entertained by this sketch of Simon's attention being distracted, but
she was in no mood for amusement at the moment. Her eyes were hard,
and if she deliberately kept her comments pitched on a semi-humorous
note, it was more to pacify and soothe the old butler than anything
else.
"I gather you don't care for Mr. Varr," she said.
"Does any one, Miss Ocky?" he retorted more calmly.
"You used a curious expression a moment since," she said, ignoring a
question she deemed purely rhetorical. "You spoke of yourself as 'Miss
Lucy's man.' Just what did you mean, Bates? I know you don't use
words just because you like the sound of them."
"You don't miss anything, do you, Miss Ocky?"
His set face softened as he regarded her with a look almost of
affection. "No, you were never one to miss anything! I'll tell you
what I meant, though I've never breathed a word of it even to Miss
Lucy, bless her!"
"There are a lot of things you could tell me," said Miss Ocky, "and I
hope some day you will. Go ahead with this one, first."
"It dates back. I could make a long story of it, but I won't. You
might say it goes back to the time I took service with your father and
mother. I was in trouble, mortal trouble, when they took me in, Miss
Ocky, and they gave me a home and comfort and--and security. That last
is a great thing in a hard world, as I guess you know. The only way I
could repay them was by being a 'good and faithful servant,' as the
Bible puts it, and I had reason to believe that they both came to be
glad of the day they showed kindness to a less fortunate human."
"What was your trouble?" she asked quietly, for this was her first
intimation that his advent to the household had been marked by anything
out of the ordinary. "My father never mentioned it."
"He wouldn't--and it doesn't belong with what I've started to tell you
now, Miss Ocky." He glanced at her apologetically. "I'm telling you
how I know they were glad to have me. When your mother was dying, Miss
Ocky, she had me called in for a word with her. She thanked me for the
service I'd given and said she hoped I would always stay with your
father as long as he needed me--'which will be to the day of his
death,' she said.
"The same thing happened when his time came. I was in and out of his
room a dozen times a day while he was ill, and once he stopped me and
told me a few things he had on his mind.
"'It's a queer thing, Bates,' he said. 'Here I am dying with scarce a
relative to my name, and I'm leaving two daughters to face the world
alone. They'll have money, but they won't have an older person to help
them over the rough places.' I could see he was worried. 'Of course,'
he said, 'Miss Lucy is going to marry that young fellow, Varr. I'm not
so fond of him as she is, though I've nothing against him that would
stop the match. It's her I'm thinking about. She will have this house
when I'm gone and she is married--and I want her to have you.' Well,
Miss Ocky, to tell you the truth I started to say something about
hoping that _you_ would set up housekeeping and find a place for me,
but he wouldn't listen to me for a minute. You know how quick he was.
'I'm competent to judge my own children!' he snapped at me. 'Ocky can
stand on her own two legs as long as she has 'em and will get along
nicely on crutches after that. It's Lucy that may need help.' He
looked at me very sharp--you have his eyes, Miss Ocky. 'I'm a dying
man and this is the last thing I'll ever ask of you,' he said. 'I
don't pretend that you owe me anything, but I'll ask you as a favor to
promise me you'll always stand by Miss Lucy.'
"There couldn't be two answers to that. I promised."
"And you've kept your promise faithfully. You've stood by."
"That's all I have done, though," grumbled the old servant morosely.
His troubled gaze sought hers. "I've just--stood by."
"Well, you couldn't very well do more. I think it is greatly to your
credit that you didn't leave the house long ago."
"I've been tempted often enough, Miss Ocky, but there's been the
thought in the back of my head that some day I might really be able to
help Miss Lucy in an hour of need." His hands closed nervously. "But
for that I'd have left, no fear! I've stood so much from him that now
I _hate_ him! Do you know, Miss Ocky," his voice dropped to awed
confession, "when he was so sick of pneumonia awhile back I just hoped
and hoped and hoped our troubles were near an end!"
"It would have been more practical to have left a window open on him,
but I suppose the nurse would have stopped that." Miss Ocky's voice
was an amused drawl. "Did you try prayer, Bates?"
"_Prayer_! Good gracious, no, Miss Ocky!"
