The two old men sat in the library, eyeing the blue envelope that lay
on the end of the long table nearest the fireplace, where a merry but
unnoticed blaze crackled in the vain effort to cry down the shrieks of
the bleak December wind that whistled about the corners of the house.
Someone had come into the room--they did not know who nor when--to poke
up the fire and to throw fresh coals into the grate. No doubt it was the
parlourmaid. She was always doing something of the sort. It seemed to
be her duty. Or, it might have been the housekeeper, in case the
parlourmaid was out for the evening. Whoever it was, she certainly had
poked up the fire, and in doing so had been compelled to push two pairs
of feet out of the way to avoid trampling upon them.
Still they couldn't recall having seen her. For that matter, it wasn't
of the slightest consequence. Of course, they might have poked it up
themselves and saved her the trouble, but these ancients were not in the
habit of doing anything that could be done by menials in the employ
of Mr Brood. Their minds were centred upon the blue envelope that
had arrived shortly after dinner. The fire was an old story; the blue
envelope was a novelty.
From some shifting spot far out upon the broad Atlantic the contents
of that blue envelope had come through the air, invisible, mysterious,
uncanny. They could not understand it at all. A wireless message! It was
the first of its kind they had seen, and they were very old men, who had
seen everything else in the world--if one could believe their boastful
tales.
They had sailed the seven seas and they had traversed all the lands of
the earth, and yet here was mystery. A man had spoken out of the air
a thousand miles away, and his words were lying there on the end of a
library-table, in front of a cheerful hearthstone, within reach of their
wistful fingers; and someone had come in to poke up the fire without
their knowledge. How could they be expected to know?
There was something maddening in the fact that the envelope would have
to remain unopened until young Frederic Brood came home for the night.
They found themselves wondering if by any chance he would fail to come
in at all. Their hour for retiring was ten o'clock, day in, day out.
As a rule they went to sleep about half-past eight. They seldom retired
unless someone made the act possible by first awakening them.
The clock on the wide mantelpiece had declared some time before, in
ominous tones, that half-past ten had arrived, and yet they were not
sleepy. They had not been so thoroughly wideawake in years.
Up to half-past nine they discussed the blue envelope with every inmate
of the house, from Mrs John Desmond, the housekeeper, down to the
voiceless but eloquent decanter of port that stood between them, first
on the arm of one chair, then the other. They were very old men;
they could soliloquise without in the least disturbing each other. An
observer would say, during these periods of abstraction, that their
remarks were addressed to the decanter, and that the poor decanter had
something to say in return. But, for all that, their eyes seldom left
the broad blue envelope that had lain there since half-past eight.
They knew that it came directly or indirectly from the man to whom
they owed their present condition of comfort and security after half
a century of vicissitudes; from the man whose life they had saved more
than once in those old, evil days when comforts were so few that they
passed without recognition in the maelstrom of events. From mid-ocean
James Brood was speaking to his son. His words--perhaps his cry for
help--were lying there on the end of the table, confined in a flimsy blue
envelope, and no one dared to liberate them.
Frederic Brood deserved a thrashing for staying out so late--at least,
so the decanter had been told a dozen times or more, and the clock,
too, for that matter, to say nothing of the confidences reposed in the
coal-scuttle, the fire implements, and other patient listeners of a like
character.
It may be well to state that these bosom friends and comrades of half a
hundred years had quarrelled at seven o'clock that evening over a very
important matter--the accuracy of individual timepieces. The watch of
Mr Danbury Dawes had said it was five minutes before seven; that of Mr
Joseph Riggs three minutes after. Since then neither had spoken to the
other, but each slyly had set his watch by the big clock in the hall
before going into dinner, and was prepared to meet any argument.
Twenty years ago these two old cronies had met James Brood in one of the
blackest holes of Calcutta, a derelict being swept to perdition with
the swiftness and sureness of a tide that knows no pause. They found him
when the dregs were at his lips and the stupor of defeat in his brain.
Without meaning to be considered Samaritans, good or bad, they dragged
him from the depths and found that they had revived _a man_. Those were
the days when James Brood's life meant nothing to him, days when he was
tortured by the thought that it would be all too long for him to endure;
yet he was not the kind to murder himself as men do who lack the courage
to go on living.
Weeks after the rescue in Calcutta, these two soldiers of fortune, and
another John Desmond, learned from the lips of the man himself that he
was not such as they, but rich in this world's goods, richer than the
Solomon of their discreet imagination. Shaken, battered, but sobered, he
related portions of his life's story to them, and they guessed the rest,
being men who had lived by correctly guessing for half the years of
their adventurous lives.
