CHAPTER XIIITHE HOME FOR INDIGENT DRAKES
“Well, if I can’t hug him,” Phœbe resigned herself briskly, “tell me his name and let me get acquainted as quick as possible. Although I think you make a mistake, Jerry darling, not to let me hug him and get over with it. He’s the most willin’-lookin’ creature I ever clapped eyes on, and I’m sure we’d be both enjoyin’ an innocent bit of lovin’. And mebbe if we had it out now right before your eyes we’d have done with it and not go hankerin’ after it behind your back.” Her rapid-fire tongue gave no one a chance. But, meanwhile, as she talked she pushed chairs out and arranged comfortable cushions. “There! Sit ye down and tell me all about it. What’s his name and where did you find him? Here! Sit here! I’ll half turn my back on him, he’s that temptin’. Why don’t some of you be talkin’ and not make me do all the entertainin’?”
“Isn’t she a wonder?” cried Jerry to Richard. “Look out! She’s always up to mischief when she begins dropping her ‘g’s.’”
Red-head she was, and eyes of absolute blue; and her lips curved in perpetual merriment.
“Saint Phœbe!” ejaculated Richard.
“The same,” she agreed. “Me halo’s in the wash. But be quiet, young man, until you’re introduced. I’m a respectable widow, and awful seductive—I mean,susceptible. Ach! Don’t look at me that way like a Gibson pen-and-ink sketch! Do you want me to be eatin’ out o’ your hand?”
She turned her chair and faced Jerry.
“Who is the handsome creature?” she asked pathetically; “and how did he ever get out of his picture frame?”
“Mrs. Norris,” Jerry took up the spirit of the game, “may I make known Mr. Richard, Mr. Richard Richard?”
“Is that his name?” she asked without turning around, “or are you stuttering from nervousness?”
“His name is Mr. Richard Richard.”
Phœbe looked over her shoulder at him incredulously.
“That’s not a name,” said she; “it’s the chorus of a song. Do you mean to say your last name’s Richard?”
“I do.”
“And you say your first name’s Richard, too?”
“I do.”
“You talk like a wedding.”
“I do.”
“Your middle name isn’t by chance Richard, is it?”
“I tried to have it that way,” he explained, “but——”
“The family voted you down, I suppose.”
“Exactly. You see, Mrs. Norris——”
“Drat Mrs. Norris!” she interrupted. “A man with only front names can’t have any advantages over me. You’ll call me Phœbe, young man, as everybody else does. You don’t suppose I’m goin’ to delay our intimacy by Misterin’ you, do you?” She turned abruptly to Jerry. “Just what claims have you on this beautiful person, Jerry? I want to know at once. The look of him sets me all a-flutter.”
“None whatever,” laughed Jerry. “But don’t makehim any vainer, Phœbe. He’s stuffed with pride as it is.”
“Ach!” Phœbe tossed her head. “I’ll take that out of him. My method is to puff him full of flattery till he explodes—feed him till he’s sick of it.”
“If flattery be the food of love, play on,” cried Richard.
And so they joked and grew acquainted. Amid interruptions and laughter Jerry managed to piece out an explanation of her meeting with Richard, of Mrs. Wells’ interest in him, and of Richard’s plans for the saving of Walter.
“Poor lad!” Phœbe grew serious. “Walter spent the night out on this porch just before you sailed. He had got hold of a quart of whisky somehow and was beginning on it, but I wheedled it out of him. He was going to toss it into the Lake, but I tried other tactics on him. I told him to put it on that shelf up there.” She pointed to a small projection near the roof of her small cottage. A brown bottle obviously three-quarters full was in ample view. “I told him that he must fight the devil a stand-up fight. He slept out here all night, and there it is—just as he left it.”
Phœbe might have told more; but she did not. She was the garrulous sort, the old “sanguine type,” who keep their own counsel in the midst of much chattering. She might have told of Walter’s maudlin love-makings; of his fierce attempts to force Phœbe Norris to run off and marry him; and of her struggles to keep him from slipping completely into the wallow. It would have made a great difference in the theories of both Mrs. Wells and of Richard if they could have known this side of the boy. And it would have been another blow to the mother if she had realized that it was the expertmanagement of Phœbe Norris that had kept the boy straight during his journey abroad, and that the two lapses, in London and on the steamer, were brought on by the irritating surveillance of the mother.
