Chapter XX: Seth’s Whip

RICHARD’S best singing of the “Hel-lo” call failed to bring a response from Jerry.

“Mrs.” George Alexander, who, as “Sukie,” presided over the kitchen, reckoned that Miss Geraldine had gone down to visit Mrs. Phœbe Norris. That’s what she “reckoned,” but she “’lowed” that Miss Geraldine might go even farther. One of the Wheelen boys was with her.

“When one o’ dem Wheelen boys comes ’long,” Sukie explained, “nobody c’d tell _whar_ M’s Geraldine ’ud lan’ up. Ef she jes’ tuck it in her head to go plum down dat Lake to Hammonspo’t, plum down dat Lake she’d go! When M’s Geraldine gits in dem canoes she jes’ na’chully do’ know when to git outen ’em!”

Off on a canoe trip! That did not sound like bankruptcy; although it corresponded surprisingly to the mother’s free and easy Southern manner of handling high finance.

But perhaps Sukie’s “reckoning” was more nearly correct than her “’lowing.” He would investigate further at the Norris cottage.

“Too late, young man,” cried Phœbe before he could state his errand. “Anyone could see by the rush you made down that hill and by the glitter in your eye that you are tryin’ to overtake a woman. Jerry is gone. The other man has her, and my tip is that you had better bring matters to a point quickly--or you’ll lose nest and feathers too.”

His rapid-fire questions exhibited Phœbe in the light of a perfect mind-reader. But she had no help for him. They had gone off in Wheelen’s canoe; there was no telling when they would be back.

“I’ll wait,” said Richard firmly, and sat down upon one of her comfortable porch chairs.

“I’m thinkin’ of putting up a sign,” remarked Phœbe. Richard gazed down the Lake and made no answer. “Only I’m not sure whether to make it ‘Beware the dog,’ or ‘Trespassing forbidden.’... Perhaps I’ll make it ‘Huntin’ not allowed on this land’--meanin’ by that, ‘girl huntin’’--or mebbe I’ll just have it read, ‘The Norris Inn; Meals Furnished Free.’”

“Eh?” he came out of his fixed stare. “Did you say something about eating? I’m really quite hungry.”

“Of course you would be!” she said. “Feed a stray dog an’ he’ll always come back. It was a mistake ever to give you two anything. Your friend Jawn was here for two-o’clock tea. What’ll you have, sir?” She flung a bit of sewing over her left arm and impersonated an ingratiating waiter. “We recommend our toasted muffins and tea.”

“Great!” he agreed politely. “I’d be delighted.”

But anyone could see that his mind was not on food. Down the Lake he squinted with wrinkling brows as if he were trying to read the name on a far-distant steamer.

“As a rule canoes don’t travel in the middle of the Lake,” said Phœbe.

“Eh?” he looked up absently.

“They hug the shore,” she said.

“Oh! Do they?... Why?”

“Canoeing is said to be a dangerous sport.” Phœbe talked through the window as she prepared the muffins. “And it is. Although, for myself, I’m thinkin’ there’s less danger out in the middle of the Lake where everybody can see you with field-glasses than goin’ in and out among the bushes and gettin’ out ever so often to sit down under a tree and rest.”

“I don’t get that,” said Richard.

“You wouldn’t,” commented Phœbe dryly. “I believe I once called you a clever rascal. I apologize and withdraw the ‘clever.’ You are not clever.”

“Very good! Very good!” With an effort Richard had caught the point of her satire and applauded politely. But his mind was elsewhere, as evidenced by his sudden remark, “You told me the Wells’ were prosperous.”

“Well, aren’t they?”

“No. They’re in bad straits financially. Perhaps you have known; at any rate my instinct tells me that it will do no harm to tell you.”

Phœbe left her muffins toasting and came out to him.

“Who’s been puttin’ that into your head?” she inquired seriously.

“Mrs. Wells.”

For a moment Phœbe stared at him soberly; then she broke into merriment.

“It’s no joke,” he said solemnly. “She has sold off the land that paid the best income--the apples--and she has been borrowing and not paying back for twenty years.”

Phœbe sat down weakly.

“You’re tryin’ to frighten me,” she said.

“It’s the truth. Furthermore----”

Richard ceased speaking and fumbled for cigarette paper.

“Furthermore what?” Phœbe demanded impatiently.

“Your muffins are burning.”

“Let ’em! What’s this furthermore business?”

“I’m very sensitive to odours.”

“And I’m very sensitive to furthermores. Furthermore what?”

