The Indian Drum by William MacHarg (classic english novels txt) 📕

He found, as he tried now to disentangle the events of the afternoon, that from them, and especially from his last interview with Sherrill, two facts stood out most clearly. The first of these related more directly to his father—to Benjamin Corvet. When such a man as Benjamin Corvet must have been, disappears—when, without warning and without leaving any account of himself he vanishes from among those who knew him—the persons most closely interested pass through three stages of anxiety. They doubt first whether the disappearance is real and whether inquiry on their part will not be resented; they waken next to realization that the man is actually gone, and that something must be done; the third stage is open and public inquiry. Whatever might be the nature of the information Sherrill was withholding from him, Alan saw that its effect on Sherrill had been to shorten very greatly Sherrill's time of doubt as to Corvet's actual disappearance. The Sherrills—particularly Sherrill himself—had been in the second stage of anxiety when Alan came; they had been awaiting Alan's arrival in the belief that Alan could give them information which would show them what must be "done" about Corvet. Alan had not been able to give them this information; but his coming, and his interview with Sherrill, had strongly influenced Sherrill's attitude. Sherrill had shrunk, still more definitely and consciously, after that, from prying into the affairs of his friend; he had now, strangely, almost withdrawn himself from the inquiry, and had given it over to Alan.

Sherrill had spoken of the possibility that something might have "happened" to Covert; but it was plain he did not believe he had met with actual violence. He had left it to Alan to examine Corvet's house; but he had not urged Alan to examine it at once; he had left the time of the examination to be determined by Alan. This showed clearly that Sherrill believed—perhaps had sufficient reason for believing—that Corvet had simply "gone away." The second of Alan's two facts related even more closely and personally to Alan himself. Corvet, Sherrill had said, had married in 1889. But Sherrill in long knowledge of his friend, had shown firm conviction that there had been no mere vulgar liaison in Corvet's life. Did this mean that there might have been some previous marriage of Alan's father—some marriage which had strangely overlapped and nullified his public marriage? In that case, Alan could be, not only in fact but legally, Corvet's son; and such things as this, Alan knew, had sometimes happened, and had happened by a strange combination of events, innocently for all parties. Corvet's public separation from his wife, Sherrill had said, had taken place in 1897, but the actual separation between them might, possibly, have taken place long before that.

Alan resolved to hold these questions in abeyance; he would not accept or grant the stigma which his relationship to Corvet seemed to attach to himself until it had been proved to him. He had come to Chicago expecting, not to find that there had never been anything wrong, but to find that the wrong had been righted in some way at last. But what was most plain of all to him, from what Sherrill had told him, was that the wrong—whatever it might be—had not been righted; it existed still.

The afternoon had changed swiftly into night; dusk had been gathering during his last talk with Sherrill, so that he hardly had been able to see Sherrill's face, and just after Sherrill had left him, full dark had come. Alan did not know how long he had been sitting in the darkness thinking out these things; but now a little clock which had been ticking steadily in the blackness tinkled six. Alan heard a knock at his door, and when it was repeated, he called, "Come in."

The light which came in from the hall, as the door was opened, showed a man servant. The man, after a respectful inquiry, switched on the light. He crossed into the adjoining room—a bedroom; the room where Alan was, he thought, must be a dressing room, and there was a bath between. Presently the man reappeared, and moved softly about the room, unpacking Alan's suitcase. He hung Alan's other suit in the closet on hangers; he put the linen, except for one shirt, in the dresser drawers, and he put Alan's few toilet things with the ivory-backed brushes and comb and other articles on the dressing stand.

Alan watched him queerly; no one except himself ever had unpacked Alan's suitcase before; the first time he had gone away to college—it was a brand new suitcase then—"mother" had packed it; after that first time, Alan had packed and unpacked it. It gave him an odd feeling now to see some one else unpacking his things. The man, having finished and taken everything out, continued to look in the suitcase for something else.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said finally, "but I cannot find your buttons."

"I've got them on," Alan said. He took them out and gave them to the valet with a smile; it was good to have something to smile at, if it was only the realization that he never had thought before of any one's having more than one set of buttons for ordinary shirts. Alan wondered, with a sort of trepidation, whether the man would expect to stay and help him dress; but he only put the buttons in the clean shirt and reopened the dresser drawers and laid out a change of things.

"Is there anything else, sir?" he asked.

"Nothing, thank you," Alan said.

"I was to tell you, sir, Mr. Sherrill is sorry he cannot be at home to dinner to-night. Mrs. Sherrill and Miss Sherrill will be here. Dinner is at seven, sir."

