The Unspeakable Gentleman | Page 6

Now in France--"
Mr. Aiken dropped his pipe.
"Who said anything about France?" he demanded.
"And did you not?" I asked, beginning to enjoy my visit. "Surely you were speaking just now about a chateau, the scene of some pleasant adventure. Pray don't let me interrupt you."
A bead of perspiration rolled down Mr. Aiken's brow, and he tightened his handkerchief about his throat, as though to stifle further conversation. He sat silent for a minute while his mind seemed to wander off into a maze of dim recollections, and his eyes half-closed, the better to see the pictures that drifted through his memory.
"What am I here ashore and sober for," he asked finally, "so I won't talk, that's why, and I won't talk, so there's the end of it. It's just that I have to have my little joke, that's all, or I wouldn't have said anything about the chato or the Captain either.
"Though, if I do say it," he added in final justification, "there ain't many seafaring men who have a chance to sail along of a man like him."
"And how does that happen?" I asked.
"Because there ain't any more like him to sail with."
He sat watching me, and the gap between us seemed to widen. He seemed to be looking at me from some great distance, from the end of the road where years and experience had led him, full of thoughts he could never express, even if the desire impelled him.
"No, not any," said Mr. Aiken.
The dusk was beginning to gather when I rode home, the heavy purple dusk of autumn, full of the crisp smell of dead leaves and the low hanging wood smoke from the chimneys.
My father was reading Voltaire beside a briskly burning fire. Closing his book on his forefinger, he waved me to a chair beside him.
"My son," he said, "they mix better than you think, Voltaire and gunpowder. Have you not found it so?"
"I fear," I replied, "that my experience has been too limited. Give me time, sir, I have only been twice to sea. Next time I shall remember to take Voltaire with me."
"Do," he advised courteously; "you will find it will help with the privateers--tide you over every little unpleasantness. Ah yes, it is advice worth following. I learned it long ago--a little difference of opinion--and the pages of the great philosopher--"
He raised his arm and glanced at it critically.
"Words well placed--is it not wonderful, their steadying effect--the deadly accuracy which their logic seems to impart to the hand and eye? A man can be dangerous indeed with twenty pages of Voltaire behind him."
He took a pinch of snuff, and leaned forward to tap me gently on the knee, his expression coldly genial.
"I have read all the works of Voltaire, Henry, read them many times."
Unbidden, a picture of him came before me in a room with gilt chairs and candelabra whose glass pendants sparkled in the mild yellow light--with a smell of powder mingling strangely with the scent of flowers.
"But why," he concluded, "should I be more explicit than Mr. Aiken? To fear nothing, say nothing. It is a maxim followed by so many politicians. Strange that it still stays valuable. Strange--"
And he waved his hand in a negligent gesture of deprecation.
"Why, indeed, be more explicit," I rejoined. "Your sudden interest is quite enough to leave me overcome, sir, when, after years of neglect, you see to it I ride out safely of an afternoon."
He tapped his snuff box thoughtfully.
"Coincidence again, Henry, that is all. How was I to know you would be outside Ned Aiken's house while I was within?"
"And how should I know that paternal care would prompt you to remain within while I was without?"
For a second it seemed to me that my father was going to laugh--for a fraction of a second something like astonishment seemed to take possession of him. Then Brutus appeared in the doorway.
"My son," he said, as I followed him to supper, "I must compliment you. Positively you improve upon acquaintance."

III
I had remembered him as a man who disliked talk. I had often seen him sit for hours on end without a word, looking at nothing in particular, with his expressionless serenity. But on this particular evening the day's activities appeared to have made his social instincts vividly assertive, and to arouse him to unusual, and almost unnatural animation. As we sat at a small round table beside the dining room fireplace, he launched into a cheerful discourse, ignoring completely any displeasure I attempted to assume. The great room with its dingy wainscot only half lighted by the candles on the table before us, was cluttered with a hundred odds and ends that collect in a deserted house--a ladder, a stiff, rusted bridle, a coil of frayed rope, a kettle, a dozen sheets of the