THE HOME FOR INDIGENT DRAKES
“WELL, if I can’t hug him,” Phœbe resigned herself briskly, “tell me
his name and let me get acquainted as quick as possible. Although I
think you make a mistake, Jerry darling, not to let me hug him and get
over with it. He’s the most willin’-lookin’ creature I ever clapped
eyes on, and I’m sure we’d be both enjoyin’ an innocent bit of lovin’.
And mebbe if we had it out now right before your eyes we’d have done
with it and not go hankerin’ after it behind your back.” Her rapid-fire
tongue gave no one a chance. But, meanwhile, as she talked she pushed
chairs out and arranged comfortable cushions. “There! Sit ye down and
tell me all about it. What’s his name and where did you find him? Here!
Sit here! I’ll half turn my back on him, he’s that temptin’. Why don’t
some of you be talkin’ and not make me do all the entertainin’?”
“Isn’t she a wonder?” cried Jerry to Richard. “Look out! She’s always
up to mischief when she begins dropping her ‘g’s.’”
Red-head she was, and eyes of absolute blue; and her lips curved in
perpetual merriment.
“Saint Phœbe!” ejaculated Richard.
“The same,” she agreed. “Me halo’s in the wash. But be quiet, young
man, until you’re introduced. I’m a respectable widow, and awful
seductive--I mean, susceptible. Ach! Don’t look at me that way like
a Gibson pen-and-ink sketch! Do you want me to be eatin’ out o’ your
hand?”
She turned her chair and faced Jerry.
“Who is the handsome creature?” she asked pathetically; “and how did he
ever get out of his picture frame?”
“Mrs. Norris,” Jerry took up the spirit of the game, “may I make known
Mr. Richard, Mr. Richard Richard?”
“Is that his name?” she asked without turning around, “or are you
stuttering from nervousness?”
“His name is Mr. Richard Richard.”
Phœbe looked over her shoulder at him incredulously.
“That’s not a name,” said she; “it’s the chorus of a song. Do you mean
to say your last name’s Richard?”
“I do.”
“And you say your first name’s Richard, too?”
“I do.”
“You talk like a wedding.”
“I do.”
“Your middle name isn’t by chance Richard, is it?”
“I tried to have it that way,” he explained, “but----”
“The family voted you down, I suppose.”
“Exactly. You see, Mrs. Norris----”
“Drat Mrs. Norris!” she interrupted. “A man with only front names
can’t have any advantages over me. You’ll call me Phœbe, young man, as
everybody else does. You don’t suppose I’m goin’ to delay our intimacy
by Misterin’ you, do you?” She turned abruptly to Jerry. “Just what
claims have you on this beautiful person, Jerry? I want to know at
once. The look of him sets me all a-flutter.”
“None whatever,” laughed Jerry. “But don’t make him any vainer, Phœbe.
He’s stuffed with pride as it is.”
“Ach!” Phœbe tossed her head. “I’ll take that out of him. My method is
to puff him full of flattery till he explodes--feed him till he’s sick
of it.”
“If flattery be the food of love, play on,” cried Richard.
And so they joked and grew acquainted. Amid interruptions and laughter
Jerry managed to piece out an explanation of her meeting with Richard,
of Mrs. Wells’ interest in him, and of Richard’s plans for the saving
of Walter.
“Poor lad!” Phœbe grew serious. “Walter spent the night out on this
porch just before you sailed. He had got hold of a quart of whisky
somehow and was beginning on it, but I wheedled it out of him. He was
going to toss it into the Lake, but I tried other tactics on him. I
told him to put it on that shelf up there.” She pointed to a small
projection near the roof of her small cottage. A brown bottle obviously
three-quarters full was in ample view. “I told him that he must fight
the devil a stand-up fight. He slept out here all night, and there it
is--just as he left it.”
Phœbe might have told more; but she did not. She was the garrulous
sort, the old “sanguine type,” who keep their own counsel in the
midst of much chattering. She might have told of Walter’s maudlin
love-makings; of his fierce attempts to force Phœbe Norris to run
off and marry him; and of her struggles to keep him from slipping
completely into the wallow. It would have made a great difference in
the theories of both Mrs. Wells and of Richard if they could have known
this side of the boy. And it would have been another blow to the mother
if she had realized that it was the expert management of Phœbe Norris
that had kept the boy straight during his journey abroad, and that
the two lapses, in London and on the steamer, were brought on by the
irritating surveillance of the mother.
Richard was tremendously interested. He probed Phœbe with questions,
but she turned them off adroitly. When he persisted in asking her where
she got her knowledge of how to treat Walter she explained frankly.
