Chapter 6

They had entered the room, and stood in a group before my father. Their faces were set grimly. Their manner was stern and uncompromising, as befitted men of unimpeachable position and integrity. As I watched them, I still was wondering at their errand. Why should they, of all people have paid this call? There was not one who did not own his ships and counting house, not one who was not a leading trader in our seaport. In all the years I had known them, not one had looked at me, or given me a civil word, and indeed, they had little reason to give one. And yet, here they were calling on my father.

It was an odd contradiction of the lesson books that of all the men in the room, he should appear the most prepossessing. Though many of them were younger, his clothes were more in fashion, and time had touched him with a lighter hand. If I had come on them all as strangers, I should have expected kindness and understanding from him first of any. His forehead was broader, and his glance was keener. Indeed, there was none who looked more the gentleman. There was no man who could have displayed more perfect courtesy in his gravely polite salute.

"This," said my father, smiling, "is indeed a pleasure. I had hoped for this honor, and yet the years have so often disappointed me that I had only hoped."

Captain Tracy, short and squat, his hands held out in the way old sailors have, as though ready instinctively to grasp some rope or bulwark, thrust a bull neck forward, and peered at my father with little, reddened eyes, opened in wide incredulity.

"You what?" he demanded hoarsely.

"I said, Captain Tracy, that I hoped,"--and my father helped himself to snuff--"Will you be seated, gentlemen?"

"No," said Major Proctor.

"I have always noted," my father remarked, "that standing is better for the figure. The climate, Major, has agreed with you."

Major Proctor launched on a savage rejoinder, but Mr. Penfield leaned towards him with a whispered admonition.

"I take it," he said to my father, "that you did not read our letter. You made a mistake, Mr. Shelton, a grave mistake, in not doing so."

"I am fond of reading," said my father, "and I found your letter--pardon my rudeness--but I must be frank--I found your letter most amusing."

Mr. Lane stretched a claw-like hand toward him.

"You always did laugh," he cried shrilly.

"Never now, Mr. Lane," replied my father. "Yet I must admit, if laughter were my habit--" he paused and surveyed Mr. Lane's pinched and bony figure.

"You found the letter amusing, eh?" snapped Captain Tracy. "You found it funny when we ordered you out of this town, did you? I suppose you thought we were joking, eh? Well, by Gad, we weren't, and that's what we've come to tell you. Heaven help us if we don't see you out on a rail, you damned--"

"Gently, gently," interjected Mr. Penfield, in a soothing tone. "Let us not use any harder words than necessary. Mr. Shelton will agree with us, I am sure. Mr. Shelton did not understand. Perhaps Mr. Shelton has forgotten."

"My memory," said my father, "still remains unimpaired. I recall the last time I saw you was some ten years ago in this very house. I recall at the time you warned me never to return here. In some ways, perhaps, you were right, and yet at present I find my residence here most expedient. Indeed, I find it quite impossible to leave. Frankly, gentlemen, the house is watched, and it is as much as my life is worth to stir outside the doors."

"Good God!" cried Mr. Lane, in the shrill voice that fitted him so well. "We might have known it!"

There was a momentary silence, and Major Proctor whispered in Mr. Penfield's ear.

"Captain Shelton," said Mr. Penfield, "I see your son and a woman are in the room. It might be better if you sent them away. Your son, I have heard, has learned to behave himself. There is no need for him to hear what we have to say to you."

There was a note of raillery in his voice that must have offended my father.

"Mr. Penfield is mistaken. I fear closed shutters make the room a trifle dark to see clearly. It is a lady, Mr. Penfield, who is with us."

Captain Tracy laughed. My father's hand dropped to his side. For a moment no one spoke. Captain Tracy moved his head half an inch further forward.

"Well?" he asked.

"Let us leave the matter for a moment," said my father. "It can wait. Pray continue, Mr. Penfield. My son will be glad to listen."

Mr. Penfield cleared his throat, and looked at the others uncertainly.

"Go on, Penfield," said the Major.

"Mr. Shelton," began Mr. Penfield stiffly, "ten years ago you were a gentleman."

