“JAWN”
IT took a long part of the morning for Walter’s “cat” to arrive at
Fagner’s dock. The skipper was in Penn Yan, he was told, at the N. Y.
C. tracks, unloading his new yacht. So more time elapsed before Walter
was able to sail into the Lake “outlet,” tie up, and saunter over to
the scene. Willing helpers enough were eager to assist in setting the
mast, fastening the stays, adjusting this and that preparatory to
dropping her into the Lake. Walter stood by, too shy to let them know
that the boat was his own.
Finally, just as the last heave dropped her into the water, where she
floated like the proverbial cork, Fagner noticed Walter.
“We’re getting your boat ready for you,” he chaffed. He had not the
faintest notion that the boy’s talk at various times was based on
anything substantial. He had joined in with Walter’s scheme out of
sympathy and good nature. Walter’s whole life and future were an open
book to that locality. “Or would you rather have the _Moodiks_?”
“This ’un suits me,” Walter remarked. “Whe’ ’re the sails?”
“They’ll be along later; ordered new ones from Boston, and they had
trouble with a strike down there.”
Except for the sails the yacht was complete. The group on the dock
stood off and admired while Fagner tuned up his motor-boat and arranged
a tow-line; but meanwhile Walter had hauled George Alexander’s cat-boat
alongside and was fastening his own tow-line.
“Goin’ to take him up, Walt?” someone asked. Unknown to Walter it had
been a town joke among the men that Walter Wells, who never had a cent,
had offered to buy a yacht. Fagner’s offer to sell had been made in
public, but the spirit of the offer was equally well known.
“Sure!” said Walter.
The operation caught Fagner’s eye, but before he could say a word
Walter dumbfounded him by remarking, “Jerry’ll send yuh a cheque, soon
as you tell her how much.”
Fagner said nothing, but moved off quickly in search of a telephone.
His smile reassured the crowd, who began to see now that this was
business after all. They gazed at Walter solemnly, for business is no
joking matter.
At the other end of the telephone Jerry assured the skipper that the
option on his new yacht was being taken up seriously. He came hurriedly
back.
“You really mean to take me up, Walter?” he asked.
“Sure; unless you’ve changed your mind?”
Walter stopped fumbling with his sailor knots and straightened up. The
crowd looked on expectantly.
“Oh, no!” Fagner laughed. “I’m game! I said I’d do it, and I will!
But,” he added half to himself, “this is certainly one on me.” Aloud he
asked, “Are you sure you don’t want the _Moodiks_?”
“Nope,” said Walter, bending to his rope again.
“Well, let me tow you down with my motor?”
“Nope,” said Walter. “I’ll tow her myself.”
In a few minutes more the little “cat” was heading down the Lake with
the new yacht in tow.
“What’s the matter?” someone asked Fagner. “You look as if you’d lost
something.”
“Oh, no,” laughed Fagner. “I’ve only just been ‘called’ with four mixed
diamonds and one black card.”
“Didn’t you want to sell to the boy?” asked one of his workmen, a good
old fellow to whom one could be confidential.
“What!” cried Fagner. “Want to sell that?” He pointed to the beautiful
fragile craft which a moment or two before had been his. It was
following the “cat” as if it had no weight at all. “Absolutely not!
That little beauty is the fastest sailing boat in America. Do you see
the way she glides? That boat slips over the water like a skimming
stone. But she’ll have to be skippered,” he smiled grimly. “After he
loses a few races I’ll buy her back. I agreed to sell him either boat,
provided he would skipper it himself, and provided also that he would
give me an option on a resell. I think I’m safe--although I feel just
now like a kid that has had his candy snatched out of his hand.”
Jerry, in the meantime, was busy with the documents piled up on the
library table. There had been order about them once, but it took
time to discover which were out of date and which still operative.
Careful memoranda on slips of cardboard were helpful here and there,
but it would require reading packets of correspondence before all the
matters could be cleared up; and George Alexander would have to be
interviewed. George Alexander had had complete charge of the house and
farm end of things during the trip abroad.
This left Richard to his own devices. For a time he made quick friends
with “Count”--pointers are not very discriminating. Then with the dog
“heeling” beautifully, he marched down the hill to take a swim. Phœbe
Norris was sewing on her water-front porch.