Like Brood they were Americans. But, unlike him, they had spent most of
their lives in the deserts of time and had sown seeds which could
never be reaped except in the form of narrative. Ever in pursuit of the
elusive thing called luck, they had found it only in hairbreadth escapes
from death, in the cunning avoidance of catastrophe, in devil-may-care
leaps in the dark, in all the ways known to men who find the world too
small.
Never had luck served them on a golden platter. For twenty-five years
and more these three men, Dawes, Riggs, and poor John Desmond, had
thrashed through the world in quest of the pot of gold at the foot of
the rainbow, only to find that the rainbow was for ever lifting, for
ever shifting; yet they complained not. They throve on misfortune, they
courted it along with the other things in life, and they were unhappy
only when ill luck singled one of them out and spared the others.
What Brood told them of his life brought the grim smile of appreciation
to the lips of each. He had married a beautiful foreigner--an Austrian,
they gathered--of excellent family, and had taken her to his home in
New York City, a house in lower Fifth Avenue where his father and
grandfather had lived before him. And that was the very house in
which two of the wayfarers, after twenty years, now sat in rueful
contemplation of a blue envelope.
A baby boy came to the Broods in the second year of their wedded life,
but before that there had come a man--a music-master, dreamy-eyed,
handsome, Latin; a man who played upon the harp as only the angels are
believed to play. In his delirious ravings Brood cursed this man and the
wife he had stolen away from him; he reviled the baby boy, even denying
him; he laughed with blood-curdling glee over the manner in which he had
cast out the woman who had broken his heart and crushed his pride; he
wailed in anguish over the mistake he had made in allowing the man to
live that he might gloat in triumph.
This much the three men who lifted him from hell were able to learn from
lips that knew not what they said, and they were filled with pity. Later
on, in a rational weakness, he told them more, and without curses. A
deep, silent, steadfast bitterness succeeded the violent ravings. He
became a wayfarer with them, quiet, dogged, fatal; where they went he
also went; what they did so also did he.
Soon he led, and they followed. Into the dark places of the world they
plunged. Perils meant little to him, death even less. They no longer
knew days of privation, for he shared his wealth with them; but they
knew no rest, no peace, no safety. Life had been a whirlwind before they
came upon James Brood; it was a hurricane afterward.
Twice John Desmond, younger than Dawes and Riggs, saved the life of
James Brood by acts of unparalleled heroism: once in a South African
jungle when a lioness fought for her young, and again in upper India
when, single-handed, he held off a horde of Hindus for days while his
comrade lay wounded in a cavern. Dawes and Riggs, in the Himalayas,
crept down the wall of a precipice, with five thousand feet between them
and the bottom of the gorge, to drag him from a narrow ledge upon which
he lay unconscious after a misstep in the night. More than once--aye,
more than a dozen times--one or the other of these loyal friends stood
between him and death, and times without number he, too, turned the grim
reaper aside from them.
John Desmond, gay, handsome, and still young as men of his kind go, met
the fate that brooks no intervention. He was the first to drop out of
the ranks. In Cairo, during a curious period of inactivity some ten
months after the advent of James Brood, he met the woman who conquered
his venturesome spirit; a slim, clean, pretty English governess in the
employ of a British admiral's family. They were married inside of a
fortnight. After the quiet little ceremony, from which the sinister
presence of James Brood was missing, he shook the bronzed hands of his
older comrades, and gave up the life he had led for the new one she
promised. At the pier Brood appeared and wished him well, and he sailed
away on a sea that bade fair to remain smooth to the end of time. He
was taking her home to the little Maryland town that had not seen him in
years.
Ten years passed before James Brood put his foot on the soil of his
native land. Then he came back to the home of his fathers, to the home
that had been desecrated, and with him came the two old men who now sat
in his huge library before the crackling fire. He could go on with life,
but they were no longer fit for its cruel hardships. His home became
theirs. They were to die there when the time came.
Brood's son was fifteen years of age before he knew, even by sight, the
man whom he called father. Up to the time of the death of his mother who
died heart-broken in her father's home--he had been kept in seclusion.
There had been deliberate purpose in the methods of James Brood in so
far as this unhappy child was concerned. When he cast out the mother he
set his hand heavily upon her future.
Fearing, even feeling, the infernal certainty that this child was not
his own, he planned with diabolical cruelty to hurt her to the limit of
his powers and to the end of her days. He knew she would hunger for this
baby boy of hers, that her heart could be broken through him, that her
punishment could be made full and complete.
He sequestered the child in a place where he could not be found, and
went his own way, grimly certain that he was making her pay! She died
when Frederic was twelve years old, without having seen him again after
that dreadful hour when, protesting her innocence, she had been turned
out into the night and told to go whither she would, but never to return
to the house she had disgraced. James Brood heard of her death when in
the heart of China, and he was a haggard wreck for months thereafter.