Richard puffed slowly.

“Well, it is only a fear I have that Mrs. Wells may have used money that was not, strictly speaking, her own.”

“_Take that back!_”

Phœbe jumped to her feet, reached up deftly and unhooked the stout whip that had done duty for some years as a protector from Seth. “Take it back, I say!” she cried as she swung the lash, “or I’ll make you take it back.”

She was trembling with anger, and she looked murderous.

“All right,” Richard puffed away quietly. “I’ll take it back, although I think you should attend to those muffins before you cart-whip me. I’d rather have my muffins in the mouth than in the nose, if you don’t mind.”

Phœbe struggled a moment with her quivering anger and then put back her whip and strode to the rescue of the muffins.

Nearly a half-hour slipped away before she returned. Richard was only a desultory smoker, but he had time to roll a number of cigarettes before she appeared finally with a tray of fresh muffins, some jam and a pot of hot tea. All trace of her anger was gone, too.

“There is only one thing I hate worse than a lie,” she began the conversation as she poured the tea, “and that is the truth.”

“You are quite right,” he agreed as he spread a hot muffin. “Truth is the nastiest dose in the pharmacopœia. Perhaps I came at you too strong, but I think I made no mistake in thinking you can stand a lot. I have always been frank with you, Phœbe, and my instinct tells me----”

“Your instinct had better be careful,” she warned, flushing a little; “it nearly got you a welt across the face.”

“And I am very glad,” he replied calmly. “If you would flame up like that for your friends you would do a lot more to help them out of their troubles. I fear they’ll need all the help you can give them.”

“Perhaps you had better tell me what you know. You take your own risk, of course”--she was regaining her normal cheerfulness--“if I don’t like what you know, you may get this pot of hot tea in your face.... Go on; I’m listenin’--carefully.”

He related the confession which Mrs. Wells had made to him under the hydrangeas, but for prudential reasons he did not divulge the ground of his belief that some of Mrs. Wells’ business transactions may not have been entirely business-like.

To Richard’s surprise, Phœbe broke into nervous laughter.

“What a fool I’ve been,” said she, “ever to get stirred up by all that! Can’t you see that the old lady was just tryin’ you out?”

“No; I don’t see anything of the sort.”

“You believe all she said?”

“Don’t you?”

“I asked you first.”

“Yes; I do believe it. If they were sold out to-morrow, the debts would overwhelm them.”

“Then I suppose the jig’s up?”

Phœbe was still intent on her moving-picture film of a pair of New York villains attempting to marry money; but Richard understood her differently.

“I fear the jig is up, as you say. Of course,” he added, “I’ll have to see Jerry first to make sure.”

“Yes,” agreed Phœbe, “you had better make sure. But I’m sorry for one thing----”

“Which is?”

“That I didn’t give you that welt with the whip.”

He laughed, not at all taking her seriously.

“But you may get it yet,” she laughed in turn.... “_Walter told me your other name!_” She shot the information at him suddenly.

“Oh,” he remarked casually; “he did, did he?”

“Rather a sporty name to be gallivantin’ under, eh?”

“I never liked it.”

“Why?”

“It made me too conspicuous.... And people asked such impertinent questions.”

“They would!”

“Yes; Richard Richard is much better.... Don’t tell Jerry about the other name yet, will you?”

She agreed. Somehow she felt sorry for the man. According to her theory he had played for high stakes and lost. About that she cared little. But his coolness and good nature pleased her; and he had courage, for he had never so much as flinched when she flung the big whip. No doubt he would have taken her blow without even lifting his guard. He had merely looked up at her with his mild blue eye, scrutinizing her with an almost disinterested curiosity. Seth had always dropped on all fours at the very sight of the whip; this man was built on a more courageous mould, and she admired him immensely for it.

“You’re a good sport,” she summed him up, “even if you are a bad lot.”

“Thanks.... Where is Walter?” he asked.

“He and Jawn are sailing the new boat.” She laughed at some memory of their setting forth. That laugh was a brave attempt to conceal her worry over the Wells’ affairs. “Jawn’s a bright lad, he is; but he--he ought to have the whip, too.”

“I believe you,” Richard assented. “Was he nice and vulgar to you to-day? Jawn loves to be vulgar.”

“I’m no judge of such things,” she parried; “it takes all my time just to enjoy them.”

“Young woman,” he told her in his smiling superior way, “that’s a mighty fine formula to go through life on. Why be always judging and valuing? One needs all the time just to enjoy.”