"Could it have been possible?" said my father with a bow.

"Ten years ago you were a man that every one of us here trusted and respected, a friend of several. In the War of the Revolution you conducted yourself like a man of honor. You equipped your own brig with a letter of marque, and sailed it yourself off Jamaica. You fought in three engagements. You displayed a daring and bravery which we once admired."

"Could it have been possible?" my father bowed again. "I do recall I failed to stay at home," he added, bowing again to Mr. Penfield.

Mr. Penfield frowned, and continued a little more quickly:

"And when you did return, you engaged in the China trade. You were a successful man, Mr. Shelton. We looked upon you as one of the more brilliant younger men of our seaport. We trusted you, Captain Shelton."

"Could it have been possible!" exclaimed my father.

"Yes," said Mr. Penfield in a louder tone, "we trusted you. You have only to look at your books, if you have kept them, to remember that."

"My books," said my father, "still contrive to balance."

"In the year 1788," Mr. Penfield went on, "you remember that year, do you not? In that year the six of us here engaged in a venture. From the north we had carried here five hundred bales of fur, valued at fifty dollars to the bale. You contracted with us, Captain Shelton, to convey those bales to England. It would have been a nice piece of business, if your supercargo had not been an honest man. He knew you, Shelton, if we did not. He knew the game you had planned to play, and though he was your brother-in-law, he was man enough to stop it."

Mr. Penfield's voice had risen, so that it rang through the room, and his words followed each other in cold indictment. The others stood watching my father with strained attention.

"Indeed," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Penfield, "as you so aptly put it--indeed. Your ship carrying that consignment, had Jason Hill as supercargo, and Ned Aiken, that damned parasite of yours, as master. A day out from this port, a plank sprung aft, which obliged him to put back to Boston for repairs. The cargo was trans-shipped. When it was aboard again, Jason Hill happened to examine that cargo. The furs had gone. In their place five hundred bales of chips had been loaded in the hold. He went to the master for an explanation. Mr. Aiken, who had been drinking heavily, was asleep in the cabin, and on the table beside him was a letter, Shelton. You remember that letter? It bore instructions from you to scuttle that ship ten miles out of Liverpool harbor."

"And," said my father, with another bow, "I was to collect the insurance. It was nicely planned."

"If you remember that, you recall what happened next. We called on you, Shelton, and accused you of what you had done. You neither confirmed nor denied it. We told you then to leave the town. We warned you never to return. We warned you that we were through with your trickery. We were through with your cheating and your thieving. We warned you, Shelton, and now you're back, back, by your own confession, on another rogue's errand."

"Not on another's," my father objected mildly. "One of my own, Mr. Penfield. The experience you have outlined so lucidly convinced me that it was better to stick closely to my own affairs."

"Mr. Shelton," Mr. Penfield went on, regardless of the interruption, "we warned you yesterday to leave the town before nightfall, and you have failed to take our advice."

"I see no reason why I should leave," replied my father easily. "I am comfortable here for the moment. I would not be outside. Even the arguments you have given are specious. You got your furs back, and if I recall, they proved to be so badly moth eaten that they were not fit for any trade."

"Even though you see no reason," said Major Proctor smoothly, "you are going to leave, Shelton. You are going to leave in one hour. If you delay a minute later, we will come with friends who will know how to handle you. We will come in an hour with a tar pot and a feather mattress."

"You are not only unwelcome to us on account of your past," said Mr. Penfield, "but more recent developments make it impossible, quite impossible for you to stay. We have heard your story already from Mr. Jason Hill. You are right that it is no concern of ours, except that we remember the good of this town. We have a business with France, and we cannot afford to lose it. Major Proctor was blunt just now, and yet he is right. Give us credit for warning you, at least. You will go, of course?"

My father smiled again, and smoothed the wrinkles of his coat. For some reason the scene seemed vastly pleasant. He shrugged his shoulders in a deprecatory gesture, walked over to the table, and lifted up a glass of ram.