Richard was tremendously interested. He probed Phœbe with questions, but she turned them off adroitly. When he persisted in asking her where she got her knowledge of how to treat Walter she explained frankly.
“You see,” she said, “I have served my trade as an expert attendant upon twisted-minded folks. Perhaps they have told you, Richard Richard, that Seth, my husband, was out of his mind the larger part of ten years. I was his wife as far as the ceremony goes, but, as everyone knows, I was really only his hired nurse.”
“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “Believe me, I did not mean to probe you——”
“Shucks!” she tossed her head. “There’s not a thing to be fussy about. Seth was just a man with a child’s brain. The real Seth, the one I knew, died before I married him; so I took care of the boy Seth—if you understand me—gave him his food, bathed him and put him to bed. When he was too violent I threatened him with a whip. I struck him only once—when he gave me that.” She pulled down the collar of her gown and showed part of a livid scar. “He always remembered that whiplash and was a good doggie ever after. Of course I had to watch him when he got into his fits; but I have had less trouble with bulldogs. Poor old Seth, I got to be almost fond of him; but he was just a faithful two-legged animal; there’s nothing to be sensitive about.”
Again, this was not the whole story, as everyone knew. Seth Norris had changed from a fine young grape farmer into a violent crafty brute. Phœbe had mastered himwith the whip, but she had been forced to barb-wire a considerable enclosure to keep the lunatic from doing damage to others. She had made a comfortable house for him away from her own dwelling, and there he lived and roamed about within the limits of the barbed fence in the finest kind of savage contentment. But there were wild nights when she had no sleep, and there was more than one struggle before she was sure of her physical mastery. And yet, except for the scar, which did not show, she bore not the slightest evidence of her gruesome experience.
“I’m a widow at twenty-eight, with land of my own and income enough to buy the winter praties.” She struck an attitude out ofMonte Cristoand exclaimed, “‘The world is mine!’”
“You must have married young?” Richard persisted.
“Eighteen,” she said. “Seth died this spring. You don’t suppose I’d wear black, do you? Lord love you! I ’phoned up all the neighbours when he——”
“She’s just trying to shock you, Richard. Don’t believe her,” interrupted Jerry.
“Shut up, hussy. And I tried to inveigle them to come to a wake, but they all had previous engagements.”
“You’re Irish!” Richard guessed.
“Young man,” Phœbe eyed him, “you are too smart for these parts. You remind me of the wisdom of our chief-of-police Casey. A German tourist-party motored into Penn Yan one afternoon and interrogated Casey. The German said, ‘Bleeze, I sprech not Englisch. Mine name ist Schmidt. Bleeze,whois Elm Street?’ And Casey looked hard at him and exclaimed, ‘By Golly, you’re a Dutchman!’ Irish? Of course I’m Irish——”
“Oh, you’ll enjoy ‘Jawn,’” exclaimed Richard.
“Mebbe,” said she. “Wait. I’m Irish and I’m English and I’m Scotch and the Lord knows what else. How do you expect to keep a strain pure in this country where everybody pens up together and eats out of the same dish? It’s hard enough to keep the feathers off the legs of my white Orpingtons and get any kind of ribbon at the Yates county fair.”
“She’s strong on chickens, Richard,” said Jerry. “Look out! She’s awful touchy on white Orpingtons!”
“And so would you be if you paid good money for the pure stock, penned them in until they couldn’t breathe, and then watched them grow all kinds of things on their legs, things that are not in the books. I’ve only got six clean-legged hens out of a batch of forty. It gives me the jumps every time I see a dandelion thistle blow by. Pfitt! Is that one?... Well, what are you laughing at?”
She had made such a delicious face as she grabbed an imaginary thistle that laughter was compulsory.
“Sure, and isn’t it the wind that carries the pollen and spoils your best flowers by mixin’ ’em——”
Jerry screamed at the thought, and covered her face.
“It’s hardly the accepted theory!” roared Richard.
“Well!” Phœbe kept a serious face; “what I’d like to know is,whatput the bad fuzz on my Orpingtons’ legs? Anyhow, I kill every dandelion I see before they get bloomin’ and gallivantin’ about.”
“Oh, you’re Irish, O.K.,” cried Richard when he had recovered. “Deliciously Irish.”
“Didn’t I tell you you’d love her?” exulted Jerry, drying her eyes.
“I fear I shall,” said Richard gallantly.
