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Page 53
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.
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