THE CARD ON THE DOOR
THE time came when Walter, a very sick boy, could be brought up on
deck and cared for. It is so easy to account for any sort of secret
illness on shipboard that few except casual inquiries were made. The
ship’s doctor, a good old fellow using the trip as a vacation from
regular practice, knew exactly what to do. Unknown to the mother Walter
received his daily tipple, only a touch, to be sure, but enough to
prevent the complete horrors of unrequited thirst. The grateful Walter
lay on his chair disturbing nobody, and, in his weak way, lived. Mr.
Richard and the doctor had good chats together, all of which were
stored up by the layman for future use.
Mrs. Wells and Mr. Richard fell into each other’s arms, figuratively,
at the first encounter. Geraldine sewed tranquilly and listened to
the contributions to the thesis of the ultimate spirituality of
all material things, with side excursions on telepathy, hypnotism
and dreams. When Geraldine later had twitted Mr. Richard (whose
given name, by the way, they could not agree upon, she claiming it
should be something simple and easy to remember like Robert or John,
and he sticking up for a distinctive cognomen like Llewellyn or
Gladstone)--when she had jested over his fine acting with the mater he
had looked at her with his mildly-serious gaze. “I could not do that,”
he had said, “not with your mother. I am a Platonist, I suppose. This
world, to me, is a beautiful illusion of the senses, a weak copy of the
eternal verities. Your mother is a very remarkable woman. I could not
fool her long on her favourite theme. No; we’re in deadly earnest--both
of us!”
In the middle of one of their discussions on the mystery of mind Mrs.
Wells suddenly turned to Geraldine and cried excitedly, “I have it, my
dear; I have it!”
Geraldine sewed on and waited. The mother struck an attitude of deep
concentration. Somehow Geraldine felt apprehensive. No member of the
family had ever attempted a prolonged practical joke on Mrs. Wells.
She had plenty of good humour but no appreciation of fooling directed
against herself. Therefore the palming off of a stranger under an
assumed name had grown to be a burden to Geraldine, especially
dangerous now that Mrs. Wells had received the said stranger into the
intimate purlieus of her pet theories. One could not play jestingly
with Mind! Geraldine was particularly anxious on this afternoon because
Mr. Richard had appeared in grey coat and white trousers, white hose
and shoes.
“Do you believe, Mr. Richard,” asked Mrs. Wells, her eyes firmly
fixed on his white trousers, “that conversation can be heard by the
subliminal self and be transferred later to consciousness?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” Mr. Richard assured her. “That is a very common
experience. Half our requests to repeat are not due to bad hearing.
Our hearing is well-nigh infallible, like any other recording machine.
Consciousness has been busy with something else, that is all. Give it
time and it will get the message. When anyone asks me, ‘What did you
say?’ I always wait a second or two. Quite often my remark doesn’t
need to be repeated; he picks it up out of sub-consciousness, where it
has been perfectly printed.”
“The white trousers bring it all back,” announced Mrs. Wells solemnly.
“Yes?”
“I see the upper deck very plainly.” Mrs. Wells closed her eyes.
Geraldine moved to a seat back of her mother, from which safe position
she raised a warning finger to Mr. Richard. “Don’t fidget, Geraldine;
I must concentrate.... Geraldine is in a kimono; her hair braided and
wound around; she leans over a man in white trousers and she says,
‘Is that you, Richard?’ and adds, ‘This is Jerry.’ He says he is not
Richard. Geraldine apologizes and moves away. The white trousers stare
after her.”
“Very rude of the white trousers, I am sure,” Geraldine remarks, but
offers no further help to clear up a situation she remembers only too
well.
“That is what I wanted to ask you about, Geraldine,”--the mother
ignored the comment--she had probably only heard it with her subliminal
ear, “but Walter,” she glanced towards the boy who appeared to be
sleeping, “but Walter upset my mind completely. Now, Mr. Richard, I did
not hear a word of that conversation at first, because it took all my
mind to get to the fact that Geraldine, whom I had just left sleeping
in her room, should be prowling about the deck nudging sleeping men.
