A MORNING OF SURPRISES
The following morning at ten I was ordered round with the touring car,
and Miss Gelette saw me for a moment alone before her uncle appeared.
She had to look twice before recognizing me, for now I wore putties and
the maroon livery supplied to Jules. It wasn't a half bad fit, though I
couldn't bend over without experiencing certain misgivings.
She eyed my shaven lip and said: "I don't know if it's an improvement
or not. Did you mind very much?"
"Not a bit, madam. I was thinking of getting rid of it in the hot
weather, anyway."
"You're a philosopher, Peter, and very good-natured. I'm so glad you
are." And then Mr. Varney appeared, leaning on the gold-knobbed Malacca
cane he always carried.
In the bright morning sun his complexion looked more startling
and sinister than ever, and, for all his immaculate and youthful
foppishness of dress, so haggard and feeble did he seem that
instinctively I stepped forward to assist him.
This was a mistake, for he drew himself up and said angrily: "To your
seat, my man! When I need a nurse, I'll engage one." And he strutted
down the steps, twirling his cane, like a macaroni of the old school.
I came mighty near losing my job right there, it being on the tip of my
tongue to tell him what was on my mind, for my humor wasn't very good
that morning, despite Miss Gelette's observation to the contrary. After
my half year's holiday, getting up at six o'clock in the morning and
overhauling three cars wasn't the joke it seemed the previous night.
Nor was I used to being talked to in that fashion. Moreover, the Demon
was awake and stirring within me, clamoring lustily for his customary
morning drink. The fight to the finish had only commenced, but already
I was sparring for wind.
I felt very irritable and despondent as I took the wheel, and, pursuant
to a curt command from Mr. Varney, headed for the Ocean Boulevard at a
maddeningly sedate pace.
"Not more than seven miles an hour, mind!" he emphasized, tapping me
smartly on the shoulder with his cane. "You're at liberty to break your
own neck, but not mine."
A mad desire possessed me to seize the cane and throw it in his face,
then let out the engine for all she was worth. I was beginning to see
the other side of the servant question, and I wondered guiltily if
Jensen and his predecessors had ever felt like smashing me. Could I
ever have been so overbearing as old Varney? Perhaps more so, when
under the influence of the Demon.
At mention of my real name, I pricked up my ears. Mr. Varney was
talking, and I could hear plainly above the soft pur of the engine. He
was discussing the previous night's tragedy, reading snatches of the
account from the morning paper, which I hadn't seen.
"Well, that's the last whelp of a vile brood gone, and a good
riddance," he concluded, with marked satisfaction. "It's the end I
always predicted."
"Why, did you know the family?" asked his niece in surprise.
"Yes, long before your time," as if her youth were a defect. "Peter
Lawton, this one's Father, was at Harvard with me. Married Sally
Canning, of Baltimore, against her parents' wishes--she was a noted
beauty--broke her heart and died a drunkard at thirty. A bad, worthless
lot."
"I don't know," said the girl slowly. "There was nothing ever wrong
with them but this, was there?"
"Well, isn't that enough?" he snapped, banging his cane on the floor.
"Is it nothing to be a dipsomaniac, and, knowing that, marry an
innocent young girl? Is it nothing to beget progeny and perpetuate a
degenerate endless chain----"
"I know, uncle. I was only thinking that the first Lawton who started
this curse, perhaps hundreds of years ago, was the real culprit. Think
of the tragedy of it, of inheriting such a thing through no fault of
your own----"
"Pooh! A nice bread-poultice philosophy! Is there no such thing
as free will? A fine world this would be if we were to yield to
every mad desire! During my long experience I've found that when a
blackguard perpetrates some characteristically dirty business, he
always lays it to heredity. It's never himself that's to blame, but his
ancestors--though they get precious little credit for any virtues he
may have. And I say that for Peter Lawton to marry was a blackguardly
business. It was a crime, and the State should punish such crimes or
make them impossible."
"That's all very well. But if two people love each other----"
"Pooh! If he'd loved her half as well as he loved himself he never
would have married her."
It took some effort to sit there quietly and hear my father called a
blackguard. Having but the vaguest memory of him, I had no means of
knowing that he had been acquainted with Theodore Varney. But as the
Canning family had never anything to do with me--I was brought up by
an impoverished maiden aunt of my father--it would seem Varney had
his facts right when he said my mother married against her parents'
wishes. Indeed, they had never forgiven her, my father, or me. But
whether that made my father a blackguard was another matter.
On the whole, however, Varney's remarks did me an immensity of good.
They stilled the clamoring voice of the Demon; I forgot about it in my
anger at old Varney. I gritted my teeth and swore that I'd show him the
"last whelp of a vile brood" was still very much alive, and would _not_
end the way he had predicted. I would never touch another drop if only
to spite him. Thus a second unexpected ally came to my help in my fight
with the Demon; the first was spontaneous liking for Brenda Gelette;
the second, spontaneous dislike for her uncle.
The girl having been effectually squelched in her attempted mild
defense of my worthless family, they proceeded to talk of other
matters; that is, old Varney talked, giving his opinion like a
magistrate from the bench, and not caring whether he had an auditor or
not.
It was evident that he had read and traveled widely. I gathered that
their home was in Philadelphia, but they spoke of high official circles
in Washington, and of New Yorkers I had heard of and others I knew
rather intimately. It was a caution the way the Varney tongue opened
out on most of them; he had piled up a whole library of scandal during
his long life, and had forgotten none of it. He seemed to take a
malicious pleasure in saying nasty things about everybody, and the
worst of it was I felt they were right. In many instances I knew them
to be.