He had worshipped this beautiful Viennese. He could not wreak vengeance
upon a dead woman; he could not hate a dead woman. He had always loved
her. It was after this that he stood on the firing-line of many a
fiercely fought battle in the Orient, inviting the bullet that would rip
through his heart.
It was not courage, but cowardice, that put him in spots where the
bullets were thickest; it was not valour that sent him among the
bayonets and sabres of a fanatical enemy. It was the thing at the bottom
of his soul that told him she would come to him once more when the
strife was ended, and that she was waiting for him somewhere beyond
the border to hear his plea for pardon! Of such flimsy shreds is man's
purpose made!
Five years after his return to New York he brought her son back to the
house in lower Fifth Avenue and tried, with bitterness in his soul,
to endure the word “father” as it fell from lips to which the term was
almost strange.
The old men, they who sat by the fire on this wind-swept night and
waited for the youth of twenty-two to whom the blue missive was
addressed, knew the story of James Brood and his wife Matilde, and they
knew that the former had no love in his heart for the youth who bore his
name. Their lips were sealed. Garrulous on all other subjects, they were
as silent as the grave on this.
They, too, were constrained to hate the lad. He made not the slightest
pretence of appreciating their position in the household. To him they
were pensioners, no more, no less; to him their deeds of valour were
offset by the deeds of his father; there was nothing left over for a
balance on that score. He was politely considerate; he was even kindly
disposed toward their vagaries and whims; he endured them because there
was nothing else left for him to do. But, for all that, he despised
them; justifiably, no doubt, if one bears in mind the fact that they
signified more to James Brood than did his long-neglected son.
The cold reserve that extended to the young man did not carry beyond him
in relation to any other member of the household so far as James Brood
was concerned. The unhappy boy, early in their acquaintance, came to
realise that there was little in common between him and the man he
called father. After a while the eager light died out of his own eyes
and he no longer strove to encourage the intimate relations he had
counted upon as a part of the recompense for so many years of separation
and loneliness.
It required but little effort on his part to meet his father's
indifference with a coldness quite as pronounced. He had never known the
meaning of filial love; he had been taught by word of mouth to love the
man he had never seen, and he had learned as one learns astronomy--by
calculation. He hated the two old men because his father loved them.
In a measure, this condition may serve to show how far apart they stood
from each other, James Brood and Frederic. Wanderlust and a certain
feeling of unrest that went even deeper than the old habits kept James
Brood away from his home many months out of the year. He was not an old
man; in fact, he was under fifty, and possessed of the qualities that
make for strength and virility even unto the age of fourscore years.
While his old comrades, far up in the seventies, were content to sit
by the fire in winter and in the shade in summer, he, not yet so old as
they when their long stretch of intimacy began, was not resigned to the
soft things of life. He was built of steel, and the steel within him
called for the clash with flint. He loved the spark of fire that flashed
in the contact.
It was a harsh December night when the two old men sat guard over the
message from the sea, and it was on a warm June day that they had said
good-bye to him at the outset of his most recent flight.
The patient butler, Jones, had made no less than four visits to the
library since ten o'clock to awaken them and pack them off to bed. Each
time he had been ordered away, once with the joint admonition to “mind
his own business.”
“But it is nearly midnight,” protested Jones irritably, with a glance at
the almost empty decanter.
“Jones,” said Danbury Dawes with great dignity and an eye that deceived
him to such a degree that he could not for the life of him understand
why Jones was attending them in pairs, “Jones, you ought to be
in--hic--bed, damn you both of you. Wha' you mean, sir, by coming in--hic--here
thish time o' night dis-disturbing----”
“You infernal ingrate,” broke in Mr Riggs fiercely, “don't you dare to
touch that bottle, sir! Let it alone!”
“It's time you were in bed,” pronounced Jones, taking Mr Dawes by the
arm.
Mr Dawes sagged heavily in his chair and grinned triumphantly. He was a
short, very fat old man.
“People who live in--hic--glass houses--------” he began amiably, and then
suddenly was overtaken by the thought of the moment before. “Take your
hand off of me, confoun' you! D' you sup-supposh I can go to bed with
my bes' frien' out there--hic--in the mid-middle of Atlan'ic Oc-o-shum,
sinking in four miles of wa-wa'er and calling f-far help?”
“Take him to bed, Jones,” said Mr Riggs firmly. “He's drunk and-and
utterly useless at a time like this. Take him along.”
“Who the dev--hic--il are you, sir?” demanded Mr Dawes, regarding Mr Riggs
as if he had never seen him before.
“You are both drunk,” said Jones succinctly. Mr Riggs began to whimper.
