The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
THE two gayly painted guard posts with their quaint, rounded tops that stood in the great canal in front of Lemuel Harnway's fine old palace were reflected in the still waters of the late afternoon and the shadows seemed as still as the posts themselves; as still as the image of the ornate façade of the palace itself. High and sheer the venerable and historic old building stood as if its front wall sturdily bade defiance to the canal as it had done for centuries. It seemed to suggest that the Grand Canal, and not itself, was the interloper, and that it stood there by right of first domain. Then the shadows wavered, distorted, little ripples began to advance until the entire reflection was aquiver, and a gondola, with the ease of a gliding swan, slipped forward, turned its prow deftly into the waterway between the guideposts and the wide marble steps of the front entrance and came to a halt.
Captain Ware winked in a friendly way at his old retainer, Tomaso, told him to wait in the shade, and staring at the marble tracery of the old entryway with approving eyes, advanced upward.
“The old fellow did himself well,” he thought, and then looked up at the open door as a liveried footman appeared therein and bowed.
“Is the Signor Harnway at home?” Jimmy asked.
“He is, signor—but have you an appointment?” the man asked, eying the visitor speculatively as if to gauge his importance.
“No, but I think this will prove sufficient,” the captain said as he produced and handed the man a card.
His manner seemed to express assurance and confidence, hence the footman became obsequious, bowed more deeply and with a gesture ushered the visitor into a waiting salon near the grand entrance, and disappeared. It was but a minute later when the curtains were swept aside and Lemuel Harnway, gaunt, tall, white headed, white eyebrowed, and white mustached entered with extended hands and. said, “Lord bless my soul! If it isn't Milly's son Jim, I'm a doggoned old liar!”
“Yes, Uncle Lem, it is I all right,” the captain admitted as he stepped forward to shake the friendly extended hands. “I didn't know whether you would remember me or not, and I didn't know but that you might be too busy to see me.”
“I'm never too busy to see my sister's only son, am I? You young scalawag. How dare you make any talk of that kind? Well, have you given up that fool idea of skippering a tramp steamer yet, or haven't you?”
“No, Uncle Lem, I haven't. The Adventure is lying out there now—in the Giudecco.”
“Adventure, eh? What a damned silly name for a ship. Reckon you named her that because you're romantic. Humph! Romance! Tommyrot! Thank the Lord Almighty, you must have got that from your father's side of the house. The Harnways had too much sense to be romantic. Now, your mother”
“It was she who chose that name for my ship, Uncle Lem. I bought her the year before she died.”
The harsh old face suddenly became grave and thoughtful and he looked momentarily aged and tired.
“Perhaps Milly did have some romance in her, after all,” he admitted. “Otherwise she'd hardly have run away with Tom Ware and lived all the rest of her life up there among the Yankees on that barren, cold, rocky place called Cape Cod. Um-m-h! Anyhow you must have got this nonsensical love of the sea from him. I'll say that much to his discredit. I always had to respect Tom, but we never could get along together!”
“I remember, Uncle Lem, that you and he were never alone for fifteen minutes at a time without a hot discussion about something or other. I even remember that you tried to dissuade him from going into the steamship business, although he did seem to make money out of it when you swore he would go broke.”
Lemuel Harnway sniffed, seemed at loss for speech and then chuckled as if amused.
“I believe I did,” he admitted. “But even as great a man as I am can sometimes make mistakes, Jimmy. Sometimes, but not often. Now of course you must get your traps off that fool ship of yours and come here and stop with me—the longer the better. Why don't you sell the blasted thing and come and stay with me for keeps? I'm getting old, Jimmy, and you're the last living being that has Harnway blood in his veins.”
Captain Jimmy was unexpectedly aware that his affection for his uncle was greater than he had conceived. That reference to their kinship brought back, poignantly, the family conditions which time and feud had brought about. He remembered, now, that as a boy he had been fond of this grim uncle, then a harsh and dominant fighting man with hot blood flowing from a courageous heart, and that had not this same uncle become a restless old wanderer after the death of his childless wife, whom Jimmy had never seen; they might have formed a greater affection. He remembered his mother's shocked voice when the news came that his uncle Lemuel at the age of fifty had married a girl of but nineteen. Then again he remembered when, less than a year later, news had come of her sudden death, his mother's long silence, her sigh, and quiet words, “Poor old Lem. Poor, poor old Lem! Always stiff with family pride, marrying too late in the hope of having an heir to carry on the name, and now—this! What will become of him now?”