It was not until Geraldine had moved completely away that I caught up
the words. When she spoke I heard only a murmur, absolutely nothing
distinct; and yet it must have been recorded on the subliminal and
lifted later into consciousness. I was going straight to Geraldine to
ask her about her strange conduct and particularly to inquire why she
should be asking about a ‘Richard’ whom she knew well enough to permit
calling her ‘Jerry’--why, bless my soul, Geraldine was looking for you,
Mr. Richard! But she did not say _Mr._ Richard--I am sure of that; and
she _did_ say ‘Jerry.’ Geraldine, help us out.”
“It’s too deep for me,” Geraldine smiled into her sewing. “You two work
it out,” she added serenely; “one of the party ought to keep sane.”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Wells was always irritated at the suggestion of any
connection between mental mysteries and loss of mental balance; but
it drove her away from Geraldine--as Geraldine intended--and set her
questioning Mr. Richard.
“Don’t you think it is possible that I heard correctly?” she asked Mr.
Richard.
He pondered over the situation. The events of the night came before
him. Suddenly he remembered that Geraldine had told him that she had
sought for him after Walter had visited her room with suggestions of
exposure.
“Ah!” he concluded suddenly; “I believe you heard accurately, Mrs.
Wells.”
Geraldine looked at him carefully. He gave her an assuring nod.
“Miss Wells was hunting for Walter,” he said. “She told me later. She
thought she had discovered me in the white-trousered sleeper and sought
a helper.”
“But she called you Richard, as if you were a butler or a chauffeur,
and she presumed that you would know her as ‘Jerry.’”
“Oh,” Mr. Richard laughed, “didn’t you know that my first name is
Richard, too? Don’t blame me!” he spread his hands out and shook his
head. “Richard Richard, that’s the label they gave me.”
“Why, no one would ever----”
“Oh, yes, they would. Look at Jerome K. Jerome.”
“Yes, that’s so.”
“And Peter Peter,” Geraldine helped.
“What!” the mother turned on her. She knew of no Peter Peter.
“The pumpkin eater,” explained Geraldine as she thoughtfully threaded a
needle.
Richard Richard bubbled with mirth. He had a hearty out-of-doors laugh.
“Great character, old Peter Peter. He and I have many qualities in
common. He was always hard up. So was his cousin, Tom Tom.”
“Eh?” Mrs. Wells’ mind could not catch up quickly with the jest. “Tom
Tom?”
“The piper’s son, you know,” Richard explained. “He stole a pig,” he
added instructively.
“To be sure. To be sure,” Mrs. Wells admitted. “How stupid of me.” But
her intent eye showed that her mind was still on the mystery. “There
is no Mr. Richard Richard on the steamer-list. I am sure I should have
noticed it.”
“No,” Richard answered slowly. “No-o. It wouldn’t be. I came in late
at Genoa. Didn’t make reservations. Knew there’d be plenty of room in
July; all the rush the other way, you know. So they didn’t get my name
in time to print.”
Richard seemed to be enjoying the game. Every now and then he would
look towards Geraldine for approval, but she gave him only a calm
wide-eyed survey.
With cap drawn down almost over his eyes, Walter, stretched out in
his chair, was observing the group with ferret-like eagerness. He knew
a thing or two! They were not pulling the wool over his eyes. And he
would show them, too; but in his own time.
The mother was not satisfied. “It sounds plausible,” she admitted
grudgingly. “Although how any sane person would name a child Richard
Richard----” She interrupted herself to gaze firmly into his honest,
genial face. The absence of all guile assured her. Besides, here was
a man who really knew mental phenomena, had taken courses under James
and Münsterberg; had some hypnotic abilities himself; was familiar with
what was to her an unknown region, Kant and Hegel; a man, in other
words, who had the right attitude towards Mind. Yes; he was all right.