“My bes' frien' is drawnin' by inches, and you come in here and tell me
I'm drunk. It's most heartless thing I ever heard of. Isn't it, Danbury,
ol' pal? Isn't it, damn you? Speak up!”
“Drawnin' by inches--hic--in four miles of wa-water,” admitted Mr Dawes
miserably. “My God, Jo-Jones, do you know how many--hic--inches there are
in four miles?”
Moved by the same impulse, the two old men struggled to their feet and
embraced each other, swayed by an emotion so honest that all sense of
the ludicrous was removed. Even Jones, though he grinned, allowed a note
of gentleness to creep into his voice.
“Come along, gentlemen, like good fellows. Let's go to bed. I'm sure the
message to Mr Frederic is not as bad as you----”
Mr Riggs, who was head and shoulders taller than Mr Dawes, made a
gesture of despair with both arms, forgetting that they encircled his
friend's neck, with the result that both of his bony elbows came in
violent contact with Mr Dawes's ears, almost upsetting him.
“Don't argue, Jones,” he interrupted dismally. “I know it's bad news. So
does Mr Dawes. Don't you, Danbury?”
“What d' you mean by--hic--knockin' my hat off?” demanded Mr Dawes
furiously, shaking his fist at Mr Riggs from rather close quarters--so
close, in fact, that Mr Riggs suddenly clapped his hands to his stomach
and emitted a surprised groan.
Jones inserted his figure between them.
“Come, come, gentlemen; don't forget yourselves. What now, Mr Riggs?”
“I'm lookin' for the gentleman's hat, sir,” said Mr Riggs impressively
from a stooping posture.
“His hat is on the rack in the hall,” said Jones sharply.
“Then I shan't ex-expect an--hic--'pology,” said Mr Dawes magnanimously.
Mr Riggs opened his mouth to retort, but as he did so his eyes fell upon
the blue envelope.
“Poor old Jim--poor old Jim Brood!” he groaned. “We mustn't lose
a minute, Danbury. He needs us, old pal. We must start relief
exp'ition' fore mornin'. Not a minute to be lost, Jones--not a----”
The heavy front door closed with a bang at that instant, and the sound
of footsteps, came from the hall--a quick, firm tread that had decision
in it.
Jones cast a furtive, nervous glance over his shoulder.
“I'm sorry to have Mr Frederic see you like this,” he said, biting his
lip. “He hates it so.”
The two old men made a commendable effort to stand erect, but no effort
to stand alone. They linked arms and stood shoulder to shoulder.
“Show him in,” said Mr Riggs magnificently.
“Now we'll fin' out wass in telegram off briny deep,” said Mr Dawes,
straddling his legs a little farther apart in order to declare a staunch
front.
“It's worth waiting up for,” said Mr Riggs.
“Abs'lutely,” said his staunch friend.
Frederic Brood appeared in the door, stopping short just inside the
heavy curtains. There was a momentary picture, such as a stage-director
would have arranged. He was still wearing his silk hat and top-coat, and
one glove had been halted in the process of removal. Young Brood stared
at the group of three, a frank stare of amazement. A crooked smile came
to his lips.
“Somewhat later than usual, I see,” he said, and the glove came off with
a jerk. “What's the matter, Jones? Rebellion?”
“No, sir. It's the wireless, sir.”
“Wireless?”
“Briny deep,” said Mr Dawes, vaguely pointing.
“Oh,” said young Brood, crossing slowly to the table. He picked up the
envelope and looked at the inscription. “Oh,” said he again in quite a
different tone on seeing that it was addressed to him. “From father, I
dare say,” he went on, a fine line appearing between his eyebrows.
The old men leaned forward, fixing their blear eyes upon the missive.
“Le's hear the worst, Freddy,” said Mr Riggs.
The young man ran his finger under the flap and deliberately drew out
the message. There ensued another picture. As he read, his eyes widened
and then contracted; his firm young jaw became set and rigid. Suddenly
a short, bitter execration fell from his lips and the paper crumpled in
his hand. Without another word he strode to the fireplace and tossed it
upon the coals. It flared for a second and was wafted up the chimney, a
charred, feathery thing.
Without deigning to notice the two old men who had sat up half the night
to learn the contents of that wonderful thing from the sea, he whirled
on his heel and left the room. One might have noticed that his lips were
drawn in a mirthless, sardonic smile, and that his eyes were angry.
“Oh, Lordy!” sighed Danbury Dawes, blinking, and was on the point of
sitting down abruptly. The arm of Jones prevented.
“I never was so insulted in my----” began
Joseph Riggs feebly.
“Steady, gentlemen,” said Jones. “Lean on me, please.”