"I remarked before that I was quite comfortable here," he replied after a moment's pause. "I may add that I am amused. Since I have returned to the ancestral roof, and looked again at the portraits of my family, I have had many callers to entertain me. Two have tried to rob me. One has threatened me with death. And now six come, and threaten me with tar and feathers. Positively, it is too diverting to leave. Pray don't interrupt me, Captain Tracy. In a moment you shall have the floor."

He took a sip from his rum glass, watching them over the brim. And then he continued, slowly and coldly, yet turning every period with a perfect courtesy:

"There is one thing, only one, that you and all my other callers appear to have overlooked. You fail for some reason to realize that I do things only of my own volition. It is eccentric, I know, but we all have our failings."

He paused to place his glass daintily on the table, and straightened the lace at his wrist with careful solicitude.

"Once before this morning I have stated that I am not particularly afraid of anything. Strange as it may seem, this statement still applies. Or put it this way,--I have grown blase. People have threatened me too often. No, gentlemen, you are going to lose your trading privileges, I think. And I am going to remain in my house quite as long as I choose."

"Which will be one hour," said Major Proctor.

"Be careful, Major," said my father. "You have grown too stout to risk your words. Do you care to know why I am going to remain?"

No one answered.

"Then I will tell you," he went on. "Three of my ships are in the harbor, and times are troublesome at sea. They are armed with heavy metal, and manned by quite as reckless and unpleasant a lot of men as I have ever beheld on a deck. Between them they have seventeen guns of varying calibre, and there is powder in their magazines. Do I need to go any further, or do we understand each other?"

"No," snapped Captain Tracy hoarsely. "I'm damned if we do."

"It sounds crude, as I say it," he continued apologetically, "and yet true, nevertheless. As soon as I see anyone of you, or any of my other neighbors enter my grounds again, I shall order my ships to tack down the river, and open fire on the town. They have sail ready now, gentlemen. My servant has gone already to carry them my order."

"And you'll hang for piracy tomorrow morning," laughed the Major harshly. "Shelton, you have grown mad."

"Exactly," said my father gently. "Mad, Major. Mad enough to put my threat into effect in five minutes, if you do not leave this house; mad enough to scuttle every ship in this harbor; mad enough to set your warehouses in flames; mad enough even to find the company of you and your friends most damnably dull and wearisome; mad enough to wonder why I ever suffered you to remain so long beneath my roof; mad enough to believe you a pack of curs and cowards, and mad enough to treat you as such. Keep off, Tracy, you bloated fool!"

"By God!" Captain Tracy shouted, "We'll burn this house over your head. In an hour we'll have you shot against the town hall."

"Perhaps," said my father, "and yet I doubt it. Pray remember that I keep my word. Your hats are in the hall, gentlemen. In three minutes now my ships weigh anchor. If you do not go, I cannot stop them."

Mr. Penfield had grown a trifle pale. "Captain Shelton," he demanded slowly, "are you entirely serious? I almost believe you are. Of course you understand the consequences?"

"Perfectly," said my father.

"Let us go, gentlemen," said Mr. Penfield. "You will hear from us later." And he turned quickly towards the hall.

As he did so, my father drew back his right arm, and drove his fist into Captain Tracy's upturned face. His blow was well directed, for the captain staggered and fell. In almost the same motion he wheeled on Major Proctor, who had started back, and was tugging at his sword.

"Later, perhaps, Major," he said, without even lifting his voice. "But today I am busy. Pray take him away. He was always indiscreet. And you," he added to Mr. Lane, "surely you know well enough not to try conclusions with me. Take him away. Your hats are in the hall. I shall show you the door myself. After you, gentlemen."

And he followed them, closing the door gently behind him.

X

Mademoiselle, who had risen from her chair, where she had listened, only half understanding the conversation in a tongue foreign from hers, stared at the closed door, her lips parted, and her forehead wrinkled.

"What have they been saying?" she asked. "Why are they afraid? Is everyone afraid of this father of yours?"

And then, impulsively, she seized me by the arm.

"But it makes no difference. Come, it is our one chance; come quickly, Monsieur. I must speak to you, where he will not disturb us."