He paid no more attention to me than as if I were part of the car, and
when his niece tried to steer him off, or hinted diplomatically that he
lower his voice, he raised it the louder and banged on the floor with
his cane.
Jules had called him an old devil, and I was ready to concur in the
opinion. I wondered why Brenda Gelette put up with him, for assuredly
she did not seem the kind that licks dirt for sake of their daily
bread or an expected inheritance. But what love could a viper like him
engender in any one? And if not love, then was it fear? These were
questions I had been asking myself since that interview in the study.
On our way back through Sea Bright, after a funeral procession to the
casino in Allenhurst, we stopped at the Octagon drug store--a branch of
a well-known Philadelphia house--and old Varney and his niece entered.
This was where the girl had gone yesterday.
With characteristic amiability he now remarked he could attend very
well to his own business without her help, but she said she wished to
do some shopping herself, and so, grumbling, he let her accompany him.
He strutted as I had seen him do before, puffing out his flat chest
and swinging his cane as if challenging the universe, and for all my
dislike of the man, I felt a pang of sudden pity. I sensed that all
this was play acting, a pose to deceive the world. That buoyant step
and swaggering manner were as artificial as his teeth.
I am not a person of inspirations, but I got one just then. For all
Varney's words about will power, did he possess a Demon like myself?
Was he a secret "dope fiend," and did his niece suspect it? I knew
precious little about medicine, but it seemed to me that might account
for his peculiar color and emaciation; and it would account for his not
wishing the girl to accompany him into the store which supplied him
through the Philadelphia one.
I was thinking over this hypothesis when that queer sixth sense which
we all possess warned me that some one was staring at me, and, glancing
up, I saw a man standing on the corner. He wore a leather cap, with
motor goggles shoved up over the peak, and he had the high, bulging
forehead of a mathematician and the rudimentary chin of a degenerate.
As our eyes met, he slowly closed one, whose color put me in mind of
skimmed milk.
I looked hastily away, shocked as any old maid, so secure had I felt
about my disguise. To the best of my recollection, I had never seen
this fellow before, but then, during the past few months, people
occasionally spoke to me whom I had no recollection of meeting
previously, for the Demon was not an aid to memory. Clearly this fellow
knew me for all my changed appearance, and in spite of the fact that I
was supposed to be dead and buried. It would prove rather awkward if he
greeted me as Peter Lawton before old Varney, who might appear at any
moment.
I kept my head turned away, but, out of the tail of my eye, I saw him
leave the corner and come strolling toward me. I heard him coming close
to the car, something touched my hand, and when I looked up there he
was, going across the street while a small piece of folded paper lay on
the seat at my side. He was a clever sort, for I doubt if any watching
eye, from among the many that surrounded us, could have detected his
deft transference of that paper.
I decided to be equally discreet, and, pretending to examine the
magneto, unfolded the little cocked hat and read:
The King's pawn is to meet the Bishop's at Knight's.
Feeling somewhat as did Alice when she went through the Looking Glass
and met the Red Queen, I looked round hastily for the man with the
bulging forehead, but he had vanished.
"Now is he a chess crank gone insane?" I asked myself, thinking aloud.
"They ought to put him in the booby hatch."
"Eh, what's that?" roared old Varney in my ear.
"I--I didn't mean you, sir," I stammered, jumping out and opening the
door. "I was thinking of a chess problem."
"Don't talk to me about chess problems," he snapped. "Only idiots play
chess, and the only problem you have is how to earn the money I pay
you."
I put the note in my pocket and thought of the incident on the way
home. "Knight's what?" I asked myself irritably. "Even if the fellow is
crazy, why couldn't he name the square and be done with it?"
It seemed to be a morning of surprises, for when I pulled in from the
road toward the house, I passed an empty "bobcat" standing at the curb,
and when I drew up under the porte-cochère a man of about my own age
was coming down the steps. I gave one look, and then ducked, for it was
Arnold Frean, the person of all others whom I cared least to see.
"How d' do, Miss Brenda? Hello, there, Mr. Varney!" he exclaimed,
coming forward with sleek, bared head and welcoming hand. "What luck!
Old Horace was just telling me he didn't know when you'd be back."
The greetings of both the girl and her uncle were cordial; indeed, it
was the first time I'd heard old Varney do anything but snap. However,
like us all, it was evident he could be very nice when he so wanted.
He called Frean "my boy," and inquired after his family.
"Oh, the folks aren't coming down," said Frean. "They're off to Lenox,
and the governor'll be doing good if he can snatch a week-end now and
then. I'm down here on my lonely. Been working overtime, and got a bit
under the weather. Doctor ordered sea air and the governor voted me a
month's holiday. I heard you were trying your first dose of the Jersey
coast----" And so he rattled on, with a very engaging ingenuousness
which I knew cloaked an experience beyond his years.
I sat stolidly at the wheel, waiting to drive round to the garage
when old Varney condescended to alight, and, after his first careless
glance, Frean never gave me another. He had not recognized me, but if
he was going to prove a frequent visitor during his stay, which seemed
quite possible, I determined to run no chances. I would develop "motor
eye" and take to wearing goggles.
All in all, things were looking up, and here was something more to take
my thoughts off the Demon, for I knew that Arnold Frean had lied to old
Varney, and that he was a young man well worth watching.