“You see,” she said, “I have served my trade as an expert attendant
upon twisted-minded folks. Perhaps they have told you, Richard Richard,
that Seth, my husband, was out of his mind the larger part of ten
years. I was his wife as far as the ceremony goes, but, as everyone
knows, I was really only his hired nurse.”
“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “Believe me, I did not mean to
probe you----”
“Shucks!” she tossed her head. “There’s not a thing to be fussy about.
Seth was just a man with a child’s brain. The real Seth, the one I
knew, died before I married him; so I took care of the boy Seth--if
you understand me--gave him his food, bathed him and put him to bed.
When he was too violent I threatened him with a whip. I struck him only
once--when he gave me that.” She pulled down the collar of her gown
and showed part of a livid scar. “He always remembered that whiplash
and was a good doggie ever after. Of course I had to watch him when
he got into his fits; but I have had less trouble with bulldogs. Poor
old Seth, I got to be almost fond of him; but he was just a faithful
two-legged animal; there’s nothing to be sensitive about.”
Again, this was not the whole story, as everyone knew. Seth Norris
had changed from a fine young grape farmer into a violent crafty
brute. Phœbe had mastered him with the whip, but she had been forced
to barb-wire a considerable enclosure to keep the lunatic from doing
damage to others. She had made a comfortable house for him away from
her own dwelling, and there he lived and roamed about within the limits
of the barbed fence in the finest kind of savage contentment. But there
were wild nights when she had no sleep, and there was more than one
struggle before she was sure of her physical mastery. And yet, except
for the scar, which did not show, she bore not the slightest evidence
of her gruesome experience.
“I’m a widow at twenty-eight, with land of my own and income enough to
buy the winter praties.” She struck an attitude out of _Monte Cristo_
and exclaimed, “‘The world is mine!’”
“You must have married young?” Richard persisted.
“Eighteen,” she said. “Seth died this spring. You don’t suppose I’d
wear black, do you? Lord love you! I ’phoned up all the neighbours when
he----”
“She’s just trying to shock you, Richard. Don’t believe her,”
interrupted Jerry.
“Shut up, hussy. And I tried to inveigle them to come to a wake, but
they all had previous engagements.”
“You’re Irish!” Richard guessed.
“Young man,” Phœbe eyed him, “you are too smart for these parts.
You remind me of the wisdom of our chief-of-police Casey. A German
tourist-party motored into Penn Yan one afternoon and interrogated
Casey. The German said, ‘Bleeze, I sprech not Englisch. Mine name ist
Schmidt. Bleeze, _who_ is Elm Street?’ And Casey looked hard at him
and exclaimed, ‘By Golly, you’re a Dutchman!’ Irish? Of course I’m
Irish----”
“Oh, you’ll enjoy ‘Jawn,’” exclaimed Richard.
“Mebbe,” said she. “Wait. I’m Irish and I’m English and I’m Scotch and
the Lord knows what else. How do you expect to keep a strain pure in
this country where everybody pens up together and eats out of the same
dish? It’s hard enough to keep the feathers off the legs of my white
Orpingtons and get any kind of ribbon at the Yates county fair.”
“She’s strong on chickens, Richard,” said Jerry. “Look out! She’s awful
touchy on white Orpingtons!”
“And so would you be if you paid good money for the pure stock, penned
them in until they couldn’t breathe, and then watched them grow all
kinds of things on their legs, things that are not in the books. I’ve
only got six clean-legged hens out of a batch of forty. It gives me
the jumps every time I see a dandelion thistle blow by. Pfitt! Is that
one?... Well, what are you laughing at?”
She had made such a delicious face as she grabbed an imaginary thistle
that laughter was compulsory.
“Sure, and isn’t it the wind that carries the pollen and spoils your
best flowers by mixin’ ’em----”
Jerry screamed at the thought, and covered her face.
“It’s hardly the accepted theory!” roared Richard.
“Well!” Phœbe kept a serious face; “what I’d like to know is, _what_
put the bad fuzz on my Orpingtons’ legs? Anyhow, I kill every dandelion
I see before they get bloomin’ and gallivantin’ about.”
“Oh, you’re Irish, O.K.,” cried Richard when he had recovered.
“Deliciously Irish.”
“Didn’t I tell you you’d love her?” exulted Jerry, drying her eyes.
“I fear I shall,” said Richard gallantly.
