Temptation came to me when I was in the worst possible position to
resist it.
It is a way temptation has. Whenever I swear off drinking invariably I
am invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich, only the highbrow
publications that pay the least, want my work. But the moment I am
poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE and the ROT AND SPOT
WEEKLY spring at me with offers of a dollar a word. Temptation always is
on the job. When I am down and out temptation always is up and at me.
When first the Farrells tempted me my vogue had departed. On my name and
“past performances” I could still dispose of what I wrote, but only to
magazines that were just starting. The others knew I no longer was
a best-seller. All the real editors knew it. So did the theatrical
managers.
My books and plays had flourished in the dark age of the
historical-romantic novel. My heroes wore gauntlets and long swords.
They fought for the Cardinal or the King, and each loved a high-born
demoiselle who was a ward of the King or the Cardinal, and with feminine
perversity, always of whichever one her young man was fighting. With
people who had never read Guizot's “History of France,” my books were
popular, and for me made a great deal of money. This was fortunate, for
my parents had left me nothing save expensive tastes. When the tastes
became habits, the public left me. It turned to white-slave and crook
plays, and to novels true to life; so true to life that one felt the
author must at one time have been a masseur in a Turkish bath.
So, my heroines in black velvet, and my heroes with long swords were
“scrapped.” As one book reviewer put it, “To expect the public of to-day
to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking people to give up
the bunny hug and go back to the lancers.”
And, to make it harder, I was only thirty years old.
It was at this depressing period in my career that I received a letter
from Fairharbor, Massachusetts, signed Fletcher Farrell. The letter was
written on the business paper of the Farrell Cotton Mills, and asked if
I were related to the Farrells of Duncannon, of the County Wexford,
who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1860. The writer added that he had a
grandfather named Fletcher and suggested we might be related. From the
handwriting of Fletcher Farrell and from the way he ill-treated the
King's English I did not feel the ties of kinship calling me very loud.
I replied briefly that my people originally came from Youghal, in County
Cork, that as early as 1730 they had settled in New York, and that all
my relations on the Farrell side either were still at Youghal, or dead.
Mine was not an encouraging letter; nor did I mean it to be; and I
was greatly surprised two days later to receive a telegram reading,
“Something to your advantage to communicate; wife and self calling
on you Thursday at noon. Fletcher Farrell.” I was annoyed, but also
interested. The words “something to your advantage” always possess a
certain charm. So, when the elevator boy telephoned that Mr. and Mrs.
Farrell were calling, I told him to bring them up.
My first glance at the Farrells convinced me the interview was a waste
of time. I was satisfied that from two such persons, nothing to my
advantage could possibly emanate. On the contrary, from their lack of
ease, it looked as though they had come to beg or borrow. They resembled
only a butler and housekeeper applying for a new place under the
disadvantage of knowing they had no reference from the last one. Of the
two, I better liked the man. He was an elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman,
smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July,
he wore a frock coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As
though he thought at any moment it might explode, he held it from him,
and eyed it fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type.
The lines in her face and hands showed that for years she might have
known hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, and
her fingers held more diamonds than, out of a showcase, I ever had seen.
With embarrassment old man Farrell began his speech. Evidently it had
been rehearsed and as he recited it, in swift asides, his wife prompted
him; but to note the effect he was making, she kept her eyes upon me.
Having first compared my name, fame, and novels with those of Charles
Dickens, Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering Gunter, and to the
disadvantage of those gentlemen, Farrell said the similarity of our
names often had been commented upon, and that when from my letter he
had learned our families both were from the South of Ireland, he had
a premonition we might be related. Duncannon, where he was born, he
pointed out, was but forty miles from Youghal, and the fishing boats out
of Waterford Harbor often sought shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of
my forebears, he asked, followed the herring?
Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell interrupted
him.
“The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal,” she exclaimed, “were gentry.
What would they be doing in a trawler?”
