CHAPTER IVORRIS ROOT AND CARBOLIC ACID
Wherehad the boy obtained money? And how had he got it? Geraldine and Mrs. Wells knew his former methods. The ordinary relaxed figure of the boy suggested a mind without a scheme, but on the trail of money he could summon wonderful powers of cunning. Like a paranoiac under examination who is quite aware of every symptom that might betray him, and conceals them, Walter could temporarily throw off the look of the idiot, the hanging jaw, the lurch. And his begging stories were strikingly plausible.
Money had to be kept from him, of course, and also any article of value—ring or watch. To give him so much as a shilling would mean neat brandy and the beginning of a debauch. That explains the presence of so much money in the possession of Geraldine. She was helping to guard it from Walter.
In London Walter had got a five-pound note from the Bishop of Clewes. Mrs. Wells was taking advantage of a letter of introduction for the sole purpose, as she admitted to Geraldine, of comparing reality with Trollope’sBarchester Towers. Having listened to a conversation aimed to draw a contribution to the Relic Society’s monument fund, Walter had deftly taken the Bishop aside to announce that Mrs. Wells wished to present five pounds to the secretary of thesociety on her way to the station; that it was not wise to let her interest cool until she went through all the red-tape of banks in London; and that the safest thing to do was to permit Walter to take the money, preferably in gold, from the Bishop. Of course no trouble of banks, etc., would keep Mrs. Wells from paying the Bishop within the week.
The plot worked well in many ways. It gave the Bishop a certain sense of actually contributing himself, it forced Mrs. Wells to forward a P.O. order to the Relic Society, and it gave Walter his chance for a riotous rebellion.
Then the mother took command. Somehow, whether it was hypnotic or not, Walter was unable again to summon courage to beg, although he had many opportunities. On the point of beginning a tale fear, chattering fear, would seize his very voice and throttle the story into extinction. For months he had lived his daily animal round without once giving the suspicion of an attempt to break away. Mother and daughter had begun to feel secure.
And now it had happened again. Somewhere on that steamer a passenger had been gulled into giving money to a well-dressed tramp. Walter was no more than that. Geraldine pondered over each name on the steamer-list and came to a conclusion. Walter never approached strangers. He hadn’t the courage to pose on his own recommendation; his game was invariably to strike the most recent acquaintance of one of the family. There were many good reasons for this procedure, one of which was the fact that everyone else had been warned. On the list before her there were only five names of possible persons whom Walter could know, and all of these—except one—had been strictlyenjoined from helping a wrecked boy to further ruin. That one, “Mr. Richard,” she felt sure had been the mark of Walter’s latest story. There was something comical in the thought that to give money to Walter Mr. Richard had been compelled to part with his sole five-dollar bill.
Mrs. Wells and Geraldine had been two days below decks before Walter’s ugliness wore off into weak illness. They had taken turns watching him and were spent for sleep; so, naturally, they gave their first hours of relief to bed. The steamer had passed Gibraltar before either woman emerged to the upper deck. With a steward on guard in the corridor—handsomely tipped in advance and with the promise of a definite daily wage—they came up one late afternoon in time to join the deck promenade before dinner.
“Ah!” Mr. Richard popped suddenly out of a steamer-chair. “I’ve been looking for you——” He was about to say “Jerry,” when he caught both the frightened look on Geraldine’s face and the imposing figure of the mother. Then he swiftly changed to “Miss——” but paused before the “Wells,” for to him that was as much a pseudonym as “Richard.”
“I want you to know my mother,” Geraldine put in. “This is the gentleman, mother, who was good enough to play escort in Naples that hot day we were tied up there.”
“Mr. Richard-without-the-‘s’?” Mrs. Wells inquired, and then went on, “Mr. Richard, I am indebted to you for looking out for my daughter.” She was examining him with care. “She says you are a friend of that villainous-looking Captain. I am glad to see you such a peaceful-looking person. Please get back into your comfortable steamer-chair. We have beenbelow deck ever since Naples and just must tramp a little.”
