by Max Brand
“Good-evening, Mr. Anthony,” said Peters loudly, too loudly.
“Evening, Peters. Where’s father?”
“In the library, sir. Shall I take your coat?”
“I’ll carry it up to my room when I go. That’s all.”
He opened the door to the library and entered with a hope that his father would not be facing him, but he found that John Woodbury was not even reading. He sat by the big fire-place smoking a pipe which he now removed slowly from his teeth.
“Hello, Anthony.”
“Good-evening, sir.”
He rose to shake hands with his son: they might have been friends meeting after a separation so long that they were compelled to be formal, and as Anthony turned to lay down his hat and coat he knew that the keen grey eyes studied him carefully from head to foot.
“Take this chair.”
“Why, sir, wouldn’t dream of disturbing you.”
“Not a bit. I want you to try it; just a trifle too narrow for me.”
John Woodbury rose and gestured his son to the chair he had been occupying. Anthony hesitated, but then, like one who obeys first and thinks afterward, seated himself as directed.
“Mighty comfortable, sir.”
The big man stood with his hands clasped behind him, peering down under shaggy, iron-grey brows.
“I thought it would be. I designed it myself for you and I had a pretty bad time getting it made.”
He stepped to one side.
“Hits you pretty well under the knees, doesn’t it? Yes, it’s deeper than most.”
“A perfect fit, father, and mighty thoughtful of you.”
“H-m,” rumbled John Woodbury, and looked about like one who has forgotten something. “What about a glass of Scotch?”
“Nothing, thank you — I — in fact I’m not very strong for the stuff.”
The rough brows rose a trifle and fell.
“No? But isn’t it usual? Better have a go.”
Once more there was that slight touch of hesitancy, as if the son were not quite sure of the father and wished to make every concession.
“Certainly, if it’ll make you easier.”
There was an instant softening of the hard lines of the elder Woodbury’s face, as though some favour of import had been done him. He touched a bell-cord and lowered himself with a little grunt of relaxation into a chair. The chair was stoutly built, but it groaned a little under the weight of the mighty frame it received. He leaned back and in his face was a light which came not altogether from the comfortable glow of the fire.
And when the servant appeared the big man ordered: “Scotch and seltzer and one glass with a pitcher of ice.”
“Aren’t you taking anything, sir?” asked Anthony.
“Who, me? Yes, yes, of course. Why, let me see — bring me a pitcher of beer.” He added as the servant disappeared: “Never could get a taste for Scotch, and rye doesn’t seem to be — er — good form. Eh, Anthony?”
“Nonsense,” frowned the son, “haven’t you a right to be comfortable in your own house?”
“Come, come!” rumbled John Woodbury. “A young fellow in your position can’t have a boor for a father, eh?”
It was apparently an old argument between them, for Anthony stared gloomily at the fire, making no attempt to reply; and he glanced up in relief when the servant entered with the liquor. John Woodbury, however, returned to the charge as soon as they were left alone again, saying: “As a matter of fact, I’m about to set you up in an establishment of your own in New York.” He made a vastly inclusive gesture. “Everything done up brown — old house — high-class interior decorator, to get you started with a splash.”
“Are you tired of Long Island?”
“I’m not going to the city, but you will.”
“And my work?”
“A gentleman of the class you’ll be in can’t callous his hands with work. I spent my life making money; you can use your life throwing it away — like a gentleman. But” — he reached out at this point and smashed a burly fist into a palm hardly less hard— “but I’ll be damned, Anthony, if I’ll let you stay here in Long Island wasting your time riding the wildest horses you can get and practising with an infernal revolver. What the devil do you mean by it?”
“I don’t know,” said the other, musing. “Of course the days of revolvers are past, but I love the feel of the butt against my palm — I love the kick of the barrel tossing up — I love the balance; and when I have a six-shooter in my hand, sir, I feel as if I had six lives. Odd, isn’t it?” He grew excited as he talked, his eyes gleaming with dancing points of fire. “And I’ll tell you this, sir: I’d rather be out in the country where men still wear guns, where the sky isn’t stained with filthy coal smoke, where there’s an horizon wide enough to breathe in, where there’s man-talk instead of this damned chatter over tea-cups—”
“Stop!” cried John Woodbury, and leaned forward, “no matter what fool ideas you get into your head — you’re going to be a gentleman!”
The swaying forward of that mighty body, the outward thrust of the jaws, the ring of the voice, was like the crashing of an ax when armoured men meet in battle. The flicker in the eyes of Anthony was the rapier which swerves from the ax and then leaps at the heart. For a critical second their glances crossed and then the habit of obedience conquered.
“I suppose you know, sir.”
The father stared gloomily at the floor.
“You’re sort of mad, Anthony?”
Perhaps there was nothing more typical of Anthony than that he never frowned, no matter how angered he might be. Now the cold light passed from his eyes. He rose and passed behind the chair of the elder man, dropping a hand upon those massive shoulders.
“Angry with myself, sir, that I should so nearly fall out with the finest father that walks the earth.”