Alan dressed slowly, after the man had gone; and at one minute before seven he went down-stairs.

There was no one in the lower hall and, after an instant of irresolution and a glance into the empty drawing-room, he turned into the small room at the opposite side of the hall. A handsome, stately, rather large woman, whom he found there, introduced herself to him formally as Mrs. Sherrill.

He knew from Sherrill's mention of the year of their marriage that Mrs. Sherrill's age must be about forty-five, but if he had not known this, he would have thought her ten years younger. In her dark eyes and her carefully dressed, coal-black hair, and in the contour of her youthful looking, handsome face, he could not find any such pronounced resemblance to her daughter as he had seen in Lawrence Sherrill. Her reserved, yet almost too casual acceptance of Alan's presence, told him that she knew all the particulars about himself which Sherrill had been able to give; and as Constance came down the stairs and joined them half a minute later, Alan was certain that she also knew.

Yet there was in her manner toward Alan a difference from that of her mother—a difference which seemed almost opposition. Not that Mrs. Sherrill's was unfriendly or critical; rather, it was kind with the sort of reserved kindness which told Alan, almost as plainly as words, that she had not been able to hold so charitable a conviction in regard to Corvet's relationship with Alan as her husband held, but that she would be only the more considerate to Alan for that. It was this kindness which Constance set herself to oppose, and which she opposed as reservedly and as subtly as it was expressed. It gave Alan a strange, exhilarating sensation to realize that, as the three talked together, this girl was defending him.

Not him alone, of course, or him chiefly. It was Benjamin Corvet, her friend, whom she was defending primarily; yet it was Alan too; and all went on without a word about Benjamin Corvet or his affairs being spoken.

Dinner was announced, and they went into the great dining-room, where the table with its linen, silver, and china gleamed under shaded lights. The oldest and most dignified of the three men servants who waited upon them in the dining-room Alan thought must be a butler—a species of creature of whom Alan had heard but never had seen; the other servants, at least, received and handed things through him, and took their orders from him. As the silent-footed servants moved about, and Alan kept up a somewhat strained conversation with Mrs. Sherrill—a conversation in which no reference to his own affairs was yet made—he wondered whether Constance and her mother always dressed for dinner in full evening dress as now, or whether they were going out. A word from Constance to her mother told him this latter was the case, and while it did not give complete answer to his internal query, it showed him his first glimpse of social engagements as a part of the business of life. In spite of the fact that Benjamin Corvet, Sherrill's close friend, had disappeared—or perhaps because he had disappeared and, as yet, it was not publicly known—their and Sherrill's engagements had to be fulfilled.

What Sherrill had told Alan of his father had been iterating itself again and again in Alan's thoughts; now he recalled that Sherrill had said that his daughter believed that Corvet's disappearance had had something to do with her. Alan had wondered at the moment how that could be; and as he watched her across the table and now and then exchanged a comment with her, it puzzled him still more. He had opportunity to ask her when she waited with him in the library, after dinner was finished and her mother had gone up-stairs; but he did not see then how to go about it.

"I'm sorry," she said to him, "that we can't be home to-night; but perhaps you would rather be alone?"

He did not answer that.

"Have you a picture here, Miss Sherrill, of—my father?" he asked.

"Uncle Benny had had very few pictures taken; but there is one here."

She went into the study, and came back with a book open at a half-tone picture of Benjamin Corvet. Alan took it from her and carried it quickly closer to the light. The face that looked up to him from the heavily glazed page was regular of feature, handsome in a way, and forceful. There were imagination and vigor of thought in the broad, smooth forehead; the eyes were strangely moody and brooding; the mouth was gentle, rather kindly; it was a queerly impelling, haunting face. This was his father! But, as Alan held the picture, gazing down upon it, the only emotion which came to him was realization that he felt none. He had not expected to know his father from strangers on the street; but he had expected, when told that his father was before him, to feel through and through him the call of a common blood. Now, except for consternation at his own lack of feeling, he had no emotion of any sort; he could not attach to this man, because he bore the name which some one had told him was his father's, the passions which, when dreaming of his father, he had felt.

As he looked up from the picture to the girl who had given it to him, startled at himself and believing she must think his lack of feeling strange and unnatural, he surprised her gazing at him with wetness in her eyes. He fancied at first it must be for his father, and that the picture had brought back poignantly her fears. But she was not looking at the picture, but at him; and when his eyes met hers, she quickly turned away.

His own eyes filled, and he choked. He wanted to thank her for her manner to him in the afternoon, for defending his father and him, as she had at the dinner table, and now for this unplanned, impulsive sympathy when she saw how he had not been able to feel for this man who was his