“Yes, it’s a pity. But I don’t much think he could. Mr. Jennison isn’t married, an’ he isn’t rich, you see, nor—”
Just then Obed’s strong voice came from the door-way where he had been pausing. “Look here, Loreta,” he exclaimed, banteringly, “I should think you’d feel ashamed of yourself to sit there an’ try to pull the wool over their eyes! Where’s the use? I know you’ve a considerable loyal feelin’ to the Jennisons, but you needn’t carry it so far. The fact is, boys,” he continued, sitting down in his arm-chair with some difficulty—“the fact is Loreta an’ I have come to the conclusion that our Mr. Winthrop Jennison’s grown to be a pretty shady and suspicious sort of character. His life an’ his business seem to be matters that honest folks needn’t inquire into too closely. There, Loreta!”
“Now, Obed!” retorted Mrs. Probasco, in great annoyance, “you oughtn’t to say that! You don’t know, for certain, any more than I do.”
“May be I don’t know so much. May be I know more—more even than I’ve let on, my dear! For one thing, I haven’t ever yet given you the particulars of what Clagg told me that last afternoon I went over to pay the rent an’ learn if Mr. Jennison’d come from Boston.”
“Mr. Clagg? What did Mr. Clagg say, Obed?” asked the wife, her work and the boys forgotten in her sudden anxiety. Evidently the mysterious Mr. Jennison was a standing topic of debate between the pair. “How could you keep so still about it?”
“Well, I’ll let you hear now,” Obed replied, good-naturedly, with a wink at Philip, and in some enjoyment of the situation; “but wait. Before I do I’m going to tell the boys here what you know already. Then they’ll understand the rest of my story better. You see, Mr. Touchtone,” he began, “Mr. Winthrop Jennison grew up without father or mother, an’ he was first sent to one boarding-school, then to another, by his uncle, for whom he was named—who owned this place till he died. Mr. Winthrop was a wild kind of a boy, from the first. I guess he wasn’t so downright bad, but he was wild, an’ easy led into bad scrapes. There was two or three we heard of, before his eddication an’ his law studies was done. Then his uncle, that was his guardian, died; an’ Mr. Winthrop was sent to Europe. He’d used to come here quite often in the summers before that. Wife an’ I thought a good deal o’ him, an’ wanted to keep up his interest in the place. But in France and Germany he altered a good deal, an’ spent most of his money, an’ when he got back to New York he hadn’t much. He couldn’t well sell this place, or he wouldn’t, so he always said. At any rate, that wouldn’t have been o’ much use. At last, Mr. Clagg found out he gambled bad, an’ that he’d got into a set of men in the city that was shady enough to turn him into a real blackguard if he didn’t look out! Mr. Clagg talked a lot to him an’ straightened out his money-matters for him, and then he come away from New York and started into practicin’ law in Boston.”
Touchtone listened with interest quite as much as Gerald, to whom this was an exciting sketch from real life, which, as later he would find, alas! has so many like it. But the next paragraph of Mr. Winthrop Jennison’s discreditable history made Philip’s attention suddenly sharp, and a flush of color came into his face.
“We heard these things an’ lots more about him, better or worse, mostly worse. Wife and I wondered at ’em and was sorry. But whenever he come over here, no matter what he might be further inside, Mr. Winthrop was always a perfect gentleman, not a bit dissipated-lookin’, exceptin’ his bein’ generally very pale; and we rather liked his visits. He seemed pretty well tired out when he was here. He’d shut himself up in his room, or take a boat an’ go fishin’. Wife an’ I think he’s stuck so to the place as a kind of a refuge an’ restin’-place for him when things don’t suit him. He’s a nice-lookin’, pleasant-spoken man, of, I dare say, forty, only he don’t look his age. Well, after he’d been in Boston a while he broke loose again with a hull set of his worst chums. The papers said there was a forgery he and they was all mixed up in together. And when he come here, the same summer that Mr. Clagg knew about, then we found out that he’d got as many as a half dozen names and two or three post-office addresses.
“But there was worse to come. One afternoon, in September, he and some o’ the evilest-faced and best-dressed fellows I ever see come to the island from off a yacht. They all sat down there by the Point talkin’ and wranglin’ till sundown. Then Mr. Jennison went off with them in the boat, only comin’ up here a minute to say how-d’-do to Loreta here. Loreta was more afraid of him than glad to see him, for all the soft spot in her heart.”
“I wasn’t afraid of him, Obed, but I wasn’t glad to see him,” protested Mrs. Probasco. “I was sure that no man could keep that kind o’ company and seem on such good terms with ’em, and be any longer a credit to his stock.”