Then there were the long years when they heard from him but intermittently from strange places—sometimes from the heart of wild continents, sometimes from the heart of civilizations, always on the move, never content, and then the almost final severance of family news when that connecting link of communication, his mother, slipped peacefully away to rest.
Captain Jimmy lifted his eyes from the finely tiled floor, aware that he had not given an answer to this proffer of hospitality so freely tendered. His uncle, too, seemed to have fallen into an old man's reverie. He was seated in a high and severely carved chair in the shadows of the salon as if withdrawn from the afternoon light. He sat erect, white and severe, with his white old hands, still vaguely expressing capability and grasp of affairs, clutched in front of him. Jimmy had not seen him for nearly ten years, and in the interim had learned to better appraise men. He surreptitiously studied him. There was no mistake but that he adequately fitted that ancient, high and carven chair. A doge of old Venice, austere, powerful, and stern, might have some time occupied it, but his possession could have been no more harmonious. Here, thought Jimmy, was an old lion, battered in body but still brave in mind, waiting and perhaps chafing: in the certainty of his inevitable end. But the lion would fight for his own possessions and ambitions and ideals until the very last. That was Uncle Lemuel Harnway!
“I feel I'd like to do what you ask, and come, Uncle Lem, but there are certain reasons why I can't—why it's impossible. I'm still the master of a tramp ship, you know.”
His voice, after the pause, sounded loud in that echoing space where waiting room opened into loggia, and loggia fronted grand staircase, and words reverberated upward through marbled spaces to the great and distant mosaic dome.
“Can't do it, eh?” the old man replied, lifting his leonine head as if he too had been disturbedly aroused from long reviews. “Maybe you don't care to be hampered by hospitality? Um-m-h! To be fair, I've known that feeling too. But I'd like to have you come. I get bored with having to pretend to be interested in a lot of people who don't mean a cussed thing to me. Not a single thing! The trouble with me is that I've always been too damned polite!”
Jimmy put his hand above his lips to conceal the smile that came involuntarily and could not be suppressed. Polite? Why this old fire eater had been distinguished for his lack of form. He had once told the wife of a president that she was his official hostess by a mere accident of politics. That was politeness of the Henry Clay order, and this uncle of his had tried to fashion his senatorial career on the precepts of that bygone statesman.
“Yes, I've always been too polite,” his uncle reiterated, “even when I didn't have much joy from it. It's cost me a lot, one time and another, politeness has; but it's becoming in a Harnway. How long do you intend being here—is it impertinent in me to ask?”
“I can't tell,” Jimmy said, looking through the window and thinking of his pledge of the previous night. “I've got some—er—business that I wish to see through. My time is not entirely my own.”
The elder man grunted deeply as if amused and at the same time skeptical.
“Unless you've squandered all that money your father left, I shouldn't think business with you could ever be urgent. You've certainly got—or at least had—money enough. But if you've been making a fool of yourself, you know—well—you know I've got more money than I can ever use—unless I find the Fountain of Youth, which doesn't seem likely.”
He looked at the younger man with an unmistakable mixture of envy and of affection in his clear old eyes. Jimmy smiled and shook his handsome head that was shaped not entirely unlike that of his kinsman, and was unaware that the family resemblance extended much farther—so far that his uncle was recalling as he sat there, staring, that thirty-five or perhaps forty years before he must have looked enough like this nephew to have passed for his twin brother. And again he unconsciously sighed as he waited for a reply.
“No, Uncle Lem, it's not what you think at all. I haven't squandered my patrimony. In fact, I believe it's gone in the opposite direction. I haven't tried to make more money, but it seems to have piled up a little without much effort on my part.”
His kinsman sighed again, this time as if disappointed that he could not step into a financial breach.
