and shut himself in, his wife pleaded a headache, and with a word of
apology to her sister departed for her bedroom. Ocky, amiably anxious
to distract her nephew's thoughts from whatever he was glooming over,
suggested a game of chess. Finding this had not been included in his
college curriculum, she announced that she would settle herself in the
living-room with some new books that had come.
She went upstairs for one of these, and returned bearing it and a small
sheathed dagger with a highly ornamented handle. She found Copley in
the living-room, attired in a raincoat, standing and looking at the
closed door leading to Simon's study. Miss Ocky settled herself in a
chair by the lamp on the center table, drew the dagger from its worn
leather sheath and proceeded to cut the pages of Henner's "Through
Asia." She glanced up whimsically at her nephew.
"Well, Copley, are you posing for a statue of indecision?"
"Something like that, Aunt Ocky." He smiled ruefully. "I was going
for a tramp, then I thought I'd drop in for a chat with father--and now
I think I won't have a chat with him, but will go for a walk."
"It's pouring, isn't it?"
"I don't care."
"Of course, you don't. I know that mood--and a good sloshing hike in
the rain is a splendid cure for it. I know what's the matter with you,
too." She shot a look at the closed door and lowered her voice. "Why
don't you cut the Gordian knot and be done with it?" she added quietly.
"I--I don't get you."
"Elope, idiot child! You and she are both of age. Consider the late
Mr. Ajax of Greece--he defied the lightning and got away with it! They
can't do more than excommunicate you with bell and book and candle."
"But that's plenty, Aunt Ocky." A smile that had greeted her
suggestion faded away, leaving him gloomier than ever. "If I only had
to think about myself--! But I can't let Sheila in for a lot of
hardship. It costs money, these days, to live in even the most
moderate comfort, and all I could bring into the family treasury would
be just what I could earn with my two hands--supposing I was lucky
enough to find a job! It wouldn't be fair to Sheila--that's the long
and short of it."
"Have you given her a chance to speak for herself?" His aunt sniffed
contemptuously. "Gracious goodness, Copley, isn't there something more
in life than money? Don't people think of anything else in America?"
"Oh, yes. It's a free country and a man has a perfect right to be a
visionary and starve to death if he wants to. It just happens I
don't!" He grinned as some of her disgust went into a savage slashing
of uncut edges. "As things are, I don't believe I'll ask Sheila to
share my crust of bread."
"Then I'll ask her for you--blessed if I don't! I intended to run over
and see her in the morning, anyway. Did it ever strike you that
matchmaking is the proper business of old maids? They atone for
celibacy through vicarious marriage!"
"So that is the explanation of their favorite indoor sport, is it? But
I can't regard you as a confirmed old maid, Aunt Ocky." He moved to
her side and dropped a hand affectionately on her shoulder. "If you
won't think me awfully fresh for saying it--you're about the youngest
looking woman for your age that I've ever laid eyes on."
"Oh, thank you, Copley; thank you very much. Really, I must remember
you in my will for them kind words! But about to-morrow--may I
represent myself as being your plenipotentiary?"
"Sure thing. Go as far as you like, Aunt Ocky. Anything you start,
I'll finish." The sound of a chair being pushed back in the study
caught his ear and indicated a discreet change of subject. He stooped
to retrieve the dagger that had slipped from her lap and examined it a
moment. For all its exquisite beauty of design and workmanship, it was
a wicked little weapon. "You have a bloodthirsty taste in paper
cutters, Aunt Ocky. Where did you get this? Has it a history?"
"Very likely, but I don't know it. It is certainly old enough to have
a lurid past. I picked it up in the bazaar at Teheran. That
inscription on the blade is Persian."
"What does it mean? They taught me Persian when they taught me chess."
"It reads, 'I bring Peace!'"
"Oh. The Oriental point of view, I suppose! We would be more apt to
think of a dagger as bringing war."
"We think backwards at times," commented Miss Ocky. She reclaimed her
colorful souvenir of the East, then glanced up as the study door
opened. "Hello, Simon. I expect you will sleep easier to-night; no
fear of fire bugs in a rain like this!"
He grunted something unintelligible, and stared at Copley standing
there in the parlor in his raincoat. The young man returned the stare
with expressionless face. Neither he nor his father spoke, and in a
moment the tanner left the room.
