Phœbe might have told more; but she did not. She was the garrulous sort, the old “sanguine type,” who keep their own counsel in the midst of much chattering. She might have told of Walter’s maudlin love-makings; of his fierce attempts to force Phœbe Norris to run off and marry him; and of her struggles to keep him from slipping completely into the wallow. It would have made a great difference in the theories of both Mrs. Wells and of Richard if they could have known this side of the boy. And it would have been another blow to the mother if she had realized that it was the expert management of Phœbe Norris that had kept the boy straight during his journey abroad, and that the two lapses, in London and on the steamer, were brought on by the irritating surveillance of the mother.
Richard was tremendously interested. He probed Phœbe with questions, but she turned them off adroitly. When he persisted in asking her where she got her knowledge of how to treat Walter she explained frankly.
“You see,” she said, “I have served my trade as an expert attendant upon twisted-minded folks. Perhaps they have told you, Richard Richard, that Seth, my husband, was out of his mind the larger part of ten years. I was his wife as far as the ceremony goes, but, as everyone knows, I was really only his hired nurse.”
“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “Believe me, I did not mean to probe you——”
“Shucks!” she tossed her head. “There’s not a thing to be fussy about. Seth was just a man with a child’s brain. The real Seth, the one I knew, died before I married him; so I took care of the boy Seth—if you understand me—gave him his food, bathed him and put him to bed. When he was too violent I threatened him with a whip. I struck him only once—when he gave me that.” She pulled down the collar of her gown and showed part of a livid scar. “He always remembered that whiplash and was a good doggie ever after. Of course I had to watch him when he got into his fits; but I have had less trouble with bulldogs. Poor old Seth, I got to be almost fond of him; but he was just a faithful two-legged animal; there’s nothing to be sensitive about.”
Again, this was not the whole story, as everyone knew. Seth Norris had changed from a fine young grape farmer into a violent crafty brute. Phœbe had mastered him with the whip, but she had been forced to barb-wire a considerable enclosure to keep the lunatic from doing damage to others. She had made a comfortable house for him away from her own dwelling, and there he lived and roamed about within the limits of the barbed fence in the finest kind of savage contentment. But there were wild nights when she had no sleep, and there was more than one struggle before she was sure of her physical mastery. And yet, except for the scar, which did not show, she bore not the slightest evidence of her gruesome experience.
“I’m a widow at twenty-eight, with land of my own and income enough to buy the winter praties.” She struck an attitude out of Monte Cristo and exclaimed, “‘The world is mine!’”
“You must have married young?” Richard persisted.
“Eighteen,” she said. “Seth died this spring. You don’t suppose I’d wear black, do you? Lord love you! I ’phoned up all the neighbours when he——”
“She’s just trying to shock you, Richard. Don’t believe her,” interrupted Jerry.