Chapter 4

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."