Miss Ocky was as good as her word the following morning. She marched
cross-country to the Graham house, some half-mile distant, and had a
long and enlightening conversation with Sheila. She had met the girl
several times and approved of her highly, and when she left her finally
to return home her good opinion of Miss Graham was in nowise
diminished. The young woman, if she were not mistaken, had just the
qualities needed to make a useful citizen out of a husband like Copley
whose chief defect was clearly a lack of decision. He wanted
starching, that was it.
She bore homeward a book that she had borrowed from Sheila, and though
it only wanted twenty minutes to lunch time, she neither went to her
room to freshen up nor sought her nephew to make a hasty report on the
result of her embassy. She betook herself instead to the study, and
there was a malicious twinkle in her eye as she tapped on the closed
door. She obeyed a gruff command to enter.
Varr had made the best of his period of enforced idleness by working on
a batch of order-books that he had brought from his office. He was
busy with them now, and he looked as displeased as he was surprised by
Ocky's interruption.
"What do _you_ want?" he snapped irritably.
"I've picked up some information that I thought you'd like to hear,
Simon. How is your nerve this morning? I've just been to call on
Sheila Graham and she fairly made my blood curdle."
"Serves you right. Mine curdles when I even think of her." He
frowned. "Why did you go to see her?"
"I promised to take her a recipe for a cous-cous I described to her the
other day. Anyway, I like her, even if you don't. But that has
nothing to do with our muttons! While I was chatting with her I
happened to mention our experience yesterday with the monk--"
"You did! What in the world _for_?"
"Well, Simon, when I go to call on any one I like to talk about
_something_--I can't sit like a dummy--"
"You can't!"
"And that was certainly the most interesting bit of news that I had.
It quite woke her up. She's something of a blue-stocking, you know,
and has read a lot about the early history of this country. When I
spoke of the monk she looked very queer and went straight to a shelf of
books and took out this one--" Miss Ocky held up the one she was
carrying, and Varr saw that she was keeping a place in it with one
forefinger. "When she showed me a certain passage in it, I put it
right under my arm and brought it--"
"You needn't have," he told her abruptly. "I recognize the thing,
though I've never bothered to read it; Jennison's 'History of Wayne
County,' isn't it? There's a copy among your father's books in the
library."
"Is there? I wish I'd known it!" She opened the book at her place,
steadied the heavy volume on her knees and cleared her throat. "I am
going to read this to you, Simon--it isn't long."
"Go ahead." He had tried overnight to put the disagreeable subject out
of his mind but had not succeeded very well. He was consumed by
curiosity now to learn what she had discovered, though nothing would
have induced him to admit it. "What's it all about?"
She began to read in a soft, well-modulated voice.
"'Wayne County is not without its share of legends and quaint scraps of
folklore, some of them nicely calculated to chill the blood o' nights.
One fable, at least, has risen from a base of fact; I refer to the
famous Monk of Hambleton. Ancient chronicles of this town record the
arrival--in pre-Revolutionary times--of an unfortunate individual whose
face had been shockingly mutilated by accident or disease. He drifted
to Hambleton from the outer world and apparently quartered himself on
the countryside, living the life of a hermit in a small dry cave that
still shows traces of his presence. He habitually wore the garb of a
friar--a penance, perhaps, for former sins--and his disfigured face was
always concealed from curious eyes by a mask of black cloth.
"'After his death--a lonely demise in his humble cave--a story sprang
up about him to the effect that his spirit still lingered in the
neighborhood of its passing. Several credible persons claimed at
different times to have met the Monk, and since by some unhappy chance
these victims of an optical delusion were all subsequently visited by
misfortune in greater or less degree, it soon began to be whispered
about that to encounter the specter was a sure augury of impending
calamity. A local poet, long since forgotten, was inevitably inspired
to preserve the legend in his rustic doggerel. I append a few couplets:
"_'Who meets the monk at crack o' dawn
Shall rue the day that he was born._
"_'Who meets the monk in light of day,
Woe goes with him on his way.'_"
"Cheery little thing," grunted Simon Varr as she paused an instant.
"Is that all of it?"
"No, there's one more verse." Miss Ocky deepened her tones a note or
two as she solemnly read it.