“Fear is the word, me lad,” said Phœbe. “For Seth’s ‘pen’ is still there for the next one, and thebarb-wire, too. It worked so well with himself that I couldn’t be content with any other system. And the whip’s on the rack within easy reach. So count your beads carefully, Richard Richard, and pray to be delivered from Phœbe Norris.”
“It would just suit him,” said Jerry. “He’s a professional loafer. He’d just enjoy being fed and bathed and put to bed.”
“Oh!” said she. “He’s that sort, is he! Then I’m doomed. They’re the kind that get on my soft spot. All the derelicts in Jerusalem township find my door somehow, and they know I can’t resist them. Well, each man to his trade, I suppose. Whenever you’re ready, Richard Richard, trot into the pen. Shove the door to; it locks itself.”
On other topics Phœbe was serious enough; but the moment the subject touched herself she lifted it to rollicking nonsense. So before they left she spoke a quiet word or two to Richard.
“I’m interested in Walter,” she said. “Some day I want to know what you are doing with him.”
He sketched his plan briefly.
“And I want your opinion, too,” he added eagerly. “You can be a great help, I feel sure.”
“Do you think so? I don’t”
“Why?”
She pondered for a moment and then shook her head.
“I’m telling nothing. I don’t want to put things into your head. Let me hear what you can do first. He’s a good boy. It seems a shame to have him go to the bad.”
“Do you think he will come out all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t think he’s done for, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you believe there’s a chance, don’t you?”
“Y-es,” she admitted reluctantly. “There’s a chance to save him.”
“Tell me about it.” She said nothing. “Please, do. It may help wonderfully. I must get clues everywhere.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” she came to a decision. “You go on with your theory of boats and racing and all that. You may succeed. Lord knows I hope so. If you fail, come to me. I have a theory, too——”
“Why not try yours first?”
“No—oh, no!” she protested. “It wouldn’t work that way. If you fail—then I’ll try my medicine. And the best of luck to you, Richard Richard.”
The moaning yelp of a dog on the scent broke into the conversation.
“That’s ‘Count’!” said Jerry. “He’s after me. Someone must have let him loose.” The baying broke forth near at hand. There was a terrific swish of nearby bushes, then a huge liver-and-white pointer nosed into the cottage and leaped upon Jerry, whining and talking frantically. She had to beat him down.
“Charge!” she called again before he dropped at her feet and half chewed at her moccasins.
“Why, I believe the pup is crying,” said Phœbe. It seemed so. His brown eyes looked pathetically tearful.
Jerry knelt beside him, stroked his head, talked baby-talk to him and let him take her wrist in his big mouth.
“I’m ashamed of myself, Count,” she purred; “I never went out to see you after all these weeks away. Poor old faithful doggie! did he think his muzzer had left him for good and keeps?”
At the kinder tones he crawled nearer and nearer and thumped his long tail joyously on the floor; then he leaped to his feet and tugged at her short skirt, saying plainly, “Come along home. I’m afraid you’ll get away again.”
“I’ll have to go,” Jerry shook her head. “My baby wants me. Look how he trembles. He just suffers when I’m away; and here I went and forgot all about him. You faithful old brute, you make me ashamed.”
She moved out towards the road.
“Are you coming up now, Richard, or do you want to stay longer and get acquainted with Phœbe?”
Richard was about to speak, but Phœbe forestalled him.
“Take him with you, Jerry,” she called. “I’m afraid to be left alone with the man. He has a greedy look. If he finds out, somehow, that I admire him, the Lord knows what he might be tempted to do to me—kiss my hand, probably. Oh, them innocent blue eyes!” she fell purposely into the colloquial grammar. “And by the holy cross of Saint Michael, if it isn’t blushin’ he is! Take him away! I’ll be liftin’ him into me lap and singin’ him sleepy songs if you leave him here!”
With much more chatter of the sort, broken into by replies in the same spirit, Phœbe drove them out.
She stood laughing in the doorway until road trees hid them; then her face relaxed into uncanny thoughtfulness. There she stood for some minutes gazing ahead at nothing at all, and twisting Seth Norris’ gold band around and around her wedding finger.
Slowly she turned and walked into her garden to the side farthest from the Lake. A rustic one-and-a-half story building was before her. The windows werenumerous but small, exactly arranged so that a man’s body could not squeeze out. Almost anyone would have taken the hut for an imitation log cabin, but a closer view would show that it was built of genuine logs, huge, heavy fellows that could stand an Indian siege or, better still, do service as a frontier lock-up.