“I’m sorry if you have been ill. The passage has been remarkably smooth.”
“We have not been ill. I have a very sick boy.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“He is better now. Pray sit down, Mr. Richard-without-the-‘s,’ and do put on your cap. I appreciate the deference to my grey hair, but I am also enough of a grandmother not to want to be the cause of a cold in the head. Later, I shall want to talk to you. Good-bye, until we get on our feet.”
The incident of Mr. Richard, the Captain’s friend, had been driven from Mrs. Wells’ mind by the catastrophe to Walter. Now, as she walked arm in arm with Geraldine, she began to piece things together.
“That night in Naples,” the mother began in a tone that put Geraldine on guard.
“Yes, mother.”
“Why were you searching about the steamer only half dressed?”
When Geraldine had confronted her mother and Walter that night before her stateroom door, the easiest explanation was that she could not sleep and had been on deck to get the air. That excuse she had carefully tucked away for later use. But the mother did not ask, Why did you go on deck? but, Why were you searching about the steamer? Mother’s second-sight was uncanny.
“Were you looking for Walter?” Mrs. Wells suggested.
“He had been acting queerly,” said Geraldine. “He came to my room after you left.”
“Of course he did not get the money from you?”
“Of course not.”
They rounded a corner, bent themselves to the strong wind and turned for the trip back.
“There is something I want to ask you, Geraldine.”
“Yes, mother; what is it?”
“I don’t know myself. It is in the back of my head somewhere; it’s an uncomfortable something-I-want-to-know, but don’t know what it is. I trace it back to a question I was about to ask you when Walter began and blew everything else out of my head.”
“Perhaps it was my prowling about the boat?”
“No; I did want to ask about that, but that is explained, and yet there is something else.... It will come to me suddenly some day, and then if you are not about I’ll write it down.”
Mrs. Wells was strong on Mind. Without being a Christian Scientist or a clairvoyant or a Yogi disciple, she was a little of all, including Swedenborgianism. She claimed to be a free psychologist, interested in all spiritual and mental phenomena but above a label.
“That’s most interesting, now—this concealed thought in my mind. Think of it, my dear, it is up there in my head hiding from consciousness! It was a question—I am sure of that—but about what I can’t guess.”
“Perhaps it was about Mr. Richard?”
Geraldine knew her mother. One might as well have the thing out now rather than later. This was a good safe time, while they walked alone.
“Yes!” Mrs. Wells called out triumphantly. “It was! That’s a clue, at any rate. It was about Mr. Richard and—wait!... And it was about your kimono ... wait! Don’t speak for a minute.”
They walked along for the full minute.
“No,” the mother shook her head; “it poked its head out; I almost put my hand on it, but it slipped back again. It was about this Mr. Richard, and about your kimono—oh, I can see your kimono plainly!—and about your search on the deck for Walter. I can see you bending over a man and saying something to him. What made you ever suspect that man to be Walter? Why, he had startling white shoes and white trousers, a get-up that Walter detests.... Oh! Wait!... No, it’s gone again. I thought I had it.”
Geraldine felt thankful that Mr. Richard had at least two changes of raiment. On the day of her adventure he had been attired in grey coat and white shoes and trousers. That is why she thought she had her man when she awoke the unknown sleeper on the upper deck and inquired, “Is that you, Richard?” “Is that you, Richard?” she had asked, she felt so sure that she had the right man; and when he had looked up with a “Eh, what?” the shadow of his cap was so dark on his face that she did not see her mistake until after she had said, “This is Jerry.” The man had risen gallantly and came out into the light of an oil-lamp. He was quite different from Richard now; but when he saw the lady’s face he was eager to be Richard or any other man the lady willed.
“Too excited over Walter, I suppose,” Mrs. Wells answered her own question. “There! I won’t talk to you any more. You look dead tired from these last few days. You are not yourself at all, my dear. You used to be such a chatterbox; now, you are becoming actually—reserved and self-contained.”
They walked several deliberate steps before Geraldine said pleasantly, “Do you think so, mother?”
