Part 34

Sir Henry Marquis continued to read; he made no comment; his voice clear and even.

It was a big sunny room. The long windows looked out on a formal garden, great beech trees and the bow of the river. Within it was a sort of library. There were bookcases built into the wall, to the height of a man's head, and at intervals between them, rising from the floor to the cornice of the shelves, were rows of mahogany drawers with glass knobs. There was also a flat writing table.

It was the room of a traveler, a man of letters, a dreamer. On the table were an inkpot of carved jade, a paperknife of ivory with gold butterflies set in; three bronze storks, with their backs together, held an exquisite Japanese crystal.

The room was in disorder--the drawers pulled out and the contents ransacked.

My father stood leaning against the casement of the window, looking out. The lawyer, Mr. Lewis, sat in a chair beside the table, his eyes on the violated room.

“Pendleton,” he said, “I don't like this English man Gosford.”

The words seemed to arouse my father out of the depths of some reflection, and he turned to the lawyer, Mr. Lewis.

“Gosford!” he echoed.

“He is behind this business, Pendleton,” the lawyer, Mr. Lewis, went on. “Mark my word! He comes here when Marshall is dying; he forces his way to the man's bed; he puts the servants out; he locks the door. Now, what business had this Englishman with Marshall on his deathbed? What business of a secrecy so close that Marshall's son is barred out by a locked door?”

He paused and twisted the seal ring on his finger.

“When you and I came to visit the sick man, Gosford was always here, as though he kept a watch upon us, and when we left, he went always to this room to write his letters, as he said.

“And more than this, Pendleton; Marshall is hardly in his grave before Gosford writes me to inquire by what legal process the dead man's papers may be examined for a will. And it is Gosford who sends a negro riding, as if the devil were on the crupper, to summon me in the name of the Commonwealth of Virginia,--to appear and examine into the circumstances of this burglary.

“I mistrust the man. He used to hang about Marshall in his life, upon some enterprise of secrecy; and now he takes possession and leadership in his affairs, and sets the man's son aside. In what right, Pendleton, does this adventurous Englishman feel himself secure?”

My father did not reply to Lewis's discourse. His comment was in another quarter.

“Here is young Marshall and Gaeki,” he said.

The lawyer rose and came over to the window.

Two persons were advancing from the direction of the stables--a tall, delicate boy, and a strange old man. The old man walked with a quick, jerky, stride. It was the old country doctor Gaeki. And, unlike any other man of his profession, he would work as long and as carefully on the body of a horse as he would on the body of a man, snapping out his quaint oaths, and in a stress of effort, as though he struggled with some invisible creature for its prey. The negroes used to say that the devil was afraid of Gaeki, and he might have been, if to disable a man or his horse were the devil's will. But I think, rather, the negroes imagined the devil to fear what they feared themselves.

“Now, what could bring Gaeki here?” said Lewes.

“It was the horse that Gosford overheated in his race to you,” replied my father. “I saw him stop in the road where the negro boy was leading the horse about, and then call young Marshall.”

“It was no fault of young Marshall, Pendleton,” said the lawyer. “But, also, he is no match for Gosford. He is a dilettante. He paints little pictures after the fashion he learned in Paris, and he has no force or vigor in him. His father was a dreamer, a wanderer, one who loved the world and its frivolities, and the son takes that temperament, softened by his mother. He ought to have a guardian.”

“He has one,” replied my father.

“A guardian!” repeated Lewis. “What court has appointed a guardian for young Marshall?”

“A court,” replied my father, “that does not sit under the authority of Virginia. The helpless, Lewis, in their youth and inexperience, are not wholly given over to the spoiler.”

The boy they talked about was very young--under twenty, one would say. He was blue-eyed and fair-haired, with thin, delicate features, which showed good blood long inbred to the loss of vigor. He had the fine, open, generous face of one who takes the world as in a fairy story. But now there was care and anxiety in it, and a furtive shadow, as though the lad's dream of life had got some rude awakening.

At this moment the door behind my father and Lewis was thrown violently open, and a man entered. He was a person with the manner of a barrister, precise and dapper; he had a long, pink face, pale eyes, and a close-cropped beard that brought out the hard lines of his mouth. He bustled to the table, put down a sort of portfolio that held an inkpot, a writing-pad and pens, and drew up a chair like one about to take the minutes of a meeting. And all the while he apologized for his delay. He had important letters to get off in the post, and to make sure, had carried them to the tavern himself.

“And now, sirs, let us get about this business,” he finished, like one who calls his assistants to a labor:

My father turned about and looked at the man.

“Is your name Gosford?” he said in his cold, level voice.