"It's effective sometimes." She seemed to muse. "Of course, if you
were only practiced in witchcraft you could make a wax image of him and
then stick pins in it until he curled up and died--"
"Good gracious, Miss Ocky, but you've brought back some terrible ideas
from those foreign parts!" He was smiling, now, to show that he had
caught her mood and understood she was poking fun at him. The ceremony
of the blowing off of steam was nearly concluded. "If you ask me, I
don't believe that even witchcraft could hurt Simon Varr. It was only
the other day I heard him tell Miss Lucy that he'd increased his life
insurance and that the doctor had told him he was good for a
century-mark."
"Humph!" There was about her the air of one whose hopes have just been
rudely dashed. Then her face brightened and she added with determined
cheerfulness. "Never mind, Bates--you'd be amazed if you knew how
often doctors are wrong!"
"I hope you're right, Miss Ocky!"
"Suppose we drop the subject for the time. If you will look in the
sitting-room you'll find a book on the table called 'The Court of the
Borgias.' Bring it to me, please. I think a little quiet reading will
settle my thoughts after our conversation."
He went off smiling to get the volume, and presently returned with it.
He lingered to produce a match for the cigarette she took from a stand
beside her.
"Thank you for listening to me, Miss Ocky."
"And thank you, Bates, for telling me what you did about father. I am
glad he had confidence in my ability to take care of myself, and that
he wasn't worrying over me when he had so much else to think about."
"I wish Simon Varr was more like him!" said Bates.
She made no reply to that, and he withdrew in his noiseless fashion.
She did not immediately dip into the sedative history of the Borgias,
but remained looking at the corner around which he had vanished with
something akin to speculative interest. She was pondering the old
man's revelation of his hatred for Varr and the curious glint she had
caught in his eye at dinner the night before. It would be amusing, she
thought, if Bates instead of handing Simon the carving-knife should
sometime so far forget himself as to slip it between his master's
shoulders.
Amusing was the word she used to herself; perhaps, as the butler had
suggested, she had brought home some terrible ideas from the
East--ideas about Kismet and fatalism and the cheapness of human life
in comparison to human good. Wrong ideas, from the point of view of
the queer, drab, cramped and hypocritical Occidental mind.
She contemplated the Occidental mind briefly, then dismissed it as a
negligible quantity and settled to her book.
_VI: An Aunt in Need_
It was very nearly dinner-time before Copley Varr came back from his
talk with Sheila Graham. In deference to a hint from her that the
course of true love could not run smooth that afternoon in the vicinity
of her father, they had taken a long walk over the hills along quiet
country roads where hands could touch unseen by alien eyes. They were
happy, but rather nervously so, with something of the nervousness of a
young colt about to kick over the traces for the first time and who is
a little uncertain about the consequences.
One bit of their afternoon was devoted to a ramble around the grounds
of a small, vacant house, whose exterior they viewed and discussed from
every possible angle. It stood in the center of a wooded ten-acre
tract, a long mile by winding road from Simon Varr's house but not a
quarter of that distance from it as a plane flies. It was situated, in
fact, at the bottom of the very hill on which Simon's home flaunted its
greater magnificence, and it had once formed part of the property until
severed from it by the elder Copley's will.
They tried the front and back door, but finding them quite naturally
locked they made no further effort to effect an entrance. They
contented themselves with strolling around it once again, admiring its
shingles that were weather-beaten to a silvery gray, enthusing over the
quaintly-gabled windows of its upper story, calling each other's
attention to its palpable solidity of structure.
"A few hundred dollars spent on these grounds!" cried Sheila, her
cheeks flushed, her blue eyes shining. "Coppie, isn't it a _love_ of a
place? Did you ever in your life see a nicer?"
Coppie admitted freely that he never had.
It was for reasons directly connected with this desirable country
property that he sought audience of his aunt immediately upon his
return home. She was not to be found anywhere downstairs, and since
his impatience did not welcome the idea of waiting for a fortuitous
opportunity to chat with her in private, he took the stairs three at a
time and rapped eagerly on the door of her bedroom.
This was presently opened to him by a tall, bony, angular woman of
fifty-odd who regarded him not altogether favorably through
steel-rimmed spectacles. This was Janet Mackay, whom the
prosaic-minded would have designated a lady's-maid, but who had risen
from that humble position to be no less than Chancellor of State to her
sovereign majesty, Miss Ocky. The two women had shared the
ups-and-downs, the sunshine and shadow, of that mystic, colorful Orient
through whose extent the restless curiosity of the younger had led them
to and fro. Out there the line between mistress and servant had
inevitably been supplanted by the bond of companionship; but when they
returned to the more humdrum civilization of the western world, it was
Janet whose dour Scotch rectitude had re-established the distinction.
