had seemed to avoid
us and keep away. I have had the feeling of late, though I could not
give any actual reason for it except Corvet's manner and look, that the
disturbance which had oppressed him for twenty years was culminating in
some way. That culmination seems to have been reached three days ago,
when he wrote summoning you here. Henry Spearman, whom I asked about
you when I learned you were coming, had never heard of you; Mr.
Corvet's servant had never heard of you....
"Is there anything in what I have told you which makes it possible for
you to recollect or to explain?"
Alan shook his head, flushed, and then grew a little pale. What
Sherrill told him had excited him by the coincidences it offered
between events in Benjamin Corvet's life and his own; it had not made
him "recollect" Corvet, but it had given definiteness and direction to
his speculations as to Corvet's relation to himself.
Sherrill drew one of the large chairs nearer to Alan and sat down
facing him. He felt in an inner pocket and brought out an envelope;
from the envelope he took three pictures, and handed the smallest of
them to Alan. As Alan took it, he saw that it was a tintype of himself
as a round-faced boy of seven.
"That is you?" Sherrill asked.
"Yes; it was taken by the photographer in Blue Rapids. We all had our
pictures taken on that day--Jim, Betty, and I. Mr. Welton"--for the
first time Alan consciously avoided giving the title "Father" to the
man in Kansas--"sent one of me to the 'general delivery' address of the
person in Chicago."
"And this?"
The second picture, Alan saw, was one that had been taken in front of
the barn at the farm. It showed Alan at twelve, in overalls and
barefooted, holding a stick over his head at which a shepherd dog was
jumping.
"Yes; that is Shep and I--Jim's and my dog, Mr. Sherrill. It was taken
by a man who stopped at the house for dinner one day; he liked Shep and
wanted a picture of him; so he got me to make Shep jump, and he took
it."
"You don't remember anything about the man?"
"Only that he had a camera and wanted a picture of Shep."
"Doesn't it occur to you that it was your picture he wanted, and that
he had been sent to get it? I wanted your verification that these
earlier pictures were of you, but this last one is easily recognizable."
Sherrill unfolded the third picture; it was larger than the others and
had been folded across the middle to get it into the envelope. Alan
leaned forward to look at it.
"That is the University of Kansas football team," he said. "I am the
second one in the front row; I played end my junior year and tackle
when I was a senior. Mr. Corvet--?"
"Yes; Mr. Corvet had these pictures. They came into my possession day
before yesterday, the day after Corvet disappeared; I do not want to
tell just yet how they did that."
Alan's face, which had been flushed at first with excitement, had gone
quite pale, and his hands, as he clenched and unclenched them
nervously, were cold, and his lips were very dry. He could think of no
possible relationship between Benjamin Corvet and himself, except one,
which could account for Corvet's obtaining and keeping these pictures
of him through the years. As Sherrill put the pictures back into their
envelope and the envelope back into his pocket, and Alan watched him,
Alan felt nearly certain now that it had not been proof of the nature
of this relationship that Sherrill had been trying to get from him, but
only corroboration of some knowledge, or partial knowledge, which had
come to Sherrill in some other way. The existence of this knowledge
was implied by Sherrill's withholding of the way he had come into
possession of the pictures, and his manner showed now that he had
received from Alan the confirmation for which he had been seeking.
"I think you know who I am," Alan said.
Sherrill had risen and stood looking down at him.
"You have guessed, if I am not mistaken, that you are Corvet's son."
The color flamed to Alan's face for an instant, then left it paler than
before. "I thought it must be that way," he answered; "but you said he
had no children."
"Benjamin Corvet and his wife had no children."
"I thought that was what you meant." A twinge twisted Alan's face; he
tried to control it but for a moment could not.
Sherrill suddenly put his hand on Alan's shoulder; there was something
so friendly, so affectionate in the quick, impulsive grasp of
Sherrill's fingers, that Alan's heart throbbed to it; for the first
time some one had touched him in full, unchecked feeling for him; for
the first time, the unknown about him had failed to be a barrier and,
instead, had drawn another to him.
"Do not misapprehend your father," Sherrill said quietly. "I cannot
prevent what other people may think when they learn this; but I do not
share such thoughts with them. There is much in this I cannot
understand; but I know that it is not merely the result of what others
may think it--of 'a wife in more ports than one,' as you will hear the
lakemen put it. What lies under this is some great misadventure which
had changed and frustrated all your father's life."
Sherrill crossed the room and rang for a servant.
"I am going to ask you to be my guest for a short time, Alan," he
announced. "I have had your bag carried to your room; the man will
show you which one it is."