Silence fell between them. Hovering over the pleasant tea-table was the memory of the recent ugly scene and beyond that the fate of the Wells family.

“I believe you would!” Phœbe remarked in answer to one of her own thoughts.

“Perhaps.” He sipped his tea contentedly, looked down the Lake and waited.

“If the Big House should go to smash,” she explained finally, “I believe you would loaf about enjoyin’ yourself with what was left in the refrigerator and then tramp off without caring a----”

She left the sentence unfinished.

“Say it,” he suggested. “‘Damn’ is no longer a bad word. It has been taken up by the best people.”

“I believe you would!” she iterated.

“I would enjoy myself,” he agreed; “and quite possibly I would tap the refrigerator, if it were hungry time; and even more possibly I would loaf; and maybe I would tramp off. Ye-es,” he figured the matter over carefully, “I am sure I should enjoy it, too--immensely. Do you know, I am rather hoping the Big House will go to smash--although it’s a point of view I never suspected I should hold. In fact, I’m getting more delight out of the thought every minute.... My whole life is turning right over like a turtle that has been on his back for thirty years.... You can’t imagine how excited I am.”

“No,” she snapped; “praise be, I can’t. I’m--I’m----” a wave of emotion swept her--“dang it all, man, how can you sit there and grin with all this happenin’ to Jerry!”

“All what?” he asked with a fine affectation of innocence.

“All what!” she exploded. “They’ve lived in the Big House ever since there was a Big House, and even before that in the log-cabins where the negroes are now. Of course I’ve always known something like this would happen----”

“Ah! ha!” said the man, “you knew it, did you?”

“I have ears, man!” she snapped. “I hear without listenin’ at keyholes. Everybody in Jerusalem township knows the Big House is mortgaged, but mortgages are respectable enough. We always thought she preferred to invest her money in better paying stocks and things.... What has she done with it all? That’s what I should like to know.”

“She has over thirty negroes on the pay-roll,” he suggested without much concern, although he did not miss Phœbe’s agitation. “That should mean at least five thousand a year in wages; and from what I know of the Wells’ bounty, those negroes and their families get practically everything they need free. The gardens cost a couple of thousand a year. The accumulation of small wastage would amount to considerable; and then, you know, the income has been impaired mightily through the sale of the orchards, and the failure to get the most out of the grapes. They’ve been spending more than they earned--considerably more, I should judge--and they have tried the old expedient of making up the deficit each year by borrowing.”

He said not a word about the possible breach of trust as to the negroes. Phœbe would have given much to be able to ask him; but, somehow, she could not get the question out. She feared the truth.

“They’re about at the end of their rope,” he went on. “The fiddler will have to be paid, that’s all.”

“That’s _all_!” she echoed indignantly. “Isn’t it enough? The money’s nothin’ and the food’s nothin’,” she went on excitedly. “I have plenty to keep both families alive and free from the necessity of doing a stroke the rest of their lives. It isn’t that, man. The Wells family have been used to living on a big scale. They have been surrounded by negroes who fetch and carry for them, and they have been the ‘big family’ in this part of the country for a century or more. They could never come down. Don’t you see it, man? It would kill them. They could never pig it along the way you and I could do. Don’t sit there and grin at me, you blitherin’ fool! What I want to know is what we’re goin’ to do about it?”

He puffed away deliberately and watched her animated face as if he enjoyed her dramatics. Then he said:

“We’re going to pay off the debts, liquidate the mortgage and set the Wells family on its feet--bail ’em out, in short.”

“We are, are we?” she tossed her head. “And with what?”

“Money.”

“Whose money? I’ve got none; at least none that would count.”

“My money.”

“Talk sense, man,” she stood up and sat down nervously. “It’ll take thousands to----”

“Easily that,” he figured. “I’m counting on about sixty thousand. The place is mortgaged for forty-two thousand dollars, thirty thousand on a first mortgage and twelve thousand on a second. She has notes out amounting to about eight thousand more. That’s fifty thousand. She owes the negroes about ten thousand more----”

“What!” cried Phœbe, “the negroes. Where’d they get ten thou----”

She stopped, aghast at the thought that had crossed her mind. She knew all about the Wells’ scheme of keeping back half of the wages into a savings fund; and she knew that it was something more than a charity. A contract guaranteeing those savings had been drawn up for each employee on the Wells estate. Such money belonged to the negroes, and Mrs. Wells was nothing more than a legal trustee of the funds. If that had been touched, Phœbe with her natural business experience knew that something more than the mild procedure of bankruptcy might be in store for Jerry’s mother.