The eyes of the grey man half closed and a semblance of a smile touched those stiff, stern lips; one of the great work-broken hands went up and rested on the fingers of his son.
“And there’ll be no more of this infernal Western nonsense that you’re always reverting to? No more of this horse-and-gun-and-hell-bent-away stuff?”
“I suppose not,” said Anthony heavily.
“Well, Anthony, sit down and tell me about tonight.”
The son obeyed, and finally said, with difficulty: “I didn’t go to the
Morrison supper.”
A sudden cloud of white rose from the bowl of Woodbury’s pipe.
“But I thought—”
“That it was a big event? It was — a fine thing for me to get a bid to; but I went to the Wild West show instead. Sir, I know it was childish, but — I couldn’t help it! I saw the posters; I thought of the horse-breaking, the guns, the swing and snap and dash of galloping men, the taint of sweating horses — and by God, sir, I couldn’t stay away! Are you angry?”
It was more than anger; it was almost fear that widened the eye of
Woodbury as he stared at his son. He said at last, controlling himself:
“But I have your word; you’ve given up the thought of this Western
life?”
“Yes,” answered Anthony, with a touch of despair, “I have given it up, I suppose. But, oh, sir—” He stopped, hopeless.
“And what else happened?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“After you come home you don’t usually change your clothes merely for the pleasure of sitting with me here.”
“Nothing escapes you, does it?” muttered Anthony.
“In your set, Anthony, that’s what they’d call an improper question.”
“I could ask you any number of questions, sir, for that matter.”
“Well?”
“That room over there, for instance, which you always keep locked. Am I never to have a look at it?”
He indicated a door which opened from the library.
“I hope not.”
“You say that with a good deal of fee
ling. But there’s one thing more that I have a right to hear about. My mother! Why do you never tell me of her?”
The big man stirred and the chair groaned beneath him.
“Because it tortures me to speak of her, Anthony,” said the husky voice.
“Tortures me, lad!”
“I let the locked room go,” said Anthony firmly, “but my mother — she is different. Why, sir, I don’t even know how she looked! Dad, it’s my right!”
“Is it? By God, you have a right to know exactly what I choose to tell you — no more!”
He rose, strode across the room with ponderous steps, drew aside the curtains which covered the view of the garden below, and stared for a time into the night. When he turned he found that Anthony had risen — a slender, erect figure. His voice was as quiet as his anger, but an inward quality made it as thrilling as the hoarse boom of his father.
“On that point I stick. I must know something about her.”
“Must?”
“In spite of your anger. That locked room is yours; this house and everything in it is yours; but my mother — she was as much mine as yours, and I’ll hear more about her — who she was, what she looked like, where she lived—”
The sharply indrawn breath of John Woodbury cut him short.
“She died in giving birth to you, Anthony.”
“Dear God! She died for me?”
And in the silence which came over the two men it seemed as if another presence were in the room. John Woodbury stood at the fire-place with bowed head, and Anthony shaded his eyes and stared at the floor until he caught a glimpse of the other and went gently to him.
He said: “I’m sorrier than a lot of words could tell you. Will you sit down, sir, and let me tell you how I came to press home the question?”
“If you want to have it that way.”
They resumed their chairs.
CHAPTER V
ANTHONY IS LEFT IN THE DARK
“IT WILL EXPLAIN why I changed my clothes after I came home. You see, toward the end of the show a lot of the cowboys rode in. The ringmaster was announcing that they could ride anything that walked on four feet and wore a skin, when up jumped an oldish fellow in a box opposite mine and shouted that he had a horse which none of them could mount. He offered five hundred dollars to the man who could back him; and made it good by going out of the building and coming back inside of five minutes with two men leading a great stallion, the ugliest piece of horseflesh I’ve ever seen.
“As they worked the brute down the arena, it caught sight of my white shirt, I suppose, for it made a dive at me, reared up, and smashed its forehoofs against the barrier. By Jove, a regular maneater! Brought my heart into my mouth to see the big devil raging, and I began to yearn to get astride him and to — well, just fight to see which of us would come out on top. You know?”
The big man moistened his lips; he was strangely excited.
“So you climbed into the arena and rode the horse?”
“Exactly! I knew you’d understand! After I’d ridden the horse to a standstill and climbed off, a good many people gathered around me. One of them was a big man, about your size. In fact, now that I look back at it, he was a good deal like you in more ways than one; looked as if time had hardened him without making him brittle. He came to me and said: ‘Excuse me, son, but you look sort of familiar to me. Mind telling me who your mother was?’ What could I answer to a—”
A shadow fell across Anthony from the rising height of his father. As he looked up he saw John Woodbury glance sharply, first toward the French windows and then at the door of the secret room.
“Was that all, Anthony?”
“Yes, about all.”
“I want to be alone.”
The habit of automatic obedience made Anthony rise in spite of the questions which were storming at his lips.
“Good-night, sir.”
“Good-night, my boy.”
At the door the harsh voice of his father overtook him.
“Before you leave the house again, see me, Anthony.”