Then a horrid doubt assailed her, for she remembered vividly that
Geraldine had said to White Trousers, “This is Jerry.” An hour or two
of strolling about Naples would not bring them to first names.
“But,” she began, and stopped.
“Wait, Mrs. Wells,” Richard sat up. “Do not speak. I am about to try a
bit of mind-reading. You are wondering why your daughter should have
called me Richard----”
“And why she should have presumed you would know her as Jerry.”
Mrs. Wells had taken the mind-reading as a matter of course.
“Exactly.” Richard was quite ready with an explanation. “You see, my
peculiar name struck Jerry--struck Miss Wells as absurd; which of
course it is. She said she could not call me Mr. Richard, as if she
were talking about me to one of the maids--‘Mr. Richard will have
his tea now; Mr. Richard does not go out to-day’--and all that sort
of thing. She said, and wisely, that Mr. Richard was not, strictly
speaking, a name at all; so she said----”
This story was not going as well as it should. In the flash of planning
it had seemed a first-rate explanation.
“What was it you said?” he appealed to Geraldine.
She counted her five before looking up from the sewing.
“You seem to be doing very well,” she commented quietly. “Go on. I’m
quite sure I don’t remember what I said.”
“You said something, I’m sure,” Richard cocked his head sideways and
tried to think of something she might have said.
Mrs. Wells was thinking, too. “If Geraldine made up her mind to call
you by your first name she would not be a daughter of mine if she
hesitated. I agree with her; Mr. Richard is uncomfortable; I think I
shall drop the ‘Mr.’ too.”
“By all means, do!”
Richard was glad to get out of the difficulty due to the failure of
invention.
“And I won’t press you,” said Mrs. Wells, her fine face lighting up
wonderfully, “to make up any more ingenious stories of how two young
people off on a lark manage to call each other by their first names.”
Richard laughed. “It was embarrassing,” he admitted. “One drops
into first names, sometimes, you know--uh--so easily and--uh--the
explanation is deuced hard to make--uh--in public.”
“I’m an old woman----”
“Oh, tut, tut; not at all.”
“But I am not so old that I can’t understand young folks. And anyway,
young man, you are not built to lie--your ears give you away.”
Geraldine broke forth in sudden merriment.
“Oh, see here!” Richard expostulated. “See here!” The large lobes
of his ears were burning. “You’ll get me all fussed up if you draw
attention----”
“The whole ear”--Geraldine spoke a word or two between attempts to
suppress her glee--“is crimson--and now--the back of your neck is on
fire!”
In the joyfulness of the moment Walter slipped carefully from his chair
and sauntered off; but he had not gone far before Mrs. Wells’ watchful
mind--the subliminal, probably--had noted his absence. Without a word
she rose and trailed the boy. At the top of the stairs he looked back,
turned about sullenly and waited for her.
“How did I do?” Richard asked earnestly, the moment they were alone.
He was as eager as a boy. Although Geraldine was a strikingly handsome
young woman Richard paid no attention to that. In her presence he was
like a near-sighted man intent on his own ideas. Just now he was openly
delighted with his own cleverness and appealed to her as co-conspirator
to give him full credit.
“You’re a better liar than I thought,” she gave her judgment composedly.
“Ugh!” he shuddered at the word. “‘Liar’ is pretty stiff, don’t you
think? That’s a fighting word, you know. Now, I should not call it
lying, but diplomacy. Same thing, of course, but--uh--quite different,
you know.
“But I say,” he bethought himself; “what’d you think of my blushes, eh?
Pretty clever, that. Gets you credit for a deal of innocence. I----”
“You surely don’t give yourself credit for the blushes?”
“Why not?”
“You can’t turn it on or off like a faucet.”
“But I can,” he insisted. “Been practising for years. Found it very
useful when caught with the goods on.”
She looked at him thoughtfully; he grinned back and nodded his head. As
she gazed steadily at him the tips of his ears began again, and slowly
the flood welled as before.
“I suppose you are giving me an illustration now?” she asked.
“Am I reddening up again?”
“You are--gloriously.”
