CHAPTER II.
THE ARROW MESSAGE.
Percy Vere explained this mission to the old hunter. His father had been missing for years. He was an eccentric character, and professed spiritualism, astrology, ventriloquism, and kindred sciences, dabbling a little in magic and chemistry. In fact, he was a universal genius—a jack-of-all-trades, and not doing well with any.
Percy’s mother was a woman of ability and good sense, a first rate milliner, and her industry kept the wolf, which the father’s eccentricities brought to the door, away. In other words, she was obliged to support herself and son, and often furnish money to the genius, who could not make it for himself with all his diverse talents.
He did not appear to be able to concentrate his forces so as to produce any good from them. He was full of wild theories and startling speculations, but he failed signally whenever he attempted to put them to an application.
His wife expressed her opinion of him freely one day, and told him she could no longer expend her savings in his wild schemes. He replied that it was the fate of genius to be misunderstood, that he was destined to be a great man, and she would live to see it; and having uttered this ambiguous prophecy, left her.
He did not return the next day, or the next—a year passed away without bringing Guy Vere home. His wife became alarmed at his prolonged absence. She reproached herself with being too harsh with him and having driven him away from her. He was a handsome man, and she had cherished a warm affection for him, which his eccentricities had not destroyed. She feared that she had driven him to commit suicide. But no tidings came of his death.
She was obliged to keep her little millinery shop going for the support of herself and son, and her sister’s child, who being left an orphan, fell to her care. This was Percy Cute—who was just one year younger than his cousin, his mother having been so pleased with the name of her sister’s child, that she had bestowed it upon her own.
The little shop prospered, and the boys grew in years. Mrs. Vere could not drive the image of her husband from her mind. If she could have satisfied herself that he was dead, she would have been more content, but she could not do that.
The impression among Guy’s neighbors when he was at home, was that he was not in his right mind—“Luny,” they called him.
But many years passed away before she got any tidings of the missing man, and then it came in a very vague shape.