I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time, they
might have been smugglers and pirates.
“All I ever heard of the Farrells,” I told her, “begins after they
settled in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them. My
father and mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead, and
my mother's relatives are as good as dead. I mean,” I added, “we don't
speak!”
To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors great
satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.
“Then,” exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; “if I understand you, you have
no living relations at all--barring those that are dead!”
“Exactly!” I agreed.
He drew a deep sigh of relief. With apparent irrelevance but with a
carelessness that was obviously assumed, he continued.
“Since I come to America,” he announced, “I have made heaps of money.”
As though in evidence of his prosperity, he flashed the high hat. In
the sunlight it coruscated like one of his wife's diamonds. “Heaps of
money,” he repeated. “The mills are still in my name,” he went on, “but
five years since I sold them--We live on the income. We own Harbor
Castle, the finest house on the whole waterfront.”
“When all the windows are lit up,” interjected Mrs. Farrell, “it's often
took for a Fall River boat!”
“When I was building it,” Farrell continued, smoothly, “they called
it Farrell's Folly; but not NOW.” In friendly fashion he winked at
me, “Standard Oil,” he explained, “offered half a million for it. They
wanted my wharf for their tank steamers. But, I needed it for my yacht!”
I must have sat up rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had
reached home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an
imaginary wrinkle in her skirt.
“Eighteen men!” she protested, “with nothing to do but clean brass and
eat three meals a day!”
Farrell released his death grip on the silk hat to make a sweeping
gesture.
“They earn their wages,” he said generously.
“Aren't they taking us this week to Cap May?”
“They're taking the yacht to Cape May!” corrected Mrs. Farrell; “not ME!”
“The sea does not agree with her,” explained Farrell; “WE'RE going by
automobile.” Mrs. Farrell now took up the wondrous tale.
“It's a High Flyer, 1915 model,” she explained; “green, with white enamel
leather inside, and red wheels outside. You can see it from the window.”
Somewhat dazed, I stepped to the window and found you could see it from
almost anywhere. It was as large as a freight car; and was entirely
surrounded by taxi-starters, bellboys, and nurse-maids. The chauffeur,
and a deputy chauffeur, in a green livery with patent-leather leggings,
were frowning upon the mob. They possessed the hauteur of ambulance
surgeons. I returned to my chair, and then rose hastily to ask if I
could not offer Mr. Farrell some refreshment.
“Mebbe later,” he said. Evidently he felt that as yet he had not
sufficiently impressed me.
“Harbor Castle,” he recited, “has eighteen bedrooms, billiard-room,
music-room, art gallery and swimming-pool.” He shook his head. “And no
one to use 'em but us. We had a boy.” He stopped, and for an instant, as
though asking pardon, laid his hand upon the knee of Mrs. Farrell.
“But he was taken when he was four, and none came since. My wife has a
niece,” he added, “but----”
“But,” interrupted Mrs. Farrell, “she was too high and mighty for
plain folks, and now there is no one. We always took an interest in
you because your name was Farrell. We were always reading of you in
the papers. We have all your books, and a picture of you in the
billiard-room. When folks ask me if we are any relation--sometimes I
tell 'em we ARE.”
As though challenging me to object, she paused.
“It's quite possible,” I said hastily. And, in order to get rid of them,
I added: “I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to Ireland and----”
Farrell shook his head firmly. “You don't need to write to Ireland,” he
said, “for what we want.”
“What DO you want?” I asked.
“We want a SON,” said Farrell; “an adopted son. We want to adopt YOU!”
“You want to WHAT?” I asked.
To learn if Mrs. Farrell also was mad, I glanced toward her, but her
expression was inscrutable. The face of the Irishman had grown purple.
“And why not?” he demanded. “You are a famous young man, all right, and
educated. But there's nothing about me I'm ashamed of! I'm worth five
million dollars and I made every cent Of it myself--and I made it
honest. You ask Dun or Bradstreet, ask----”