“Did she say she had used that money, too?” Phœbe asked breathlessly.

“I fear so,” he told her kindly. “But don’t worry, my dear girl. As soon as I have talked with Jerry--I want to see those documents--I’ll get in touch with New York and fix the whole business up.”

“You’re not foolin’ me, are you?” she asked plaintively.

“No.”

“I thought you had no money.”

“I hadn’t until a few hours ago.”

“How much have you got?”

“I don’t know, Phœbe,” he laughed excitedly like a boy. “Heaps of it. Barrels of it. Millions, I think.”

“If I find you’re jokin’ with me, young man, I’ll--I’ll----”

Tears dropped from her eyes. She dashed them off with her hand in order the better to glare at him.

“Didn’t Walter tell you who I am?” he asked soothingly.

“But you’re not that man.” She stamped her foot. “He died years ago--in a yacht--I read about it.”

“That was my father; we had the same name.”

With a word here and there he managed to calm her agitation. Slowly she became convinced that this easy-going young man was a financial aristocrat, a wizard come in time to save her friends.

He had been a sickly boy, he told her; so the family had let him grow up a recluse. It was not until he had arrived at college years that he began to develop physically, but by that time, although he had grown into a stalwart frame of a man, he was hopelessly bookish and “queer.” The father was one of the dominant big men of his time, but he was kind and sympathetic with the boy, so “Richard” had gone his own way and was allowed peacefully to ply his individualism.

“After college,” he told her, “I decided that I could not live the dependent life any longer. I talked it over with father and he told me to try things out for myself. He offered me money, but that did not seem like playing fair; so I told him that I’d feel much happier if I went it ‘on my own,’ as the English say. He said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to knock about a bit and discover what I was best fitted to do. And so I drifted here and there, sometimes having things easy and sometimes not so easy, but you can’t imagine how contented I was. I have an enormous curiosity about life--I’m perfectly greedy to know why things are the way they are.... Then I fell in with Jawn’s group over on the West Side and met the ‘Widow’ Knowles, who gives me enough tutoring to do to keep me in food and raiment, and I lived--well, like the lilies of the field.”

“But is it true that your father was----” But she found she could not say it; it seemed too heartless to ask him.

“Quite true,” he answered her unfinished question.

“It’s a brute I am to ask you.”

“Oh, not at all,” he replied pleasantly. “Death is lying in wait for all of us.... The thing preyed on my mind for many months, but it taught me much in the end.... I think now I shall face my own death all the better.”

“Please!” she covered her eyes. “Don’t talk about it. Death is horrible.”

“Death is only the end of the great adventure,” he assured her; “and perhaps--who knows--the beginning of a more glorious one. I have a keen sense of the shortness of life, but that does not horrify me; it makes me all the more appreciative of each hour of it, and it makes me kinder to all men. That’s why I refuse to make a frantic struggle out of it.”

Richard’s calm was very consoling to Phœbe; unconsciously she partook of it and lost some of her dolefulness. For several minutes their talk lapsed. Finally he asked, “Do I look scared?”

“What are you scared of? It’s me that ought to be scared; and I am--scared that it’s a big lie you’re tellin’ me. Millions! Huh! It’s a hard dose to swallow.”

“Just the same I’m frightened. It’ll mean work----”

“Ah!” Phœbe exulted. “So it’s work you’re scared at. There’s a man for you!”

“It will mean work,” he went on soberly, “and slavery.”

“Go ’long with you, man! Slavery? It’ll be the chauffeurs and the butler and the cooks and the landscape gardeners who’ll be the slaves. What’ll you need to slave at?”

“It will mean giving up this blessed freedom. All my life I have fled from responsibilities and burdens; now I am going straight out to seek them. Others will depend upon me. If I make mistakes, I’ll suffer because others will suffer. That’s why I’m scared. I’m like the soldier in an ugly bayonet fight; it’s a sickening job, but it’s his job and he must do it. I hope I’m not a coward----”

“Faith,” chirped the practical Phœbe, “you can afford to be anything if you’ve got money.”

“I remember my father”--something in his tone stopped her raillery.

“Tell me about your father,” she interrupted quietly.