“Fear is the word, me lad,” said Phœbe. “For Seth’s ‘pen’ is still
there for the next one, and the barb-wire, too. It worked so well
with himself that I couldn’t be content with any other system. And the
whip’s on the rack within easy reach. So count your beads carefully,
Richard Richard, and pray to be delivered from Phœbe Norris.”
“It would just suit him,” said Jerry. “He’s a professional loafer. He’d
just enjoy being fed and bathed and put to bed.”
“Oh!” said she. “He’s that sort, is he! Then I’m doomed. They’re the
kind that get on my soft spot. All the derelicts in Jerusalem township
find my door somehow, and they know I can’t resist them. Well, each man
to his trade, I suppose. Whenever you’re ready, Richard Richard, trot
into the pen. Shove the door to; it locks itself.”
On other topics Phœbe was serious enough; but the moment the subject
touched herself she lifted it to rollicking nonsense. So before they
left she spoke a quiet word or two to Richard.
“I’m interested in Walter,” she said. “Some day I want to know what you
are doing with him.”
He sketched his plan briefly.
“And I want your opinion, too,” he added eagerly. “You can be a great
help, I feel sure.”
“Do you think so? I don’t”
“Why?”
She pondered for a moment and then shook her head.
“I’m telling nothing. I don’t want to put things into your head. Let me
hear what you can do first. He’s a good boy. It seems a shame to have
him go to the bad.”
“Do you think he will come out all right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t think he’s done for, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you believe there’s a chance, don’t you?”
“Y-es,” she admitted reluctantly. “There’s a chance to save him.”
“Tell me about it.” She said nothing. “Please, do. It may help
wonderfully. I must get clues everywhere.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” she came to a decision. “You go on with your
theory of boats and racing and all that. You may succeed. Lord knows I
hope so. If you fail, come to me. I have a theory, too----”
“Why not try yours first?”
“No--oh, no!” she protested. “It wouldn’t work that way. If you
fail--then I’ll try my medicine. And the best of luck to you, Richard
Richard.”
The moaning yelp of a dog on the scent broke into the conversation.
“That’s ‘Count’!” said Jerry. “He’s after me. Someone must have let him
loose.” The baying broke forth near at hand. There was a terrific swish
of nearby bushes, then a huge liver-and-white pointer nosed into the
cottage and leaped upon Jerry, whining and talking frantically. She had
to beat him down.
“Charge!” she called again before he dropped at her feet and half
chewed at her moccasins.
“Why, I believe the pup is crying,” said Phœbe. It seemed so. His brown
eyes looked pathetically tearful.
Jerry knelt beside him, stroked his head, talked baby-talk to him and
let him take her wrist in his big mouth.
“I’m ashamed of myself, Count,” she purred; “I never went out to see
you after all these weeks away. Poor old faithful doggie! did he think
his muzzer had left him for good and keeps?”
At the kinder tones he crawled nearer and nearer and thumped his long
tail joyously on the floor; then he leaped to his feet and tugged at
her short skirt, saying plainly, “Come along home. I’m afraid you’ll
get away again.”
“I’ll have to go,” Jerry shook her head. “My baby wants me. Look how he
trembles. He just suffers when I’m away; and here I went and forgot all
about him. You faithful old brute, you make me ashamed.”
She moved out towards the road.
“Are you coming up now, Richard, or do you want to stay longer and get
acquainted with Phœbe?”
Richard was about to speak, but Phœbe forestalled him.
“Take him with you, Jerry,” she called. “I’m afraid to be left alone
with the man. He has a greedy look. If he finds out, somehow, that I
admire him, the Lord knows what he might be tempted to do to me--kiss
my hand, probably. Oh, them innocent blue eyes!” she fell purposely
into the colloquial grammar. “And by the holy cross of Saint Michael,
if it isn’t blushin’ he is! Take him away! I’ll be liftin’ him into me
lap and singin’ him sleepy songs if you leave him here!”
With much more chatter of the sort, broken into by replies in the same
spirit, Phœbe drove them out.
She stood laughing in the doorway until road trees hid them; then her
face relaxed into uncanny thoughtfulness. There she stood for some
minutes gazing ahead at nothing at all, and twisting Seth Norris’ gold
band around and around her wedding finger.
Slowly she turned and walked into her garden to the side farthest from
the Lake. A rustic one-and-a-half story building was before her. The
windows were numerous but small, exactly arranged so that a man’s body
could not squeeze out. Almost anyone would have taken the hut for an
imitation log cabin, but a closer view would show that it was built of
genuine logs, huge, heavy fellows that could stand an Indian siege or,
better still, do service as a frontier lock-up.
