THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN
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
[22]