She took her meals with old Bates at a little table in the butlery,
found her chief relaxation in the one motion-picture house that
Hambleton boasted, and for the rest, "kept herself _to_ herself."
"Hello, Janet!" he greeted her. "Is my aunt in there? Ask her if I
can come in and speak to her."
The woman drew aside in the doorway as Miss Ocky answered for herself.
"That you, Copley? Come in. I'm out on the veranda. Janet, you
needn't wait."
Miss Ocky's bedroom, like all the others on the upper floor, had a
small private balcony outside its tall French windows that made a
pleasant place to draw a comfortable chair in the late afternoon or the
cool of the evening. She was sitting there now and called to him to
bring a chair for himself, but he preferred to lounge against the heavy
wooden rail of the balcony.
"Well, Romeo! I expect affairs have been marching with you and Juliet
or you wouldn't be hunting me up so promptly."
"See here, Aunt Ocky, I'm just tickled pink and all that, but are you
sure you ought to have done it?"
"Suggested the elopement?"
"N-no, of course not. That's all right. That's lovely. We are going
to take your advice and grab our happiness. What I'm fussing about is
the house business."
"Yes, you'd find something to fuss about, wouldn't you! I didn't
encounter any such obstinacy in Sheila, but women are much more
practical than men in every respect. When I told her I owned that
particular property and proposed to settle it on you jointly as a
wedding-gift, she yelped with joy. It's true that after that she began
to make polite gestures of remonstrance, but the yelp came first by a
good, wide margin! I'm glad one of you has some common-sense."
"I'm just as grateful as I can be, but--"
"Really, Copley, you're a downright nuisance. Let me tell you
something, my child. I've a great deal more money than your mother or
you or any one else around here has any idea of. I've made investments
in my time that would have turned a banker's hair gray, and never one
of them but brought me huge returns. That property is of negligible
value to me--how negligible you don't know--and yet it will be very
valuable to you and Sheila as a haven of security that you can call
your own. As a rich aunt, I have every legal and moral and ethical
right to give it to you--and as a poor but deserving nephew, it is your
cue to say 'Thank you' and accept."
"You're a brick, Aunt Ocky," said the young man soberly, for the second
time that afternoon. "Sheila spoke of a check for a thousand--"
"For your honeymoon. If you don't splurge too hard, there'll be some
of it left for initial expenses."
"You bet there will." He drew a long breath. "Thank you, Aunt Ocky,"
he said obediently. "I accept. But, look here--there'll be a holy row
when my father hears what you've done. He'll want your head on a
charger!"
"Better men than he have wanted that--and it's still neatly articulated
to the end of my spinal column!" She gave a low, reminiscent chuckle.
"There was a Chinese general, once, whom it was my privilege to annoy,
and he went so far as to put quite a flattering price on it. He lost
his own! Shall I tell you the story?"
He eagerly assented, and the gory narrative of the unlucky Chinese
head-hunter occupied them until dinner was announced.
It was scarcely to be wondered at that Copley was exuberantly cheerful
during the meal. His aunt might really have succeeded in her wish to
graft a bit of her nerve on to his backbone, for he felt a new sense of
self-reliance and resolution. Once married to Sheila, and with the
immediate future provided for by the generosity of Miss Ocky, he had no
doubt of his ability to pluck a pearl necklace from the world that was
his oyster! He knew quite a bit about the tanning business, a
knowledge acquired casually during summer vacations, and he also
knew--from Sheila--something of Graham's disappointed ambitions in
respect to a partnership, if his prospective father-in-law elected to
seek his fortune in another field, there was no reason why he shouldn't
hitch his wagon to Graham's star as Graham had once hitched his to
Varr's. The golden sun of finance was rising in the East for him, and
he and Sheila, hand in hand, would walk into the dawn--
So ran his thoughts, and between them he kept up a flow of badinage
with Ocky, rallied his quiet mother into some show of life, and even
directed a few flippancies at the glum figure which graced the head of
the table. The tanner was taciturn, abstracted, and the only show of
emotion registered by his wooden countenance was a flash of uneasiness
when Copley made some casual reference to Leslie Sherwood. Miss Ocky
did not miss that, and again she wondered what lay behind.
