THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN
BY J.P. MARQUAND
1922
I
I have seen the improbable turn true too often not to have it disturb me.Suppose these memoirs still exist when the French royalist plot of 1805and my father's peculiar role in it are forgotten. I cannot help butremember it is a restless land across the water. But surely people willcontinue to recollect. Surely these few pages, written with the solepurpose of explaining my father's part in the affair, will not degenerateinto anything so pitifully fanciful as the story of a man who tried hisbest to be a bad example because he could not be a good one.
It was my Uncle Jason who was with me when I learned of my father'sreturn to America. I still remember the look of sympathetic concern onhis broad, good-natured face, as I read my father's letter. There wasanxiety written there as he watched me, for my uncle was a kindly,thoughtful man. For the moment he seemed to have quite forgotten theaffairs of his counting house, and the inventory of goods from France,which a clerk had placed before him. Of late he had taken in me anunaccustomed interest, in no wise allayed by the letter I was holding.
"So he is here," said my Uncle Jason.
"He is just arrived," I answered.
"I had heard of it," he remarked thoughtfully. "And you will seehim, Henry?"
"Yes," I replied, "since she asked me to."
"She had asked you? Your mother? You did not tell me that." His voicehad been sharp and reproachful, and then he had sighed. "After all," hewent on more gently, "he is your father, and you must respect him assuch, Henry, hard as it is to do so. I am sorry, almost, that he and Ihave quarreled, for in many ways your father was a remarkable man whomight have gone far, except for his failing. God knows I did my best tohelp him."
And he sighed again at the small success of his efforts and returned tothe papers that lay before him on the counting house table. His businesshad become engrossing of late, and gave him little leisure.
"Do not be too hard on him, Henry," he said, as I departed.
It was ten years since I had seen my father, ten years when we changemore than we do during the rest of a lifetime. Ten years back we hadlived in a great house with lawns that ran down to the river where ourships pulled at their moorings. My father and I had left the housetogether--I for school, and my father--I have never learned where he hadgone. I was just beginning to see the starker outlines of a world thathas shaken off the shadows of youth when I saw him again.
I remember it was a morning early in autumn. The wind was fresh off thesea, making the pounding of the surf on the beach seem very near as Iurged my horse from the neat, quiet streets of the town up the ruttedlane that led to the Shelton house. The tang of the salt marshes was inthe wind, and a touch of frost over the meadows told me the ducks wouldsoon be coming in from shelter. Already the leaves were falling off thetall elms, twisting in little spirals through the clear October sunlight.
And yet, in spite of the wind and the sea and the clean light of theforenoon, there was a sadness about the place, and an undercurrent ofuneasy silence that the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the surfonly seemed to accentuate. It was like the silence that falls about atable when the guests have left it, and the chairs are empty and thelights are growing dim. It was the silence that comes over all placeswhere there should be people, and yet where no one comes.
The shrubbery my grandfather had brought from England was more wild anddisordered than when I had seen it last. The weeds had choked the formalgarden that once grew before the front door. And the house--I had oftenpictured that house in my memory--with its great arched doorway, itssmall-paned windows and its gambrel roof. Once it had seemed to me amassive and majestic structure. Now those ten years had made it shrink toa lonely, crumbling building that overlooked the harbor mouth. Clematishad swarmed over the bricks, a tangle of dead and living vines. The paintwas chipping from the doors and window ledges. Here and there a shutterhad broken loose and was sagging on rusted hinges. Houses are apt tofollow the direction their owners take.
I knew I was being watched, though I cannot tell how I knew it. Yet I sawnothing until I was nearly at our door. I remember I was noticing thegreen stain from the brass knocker on its paneling, when my horse snortedand stopped dead in his tracks. From the overgrown clump of lilacs thatflanked the granite stone which served as a door-step something wasglinting in the sun, and then as I looked more closely, I saw a facepeering at me from between the twigs, a face of light mahogany with thicklips that showed the presence of negro blood. It was Brutus, my father'shalf-caste servant.