“Then if it isn't money, I suppose it's that fool ship that keeps you from”
“No, it's not exactly that, either. It's—it's He stopped and stared thoughtfully at the pattern of the rare old stained-glass window through which the evening sun was painting a marvelous-colored mosaic on the floor of the reception salon. The old man sat up suddenly and his eyes twinkled with understanding.
“By gad! It's a woman, then. It's about time you were getting married if our race isn't to die out entirely. That was my mistake. I liked too many of 'em when I was young, and I put off marrying too long. And Lord A'mighty! I've got it, Jimmy! Never thought of it before. If you'd only marry some nice girl and change your name to Harnway, or No? You don't like that idea? Well how about compounding it to—say—Ware-Harnway, or even Harnway-Ware?”
“Be too much like patterning after the English custom,” Jimmy said, grinning with the remembered knowledge that once upon a time, long before, his uncle had at least pretended a violent Anglophobiaism. He could have no greater proof of time's changes in this once-violent old man than when the latter slowly shook his head, displayed no signs of annoyance and said, “They've got a lot of customs that are admirable when there is no alternative. This is one of them. They take pride in their forbears. Why not? We breed horses down in Kentucky. When we find a great sire, we continue his name, don't we? Now take our family, for instance, there was a Colonel Merivale Harnway who fought in the War of the Revolution, and afterward”
Jimmy hastily interrupted lest he be compelled to listen to a family genealogical history with which he was already familiar.
“Oh, it's a good name, all right. So is Ware. But—coming back to the invitation, I really can't accept your hospitality, Uncle Lem, because I've promised to help do something that would keep me from such acceptation.”
“Well, why didn't you say so, then? I never yet asked any man to break a promise, even if he pledged himself to come out at sunrise and try to shoot me. A promise is a promise. So we'll let it go at that. I hope it's got something to do with your love affair Oh, it's not a merely casual thing, eh? It's serious, I can see, by the expression on your face. Lord bless me, boy! You don't need to scowl at me as if you were about to challenge me! I meant no disrespect. Listen! I'd help you marry any fine young woman on earth unless, of course, she was one of that danged Powell tribe!”
He had paused, frowned, and seemed interested in studying the tips of his outstretched shoes as he concluded with that solitary reservation.
“But—but suppose, Uncle Lem, that it happened to be one of the Powells?”
“Nonsense! There are a lot of fine young women in the world whose names aren't Powell. However, I'm making a poor host of myself. Come with me. I'd like to show you my house—ours, you understand—ours—if you'll make it so.”
He stood to his feet, admirably erect and dignified, unmistakably a gentleman of a fine old day, and, when his nephew did likewise, linked his arm affectionately through the younger man's and impelled him toward the entrance, thrusting aside the tapestries with a graceful gesture of his firm old hand.
“I bought this palace,” he said, with evident pride of possession, “because it has a history. Because it once belonged to gentlemen, and there was a retired Polish pawn-broker from Chicago who was after it. It didn't seem right that a man who had made his money by usuring the unlucky should ever live here; that walls which had sheltered those with noble instincts; that had heard the tragedies of the worthy; that had known the love secrets of a hundred generations of youth; that had known timid brides, and mothers of first-born should fall into such degradation.”
“I thought you were neither romantic nor sentimental, Uncle Lem,” Jimmy remarked, with a grin.
“I'm not! I hate such nonsense! I bought this place because—well, because I wanted to settle down, and this place is so well arranged. That is—I got it arranged to suit myself by having some new plumbing, and—um-m-mh!—a few alterations such as having a partition knocked out here and there and By the way! Look at those frescoes up there. Those on the right were done by Pietro Liberi, and those on the left by Andrea Vicentino. Garibaldi lived in this palace and is said to have stood for hours admiring that fresco and—I don't blame him! It's worthy of any man's admiration. Now this is the big salon. Noble room, isn't it? The Doge Luigi Contarini who ruled from 1676 to 1684 owned this palace and lived here. Before he became a doge, of course. He used to hold a sort of court in this room. Think of what it must have looked like—two or three hundred guests at a reception and—all that! I'm afraid I've rather outraged its original purpose by these cabinets. I've made it a sort of museum with 'em. Can't help collecting things. Sometimes I come here and pass hours admiring them, myself.”