“The deuce you say!”
“The deuce I say.”
“Well, of all--but it only shows how expert I am.”
“You turned this one on, too; did you?”
“Did it a-purpose; just to show you I could, you know.”
“You _are_ a better--fibber than I thought,” she announced.
From the stairway Walter’s high-pitched voice made itself heard above
the ship noises.
“I’m done with you; d’y’ hear!” He was levelling a very bony finger at
his mother. “No more! No more! I won’t let you get _my_ goat no more.
No, sir! No, sir! Talk all you want! Oh, I’ll look at you.”
She had been quietly asking him to look at her in the hope that with
her eye upon him he would wilt as before.
“I’m lookin’ at you! I’m lookin’!” he shouted menacingly. “An’ what
good’s it doin’ yuh? I’ve got your number, O.K., and it’s _all off_!
_All off_, I tell you!”
Evidently she had asked him to let her go with him to his room.
“No!” he raised his voice a half-notch higher. A passenger here and
there looked up. “You don’t follow me about any more, you don’t. I’m on
to you, I am. No more! That’s--final.”
She kept steadily at him.
“Stop it!” he shrieked and began to sway back and forth, “stop it
or--or--or I’ll throw myself overboard. I will! Do you hear? I will!
Aw!” he whimpered piteously, “can’t you shut up!”
Suddenly he darted towards the side and began frantically to put a
leg over the swaying rail. A passenger struggled with him and delayed
his attempt, which gave Mrs. Wells time to reach him. She put out a
hand towards his shoulder; he struck her savagely. Other passengers
including Richard and Geraldine soon surrounded the frantic boy and
tried to calm him, but certain unsuspected depths of passion had come
to the surface and gave him strength. His eye never left his mother. He
seemed anxious not to avoid her, but to fight it out then and there for
the mastery of himself, or rather, for his freedom from the mother’s
superior will.
The blow had staggered her. He saw her falter and knew his chance. He
fairly crowed his announcements that she would no longer settle on him
and drive him here and there like a puppy. In spite of her magnificent
appearance Mrs. Wells was no longer young. She was sixty and she had
driven herself hard. The sudden fright at the boy’s jump to the railing
and the unexpectedness of the blow, to say nothing of the power of
the sickening thought that her own boy should offer to strike her in
public, had its effect. An unusual weakness caught her limbs, and her
heart lunged forward.
Summoning her will she presented a semblance of poise and dignity. To
the group about her she explained that her boy was ill. He interrupted
constantly. She asked the passengers to let her manage. She knew how.
He would go to his room and she would go along and reason with him.
All of this he denied shrilly; and in her heart she knew she had lost
her grip, as he cried aloud his victory. No! No! He would never again
go with her.
“Will you go with me?” Richard asked mildly. “Let’s get out of this,
old fellow, and talk it over. No use letting this gaping crowd know our
business, eh? What d’y’ say?”
“Sure I’ll go with you,” Walter nodded seriously, but there was no
giving in in tone or manner. It suited him to go with Richard. He told
everyone that it did. Richard and he were pals, he told them. They
had things, they had, to talk over and come to terms on. Secrets, ha!
Secrets that would make ’em all sit up and listen.
Richard agreed and led him away. As they went down the stairs, Walter
leading eagerly, Richard cast one look back. Pity for the old grey
woman, looking greyer now than ever, struck him hard. He pressed his
lips together and wished he could requite in some measure the evil done
her late years by this hopeless boy.
The hopeless boy turned suddenly in the hall.
“Richard Richard!” he cried and laughed. “That’s a good ’un.
Richard--hell! I know you.”
“Of course you do. Of course you do,” Richard agreed. “But don’t bark
it out to the whole ship. Come along to my room and talk it over.”
“All right,” Walter assented. He said “Aw ri’.” One would think by his
speech that he was still “not himself,” as the Welsh have it. No doubt
the passengers agreed upon that theory. But Walter’s speech, drunk or
sober, had become blurred and difficult.