“I came down for a swim if I----”
“Prevaricator!” she remarked pleasantly.
“Jove! You’re right,” he exclaimed. “It’s you I’m after comin’ to see!
There’s heaps I want to tell you.”
“Sit down,” she jabbed a needle at a chair, “and get it off your chest.”
He told her about Walter from the time of his first acquaintance
with him in the smoker of the _Victoria_--omitting, of course, the
real facts about his own change of name--up to the latest incident
of the refusal of his daily “nip.” Then he related the astonishing
transformation in Mrs. Wells, her sudden taking on of the privileges of
age, ending with her placing Jerry in charge of the Wells finances.
“The Wells seem prosperous,” he half inquired.
“They are,” Phœbe answered; “they have six hundred acres, mostly under
cultivation. The vineyards are especially profitable. The negroes under
George Alexander manage the place excellently. Besides, they have a lot
of money invested in mortgages and wine stocks. It’s a perfectly safe
investment, young man. Don’t be afraid to commit yourself.”
Phœbe Norris was notoriously direct, but the point seemed to slip by
Richard.
“Then there’s all the more reason for Jerry to get legal control.”
“And why, pray?”
He explained the danger that might suddenly loom up with the transfer
of the property to Walter.
“You are tremendously interested in Walter. You’re not thinking of
marryin’ Walter, are you?”
“Jove, no! I’m not thinking of marrying anybody. What has that to do
with the case?”
“You seem to be sensible enough,” she looked at him critically. “But,”
she sighed, “you never can tell. Lots of times you would have sworn,
now, that Seth was as whole-minded as that sleepin’ pup.” “Count” had
flopped at Richard’s feet. “But all the while he was probably undecided
whether to try the axe on me or the bread knife.”
“I give up,” Richard cried, as a child might at a hard riddle, “what’s
the answer?”
“Of course,” she nodded towards the log hut in the garden, “there’s
always the ‘pen’ as a last resort. I’ll keep it open for you. But not
bein’ married to you I promise to knock you on the head if you grow
violent.”
He must have missed the point of some remark, he thought. Or could long
association with a madman have given her an unsteady turn herself? He
wondered.
“You see, can’t you,” he began again, “that Mrs. Wells might put it in
Walter’s power to----”
“Oh, yes! yes!” she interrupted impatiently. “I’m not a bat. I see
that. Go on with the next instalment.” And she went on with her sewing.
“So I suggested that Jerry have the mother give her a ‘power of
attorney’ to manage the estate.”
Phœbe dropped her sewing in her lap. “And what would a girl like Jerry
be doing with all that business to look after?”
“She could do it. She’d like that sort of thing.”
“Is Mrs. Wells out of her mind completely?”
“No. But she’s losing her grip more than you’d believe. You should see
her. Her very face has changed. We don’t want her----”
“_We_ don’t--who’s ‘we’?”
“Jerry and I--we both feel that the whole thing will be safer if Jerry
has legal rights. Of course, if the boy were fit, there would not be
the slightest objection to turning over the management to him.”
“There wouldn’t?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t object to that?”
“Not a particle--if he were capable.”
Again Phœbe scrutinized the man before her.
“That ‘power of attorney’ is a very clever idea,” she remarked. “Who
thought that all out?”
“I did,” he admitted. “I’m not sure if it will work----”
“Oh, it’ll work all right, young man; and you know it well enough.
You’re just modest, that’s all.”
He asked her abruptly what she meant. She replied, “I’m Irish and I’m
also Scotch; so let me give you a Scotch answer, by asking you what
_you_ mean. You’re not featherin’ a soft nest for yourself, perhaps?”
She flung a hand towards the Wells’ house.
Richard looked out into the Lake, but made no answer at all. For the
first time in many weeks Richard Richard became his old self, shy
and silent. His ears glowed; he became uncomfortable and awkward, as
self-conscious persons will; and the gates of his fluency closed. It
had been pleasant, this new life of his, and his instinct told him it
was good; but now another instinct warned him that it might not be
wholly good. Phœbe’s cold interrogations had given him first a vague
uneasiness and then alarm. Her mind was distinctly not friendly. He
felt it, or rather, the sensitive antennæ of his mind caught the
vibrations and warned him that he had been out of his shell quite long
enough.