"But where?" I asked, still staring straight before me; and then I noticed a bolt on the morning room door. I sprang toward it and drew it hastily. "It will do no good to talk, Mademoiselle. If you had understood--" And as I spoke, the enormity of the thing loomed still larger before me.

"Mademoiselle, this morning he has robbed my uncle of a fortune, snatched it from him here in this very room, and now he has threatened to move his ships into midstream, and to open fire on the town! And Mademoiselle, he means to do it. I thought once--but he means to do it, Mademoiselle."

She pursed her lips, and looked at me from the corner of her eye.

"Pouf!" she said. "So you are growing frightened also. Yet I can understand. The Marquis always said that Captain Shelton could frighten the devil himself."

"Frightened!" I echoed, and the blood rushed into my cheeks.

"Mon Dieu! Perhaps you are not. Listen, Monsieur, I am not taunting you. I am not saying he will not. He is serious, Monsieur, and you must leave him alone, or perhaps I shall not get the paper after all, and remember, I must have it. My brother must have it, and he shall, only you must not disturb him. He may shoot at the town, if he cares to, or murder your uncle. He has often spoken of it at Blanzy, but the paper is another matter. You must leave it to me."

"To you!" I cried.

"Precisely," said Mademoiselle. "You--what can you do? You are young. You are inexperienced. Pardon me, but you would be quite ineffective."

My cheeks flamed again. Somehow no sarcasm of my father's had bitten as deep as those last words of hers. I do not know whether it was chagrin or anger that I felt at the bitter sense of my own futility. And she had seen it all. As coldly and as accurately as my father, she had watched me, and as coldly she had given her verdict. She was watching me now with a cool, confident smile that made me turn away.

"Ah," she said, "I have hurt you, and believe me, I did not mean to."

Something in the polite impersonality of her voice gave me a vague resentment. She had moved nearer, and yet I could not meet her glance.

"I am sorry" she said, and paused expectantly, but I could only stare at the floor in silence.

"Believe me, I am sorry."

It might have been different if I had detected the slightest contrition, but instead I seemed only to afford her mild amusement.

"There is no need to be sorry," I replied.

"Ah, but there is!" she said quickly, "Last night you were very kind. Last night you tried to help me."

I seemed to see her again, standing pale and troubled, while my father watched her, coldly appraising, and Brutus grinned at her across the room.

"Mademoiselle" I began, "Anything that I did last night--"

"Was quite unnecessary," she said, "And very foolish."

I drew a sharp breath. The bit of gallantry I had on my mind to speak seemed weak and useless now.

"Mademoiselle is mistaken" I lied smoothly, "Nothing that I did last night was on her account."

"Nothing!" she exclaimed sharply, "I do not understand."

"No, nothing," I said, "Pray believe me, anything I did, however foolish, was solely for myself. I have my own affair to settle with my father."

"Bah!" cried Mademoiselle, tapping her foot on the floor, and oddly enough my reply seemed to have made her angry, "So you are like all the rest of them, stupid, narrow, calculating!"

"If Mademoiselle will only listen," I began, strangely puzzled and singularly contrite.

"Listen to you!" she cried, "No, Monsieur, I have listened to you quite long enough to know your type. I see now you are quite what I thought you would be. I say you are entirely ineffective, and must leave your father alone. You do not understand him. You do not even know him. With me it is different. I have seen the world. He is temperamental, your father, a genius in his way, and a little mad, perhaps. Leave him to me, Monsieur, and it will be quite all right. Last night, it was so sudden, that I was frightened for a moment. I should have remembered he is erratic and apt to change his mind. I should have guessed why he changed it. It is you, Monsieur. You have had a bad effect upon him. You have made him turn suddenly grotesque. What did you do to him last evening?

"Do to him?" I asked, stupidly enough. "Why, nothing. I listened to him, Mademoiselle, just as I have been listening to him all this morning."

"And yet," she said, "it is your fault. Usually he is most well behaved. He is moderate, Monsieur. At Blanzy a glass of wine at dinner was all he ever desired. For days at a time, I have hardly heard him say a word. The Marquis would call him the Sphinx, and what has he been doing here? Drinking bottle after bottle, talking steadily, acting outrageously. What is more, he has been doing so ever since he spoke of returning home. I tell you, Monsieur, you must keep away from him, or perhaps he will do with the paper exactly what he says. Pray do not scowl. Laugh, Monsieur, it is funny."