“There!” the mother exclaimed good-humouredly.“We walk five strides—plump! plump!”—and she counted out five more heavy steps with a “plump!” for each step—“before you say, ‘Do you think so, mother?’ And now that I think of it, such a non-committal phrase, ‘Do I think so?’ It throws the whole thing back on me. It doesn’t admit anything.” She squeezed her daughter’s arm affectionately. “Now that’s fine, Geraldine. I hope it is permanent. There’s no use giving yourself away by incessant chatter. But, my lady, I’ll have to study you all over again. This reserve and non-committalishness is very hard to read. I used to be able to look into your mind and see the gold-fish and count every one of them. Itwaslike a sweet little aquarium, my dear, the kind with a tiny romantic castle—greatly exaggerated—at the bottom. I’m glad that’s smashed. You got to be too pure and easy. I was aching for something harder, something——”
Mrs. Wells stopped her talk abruptly. They walked on in silence, striding heavily to the heaving deck.
“Something what, mother?”
“Well.” The mother was joyful. “That’s ten ‘plumps’ before I can get a word from you. I’ll have to watch you, my dear. You are getting deep.”
Geraldine was elated that her keen mother had noted the change in her. It was all she could do to restrain herself from a voluble explanation. But here, fortunately, was a case where explanations would not help. She was practising her “latest self,” as Mr. Richard had called it, and resolutely putting out the earlier tenant, that fluent, superficial, aquarium child. So she was restraining every impulse to speak, and when speech was necessary she chose words deliberately.
Already she had scored a fine point. As a rule she was limp before her mother’s cross-examination, and the reason she never knew until now: always she had set the wheels of explanation flowing, sometimes without an interval between the mother’s questions. On two occasions lately when Mrs. Wells had shot her questions, Geraldine, with a slightly nervous quaking, had begun deliberately to count five before answering. As a result Mrs. Wells had jumped into the vacuum created by the silence, even before Geraldine had got to three; and in each case Mrs. Wells herself had supplied a satisfactory answer to her own question.Q.—“What were you doing prowling about the deck that night in Naples?”A.—“Looking for Walter, of course.”Q.—“Why did you disturb a man dressed in white?”A.—“You were so excited over Walter, of course.”
Mr. Freneau, the university instructor guide, stopped the walk for a moment to make his polite inquiries. While Walter’s condition was being made clear to him, Geraldine stepped back a few paces to “Mr. Richard’s” chair.
“I must see you,” she said, “before you talk with mother. Do you mind taking the name of Mr. Richard? I fear I have blundered in trying to explain our trip to mother.”
“Not at all,” he agreed good-naturedly. “It is a good old name. Shall I think up a pleasant Christian name to match it, or have you arranged that, too?”
“Yes, do. But please be careful. I see now how rash and impulsive I was to go off with you. Can you manage to be a friend of the Captain’s, too?”
“I’ll arrange that instantly. We have already passed the time of day. Fortunately I did not givehim my name. He’s the sort that doesn’t ask for names. I know nobody on board. Except for your absence I have had delightful days and nights of hermitage. I’d make a first-rate Trappist. Since Naples I have spoken barely a word to anyone except the bathroom steward. Forgive me for being garrulous—I am just stored up with conversation now.”
“Well, be careful what you say to mother. She thinks we went to the Museum and came right back. It would hurt her to feel that I had deceived her; and I’m sorry now that I did. Is this your chair?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come up after dinner for a moment.”
“Good! I have a very interesting story to tell you. It is about your namesake, Miss Geraldine Wells.”
“Save it. Mother is looking for me. I must go. I’ll come up when I can get away. Wait for me.”
“Aye, aye, Madam.”
After dinner Mrs. Wells insisted on going on guard to relieve the steward. Geraldine was, therefore, free to go on deck. Mr. Richard had arranged two chairs with rugs. It was a wonderful dark night.
“We have a little business to settle,” he began.
“Oh, yes.” She remembered that they had gone shares on the trip into Naples.