Perhaps they sat for ten minutes in tableau, she sewing and he gazing
out into the Lake. The dog, “Count,” added to the picture by resting a
rigid head on two outstretched paws.
“Smoke, if you want to,” Phœbe suggested finally.
“Thanks,” he said; but he did not smoke.
This man exhibited all the symptoms of guilt, but, somehow, he did not
act the convincing villain. And yet had not everything pointed to the
rôle? A casual visit to either Sampson’s or Cornwell’s moving-picture
theatres would have convinced anyone: handsome man; no particular
occupation; also no money; acquaintance made by accident; handsome
girl; rich mother growing feeble and trusting. All the characters
were here, including the clever Irish girl whose keen wit rescues the
tottering family. “But, hang it all,” thought Phœbe, “why do I feel so
mean about it? I ought to feel heroic (or is it heroinic?) and flushed
with righteousness. But I don’t. I feel like a criminal myself.”
Other minutes passed by, but Richard seemed not to note them. “I wish
I could talk,” he was saying to himself. “This infirmity of mine is
like an epileptic fit where one knows all that is happening about him
but can give no sign. And I thought I had got rid of it up in this fine
country.” But he said not a word.
“_Chills and fever!_” Phœbe suddenly stamped her foot and shook her red
hair at him. “Aren’t you ever goin’ to speak again?”
“Count” leaped to his feet, yelped suddenly, and started about the
room, his nose to the ground.
“Glory be!” laughed Phœbe. “He thought I was a gun flying off. The same
I was. I couldn’t keep still that long again without explodin’. You go
take a bath, young man. You’ll feel better. You’ll find the same suit
dried out and hangin’ up in the room on the right. Go take a swim and
then come up here, and we’ll get things straightened out.”
He rose and went towards the little room, but he said nothing. A nod of
his head seemed to be enough, and a kindly smile expressed acquiescence.
“I wouldn’t make a good lady detective,” sighed Phœbe. If the villain
was fine and good-looking, she thought, and gazed afar off across the
water with mild, blue eyes--ach! she would be pounding away at his
chains with a saw and a jimmy and inventing ways of escape from the
lock-up. Her heart was too soft for that business. Well! she could keep
her eye open, at any rate. Even if she had lived in the country all her
life she knew a thing or two, the which Handsome Harrys might find out.
What was the use of subscribing yearly to the _New York Times_ if it
wasn’t to give you a vicarious experience of the ways of the world?
As Richard passed her he stooped for a moment to examine her
sewing--something or other the largest ingredient of which seemed to be
lace--looked straight into her face, gently, almost boyishly shy, and
then without a word walked out to the end of the little dock. He dived
immediately and struck out at a diagonal for the farther shore.
Occasionally Phœbe looked up to note the receding figure. When about
the middle of the Lake she saw him turn and make straight out towards
the main branch. It may be remembered that Lake Keuka is shaped like a
mitten with a very large thumb. Mrs. Norris’ cottage was at the tip-end
of the thumb. Towards the rest of the “hand” Richard swam, a distance
of over two miles. Soon he was not discernible, except through Phœbe’s
fine field-glass, wherein he could be observed swimming a long steady
stroke.
“The villain escapes by swimming the Lake,” Phœbe chuckled. “Sure it’s
a fine movie actor he’d make.” She sewed on thoughtfully for a minute
or two and then added, “Well, if he doesn’t come back it’s a good
bargain I’ve made swapping Seth’s cotton bathing togs for an all-wool
Norfolk suit.”
The cool refreshing water was as balm to the troubled “villain.” As the
world judged matters he knew he was a failure; but generally he was
strong enough to ignore the world and live his individual life. Often,
however, the constant pressure of inquiry or of accusation--the world
will harry you if you do not conform, as all martyrs will testify--had
their cumulative effect of inducing depression. It was only by vigorous
open-air exercise or the summoning of all his will that he was able to
stand erect and unshaken. The waters of Lake Keuka were tonic to the
will. As he plied on, his spirits rose. He saw the law of his own life
clearer; he resolved to be true to nothing but himself. His shyness
waned and vanished, and strength came. “Resolve to be thyself,” he
quoted, “and know that he who finds himself loses his misery.”