"Funny?" I exclaimed, as stupidly as before. Mademoiselle sighed.

"If the Marquis had only lived--how he would have laughed. It was odd, the sense of humor of the Marquis. Strange how much alike they were, the Marquis and your father."

"It is pleasant that Mademoiselle and I should have something in common," I said.

Her gaze grew very soft and far away.

"Not as much as they had. We never shall. I think it was because they both were embittered with life, both a trifle tired and cynical. My father thought there should be a king of France, and yet I think he knew there could not be one. Your father--it is another story."

"Quite," I agreed. "And yet Mademoiselle will pardon me--I fail to see what they had in common."

"You say that," said Mademoiselle, "because you do not know him as well as I do. Do you not see that he is a bitter, disappointed man? They were both disappointed."

I examined the bolt on the door, and found it firm, despite its age. I glanced over the long, low studded room, and moved a chair from the center to a place nearer the wall. Her glance followed me inquiringly, but I forestalled her question.

"Mademoiselle," I observed, "was pointing out that she found something droll in the situation."

"And is it not droll you should have changed him?" she inquired, and yet I thought she looked around uneasily. "You have, Monsieur. He was cautious before this. He foresaw everything. He was willing to risk nothing. He even warned the Marquis against attacking the coach."

I began to perceive why the Marquis honored my father with his friendship.

"Was attacking coaches a frequent habit of the Marquis?" I asked.

"Has he not told you?" she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

"One would hardly call our conversation confidential," I explained. "Is that what you find so droll?"

And indeed, she seemed in a rare good humor, and inexplicably gay. A curious Mona Lisa smile kept bending her lips and twinkling in her eyes. The lowering clouds outside, the creakings of the beams and rafters under the east wind, nor even the drab gloom of her surroundings seemed to dampen her sudden access of good nature. The events she had witnessed seemed also to please her. Was it spite that had made her smile when she watched my father and his visitors? Was it spite that made her smile now, as she gazed at the room's battered prosperity, and at my grandfather's portrait above the mantlepiece, in the unruffled dignity of its blackening oils?

"It was the coach," said Mademoiselle, "of Napoleon at Montmareuil. A dozen of them set upon the coach. The lead horses were killed, and in an instant they were at the doors. They flung them open, but he was not inside. Instead, the coach was filled with the consular police. The paper, the paper they had signed, was at Blanzy, and your father had agreed to rescue it in case of accident. He would not leave me, Monsieur, and he would not destroy the paper."

She paused, and regarded me with a frown that had more of curiosity in it than displeasure.

"It was all well enough," she added, "until he heard of you, until you and he had dinner. It is something you did, something you said, that has made it all different. I ask you--what have you done to him? He was our friend before he saw you. Or why would he have ridden through half of France with Napoleon's police a half a league behind him? Why did he risk everything to bring out the paper when he might have burned it? Why did he not sell it there? He might have done so half a dozen times. Why does he wait till now?

"Do you know what I would say if you were older and less transparent? Do you know?"

An imperious, ringing note had entered into her voice, which made me regard her with a sudden doubt. About her was the same charm and mystery that had held me silent and curious, the same unnatural assurance, and cold disregard of her surroundings; but her eyes had grown watchful and unfriendly.

"I would say that you had turned him against us, and if you had--"

"Mademoiselle is overwrought," I said.

She tapped her foot on the floor impatiently, and compressed her lips.

"I am never overwrought," said Mademoiselle. "It is a luxury my family has not been allowed for many years. I say your father was an honest man, as men go, and a brave one too, and that you have changed him, and I warn you to leave him alone in the future. You do not know him, or how to deal with him. I tell you his trifling about the paper is a passing phase, and that you must not disturb him. No, no, do not protest. I know well enough you are not to blame. You must leave him to me. That is all."

"It pains me not to do as Mademoiselle suggests," I said.

"You mean you will not?" she flashed back at me angrily.