His son's airiness of manner distinctly jarred on Simon. A young man
just bereft of his allowance and under orders to renounce his lady-love
had no right to act like that. It wasn't natural--or else he had
something up his youthful sleeve. Humph. That might bear looking into!
"What are you going to do this evening, Copley?" he demanded, as he
returned the quill toothpick to his pocket and rose from table.
"Nothing special, sir. Read a while and turn in early."
"I'm going to be busy with some work for an hour or so. I wish you
would come to my study at nine. Want to talk to you."
Copley's heart sank as he nodded acquiescence. Then it rose again, for
his eyes had strayed across to Miss Ocky and the sight of his powerful
ally braced his courage--just as Simon, the day before, had gained
fresh confidence from the glimpse of a cabbage. Nothing could harm him
while Aunt Ocky held up his arm!
Punctually at nine o'clock he passed through the living-room on his way
to the appointment, and paused for a word with Ocky, who was reading by
the lamp in the center of the room. She had checked him with a gesture.
"What does he want to see you about?"
"I don't know. Just a snappy laying down of the laws of the Medes and
the Persians, I expect."
"Well, don't quarrel with him!"
"You mean--he's my father, after all? Right. It takes two to make a
quarrel anyway."
"The most ridiculous aphorism ever coined! I've made lots of them
myself, single-handed. And it was policy, not filial respect, that
dictated my caution. If you quarrel, you'll lose your temper; if you
lose your temper, you may let something slip that will reveal your
plans."
"Yours is the sapience of the serpent! But what could he do if he did
know the truth? We're both of age."
"Just the same, it's a good generalship to avoid risks. I have learned
to leave little to chance."
"Aunt Ocky, will you come and live with us when we are really settled?
I've an idea I could profit a lot if I sat at your knees for a while!"
"I wish I could accept your invitation," Miss Ocky answered gravely.
Her eyes left his face and seemed to shield her thoughts behind a film
of blankness. "I'm afraid I have other--plans," she added quietly.
"It's after nine--don't get the habit of unpunctuality."
He knocked on the study door at the end of the room, and closed it
after him when he had entered in response to a gruff command.
For some little time Miss Ocky tried to center her thoughts on her
book, lifting her head to listen now and again as she paused in her
reading to cut pages with her two-edged souvenir of Teheran. The
conversation in the study appeared to be flowing along smoothly. She
could not catch any words, nor did she try to; a shrewd listener can
glean a good deal merely by interpreting the vocal tones of the
different speakers. Her ear told her that Simon was certainly laying
down the law but with no more than his usual acidity, and that his son
was pleading his cause patiently and without acrimony. It was natural
enough that he should hope up to the eleventh hour for a favorable
change in his father's attitude, a foolish hope but a pardonable one--
Abruptly, Miss Ocky's ear cocked itself to a more alert angle. The
voices in the study had suddenly altered. Simon had said something in
his usual dictatorial accents, and Copley, instead of the soft answer
that turneth away wrath, had snapped a crisp rejoinder in louder tones
than any he had yet used. For a minute the two men were speaking at
once, discharging verbal salvos at point-blank range. Miss Ocky
shrugged her shoulders and smiled rather scornfully to herself. She
was not surprised. Lucy had told her of Copley's youthful flashes of
temper, which still persisted, though he had learned in some measure to
control them.
She was trying to guess the probable outcome of the battle of words
when her thoughts were interrupted from another quarter. The bell of
the front door had rung violently, and Bates hurried from the pantry
and along the hallway to answer it. Miss Ocky wondered who in the
world could be calling at such an hour.
She knew in a moment. There was the briefest of parleys with the
butler, and then, through the door of the living-room, she saw two men
hurry rearward through the hall in the direction of the study.
Evidently they proposed to present themselves before Varr without the
formality of announcing themselves through Bates.
The first of the two she recognized instantly--it was Graham, the
manager of the tannery, whom she had met several times. And he was
Sheila's father! An awkward occasion for him to appear! The second
man she did not know at all. He was smaller and slighter than Graham,
a pale, anaemic creature. He lagged behind his companion, and as the
latter kept a grip on his arm as they proceeded, he gave the effect of
a lamb going reluctantly to the sacrifice.