As if lost in thought and that realm of romance and sentiment which he so strenuously decried, and denied, he halted and his eyes swept over the magnificent old hall whose splendors had been but faintly dimmed and harmonized by the invisible touch of time. Sunset had fallen outside and he, standing there elegant of figure, and refined of face, seemed a part of the sunset of a life elegant and refined, in surroundings worthy of such a man. The light was tender as it passed through the stained-glass windows of the enormously high and vaulted dome, lingered on the heavy Venetian cornices and dull golds of their embellishment, and gently caressed the paintings wrought by long-dead masters.
Jimmy's awed inspection was disturbed by his next words.
“Come over here,” he said. “Here's something that will interest you because you are a Harnway. This cabinet here—first at the side.” He smiled and then chuckled audibly as he conducted Jimmy across the tiled floor while the resonance of the empty spaces and vaulted reception hall magnified and echoed the sounds of their progress. He halted in front of a cabinet, fumbled in his pocket for a bunch of keys, found them, adjusted glasses to the bridge of his high, thin nose and bending forward found the lock. He opened the door, reached within, and selected a small box of dull gold whose colors seemed lost in the lights and shadows that fell upon its quaint craftsmanship.
“That,” he said, as he handed it to Jimmy, “is the Crusader's Casket. I brought it back here. You know what it means? What it has cost? The lives of God knows how many men. It wiped out our and the Powell family when it reached America, because it was the origin of a feud. There are but few of either Powells or Harnways left because of that thing you hold in your hands.”
Jimmy turned it around, examining its curious scrolls and figures, which to him appeared of Persian design. “It seems a most absurd cause for a feud,” he said thoughtfully. His uncle, smiling grimly, watched him.
“Tell me, Uncle Lem, was our ancestor entitled to its possession?”
The spare figure straightened stiffly and swiftly.
“Of course. Otherwise it would never have left the possession of the Powells. The Harnways never fought for the box itself, but to hold what they were justly entitled to, something that was their own. If it had been a wooden cat it would have been fought for as zealously, as intrepidly. Of course it was a pity that the feud ever arose, because I'll admit that the Powells were a fine family, one of the best in Kentucky, and worthy foemen. Most worthy.”
“Then, Uncle Lem, you have no very great dislike for them, now, have you?”
“Lord bless your soul, my boy, no dislike whatever. In fact I have met and feel rather friendly toward the last male Powell left alive, young William. But of course we never refer to the Crusader's Casket.”
“And you have met—that is—by the way, are there any other Powells whom you have met?”
The old man laughed softly, took the box from his nephew's hands and as he restored it to the cabinet and locked it, while his face was averted, said, “Yes, there's one other, a sister of William's. And she's a little devil! Got all the Powell courage, and daring, and damn'd obstinate determination to carry on the feud until she gets that box. But, by God! no Powell can ever have it!”
For a moment Jimmy was at loss for words, and then, remembering the legends, turned the conversation.
“I believe there was a mystery about its contents, wasn't there, or something like that—some unsolved secret as to how it could be opened?”
His uncle quietly reopened the cabinet, brought the box forth again, and spoke as if the feud were forgotten in the interest of the relic.
“Here, let me show you something exceptionally ingenious. I forgot to mention it. Yes, it can be opened. I learned how to do it myself, but whatever relic it originally contained was missing. Somebody in the past had nabbed it. It is opened this way.”
He held the box up, readjusted his glasses, and pressed a corner of an arabesque that slid a tiny fraction of an inch to one side. He turned the box over and moved a similar arabesque on an end, then one at the back, and at the other end, after which he pressed the central portion of another figure, and the lid flew open, exposing the empty interior with its ebony lining.
“Isn't that ingenious?” he asked gloatingly. “It took me five years to learn that trick, and then it was by accident. Lay you five dollars you can't do it now.”