Bluff Point began to loom on his left as he passed out of the “thumb”
and got out into the main branch, here over a mile wide. The Point was
a sheer rise out of the water of almost a thousand feet, and it towered
like a huge mountain. He turned about and faced north in order to get
a better view of the Point, and became aware of a familiar cat-boat
tacking across in front of him.
It had in tow a stately little yacht, looking without sails like the
skeleton of a spectre sloop.
“Ahoy! Captain Wells, ahoy!” he called.
Walter saw him and came about. In a few minutes of manœuvering the two
men were jabbering over the beauties of _Sago-ye-wat-ha_. Richard had
found his voice again.
It was long after the noon hour when they tied up at Phœbe Norris’
dock. Phœbe was not at home. She had found it impossible to sit and sew
as she had planned. She could not decide whether she were suffering
from a guilty conscience or a desire to gad; at any rate she concluded
that Richard’s silence had put a spell on her cabin for the afternoon.
Gathering up the sewing material, she called to “Count,” who was trying
to stir up a rabbit among her cabbages, and plodded up the hill to the
“Big House,” as the negroes called the Wells’ dwelling.
At the entrance to the drive she came upon a fattish young man, fairly
well dressed--clean, at least, she said to herself--and evidently from
the Big City.
He turned a broad Irish face upon her and opened a mouth which exposed
large irregular teeth. Her father had such a face, she remembered
distinctly, and just such great white teeth.
“Is it Mrs. Emma Wells I see before me?” He raised his hat and bowed
like a Dublin ballad vender.
“As Mrs. Emma Wells is sixty years old,” Phœbe retorted, “it’s blind
your eyes must be.”
“Blinded by the glamour of the sun on your----”
“Red head,” she helped.
“On your saffron locks,” he went on, “and by the charm of your sweet
face.”
“Blarney!” she retorted. “Who are you that’s wantin’ to see Mrs. Emma
Wells?”
“Ah!” he put a long finger to the side of his nose. “I divulge nothing.
I don’t know who I am till I’ve seen my confederate, Mr. Dick.”
“Where’s your grip?” she asked suddenly.
“Grip?”
“Yes, grip--bag, carry-all, Gladstone, suitcase?--the thing you carry
your sample books in. But you’d better be makin’ off. Mrs. Wells has
all the encyclopedias, handy books of information and guide books
she’ll need this side of Paradise.”
“But it’s a visit I’m making,” said he.
“You wrote your own invitation, then,” said she.
While they talked so tartly at each other they walked along up the
drive and grinned with enjoyment. Only the Celt can understand that
this sort of palaver is the salt of living.
“Wrote my own invitation? Indeed I did not,” he insisted. “The lady of
the house herself it was who sent me the invitation by my very dear
friend, Mr. Dick. You don’t know Mr. Dick?”
“No.”
“Humph!” he ruminated. “I should think all the housemaids would be
knowing him by this time. He’s the handsome one! But perhaps with all
your time taken up in the kitchen----”
For that he received a sounding thwack on the side of the face.
“Holy Michael!” he started back. “If it isn’t my mother’s old
fraternity grip you’re giving me! Shake hands! I didn’t know you were
Irish till that minute. Shake hands with a compatriot, and forgive me
for taking you for aught save a princess. Of course I knew who you were
all the while. It’s the handsome Miss Wells that Mr. Dick’s so full of,
the heiress; only he should have said a word about the glory of your
hair. Never a word he said.”
“Who is this Mr. Dick?” she asked as they walked up the steps.
“How can I know till I have a chat with him?” he returned. “Our stories
must agree, you know.”
“Are you sure his name is Dick?”
“Well, now,” he stopped and pondered, “now that you’ve put the doubt
in my head, I’m not so sure. I’ve lost the letter that tells me all
about it. I think he said his name was Mr. Dick. Sure, it was. Dick? Of
course it was Dick. What do you mean by confusing my mind over the name
of my oldest and dearest friend?”
“And what might your name be?”
They had arrived at the house.
“‘Jawn,’” he said.
“‘Jawn’ what?”
“I’ll have to consider,” he smiled knowingly. “No doubt Mr. Dick has
arranged all that. I mustn’t commit myself just yet. For the time being
you may call me ‘Jawn.’”