"_'Who meets the monk when dusk is nigh
Within the fortnight he shall die.'_"
She closed the book and regarded her brother-in-law with eyes
half-mocking, half-pitying.
"Of course you wouldn't dream of treating such nonsense seriously,
Simon; I know that. But it's curious, and rather interesting, don't
you think? Jennison had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote his
account of it, but even he relates as a matter of fact the coincidence
that those persons who saw the vision were subsequently badly out of
luck." Ocky shook her head gently and glanced at him commiseratingly.
"If it _should_ come true in your case, Simon, I suppose this is an
opportune moment to offer you my condolences!"
"Thank you," he managed to reply dryly.
He felt very squeamish inside, though most of that was due to his
innate abhorrence of anything that brought up the subject of death. As
far as the Monk was concerned, he had found in the letter thrust into
the cleft stick and now reposing in a pigeonhole of his desk the reason
back of that masquerade--though he had to admit that the writer of the
anonymous note had certainly hit upon a sufficiently gruesome method of
transmitting it.
"Thank you, Ocky, for your condolences," he continued after an
interval. "The same to you and many of them! We'll go together, no
doubt. Don't forget you saw the Monk at the same time I did!"
"_Ah_!"
The monosyllable was almost a gasp of pain. Simon stared at her,
rather startled by the effectiveness of his sardonic reminder. The
book she was holding had dropped to the floor with a crash, her cheeks
had gone white to the lips, and now she was staring straight ahead of
her with a fixed expression of horror in her eyes as though they were
truly visioning the sure approach of Death.
_V: Miss Lucy's Man_
It did not take Simon Varr and Miss Copley very long to recover from
the perturbation they had shown when she finished reading him the bit
of folklore relating to the Monk. Both of them were highly efficient
in the art of self-repression, or failing that, knew how to mask an
inner emotion behind their normal outward semblance. When they
presently left the study for the luncheon table, Simon wore his usual
frown above knitted brows, while Miss Ocky displayed her accustomed
placidity of countenance with its high-lights of humor about her lips
and sharp gray eyes.
A dish of French chops annoyed the lord and master of the house. He
pointed out to his patient helpmeet that times were ripe for economy
and that French chops are economical only in respect to their nutritive
content. With the tannery closed down, an era of corned beef and
cabbage was strongly indicated--especially, she would understand, as
there now appeared to be four mouths to feed in the family instead of
the customary three. He hoped she would heed his words and exercise
greater prudence in the management of her household--and the courteous
inflection of his tones as he voiced his hope was a masterpiece of
sarcasm. It left his wife pale and resigned, his son red and
embarrassed.
"If corned beef and cabbage ever shows up in this dining-room,"
remarked the one member of his audience still undaunted, "my father
will turn in his grave."
"Your father thought entirely too much of his stomach," said her host
coldly.
"Yes? Well, it repaid him for all the affection he lavished on it.
His digestion was wonderful to the very end. How is yours?"
"I could say that that is purely my own business, but if you insist on
knowing, my digestion is excellent."
"I shouldn't have thought it. I don't agree with you as to the
essential privacy of the subject, either. It concerns all of us since
we have to live with you."
"_Do_ you?"
"Ah!" A touch of color in her cheeks suggested that flint was at last
beginning to spark beneath the steel. "Apropos of that and your
earlier remark, Simon--would it ease your financial straits at all if I
were to contribute something for my board and lodging? It would be a
novel experience for me in this house, but I've always been able to
adapt myself to altered circumstances."
She did not expect a hurried and polite disclaimer from her
brother-in-law. Disclaimers of any sort were not in Simon's line. He
merely sent her a chill look as he thrust back from the table and rose
to his feet.
"That is something you can settle with Lucy," he said coldly. "I'm
sorry I can't stay and chat with you a little longer, but I am due to
spend the afternoon at the tannery."
"It's nice to know that you can spend something," she threw after him
sweetly. "Why don't you bring back a hide or two from the vats, Simon?
We might boil them down for soup!"
He glared back at her over his shoulder as he stalked from the room.
Miss Ocky glanced at the faces of the two who remained with her and
gave a contented little chuckle.
"Now, that scene was a bit of honest, downright vulgarity!" she said
cheerfully. "Refreshing once in a while, don't you think?"
"Ocky! I wish you wouldn't poke him up like that."