“All right,” he said. “I’m no squealer. I only want my rights. That’s
all.... Knew yuh wasn’t no Mr. Richard. Knew from the first.”
“H’m,” Richard mused aloud as they walked with difficulty along the
swaying corridors. “How did you get on to it, old fellow?”
“Saw your name on the door. Card.”
“The deuce you did!”
“Yes, thass-ri’,” Walter chuckled. “Saw yuh go in. Looked at the door.
Saw your name plain as writin’. The card said----”
“_S-sh!_” Richard silenced him so thoroughly as to frighten the boy.
“Never mind what the card said. Where do you think you are?” he
demanded roughly; “alone in the ocean?”
Richard put on his fiercest face. Walter had a secret: very well; it
should have value. “You’re a fine pal,” Richard growled, “a devil of a
fine pal.” He strode forward with an excellent assumption of ferocity.
“Hang that card!” he added, merely to give verisimilitude, as Pooh-Bah
would say, to an otherwise bald and innocuous situation.
That card was a mistake. He had put it up to make certain that his
luggage would reach the room promptly, and with no thought of its
being a permanent name-plate. When he reached his door with Walter he
wrenched it off impatiently.
“Come in,” he changed his tone. “Come in, old chap. Let’s talk things
over. Have something to drink.”
Richard unscrewed a flask and poured out a good-sized “slug.”
“That’s all,” he warned. “You’re in a bad way, man, and I’m not going
to have you kicking completely over. I’m good for a drink now and then,
but you can’t swim in it.”
Walter drank eagerly. It seemed to set him up almost instantly. Some of
the fight went out of him.
“You’re all right,” he commented sagely. “A wise guy, you are. And so
am I, all right.”
“Of course you are.”
“And I’m no squealer, either.”
“Of course you aren’t.”
“You can be Mr. Richard Richard if you want--or anything. Mum’s me! But
in my opinion you ain’t either one.”
“What’s that?”
“Yuh ain’t Richard and yuh ain’t----”
“_S-sh!_” Richard glared ferociously.
“Well--you ain’t. That guy,” he pointed towards the spot where the card
had been, “I’ve seen his picture in the papers, and he’s an old man,
old man with whiskers, he is.”
A look of pain shot across Richard’s face. He turned away and looked
steadily for some time out of the open port-hole. Then he came gently
to the stricken boy and said:
“Walter, let’s be friends, you and me. You’re right about both names.
That man,” his voice caught as he pointed towards the door, “I’m not
fit to walk in his footsteps, much less bear his name.... There’s
nothing wrong about me, Walter. I want you to take my word for that.”
“Sure there ain’t. An’ there ain’t nothin’ wrong ’bout me, either.”
“Of course there isn’t. That’s why I am going to stand by you and keep
you from jail.”
“Huh?”
“That forty lire you got from me for the luggage which was supposed
to be on the wharf. That’s what they call obtaining money under false
pretences. Good for five years, I think.”
He gave the boy time to get the thought.
“Jail’s not half bad,” Richard looked up reminiscently as if he was
speaking from experience. “They give you good grub and work enough
to keep you feeling right and sleep enough--_that’s_ all right.
But--there’s not a drop to drink. Not--a--drop. Days go, and nights
go--nights when you stay awake hour after hour with your tongue as hot
and dry as a burnt stick, and you cry out for a little cooling drink,
and all you get is a blow on the head. And the days pass and the nights
pass; and when you begin to count up the months and maybe years yet to
come----”
He stopped suddenly. Walter was holding his head in his hands. The
picture was too much for him.
“Well,” said Richard soothingly, “you needn’t worry about me, Walter. I
wouldn’t send a dog to a place like that--not unless I were forced....
I have my own reasons for being Mr. Richard. I’m going to trust you to
forget all about that card. You keep that a dead secret, old chap, and
I’ll stand by you to the last ditch. Is it a go?”
“Sure,” nodded Walter, but the brag had gone out of his voice.
They shook hands on it.