She unchained the door and stepped inside. It was a pleasant
clean-swept interior. The articles of furniture were massive, in
keeping with the general architecture, and all were fastened securely.
A farm helper was cradling oats in the field beside her. When he saw
Phœbe’s company depart he had gone on to the end of his row and then
came over the stile into the garden. He found Mrs. Norris looking
thoughtfully about the log hut.
“I could move the hull thing easy enough,” he took up the conversation
where they had left it a little while before; “and saw the winders out
bigger and put a porch on this end. The only question is----”
“I’ve changed my mind, Henry,” she interrupted.
“Hey?”
“I think I’ll let it stand where it is for awhile.”
“Y’ll leave it stand, hey?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want any winders cut, the way y’ said?”
“No, Henry, thank you.”
He laughed softly.
“Make a nice rabbit hutch,” he suggested. He knew that Phœbe was too
good a gardener to love rabbits.
“No doubt.” Her mind was not on the man before her.
“Or perhaps,” Henry was quite ready for a resting “spell”; cradling
oats is not a sinecure. “Or perhaps,” he speculated more seriously,
“you’re thinkin’ o’ raisin’ guineas; they say they’s heaps o’ money in
guineas.”
Phœbe became suddenly aware of Henry.
“No, Henry, not guineas--nothing so useful and domesticated and
industrious as guineas. Breathe it not to others, Henry; I shall keep
this place as a home for indigent drakes who have lost their pia mater.
But keep it dark, Henry.”
“Hey?” called Henry, to whom all this was dark enough at the outset.
But she had vanished into the house; and he knew enough of the sting of
her Celtic tongue not to delay longer on the oats.
* * * * *
The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Wells capitulated handsomely.
“Walter,” she smiled towards him beautifully, “Richard has won your
hard-hearted old mother over. You shall have a yacht, the kind you
want, to do with as you please. I just won’t get used to the fact that
you are grown up. All mothers are that way, I suppose. So you run along
and buy yourself one and win some of those races the _Chronicle’s_
always talking about. And you can climb up after peak halyards or
birds’-nests or whatever you want! Geraldine will make you out a
cheque. She’s in full charge of the money now.”
“But, mother----” objected Geraldine, to whom the new office was a
sudden and unexpected promotion.
Mrs. Wells laughed almost boisterously--a most unusual performance.
Small things had begun to amuse her out of all proportion to their
entertaining powers.
“No ‘buts,’ my child,” she began before Geraldine could voice a further
protest. “You’ve just been elected, and I’ve resigned--or the other way
about. I’ve plumped everything on the library table--deeds, bills,
mortgages, cheque-books, stock, everything. Look them over at your
leisure, child. Study them out. You’ll begin to appreciate the work
your mother’s done for you----”
“But I do, mother! I do!” Geraldine protested. “Of course, if you wish
I’ll----”
“Tut! tut! child!” she soothed; “don’t get frightened. I’ll sign things
when you bring them to me. But I find I need a rest. Little things
annoy me. I want to get free. You don’t know how jolly I felt the
moment I came to that resolution. Really,” she puffed a little, “I am
perceptibly growing stouter! Expect any minute to see the hooks and
eyes start from their roots!”
Here the laughter verged into happy tears.
Many sobering things had happened to Jerry recently, but none more
serious than this. It was the sudden abdication of a beneficent
monarch, and therefore, to the crown princess, unbelievable. But it was
something more: it was a strong mother cut down by the swift approach
of old age. Some of the old fear of the dominant woman lingered in
Jerry’s attitude--it never quite left her--but it was mingled now with
pity. Those puffy cheeks and the simper were ghastly when one thought
of the past years of firm dignity. And a patch of pure white had
appeared beside the grey of her temples.
Almost as abruptly as the mother had put off her responsibilities Jerry
took them up. As the older woman had grown child-like, the younger
woman had matured. But Geraldine Wells had always been older in thought
than she ever had expressed in word or action; and now she quietly
assumed her proper years. Richard had had a large share in that
transforming, but the pitiful picture of the smiling, contented mother
had hastened the process.
Richard was intent upon Walter; as much as he could he diverted the
boy’s attention from the extraordinary transfer of authority just being
promulgated so carelessly. It was a great relief to see that Walter’s
interest was in the forthcoming yacht, and not at all in the change of
management of the estate.
Richard got him to tell all over again the fine offer of Captain Fagner.
“Got a name for it yet?” Richard had then asked.
“Sure!” Walter spoke up guiltily.
“Have you! What’ll you call her?”
“Sago-ye-wat-ha.”
“Goodness, man, what’s that? It sounds like a curse.”