Phœbe darted suddenly to this side of the big porch and then to the
other, looking carefully about the central pillars, “Non” and “Da,” all
to induce “Jawn” to inquire the reason, as he well knew.
“What’s the game?” he asked. “Solitaire hide-and-seek?”
“I’m lookin’ for the man with the box?” she said; “the one that grinds
out the pictures. Maybe you don’t know it, young man, but we’re both
of us in a moving-picture story. One villain has just escaped by
swimming the Lake; another--that’s you--comes up with an assumed name;
mistakes me first for the cook and then for the heiress and is about to
enter and make off with the family jewels. If a fillum man doesn’t get
this he’s missin’ a good story. But come in! And wipe your feet on that
mat! Your heart may be black”--the two good-natured faces fairly beamed
at each other, belying any literal meaning in the words--“but that’s
the Lord’s business. At least I can see to it that your feet are clean.”
These were two different types of American Irish. “Jawn” was the pure
breed, one generation out of the peat-bogs, but speeded forward a
thousand years by the magic of America; Phœbe was the refined gold of
the Celt untarnished by a dozen strains of alien blood. But they were
playboys, both of them. A fantastic attitude towards the world was
to them more serious and important than all the workaday habits of
smug other-peoples. They came of a race who have the saddest thoughts
on the ineffectiveness of living, and present the gayest face to the
whole dull business. And both were on a holiday, “Jawn” freed from the
psychological clinic, and Phœbe fluttering with unaccustomed wings
after ten years of captivity.
“Wait!” cried “Jawn,” suspending operations on the mat. “I feel a
limerick coming! It’s a disease.” He mumbled and rolled his eyes, then
brightened up as the rhymes came out properly.
One glance at Phœbe’s illuminated face would be convincing enough that
she was enjoying hugely this bit of impromptu and apropos doggerel. But
she shook her head dolorously and sighed.
“It is sure a disease,” she said; “are you taken often with the fit?”
“It’s the air,” he explained as they entered the open door and walked
through the entrance-hall and turned into the library. Jerry had
taken her documents to her room, and Mrs. Wells was busy among the
perennials. “I felt it coming on me the moment I got a sniff of the
waters of Lake Keuka. It’s like hay-fever, you know.” They seated
themselves in the library.
There have been waves of limericks in America, but it is questionable
if the loping doggerel will ever go quite out of style. The Irish
never tire of the monotonous rhythm. In the twilight summer evenings
along the hedges, or in winter around the huge kitchen fire, the young
Irish lad is for ever contributing impromptu limericks. The verses are
usually of a low tone morally, and so local in their application that
the stranger needs much explanation, but their popularity is perennial.
Jawn had his gift straight from the father, but the son had raised them
a tone or two to fit American taste.
Jawn’s bad lines were covered by exquisite acting. The purse of
the lip, the ecstatic roll of the eye, and the sudden flash of big
teeth--these were enough to bring laughter to the face of his most
superior critic. So Phœbe was compelled to break through a forced
reserve and let her own laughter loose. And hers was of the vaulting
kind.
“Go on with you, man!” she cried. “It’s a movie actor you’d make with
that face! And what was your next fit like?”
Mrs. Wells, with a great bunch of phlox, was entering the rear hall
when “Jawn” began; she came to the door of the library in time to hear
the conclusion.
Jawn was a good fellow and an expert psychologist, but, alas, his
humour was not always refined. He took a huge interest in the rough
side of life, wherein he was not only true to type but true to his
early training on the West Side. The Celtic flavour saved the dish,
however. And he never went beyond the bounds set by his instinctively
good sense.
Phœbe, who secretly loved many of those proper coarse things of life on
which a Puritan world has set a superstitious taboo, mingled her shrill
peal with Jawn’s heavy laughter when Mrs. Wells appeared.
It was the first time Phœbe had seen Mrs. Wells since her return from
abroad, and although she had been prepared in advance she was not ready
for the extraordinary physical transformation. Mrs. Wells was not only
greyer, but she had grown puffy and weak; an amiable softness had
settled in her eyes and in the lines about the mouth. But Phœbe covered
her surprise in effusive greetings.