Dark and saturnine as ever, he glided out into the path in front of me,thrusting something back into the sash around his waist, moved toward me,and took my horse's head. His teeth shone when I spoke to him, but hesaid never a word in return to my greeting. There was a touch of Indianin his blood that made his speech short and laconic. Nevertheless, he wasglad to see me. He grasped my shoulder as I dismounted, and shook megently from side to side. His great form loomed before me, his lipsframed in a cheerful grin, his eyes appraising and friendly. And then Inoticed for the first time the livid welt of a cut across his cheek.Brutus read my glance, but he only shook his head in answer.
"What do you mean, hiding in those bushes?" I asked him roughly.
"Always must see who is coming," said Brutus. "Monsieur may not want tosee who is coming--you understan'?"
"No," I said, "I don't understand."
His grasp on my shoulder tightened.
"Then you go home," he said, "You go home now. Something happen. Monsieurvery angry. Something bad--you understan'?"
"He is in the house?" I asked.
Brutus nodded.
"Then take this horse," I said, and swung open the front door.
A draft eddied through the broad old hallway as I stepped over thethreshold, and there was a smell of wood smoke that told me the chimneyswere still cold from disuse. Someone had stored the hall full of coils ofrope and sailcloth, but in the midst of it the same tall clock wasticking out its cycle, and the portraits of the Shelton family still hungagainst the white panels.
The long, brown rows of books still lined the walls of the morning room.The long mahogany table in the center was still littered with maps andpapers. There were the same rusted muskets and small swords in the rackby the fireplace, and in front of the fire in a great, high-backedarmchair my father was sitting. I paused with a curious feeling of doubt,surprise and diffidence. Somehow I had pictured a different meeting and adifferent man. He must surely have heard my step and the jingling of myspurs as I crossed the room, but he never so much as raised his head. Hestill rested, leaning indolently back, watching the flames dance up thechimney. He was dressed in gray satin small clothes that went well withhis slender figure. His wig was fresh powdered, and his throat and wristswere framed in spotless lace. The care of his person was almost the onlytribute he paid to his past.
I must have stood for twenty seconds watching him while he watched thefire, before he turned and faced me, and when he did I had forgotten thewords I had framed to greet him. I knew he was preparing to meet a hardordeal. He knew as well as I there was no reason why I should be glad tosee him. Yet he showed never a trace of uncertainty. His eye neverwavered. His lips were drawn in the same supercilious upward curve thatgave him the expression I most often remembered. Ten years had not donemuch to change him. The pallor I had remembered on his features had beenburned off by a tropical sun. That was all. There was hardly a wrinkleabout his eyes, hardly a tell-tale crease in his high forehead. Whereverhe had been, whatever he had done, his serenity was still unshaken. Itstill lay over him, placid and impenetrable. And when he spoke, his voicewas cool and impassive and cast in pleasant mo
dulation.
"So you are here," he remarked, as though he were weighing each wordcarefully, "and why did you come? I think I told you in my letter therewas no need unless you wished."
There was something cold and unfriendly in his speech. I tried in vain tofight down a rising feeling of antagonism, a vague sense ofdisappointment. For a moment we glanced at each other coldly.
"I think, sir," I answered, "from a sense of curiosity."
Almost as soon as I had spoken, I was sorry, for some sixth sense toldme I had hurt him. With a lithe, effortless grace he rose from his chairand faced me, and his smile, half amused, half tolerant, curved hislips again.
"I should have known you would be frank," he said, "Your letter, my son,refusing to accept my remittances, should have taught me as much, but wegrow forgetful as our feet weary of the path of life."
Yet I remember thinking that few people looked less weary than my fatheras he stood there watching me. The primroses, it seemed, had affordedpleasant footing.
I believe he read my thoughts, for it seemed to me that for an instantgenuine amusement was written in his glance, but there were few genuineemotions he allowed free play.
"Perhaps," he suggested pleasantly, "it would interest you to know whyI have returned to these rather rigorous and uncongenial surroundings. Ifnot, I beg you to be frank again, Henry. There's nothing that I dreadmore than being stupid."
"Sir," I objected, "I told you I was curious."
"To be sure you did," he admitted. "Can it be possible that I am becomingabsent-minded? Henry, I am going to tell you something very flattering.Can you believe it? It is largely on your account that I consented torevisit these familiar scenes!"