She unchained the door and stepped inside. It was a pleasant clean-swept interior. The articles of furniture were massive, in keeping with the general architecture, and all were fastened securely.
A farm helper was cradling oats in the field beside her. When he saw Phœbe’s company depart he had gone on to the end of his row and then came over the stile into the garden. He found Mrs. Norris looking thoughtfully about the log hut.
“I could move the hull thing easy enough,” he took up the conversation where they had left it a little while before; “and saw the winders out bigger and put a porch on this end. The only question is——”
“I’ve changed my mind, Henry,” she interrupted.
“Hey?”
“I think I’ll let it stand where it is for awhile.”
“Y’ll leave it stand, hey?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want any winders cut, the way y’ said?”
“No, Henry, thank you.”
He laughed softly.
“Make a nice rabbit hutch,” he suggested. He knew that Phœbe was too good a gardener to love rabbits.
“No doubt.” Her mind was not on the man before her.
“Or perhaps,” Henry was quite ready for a resting “spell”; cradling oats is not a sinecure. “Or perhaps,”he speculated more seriously, “you’re thinkin’ o’ raisin’ guineas; they say they’s heaps o’ money in guineas.”
Phœbe became suddenly aware of Henry.
“No, Henry, not guineas—nothing so useful and domesticated and industrious as guineas. Breathe it not to others, Henry; I shall keep this place as a home for indigent drakes who have lost their pia mater. But keep it dark, Henry.”
“Hey?” called Henry, to whom all this was dark enough at the outset. But she had vanished into the house; and he knew enough of the sting of her Celtic tongue not to delay longer on the oats.
The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Wells capitulated handsomely.
“Walter,” she smiled towards him beautifully, “Richard has won your hard-hearted old mother over. You shall have a yacht, the kind you want, to do with as you please. I just won’t get used to the fact that you are grown up. All mothers are that way, I suppose. So you run along and buy yourself one and win some of those races theChronicle’salways talking about. And you can climb up after peak halyards or birds’-nests or whatever you want! Geraldine will make you out a cheque. She’s in full charge of the money now.”
“But, mother——” objected Geraldine, to whom the new office was a sudden and unexpected promotion.
Mrs. Wells laughed almost boisterously—a most unusual performance. Small things had begun to amuse her out of all proportion to their entertaining powers.
“No ‘buts,’ my child,” she began before Geraldine could voice a further protest. “You’ve just been elected, and I’ve resigned—or the other way about.I’ve plumped everything on the library table—deeds, bills, mortgages, cheque-books, stock, everything. Look them over at your leisure, child. Study them out. You’ll begin to appreciate the work your mother’s done for you——”
“But I do, mother! I do!” Geraldine protested. “Of course, if you wish I’ll——”
“Tut! tut! child!” she soothed; “don’t get frightened. I’ll sign things when you bring them to me. But I find I need a rest. Little things annoy me. I want to get free. You don’t know how jolly I felt the moment I came to that resolution. Really,” she puffed a little, “I am perceptibly growing stouter! Expect any minute to see the hooks and eyes start from their roots!”
Here the laughter verged into happy tears.
Many sobering things had happened to Jerry recently, but none more serious than this. It was the sudden abdication of a beneficent monarch, and therefore, to the crown princess, unbelievable. But it was something more: it was a strong mother cut down by the swift approach of old age. Some of the old fear of the dominant woman lingered in Jerry’s attitude—it never quite left her—but it was mingled now with pity. Those puffy cheeks and the simper were ghastly when one thought of the past years of firm dignity. And a patch of pure white had appeared beside the grey of her temples.
Almost as abruptly as the mother had put off her responsibilities Jerry took them up. As the older woman had grown child-like, the younger woman had matured. But Geraldine Wells had always been older in thought than she ever had expressed in word or action; and now she quietly assumed her proper years. Richard hadhad a large share in that transforming, but the pitiful picture of the smiling, contented mother had hastened the process.
Richard was intent upon Walter; as much as he could he diverted the boy’s attention from the extraordinary transfer of authority just being promulgated so carelessly. It was a great relief to see that Walter’s interest was in the forthcoming yacht, and not at all in the change of management of the estate.
Richard got him to tell all over again the fine offer of Captain Fagner.
“Got a name for it yet?” Richard had then asked.
“Sure!” Walter spoke up guiltily.
“Have you! What’ll you call her?”
“Sago-ye-wat-ha.”
“Goodness, man, what’s that? It sounds like a curse.”