He produced her purse. She had forgotten all about that. It was a wonder that Mrs. Wells had not asked for it.
“Do you realize, imprudent lady,” he said, “that you have turned over to a stranger—I am the stranger—the equivalent of very nearly one hundred dollars in gold?”
“Was it that much?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
“You tempt me to be dishonest,” he laughed. “And it is a great temptation, too; for not only am I broke, but I have lent some of your money to one of the passengers here, and, bless me, he seems to have fallen overboard. He hasn’t been in his room, the bathroom steward tells me, and he hasn’t been at his place at table.”
“How much was it?”
“I’m awfully sorry, but it was forty gold lire. Most peculiar the way the thing happened. I was in the smoker watching a mighty poor game of bridge when I noticed a young chap beside me, odd sort of fellow, well dressed and all that, but consumptive looking. He was watching me with the strangest smile, as if he had some joke on me. Well, he had! When he caught my eye he leaned over and whispered, ‘Good-evening, Mr.Richard.’ Then he winked and stuck out his tongue in the drollest way. Of course I fancied he knew you and had heard about our little fun over names. ‘My name’s Wells,’ he said, and leaned far back and nodded knowingly. ‘And my sister’s name is Geraldine Wells.’
“We shook hands and I made some remark about taking his sister’s name in vain. I explained how we had picked a name at random, and asked him point-blank how he had found us out, but he winked at me and shook his head. ‘I’m no squealer,’ he said. ‘Mum—that’smyname,’ he said very mysteriously. Well, I chatted with him for a while—he didn’t say much himself; he appeared rather disturbed; kept asking me what time it was and getting up and looking out the door and coming back and shaking his head, until I asked if there was any trouble. I’d be glad tomake amends for picking his sister’s name out of the catalogue and christening someone else with it.
“‘No,’ he smiled, very plaintively, I thought; there was no trouble, only he wanted to go to bed and couldn’t because the family luggage was tied up out there on the wharf with a lot of cash due on it. Mrs. Wells, his mother, was doing Naples and Pompeii and had taken all the money with her. Of course the trunks and things could wait until morning, but it was rather dangerous to wait. The boat sailed pretty promptly at six the next morning, you know.
“He said, ‘Good-night,’ and started out. I asked him if five dollars would do. He wanted to know how much that was in lire. When I told him he shook his head and said he would camp on deck and wait up for the mother. Forty lire was the amount due. I fumbled in my pocket and fell on your purse. He refused to take the money at first, but finally let me lend it to him. Of course he’ll pay me, unless he got into trouble on the dock and failed to sail with the steamer. But wasn’t it strange about the name Wells, the one I picked out from that steamer-list?”
“Walter Wells is my brother.”
“Eh? The chap who borrowed the money?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell me that you are really Geraldine Wells?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, of all occult happenings!”
She explained how the underscoring on the steamer-list had attracted his eye and forced him unconsciously to choose the name.
“And you knew all along?” he asked.
“Don’t be silly. Of course I know my own name.”
“But you said nothing, gave me no hint.... You are deeper than you look. And say,” he recalled something; “what an ass I was to tell you all that rot about keeping silent and not blurting out all you know. And by the way, Miss Jerry, you scored beautifully on that stay-over-until-the-next-boat idea. I’ll wager you knew all about that sailing hour.”
She smiled mysteriously.
“I admit nothing,” she said. “I’m complimented enough to know that you thought me game enough to do it.”
“Never thought of you at all,” he remarked frankly. “Should have, of course. I was thinking of myself solely. Dreadfully selfish, eh? I am an egoist, not an altruist at all.... But it would have been jolly.”
“Thank you.”
He laughed intimately. “We have a lot of personal vocabulary between us, haven’t we? ‘Thank you,’ ‘much,’ and——”
“And ‘my dear.’”
“Oh, yes! Yes; yes. That little family luncheon-party with our own butler was charming, now, wasn’t it?”
“Your ear-tips are reddening, Richard, my dear.”