"No," I said, "I cannot, sir, since you ask me."
My father shrugged his shoulders. "Far be it from me to overstrain yourcredulity, my son," he observed blandly. "Let us admit then there wasalso some slight factor of expedience--but slight, Henry, almostnegligible, in fact. It happened that I was in a French port, and thatwhile there I should think of you."
"Sir," I said, "You startle me!"
But he continued, regardless of my interruption.
"And what should be there also, but the _Eclipse_, ready to set for home!Quite suddenly I determined to sail her back. I, too, was curious, myson." For a moment his voice lost its bantering note. "Curious," hecontinued gravely, "to know whether you were a man like me, or one ofwhom I might have reason to be proud.... So here we are, Henry. Who saidcoincidence was the exception and not the rule?"
His last words drifted gently away, and in their wake followed an awkwardsilence. The logs were hissing in the fire. I could hear the clock in thehall outside, and the beating of the vines against the window panes. Itwas no sound, certainly, that made me whirl around to look behindme,--some instinct--that was all. There was Brutus, not two feet from myback, with my father's cloak over his right arm, and my father's swordheld in his great fist.
"Do not disturb yourself, Brutus," said my father. "We are bothgentlemen, more or less, and will not come to blows. My cloak, Brutus.I am sorry, my son, that we must wait till later in the day toexchange ideas. Even here in America affairs seem to follow me. Willyou content yourself till evening? There are horses in the stable andliquors in the cellar. Choose all or either, Henry. Personally, I findthem both amusing."
He stood motionless, however, even when his dark cloak was adjusted tohis shoulders, as though some matters were disturbing him; and then hetapped his sword hilt with a precise, even motion of his fingers.
"Brutus," he said slowly, "I shall take my pistols also."
"Your pistols!" I echoed. "You have forgotten you are back in America."
He half turned toward me, and favored me with a serene, incurious glance.
"On the contrary," he said, "I am just beginning to remember."
And so without further words he left me. I followed him through our reardoorway, out over the crumbling bricks of our terrace, which had beenbuilt to overlook the river, and watched him walk slowly and thoughtfullydown the path with its border of elm trees, to his warehouses, where ahalf dozen men had already started work.
The river was dark blue under a cloudless sky. The sunlight was playingin restless sparkles where the wind ruffled the water's surface. Out nearthe channel I could see the _Eclipse_ riding at anchor, her deckslittered with bales and gear, and the _Sun Maid_ and the _Sea Tern_, trimand neat, and down deep in the water as though ready to put to sea. Atthe head of our wharf were bales and boxes stacked in the odd confusionthat comes of a hasty discharge of cargo.
On the terrace where I was standing I could see the other wharves alongthe waterfront, and the church spires and roofs of the town reared amongthe trees that lined the busy streets. Toward the sand dunes the marshesstretched away in russet gold into the autumn haze. The woods across theriver were bright patches of reds and yellows, pleasant and inviting inthe sunlight.
But I saw it all with only half an eye. I was still thinking of the darkhall behind me, and the cold, unwelcome stillness of the shuttered rooms.I could understand his depression, now that he had come back to it. Butthere was something else.... I was still thinking of it when I looked atthe _Eclipse_ again. It would have been hard to find a craft of moredelicate, graceful lines. They often said he had a flair for ships andwomen. A shifting current, some freak of the wind and tide, was makingher twist and pull at her anchor, and for a moment the sun struck cleanon her broadside. A gaping hole between decks had connected two of herports in a jagged rent.
It was not surprising. My father's ships were often fired on at sea. Norwas it strange that Brutus had a half-healed scar on his cheek. But whyhad my father gone armed to his own wharf? Perhaps I might have forgottenif I had not visited the stables.
Our carriage harness still hung from the pegs, dried and twisted by theyears, and minus its silver trimmings. The sunlight filtered throughcracks in the roof, and danced through the dust mites to the rows ofvacant stalls. Near the door my horse was feeding comfortably, and besidehim stood two bays that shone from careful grooming. One was carrying asaddle with a pair of pistols in the pocket. Yet not a hair had beenturned from riding.
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