Jerry had finished the conversation with the mother by this time.
“That’s Red Jacket’s name in the Seneca language,” she explained. “Red Jacket was a wonderful orator, perhaps the greatest Indian orator known in history. Sago-ye-wat-ha means ‘He keeps them awake.’ Pretty clever name for a good talker, isn’t it?”
“Splendid!” agreed Richard. “And a bully name for a racing yacht. ‘She keeps them awake’! Good! Here’s hoping that she also puts them all to sleep!”
Mrs. Wells, as usual, had her coffee served on the terrace. Walter was soon making for the Norris cottage. He half explained as he left that he was going to sail round the Point in the “cat” and see Fagner about the new boat. Walter had no money for trolley fare; and he was never a youngster to take much to horses.
“This financial business has unnerved me,” Jerry confessed when they were alone. “It was a shock.”
“You’ll love it,” Richard commented shrewdly.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she corrected his view-point. “I’m crazy to get into it. I’m not lazy like you. What worries me is mother. She’s getting sleek and fat and silly-minded. Did you see the way she laughed? Like a foolish old woman.... She’s ill. That collapse on the boat meant more than we thought, I fear. I think I’ll have Dr. Sampson drop in for a call. He’s the only man about here who can manage her and prescribe for her without her ever being aware of it. Dr. Sampson can laugh a bone into setting properly, and over the telephone, too!”
“Those Sampsons could always do wonders with bones,” he joked; “remember the historic jaw-bone?”
He told her not to worry about Mrs. Wells, that she was going through a very natural transformation. The old will show age. Jerry must get used to the fact that her mother was sixty years old in years but nearly eighty in performance. No doubt the shock had done its part in making the change abrupt, but there was nothing alarming. The point was, he insisted, to take her at her word before she became querulous—age is not at all consistent; and further, he suggested that she should see the family lawyer and have papers made giving Geraldine complete control of everything.
“Why, how absurd!” she began, but he pointed out to her the consequences to Walter of having an estate on his hands.
“Do you suppose for one minute that you could control him?” he asked.
That sobered her.
“I am not thinking of your mother’s death,” heassured her. “She is the type that lives on into a long peaceful dotage. But I am thinking seriously of what she might rise up some morning and do, just as she did this morning. She might hand over the whole thing to Walter, or present him with a dangerous sum of money.”
“That’s very true,” Jerry agreed. “After this morning I’ll believe anything of her.”
“See your lawyer without delay,” he repeated. “There is such a thing as ‘power of attorney,’ I think they call it. It gives you authority over everything without having the mother relinquish her title to anything.”
“But she can always withdraw such papers—I know that much law.”
“To be sure,” Richard explained; “but lawyers know how to delay. What we want to stave off is any sudden on-the-minute decision.”
Jerry agreed that the idea was a good one. For her own gain she would not have lifted a finger, but always Walter was forcing decisions.
“I’m really growing enthusiastic over Walter,” she remarked abruptly. “He has picked up wonderfully. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that mother’s complete surrender and Walter’s change have come about at the same time?”
“Not at all. It agrees with my theory; and whoever heard a man going against his own theory? Mrs. Wells had a sort of mental strangle-hold on Walter’s mind. I believe that she clutched his mind and held it as literally as she could have held his wrist. When she gave up, he was set free. That’s not only my theory, but it’s the belief of ‘Jawn’ Galloway. Wait till you see him! He’ll make it clear to you. He’s coming, you know.”
“Oh, is he? No; I didn’t know. Did mother invite him?”
“Jove!” Richard remembered. “I wrote him that I was about to ask her; but I clean forgot it. But we can’t expect him for several days yet. There’ll be plenty of time to break the news that she has invited ‘Jawn’ up; and when she sees ‘Jawn’ she’ll rejoice. I’m dying to see Phœbe and ‘Jawn’ get together. They’re a pair of Irish comedians.... But I’ve good news for you. Walter declined his nip last night.”
“What do you mean?”
He explained to her his system, backed up by the authority of the ship doctor, of permitting a small drink a day to keep down the agonies of thirst.
“Walter refused?” She was incredulous and happy.
“Absolutely!” cried Richard. “Said he would have to cut that out now. He said a skipper would have to keep himself pretty straight if he wanted to show in a race against men like Fagner and Tyler. Isn’t it glorious?”
“Glorious?” echoed Jerry, her eyes shining. “It’s—it’s uncanny.”