Jerry had finished the conversation with the mother by this time.
“That’s Red Jacket’s name in the Seneca language,” she explained. “Red
Jacket was a wonderful orator, perhaps the greatest Indian orator known
in history. Sago-ye-wat-ha means ‘He keeps them awake.’ Pretty clever
name for a good talker, isn’t it?”
“Splendid!” agreed Richard. “And a bully name for a racing yacht. ‘She
keeps them awake’! Good! Here’s hoping that she also puts them all to
sleep!”
Mrs. Wells, as usual, had her coffee served on the terrace. Walter was
soon making for the Norris cottage. He half explained as he left that
he was going to sail round the Point in the “cat” and see Fagner about
the new boat. Walter had no money for trolley fare; and he was never a
youngster to take much to horses.
“This financial business has unnerved me,” Jerry confessed when they
were alone. “It was a shock.”
“You’ll love it,” Richard commented shrewdly.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she corrected his view-point. “I’m crazy to
get into it. I’m not lazy like you. What worries me is mother. She’s
getting sleek and fat and silly-minded. Did you see the way she
laughed? Like a foolish old woman.... She’s ill. That collapse on the
boat meant more than we thought, I fear. I think I’ll have Dr. Sampson
drop in for a call. He’s the only man about here who can manage her and
prescribe for her without her ever being aware of it. Dr. Sampson can
laugh a bone into setting properly, and over the telephone, too!”
“Those Sampsons could always do wonders with bones,” he joked;
“remember the historic jaw-bone?”
He told her not to worry about Mrs. Wells, that she was going through a
very natural transformation. The old will show age. Jerry must get used
to the fact that her mother was sixty years old in years but nearly
eighty in performance. No doubt the shock had done its part in making
the change abrupt, but there was nothing alarming. The point was, he
insisted, to take her at her word before she became querulous--age
is not at all consistent; and further, he suggested that she should
see the family lawyer and have papers made giving Geraldine complete
control of everything.
“Why, how absurd!” she began, but he pointed out to her the
consequences to Walter of having an estate on his hands.
“Do you suppose for one minute that you could control him?” he asked.
That sobered her.
“I am not thinking of your mother’s death,” he assured her. “She is
the type that lives on into a long peaceful dotage. But I am thinking
seriously of what she might rise up some morning and do, just as she
did this morning. She might hand over the whole thing to Walter, or
present him with a dangerous sum of money.”
“That’s very true,” Jerry agreed. “After this morning I’ll believe
anything of her.”
“See your lawyer without delay,” he repeated. “There is such a thing as
‘power of attorney,’ I think they call it. It gives you authority over
everything without having the mother relinquish her title to anything.”
“But she can always withdraw such papers--I know that much law.”
“To be sure,” Richard explained; “but lawyers know how to delay. What
we want to stave off is any sudden on-the-minute decision.”
Jerry agreed that the idea was a good one. For her own gain she would
not have lifted a finger, but always Walter was forcing decisions.
“I’m really growing enthusiastic over Walter,” she remarked abruptly.
“He has picked up wonderfully. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that
mother’s complete surrender and Walter’s change have come about at the
same time?”
“Not at all. It agrees with my theory; and whoever heard a man going
against his own theory? Mrs. Wells had a sort of mental strangle-hold
on Walter’s mind. I believe that she clutched his mind and held it as
literally as she could have held his wrist. When she gave up, he was
set free. That’s not only my theory, but it’s the belief of ‘Jawn’
Galloway. Wait till you see him! He’ll make it clear to you. He’s
coming, you know.”
“Oh, is he? No; I didn’t know. Did mother invite him?”
“Jove!” Richard remembered. “I wrote him that I was about to ask her;
but I clean forgot it. But we can’t expect him for several days yet.
There’ll be plenty of time to break the news that she has invited
‘Jawn’ up; and when she sees ‘Jawn’ she’ll rejoice. I’m dying to see
Phœbe and ‘Jawn’ get together. They’re a pair of Irish comedians....
But I’ve good news for you. Walter declined his nip last night.”
“What do you mean?”
He explained to her his system, backed up by the authority of the ship
doctor, of permitting a small drink a day to keep down the agonies of
thirst.
“Walter refused?” She was incredulous and happy.
“Absolutely!” cried Richard. “Said he would have to cut that out now.
He said a skipper would have to keep himself pretty straight if he
wanted to show in a race against men like Fagner and Tyler. Isn’t it
glorious?”
“Glorious?” echoed Jerry, her eyes shining. “It’s--it’s uncanny.”