“Stuff,” he returned. “You can’t see them in this darkness.... Now, why did you suggest the plagued thing! They are beginning to burn like fury. Odd about those ears; they give me credit for modesty and honesty and a lot of virtues. Blushing is just a disease of the circulation, like pallor. Criminals blush as often, I suppose, as——”
“Richard!”
“Eh?”
“Why do you let speech blur the finer self, deep-hidden and begging for expression?”
“Very good! Very good!” he cried; “a hit! Do you know, Miss Jerry, I am having an extraordinary rush of conversation. I haven’t talked so much since I don’t know when. But here goes. Shop closed.”
For a minute or two they rocked gently with the steamer and cultivated the “unexpressed self.”
“Oh, see here!” he was the first to speak. “I can’t stop now. There is much to settle up yet.”
“Please don’t attempt to settle money matters on this boat,” she interrupted. “I don’t see now how you can ever pay me back without mother knowing; and I won’t have that now. Forget about it. You can pay in many other ways.”
Again they had a minute or two of silence.
“But there’s something else,” Mr. Richard insisted. “Where is this Walter brother of yours who took the—oh, I beg your pardon; he is the sick one, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Is he better?”
“Yes.”
“He got the luggage from the dock all right, I suppose?”
Geraldine counted five before replying and then five more. He had better know the truth.
“There was no luggage on the dock.”
“What!”
“Our trunks and bags were taken on at Genoa and are all packed in the hold or in our staterooms. Walter was working you for money. He saw us together in the Naples Museum and was trying to blackmail us, that is all.”
He said nothing.
Geraldine sketched briefly the story of this youthful derelict and of their seeming control of him lately. She told how their only safety was in keeping money from him, how they had warned everybody and how the mother had believed she had broken down his very will to beg. Then she gave Richard the result of the interview in the hall; and the frightful outbreak and their days of struggle with a drink-crazed man.
“My refusal to pay up,” she said, “stirred his courage, I suppose. It angered him into action. He went straight to you.”
“And I gave him money,” Richard spoke thoughtfully, “the money that sent him down and out. That makes me responsible.”
“You did not know,” Geraldine excused him.
“Responsible none the less,” Richard insisted quietly. “You surely don’t believe that the events of this world depend on whether folks know or are sorry or even wish otherwise? I gave that boy the money that sent him back to the devil. Knowing or not knowing has nothing to do with the fact. I feel responsible and I’ll make what amends I can.”
“You can do nothing with Walter. Everybody has given him up. And it is such a pity. He’s really a nice gentle boy who has been poisoned, that’s all.... But he is frightful when the devil gets working in him. Mother isn’t afraid of him, but I am. You can do nothing; nobody can.”
“We’ll see,” said Richard. “I am terrifically strong. I can lift and pull and knock things about in a quite extraordinary manner. That gives me confidence. This drink business is largely mental. I’ve done a little mental-suggesting, out of curiosity merely. Let me have a try at the boy.”
“If you talk that way,” she laughed as she left him to take her turn below, “you and mother will get along famously, and she’ll believe anything you tell her. Mental is mother’s favourite word. With mother everything is mental.”
“Everything is,” he assured her solemnly. “Even you, now, charming as you are, even you are only a figment of my brain, a well-ordered complication of my optic nerve. See! I can close my eyes so—and poof! you vanish. To me you are a very pleasant dream.”
“Thank you.”
“And for me you would not exist at all,” he went on, “if I ceased to hear you, see you, touch you, taste you and—I haven’t tasted you yet, but I would know your scent in the dark.”
“How dreadful!”
“Oh, no! No; no!” he sniffed the air delicately. “It is a faint orris and carbolic acid. Very pleasant, really; and perfectly antiseptic. You probably use an orris perfume. I don’t know what the carbolic is. All existence is sensation and I am an epicure on the cultivation of the senses. I am right about the scents, am I not?”
“Oh, quite right,” she laughed. “Carbolic soap is one of mother’s manias. Keep up that pose and mother will love you!”