“Yes, sir.”
He closed the door softly, as one deep in thought, and stood for a time without moving. Because a man had asked him who his mother was, he was under orders not to leave the house. While he stood, he heard a faint click of a snapping lock within the library and knew that John Woodbury had entered the secret room.
In his own bedroom he undressed slowly and afterward stood for a long time under the shower, rubbing himself down with the care of an athlete, thumbing the soreness of the wild ride out of the lean, sinewy muscles, for his was a made strength built up in the gymnasium and used on the wrestling mat, the cinder path, and the football field. Drying himself with a rough towel that whipped the pink into his skin, he looked down over his corded, slender limbs, remembered the thick arms and Herculean torso of John Woodbury, and wondered.
He sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped in a bathrobe, and pondered. Stroke by stroke he built the picture of that dead mother, like a painter who jots down the first sketch of a large composition. John Woodbury, vast, blond, grey-eyed, had given him few of his physical traits. But then he had often heard that the son usually resembled the mother. She must have been dark, slender, a frail wife for such a giant; but perhaps she had a strength of spirit which made her his mate.
As the picture drew out more clearly in the mind of Anthony, he turned from the lighted room, threw open a window, and leaned out to breathe the calm, damp air of night.
It was infinitely cool, infinitely fresh. To his left a row of young trees darted their slender tops at the sky like shadowy spearheads. The smell of wet leaves and the wet grass beneath rose up to him. To the right, for his own room stood in a wing of the mansion, the house shouldered its way into the gloom, a solemn, grey shadow, netted in a black tracery of climbing vine. In all the stretch of wall only two windows were lighted, and those yellow squares, he knew, belonged to his father. He had left the secret room, therefore.
As he watched, a shadow brushed slowly across one of the drawn shades, swept the second, and returned at once in the opposite direction. Back and forth, back and forth, that shadow moved, and as his eye grew accustomed to watching, he caught quite clearly the curve of the shoulders and the forward droop of the head.
It was not until then that the first alarm came to Anthony, for he knew that the footsteps of the big grey man were dogged by fear. He could no more conceive it than he could imagine noon and midnight in conjunction, and feeling as guilty as if he had played the part of an eavesdropper he turned away, snapped off the lights, and slipped into bed.
The pleasant warmth of sleep would not come. In its place the images of the day filed past him like the dance of figures on a motion picture screen, and always, like the repeated entrance of the hero, the other images grew small and dim. He saw again the burly stranger wading through the crowd in the arena, shaking off the packed mob as the prow of a stately ship shakes off the water, to either side.
At length he started out of bed and glanced through the window. The moving shadow still swept across the lighted shades of his father’s room; so he donned bathrobe and slippers and went down the long hall. At the door he did not stop to knock, for he was too deeply concerned by this time to pay any heed to convention. He grasped the knob and threw the door wide open. What happened then was so sudden that he could not be sure afterward what he had seen. He was certain that the door opened on a lighted room, yet before he could step in the lights were snapped out.
He was staring into a deep void of night; and a silence came about him like a whisper. Out of that silence he thought after a second that he caught the sound of a hurried breathing, louder and louder, as though someone were creeping upon him. He glanced over his shoulder in a slight panic, but down the grey hall on either side there was nothing to be seen. Once more he looked back into the solemn room, opened his lips to speak, changed his mind, and closed the door again.
Yet when he looked down agai
n from his own room the lights shone once more on the shades of his father’s windows. Past them brushed the shadow of the pacing man, up and down, up and down. He turned his eyes away to the jagged tops of the young trees, to the glimpses of dark fields beyond them, and inhaled the scent of the wet, green things. It seemed to Anthony as if it all were hostile — as though the whole outdoors were besieging this house.
He caught the sway of the pacing figure whose shadow moved in regular rhythm across the yellow shades. It entered his mind, clung there, and finally he began to pace in the same cadence, up and down the room. With every step he felt that he was entering deeper into the danger which threatened John Woodbury. What danger? For answer to himself he stepped to the windows and pulled down the shades. At least he could be alone.
CHAPTER VI
JOHN BARD
THERE IS NO cleanser of the mind like a morning bath. The same cold, whipping spray which calls up the pink blood, glowing through the marble of the skin, drives the ache of sleep from the brain, and washes away at once all the recorded thoughts of yesterday. So in place of a crowded slate of wonders and doubts, Anthony bore down to the breakfast table a willingness to take what the morning might bring and forget the night before.
John Woodbury was already there, helping himself from the covered dishes, for the meal was served in the English style. There was the usual “Good-morning, sir,” “Good-morning, Anthony,” and then they took their places at the table. A cautious survey of the craglike face of his father showed no traces of a sleepless night; but then, what could a single night of unrest mean to that body of iron?
He ventured, remembering the implied command to remain within the house until further orders: “You asked me to speak to you, sir, before I left the house. I’d rather like to take a ride this morning.”
And the imperturbable voice replied: “You’ve worn your horses out lately. Better give them a day of rest.”