Graham's face had been deeply flushed--so much she had had time to note
as he swept past the open door. She heard him knock at the study--from
sheer force of habit, no doubt, as he could not have waited for a
summons to enter before flinging back the door. His voice carried
clear to Miss Ocky's ear as he swiftly took up some remark he had
caught from within.
"That will do, young man! I can fight my own battles with no help from
you--!"
Obviously, events were marching to a proper row. Miss Ocky had no
objection to rows when she could participate in them, but to sit by and
listen to others enjoying themselves was merely boresome. She put her
book on the table, marking her place with the Persian dagger, rose and
left the room. The angry voices from the study followed her upstairs
as she sought the quiet of her own room.
Here she found Janet Mackay, seated in a corner with a dozen new
handkerchiefs of linen that she was adorning with exquisitely
embroidered initials. She looked up, but continued her work without
speaking.
"Hello, Janet. Why aren't you at the movies this evening?"
"They're showing a gripping picture of purple passion," replied Miss
Mackay succinctly. She snipped a thread, deftly inserted fresh thread
in her needle and added casually, "It's a small world."
This was a sample of Janet's cautious, crab-like approach to some topic
of interest. Miss Ocky recognized it and soon had encouraged her to
persevere.
"A great thought, Janet, but scarcely a new one. What brought it to
your mind?"
"A piece of news that Bates was telling me over our supper. He got it
this afternoon from the postman. Did ye know that old Simon's kitchen
garden had been looted the other night?"
"No."
"It was. The fellow took a few tomatoes and did a wee bit damage with
his big feet. Old Simon found out who it was, and he had him arrested."
"Humph. He would. The man was probably hungry, poor devil."
"Aye; so they're saying in the town. No matter. Old Simon appeared
against him this morning in court and they sent him to the lock-up for
thirty days."
"Ninety meals! It might be worse. Who was it?"
"A young fellow named Charlie Maxon."
"Charlie Maxon! Well, he'll be no loss to the community for a month!"
"Aye?" Janet looked up sharply from her work. "Ye know him?"
"He's one of the leaders of the strike. I've spoken with him once or
twice. A bad egg, I should think."
"Aye, and his parents before him," said Janet Mackay. "They used to
live around the corner from me in Aberdeen. I can remember Charlie as
a bairn, and even then he was always into mischief. He's no whit
better now."
"And he turns up again in this little out-of-the-way place in America!
I see now why you say the world's a small one. Queer, but it's the way
things sometimes happen. Are you sure it's the same?"
"Aye. Three times I've seen him in town and thought his face familiar,
he looks so like his father. When Bates spoke his name, I knew."
"Well, I take it you won't remind him of the old times in bonnie
Scotland!"
"No fear!" said the older woman promptly. Then she looked keenly at
her mistress. "Aren't ye up early to-night?"
"Simon is having a row with Copley in the study." Miss Ocky shrugged
her shoulders and made a grimace. "I didn't care to listen any longer."
"He's having a row with the boy, is he?" Janet regarded her work
critically and bit off a thread neatly. "The old deevil! I'm glad I
have been with you all this time, Miss Ocky, and not around that 'un!
I've heard a few things about him from Bates." She threaded another
needle with deft fingers. "He's a rare curmudgeon. D'ye suppose he'll
go on like this to the end of his days?"
"Can you teach an old dog new tricks?" asked Miss Ocky contemptuously.
"You should know better at your age, Janet." She got up and strolled
out on the balcony to see the brilliant stars in a sky of velvet
blackness. "Quarter past ten already. I shan't need you for anything
to-night. If you insist on ruining your eyes with that work any
longer, go off to your own room and let me get to bed!"
_VII: Out of the Past_
When the curtain rose on the scene of that interview between the tanner
and his son, Simon was discovered at his desk laboriously making
entries in his small, cramped handwriting in the red notebook that held
so many of his secrets. He did not look up until he had completed the
memorandum which engaged him; when he swung his chair around he still
held the closed book in his hand and occasionally pounded his knee with
it when he wished to emphasize some point in the ensuing conversation.
He had his notions of good generalship no less than his shrewd
sister-in-law, and he did not make the mistake of pitching his
prefatory remarks on a note of hostility. He was fishing for
information. He hoped to get a clue to the reason for Copley's sudden
elevation of spirit, if a reason really existed.