“Done,” said Jimmy, and promptly lost the five. His uncle was elated as a boy over a puzzle. “Have another five on it? Well, it would be a shame to take your money. Here, hold it in your hands and let me show you. Here's one of the secrets—you must press hard on the sides when moving the end slides, otherwise, as it's already cost you five to learn, they don't move. I regard this as one of the cleverest mechanical things I've ever seen.”
“Clever enough to cost me five dollars,” Jimmy agreed with a grin as he opened and reshut the box several times, before handing it to its owner.
“I observe that you like and appreciate that box, Jimmy,” said the older man. “As I've remarked, I begin to feel old and the cares of possession, and defending Harnway property, become onerous. Also I feel generous toward my only surviving kith and kin and so—Jimmy, I'll give you that box, here and now, with just one single proviso: And that is that you'll pledge yourself never—never—to let it fall into the hands of a Powell.”
He extended his old hands with the box resting in their palms, as if presenting some priceless offering. His fine clear eyes stared at Jimmy while the latter stood regarding the little golden casket as if fascinated by its dull glow. It seemed to gleam mockingly up at him as if daring him to grasp it. He was in a mental quandry. He was tempted to accept it and then opportunely let Tommie know that it was in his possession and—couldn't she steal it from him easier than from this inflexible old gentleman of the feudal school who had it guarded in the heart of a great palace? Why carry on the absurd feud? Why not end it now in the easiest way? His hand moved slowly forward and then abruptly stopped, wavered, and fell.
“No, sir,” he said in a somewhat strained but quiet voice, “there are—certain reasons why I can't accept the casket with such a pledge.”
Still fascinated by the box, as if hypnotized by all it meant, he didn't look up at his kinsman's face. He did not observe the strange expression that came over it. It was one of relief, of smiling self-satisfaction, much like the expression that a miser might have displayed when dealing with a fool who had too magnanimously declined the half-hearted proffer of a golden gift. And this strange old miser of family honor and guardian of the object of a feud, said, very simply, “Don't want to take it on, eh? Well, back it goes. I'll keep it and while I'm its custodian I'd like to see any Powell take it away from me.”
He put it back in the cabinet and carefully, indeed, painstakingly, locked the door and, to make certain that it was locked, shook it to test its security.
“Uncle Lem,” Jimmy blurted in something akin to desperation, “you haven't asked me why I won't give such a pledge and accept the care of the box.”
“No, sir, I haven't. And I don't intend to,” his uncle replied in a tone that his nephew could not interpret. It might have been that of annoyance, or of resignation, or even contempt. He craved the respect of this elderly though yet vigorous old man, his sole remaining kinsman, who had so generously welcomed him and so frankly sought his affection, and he found it difficult to find words adequate to his personal predicament. He could appreciate the storm of wrath that would be evoked by his frank admission that he was in love with a daughter of the hated Powell clan, and that to her he had given a pledge of assistance for the recovery of that damnable and malevolent trinket of gold for whose intrinsic value any Powell or any Harnway could have taken no heed. Any of either clan could have bought a finer object without sacrificing a single mint julep in a day's visit to Washington.
“But—but, sir, suppose that I didn't wish to give such a promise, yet that I still coveted the box so much that I'd be tempted to steal it, and that”
“You are making supposititious cases! If you coveted the box you'd take it with the attendant conditions. And if you had some impossible, fool reason for not making a promise—which of course couldn't be, inasmuch as I'm talking about the Powells—well, I suppose you'd prove yourself a Harnway and try to take it by hook or crook. That's the way our tribe have usually gone after things they really wanted. We're like most families, I reckon, no better nor no worse. The difference between us and many others is that when we went after a thing we usually got it. Even if we had to—er—steal it! If you want this casket and don't care to give your pledge, why, you can some time take a chance on stealing it from me. And I'd like to see how any one could get away with that job!”
He stopped and burst into a roar of laughter that echoed and reëchoed throughout the great reception room that was dimming in the sunset glow now that the hour had lengthened.
“Uncle Lem,” said Jimmy, “it might come to that yet. I warn you, sir.”
“Go to it, Jimmy. If you get away with it you're welcome and I'll prove a good loser—to one of my own blood,” his uncle asserted as he led the way out of the stately old room, leaving it and its treasures to silence.