Alan hesitated; he felt that Sherrill had not told him all he
knew--that there were some things Sherrill purposely was withholding
from him; but he could not force Sherrill to tell more than he wished;
so after an instant's irresolution, he accepted the dismissal.
Sherrill walked with him to the door, and gave his directions to the
servant; he stood watching, as Alan and the man went up the stairs.
Then he went back and seated himself in the chair Alan had occupied,
and sat with hands grasping the arms of the chair while he stared into
the fire.
Fifteen minutes later, he heard his daughter's footsteps and looked up.
Constance halted in the door to assure herself that he was now alone;
then she came to him and, seating herself on the arm of the chair, she
put her hand on his thin hair and smoothed it softly; he felt for her
other hand with his and found it, and held it clasped between his palms.
"You've found out who he is, father?" she asked.
"The facts have left me no doubt at all as to that, little daughter."
"No doubt that he is----who?"
Sherrill was silent for a moment--not from uncertainty, but because of
the effect which what he must say would have upon her; then he told her
in almost the same words he had used to Alan. Constance started,
flushed, and her hand stiffened convulsively between her father's.
They said nothing more to one another; Sherrill seemed considering and
debating something within himself; and presently he seemed to come to a
decision. He got up, stooped and touched his daughter's hand, and left
the room. He went up the stairs and on the second floor he went to a
front room and knocked. Alan's voice told him to come in. Sherrill
went in and, when he had made sure that the servant was not with Alan,
he closed the door carefully behind him.
Then he turned back to Alan, and for an instant stood indecisive as
though he did not know how to begin what he wanted to say. As he
glanced down at a key he took from his pocket, his indecision seemed to
receive direction and inspiration from it; and he put it down on Alan's
dresser.
"I've brought you," he said evenly, "the key to your house."
Alan gazed at him, bewildered. "The key to my house?"
"To the house on Astor Street," Sherrill confirmed. "Your father
deeded the house and its furniture and all its contents to you the day
before he disappeared. I have not the deed here; it came into my hands
the day before yesterday at the same time I got possession of the
pictures which might--or might not, for all I knew then--be you. I
have the deed down-town and will give it to you. The house is yours in
fee simple, given you by your father, not bequeathed to you by him to
become your property after his death. He meant by that, I think, even
more than the mere acknowledgment that he is your father."
Sherrill walked to the window and stood as though looking out, but his
eyes were blank with thought.
"For almost twenty years," he said, "your father, as I have told you,
lived in that house practically alone; during all those years a shadow
of some sort was over him. I don't know at all, Alan, what that shadow
was. But it is certain that whatever it was that had changed him from
the man he was when I first knew him culminated three days ago when he
wrote to you. It may be that the consequences of his writing to you
were such that, after he had sent the letter, he could not bring
himself to face them and so has merely ... gone away. In that case, as
we stand here talking, he is still alive. On the other hand, his
writing you may have precipitated something that I know nothing of. In
either case, if he has left anywhere any evidence of what it is that
changed and oppressed him for all these years, or if there is any
evidence of what has happened to him now, it will be found in his
house."
Sherrill turned back to Alan. "It is for you--not me, Alan," he said
simply, "to make that search. I have thought seriously about it, this
last half hour, and have decided that is as he would want it--perhaps
as he did want it--to be. He could have told me what his trouble was
any time in these twenty years, if he had been willing I should know;
but he never did."
Sherrill was silent for a moment.
"There are some things your father did just before he disappeared that
I have not told you yet," he went on. "The reason I have not told them
is that I have not yet fully decided in my own mind what action they
call for from me. I can assure you, however, that it would not help
you now in any way to know them."
He thought again; then glanced to the key on the dresser and seemed to
recollect.
"That key," he said, "is one I made your father give me some time ago;
he was at home alone so much that I was afraid something might happen
to him there. He gave it me because he knew I would not misuse it. I
used it, for the first time, three days ago, when, after becoming
certain something had gone wrong with him, I went to the house to
search for him; my daughter used it this morning when she went there to
wait for you. Your father, of course, had a key to the front door like
this one; his servant has a key to the servants' entrance. I do not
know of any other keys."
"The servant is in charge there now?" Alan asked.
"Just now there is no one in the house. The servant, after your father
disappeared, thought that, if he had merely gone away, he might have
gone back to his birthplace near Manistique, and he went up there to
look for him. I had a wire from him to-day that he had not found him
and was coming back."
Sherrill waited a moment to see whether there was anything more Alan
wanted to ask; then he went out.