Chapter XIV: “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.”