“Phœbe!” Mrs. Wells had exclaimed.
“Mother Wells!” Phœbe had shrilled, a pet name, the private privilege
of Phœbe.
“Phœbe,” thought Jawn; “it is the daughter’s name; and I figured it was
Geraldine. My memory is gone entirely.”
The greetings over, Mrs. Wells waited patiently for some explanation of
the smiling visitor. Evidently, from the uproarious conversation she
had interrupted, these two were well-enough acquainted.
“Who is--your--uh----?” Mrs. Wells helped.
“He’s not my anything,” retorted Phœbe. “I haven’t the least idea who
he is; and he doesn’t seem to have clear ideas on the subject himself.”
“This is Mrs. Emma Wells?” Jawn was presenting a hand and his widest
smile.
“Ye-s,” Mrs. Wells admitted, on her guard instantly. “If you came about
mortgages or business you’ll have to see my daughter Geraldine. She is
upstairs in her room. Shall I send for her?”
“Weren’t you expecting me?” Jawn asked.
“No-o; I think not.”
“But Mr. Dick said you had invited me to pay you a visit.”
“Mr. Dick? I don’t know any Mr. Dick, unless you mean Mr. Dickson? He
lives across the Lake.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you to expect ‘Jawn’ Galloway?”
“No.”
“He’s forgot it!”
“Please let me send for Jerry,” Mrs. Wells suggested nervously.
“Please----”
“Oh, I have nothing to do with business.” He waved a large palm. “I’m
just a guest.”
“Your name, you said----” Mrs. Wells tried to clear the mystery.
“No, I haven’t said, have I?” he asked blandly.
Phœbe broke in. “You have; you just asked us if we weren’t expecting a
‘Jawn’ Galloway?”
“I did,” he nodded; “but by the same token that’s not saying ‘Jawn’
Galloway’s my name.”
“I think,” Phœbe remarked emphatically, “we had better ’phone for
Casey--Casey is the police force, Mr. ‘Jawn’--and have done with it.”
Mrs. Wells told the visitor not to mind Mrs. Norris, and explained
how she always said the opposite of what she really meant. But she
was puzzled, and plainly showed it. Once or twice she started towards
the door. It would be such a relief to turn the matter over to
Geraldine. Meanwhile “Jawn” Galloway was carried away by the thought
of getting rid of his plain Irish name. Evidently his good pal, “Mr.
Dick”--if that was the name he had taken--had forgotten to mention
“Jawn” Galloway at all. That was thoroughly characteristic of “Mr.
Dick.” Well, why not play his own game and adopt a fancy cognomen,
too? Professor “Jawn” Galloway was getting too well known, anyway. He
couldn’t walk down the street without someone consulting him on some
sort of mental upset. After an article of his in a popular magazine his
friends had been calling him up of a morning to get his interpretation
of their dreams of the night before. “Jawn” he would have to stick
to, for he had admitted as much to this red-headed daughter, who had
started out Geraldine and had turned into Phœbe and then into Mrs.
Norris. Besides he never could get used to any other first name.
“Dalrymple”--that sounded distinguished and upper-class or--ah! he had
it--“De Lancey!”
“But if you would tell us your name,” Mrs. Wells was saying gently, “I
am sure we could then understand--ah! here’s Geraldine!” Mrs. Wells was
radiantly relieved.
In a word she put the mystery to Jerry, who understood immediately.
It was “Jawn” Galloway, and she came forward with outstretched hand,
intending to explain. But “Jawn” was on his feet and reaching out his
own hand.
“Jerry!” he called. “I’m betting that this is the Jerry my good friend
has been writing to me about. Only he didn’t have ink vivid enough,” he
shook her hand warmly. “It is Jerry, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m ‘Jawn’ De Lancey.”
“De Lancey?” she looked puzzled.
“Didn’t Mr. Dick tell you?”
“Mr. Dick. Do you mean Mr. Richard?”
He laughed, throwing back his head.
“We all call him Mr. Dick in New York. Of course, you would not know
that. Mr. Richard! How stupid of me. Mr. Richard, of course.”
Explanations followed, Jerry looming large as an explainer; but Phœbe
was plainly unconvinced.
“I still insist,” she was firm, “upon calling Casey. But first I would
count the silver.”