"Well! Suppose he stops poking me first! I haven't got the patience
of a saint like you, Lucy--and gracious only knows where _you_ get it
from, my poor child! Twenty years ago you'd have taken that plate of
chops and shoved it down his throat." A fleeting recollection
corollary to this thought impelled her to shoot a discontented glance
at her nephew across the table. "What in the world has become of the
Copley spirit?" she demanded bitterly.
"You don't really understand Simon," murmured her sister.
"No," said Miss Ocky grimly, "but I'm beginning to."
They left it at that and withdrew from the dining-room. From his
inconspicuous post near the sideboard, Bates followed the retreating
figure of Miss Ocky with admiring and grateful eyes. Here, he told
himself, was the old Miss Ocky coming to life again, and his heart
rejoiced to think that Simon was in a fair way to get back as good as
he gave. The spirit of the Copleys--aye, they had it, every one of
them, if only they would show it now and then!
Lucy Varr departed for the kitchen, possibly to caution the cook
against undue ostentation at dinner, and Copley, obeying an imperious
glance from a pair of gray eyes, followed his aunt to the veranda. She
led the way to one end of it, and there turned the corner into an ell
that had been screened and glassed against the mosquitoes of summer and
the frosts of winter. With comfortable wicker chairs and quantities of
soft cushions, it was a cosy nook that had become Miss Ocky's favorite
haunt for reading or writing.
She ousted a magnificent, smoky-blue Angora who, catlike, had decided
the best was none too good for him, seated herself and waved Copley to
another chair.
"I had a talk with Sheila this morning," she announced.
The young man's face had been flushed and dark, but now, at the mention
of Sheila's name, it lighted quickly. He had been acutely embarrassed
during the exchange of courtesies between his father and his aunt, and
he had felt a quick resentment at the innuendo she had flung at him and
which he had by no means missed, but these passing moods vanished in
favor of happier emotions.
"I wondered if you really would! But, say, Aunt Ocky--you surely
didn't have the nerve to mention your elopement scheme, did you?"
"I certainly did. My nerve is a very superior article. I wish to
goodness I could graft a piece of it onto your backbone."
"Oh. Can't a fellow be sensible, Aunt Ocky, without being accused of
spinelessness? However, for the love of Mike, tell me what she said!
She turned it down hard, of course."
"She did not, though it was obvious that she would have preferred to
hear it from your own lips. Naturally. At any rate, when I first got
there I broached the subject tactfully--"
"You couldn't do it any other way, Aunt Ocky."
"Don't be impertinent. She soon made it plain that she was willing to
talk frankly and openly--was glad of the rare opportunity to discuss
matters with a person of some intelligence. She has been having a
little unpleasantness of her own; did you know that? It appears her
father has been fearfully stirred up over something yesterday and
to-day, and this morning when she spoke of you in some connection he
was quite savage. He was never keen on the idea of a match between you
two, was he?"
"No. I'm afraid he has sense, too!"
"Well, his daughter has a mind of her own, and she has made it up. She
has wisely concluded that a lot of our happiness in this life has to be
snatched from the Fates who dangle it before our eyes, just out of our
reach. She feels that the most practical way for you and her to grab
yours is to marry first and let the fireworks follow. Opposition to
the marriage will be curiously ineffective if the marriage has already
taken place. I thought she showed a good deal of fine logic, there."
"You mean, she agreed with everything you suggested!" Copley made a
despairing gesture. "Aunt Ocky, come down to brass tacks. It's true
that I'm crazy about Sheila and that she cares more for me that I could
hope to deserve--"
"Ever so much more!"
"--but Sheila is a human being who has to _eat_! She has to have
clothes to wear. She probably has a preference for a roof over her
head. And I--I'm _bust_!"
"Nothing saved from your allowance, I suppose?"
"It was never magnificent. Now, it is discontinued. Father has always
put it to my credit at the bank punctually on the first of the month.
Last Tuesday I dropped in to get my balance and--found an overdraft!
He was never careless in his life, so I don't need to ask him if he
forgot to make the deposit. He has simply decided to bring it sharply
to my attention that I am in no situation to marry, so he has cut out
my allowance."
"Humph. I expect you're right." She frowned at this new manifestation
of Simon's ruthless determination always to have his own way in
everything, then shifted a portion of her severity toward her nephew.