“He was a very sensitive man, and the world was very hard upon him. They called him a money-grabber. The cartoonist pictured him with an eternal dollar-mark on his forehead. Any comedian could raise a laugh by merely mentioning his name. Even in serious plays they made fun of him. Yet he never worked for himself. During the big panics he hardly slept. We have a private letter from a president of the United States, written in his own hand, praising father for his work in stopping a national disaster, yet that very president begged him not to disclose the fact that he had written. It would be misunderstood, he wrote; it would damage the government if the people knew.... My father treasured that letter, although it hurt him. But he never complained. He gave even more of his hours to the service of others.... I have seen the brooding anxiety in his eyes.... When he was ill he dare not let it be known--the market would feel it. He could not take holidays like other folks; he could not even be friendly; and he hungered for public appreciation.

“The world tore at his character during muck-raking days, and even struck at his family. Cameras snapped at us wherever we went. I used to hate to look at a newspaper. The boys in school jibed me until I grew positively mute. I think they were envious--some of them--of my public fame. Envy! Merciful heavens!... Father asked only to be let alone, and they gave him ugly notoriety. Even his tragic death was made the subject of horrible jokes.... And I am going to take up the work.... I’m scared, but only because I feel that I may not be worthy.”

“Then what do you do it for?” asked Phœbe. “Come up on the Lake and let the world go to pot. What they say about you in the columns of the _Express_ or the _Chronicle_ won’t keep you awake o’ nights. Why do you mux your life up with finance and all that if you don’t like it? I believe you do like it.”

Some of the brooding anxiety of his father had come into his eyes.

“No,” he spoke thoughtfully, “I think I never shall like it. But I must go forward just the same.”

“Why?”

For a moment he did not answer. He seemed not to have heard her question. Finally he spoke.

“Some persons would call it Duty. That isn’t what I call it. But I know exactly what it is. It is a force in you that will not be diverted. It points you to your job, whether it be loafing or playing or sweating labour. You may cry out against it, but you go on just the same. It keeps men--and women too--at the grubbiest of tasks. Without it civilization would not be.... My job is clear. I thought I never would do it, but now I know that I shall; and I know, too, that I always intended to. My wander-years were all preparing me for this--and I never suspected it until now. I have been standing aloof and watching life pass by, and now I am tumbled into the torrent.... It is part of the great plan.... But,” he added wistfully, “the watching days were good--and they were necessary.”

A chirp or two came into Phœbe’s voice, but the brooding sense of disaster still lingered. Finally she said, “But I don’t see how you can help them,” meaning Mrs. Wells and Jerry.

“Father left his affairs in the hands of a trusted group of his friends,” he explained. “They are to carry on the estate until such time as I shall make up my mind to take charge.... I thought that time was postponed for ever. Now,” he stood up and cried exultantly, “now I’m eager for it!”

“And so you’re not a villain after all.”

“I’m afraid not, Phœbe.”

“Humph!” She began to assert her old self. “Then Jawn is.”

“Wrong again.”

“Very well,” she shook her head. “I’ll watch him just the same. And I’ll keep an eye on you, too, sonny. It’s a nice story you’ve been tellin’ me. Mebbe it’s all true; but, I warn you, the moment either of you tries to sell me stock in rubber trees in Madagascar, I’ll put the whip to you.”

To help him out she told him of the meek gentleman who tried to hoodwink the village.

“I may own stock in that concern for all I know,” he laughed. “Would you believe it, child, I’m crazy to find out what I do own!... But, remember, Jerry must know nothing until I tell her myself. Promise me you won’t let the cat out of the bag.”

“Tell her?” quoth she. “Is it garrulous as well as stupid you think I am? If Jerry knew the truth about you she’d die rather than accept a penny.”

“Really?” He was genuinely concerned.

“You’ve got a hard job before you, young man!” She enjoyed his discomfiture. “I don’t know which is the harder, to get sixty thousand dollars out of ‘Red Jacket’ or to get sixty thousand into it. The Wells’ would rather go to the poorhouse than take an unearned penny from anybody. Tell her? You don’t suppose I want to commit financial suicide, do you? Pfist!” She raised a warning finger. “They’re comin’ round the bend; they’re almost on us. I wish you luck, ‘Mr. Richard,’” she chuckled, “and, faith, you’ll need it.”

Around the bend they came, Jerry at the prow of a long birch canoe, the Wheelen boy at the stern. Slowly and silently she swung the slender paddle as Seneca maidens had done on those waters for hundreds of years; and with her brown conventional bathing suit and her braided brown hair she looked the part of aboriginal.

“Hel-lo!” he sang.

“Hel-lo!” came back across the water. There was not a sign of weakness or fear in the long-drawn “lo!” Evidently she was still ignorant of the meaning of all those cryptic entries in her mother’s books.