"In a sense, Copley, I'm rather glad that he did. If there's one thing
you need, it's a touch of adversity. Stiffen up, boy! I've done
everything this morning that I propose to do for you; now go to Sheila
and talk things over with her, as you ought to, instead of with me.
She's waiting for you!"
He rose with decision, a new alertness in his face and manner.
"Aunt Ocky, you're a brick." Impulsively, he took a step toward her,
thrust forth a sinewy hand and gripped the one she raised. "It makes
me feel like a new man just to listen to you--and the only thing I
can't understand is why you think me worth the trouble you take."
"There is no mystery about that. I have always loved your mother
tenderly, and some of that affection you have inherited. Sheila is a
lovely girl who I believe will make you happy--and do you good. As for
my desire to have the business settled--well, I've my own reasons for
that which will be made clear to you in time. Have you anything else
on your infant mind? No? Then, go--for goodness' sake, go!"
He went.
Miss Ocky sank back in her chair and for a space stared out at the
peaceful countryside that rose and fell in gentle undulations which
finally faded away into the blue distance. The forgiving Angora leaped
to her lap and she caressed him absently, her mind centered upon her
thoughts, which were not always as cheerful as they might have been.
So rapt was she in meditation that she was not aware of Bates' presence
until he had stood near her for a full minute. His house-shoes enabled
him to move on noiseless feet and he had never stooped to that common
subterfuge of butlers, the nervous cough. He stood patiently, in
silence, and Miss Ocky, when she noticed him at length, was stirred to
remembrance by something in his attitude. It was just so he had used
to come upon her in the old days when he was wont to bring his
difficulties to her, apparently deriving comfort from her half-mocking,
half-sympathetic comments.
"Well, Bates--you want to speak to me?"
"Yes, Miss Ocky, I do--and I don't."
"I understand perfectly, thanks to my exceptional cleverness and my
vast knowledge of human nature. What you want to do is blow off
steam--as you used to--but you are not certain that it's quite the
right thing to do. Isn't that it?"
"Yes, Miss Ocky."
"Well, I can set your doubts at rest. It isn't right; and now that
we've settled that," added the lady comfortably, "go ahead and blow.
After a long and very virtuous life I'm beginning to think there is
much to be said for crime! I can guess your secret sorrow, too."
"I'm sure you can, Miss Ocky." A faint amusement that had lighted his
tired eyes at her philosophy vanished again. "You've been here two
months or more, and you've seen how it is for yourself."
"Yes--I have. I tell you candidly, Bates, if I had dreamed how things
were going here I would never have stayed away twenty years. I was
shocked when I saw my sister--"
"That's it, Miss Ocky, that's it!" In his eagerness he was oblivious
to his breach of good form in interrupting. "It's not myself I'm
blowing off steam about. It's Miss Lucy. You can guess how I've felt
through these years, watching her change into what she is. It has hurt
me, Miss Ocky, for when all is said and done, I'm Miss Lucy's man as I
was her father's before her--not Simon Varr's! You remember what she
was like before you went away--always bright and happy and full of fun
and singing around the house. We used to call her the Queen of
Fairyland--"
"My memory is excellent, Bates. You needn't harrow me further."
"And look at her now," continued the old man relentlessly. "A poor
meek woman that never dares to call her soul her own, faded and
lifeless as the flowers I throw out of the vases, looking twice her
age--"
"I hope she's well out of earshot, Bates."
"And it's all the fault of that man!" said the butler passionately, his
eyes shining with anger and indignation and his usual careful diction
sacrificed to the greater need of plain speech. "It's him that has
done it with his sneerin' mockin' ways that would bring an angel to
tears--his penny-savin', snivelin' meanness that grudges her every cent
she spends, just as though he'd had a dollar to call his own before she
lifted him out of the gutter where he belongs. 'Twould have been
kinder if he had up in the beginning and struck her over the head and
been done with it instead of wearin' her down to skin and bones by his
naggin' and growlin' and snarlin'. And how do you think I've felt,
Miss Ocky, while I stood by all these years and watched it goin' on
unable to lift a finger to her help? 'Tis only once and again, when he
has her near to tears at the table, that I'm able to drop a plate or
joggle his elbow and him drinkin' coffee the while, and so distract his
attention."