“My dear Fanny,” began Wayne, thrusting his long legs out at comfortable ease, “can you imagine our father dear being worked? He backed off and sparred for time when you wanted to marry John, though John belongs to our old Scotch-Irish Brahmin caste, because a Blair once owned a distillery back in the dark ages, and there was no telling but the sins of the rye juice might be visited on your children to the third and fourth generation if you married John. And if I had craved the Colonel’s permission to marry some girl in another town—some girl, let us say, that I had met on a steamer going to Bermuda—you may be dead sure he would have put detectives on her family and had a careful assay made of her moral character. Trust the Colonel, Fanny, for caution in such matters! Don’t you think for a minute that he hasn’t investigated Miss Adelaide Allen’s family into its most obscure and inaccessible recesses! Our father was not born yesterday; our father is the great Colonel Roger Craighill, a prophet honoured even on his own Monongahela. Father never makes mistakes, Fanny. I’m his only mistake. I’m a great grief to father. He has frequently admitted it. He begs me please not to forget that I am his son. I am beyond any question a bad lot; I have raised no end of hell; I have frequently been drunk—beastly, fighting drunk. And father will go to his dear pastor and ask him to pray for me, and he will admit to old sympathizing friends that I’m an awful disappointment to him. That’s the reason he stopped lecturing me long ago; he doesn’t want me to keep sober; when I get drunk and smash bread wagons in the dewy dawn with my machine after a night among the ungodly he puts on his martyr’s halo and asks his pastor to plead with God for me!”
“Wayne! Wayne! What’s the matter with you?”
He had spoken rapidly and with a bitterness that utterly confounded her; and he laughed now mirthlessly.
“It’s all right, Fanny. I’m a rotten bad lot. No wonder the Colonel has given me up; but I have the advantage of him there: I’ve given myself up! Yes, I’ve given myself up,” he repeated, and nodded his head several times as though he found pleasure in the thought.
CHAPTER III
A LETTER, A BOTTLE AND AN OLD FRIEND
WHEN Wayne had taken Mrs. Blair to her own home and had promised on her doorstep to be “good” and to come to her house soon for a further discussion of family affairs, he told Joe, the chauffeur, that he wished to drive the machine, and was soon running toward town at maximum speed.
Joe, huddled in an old ulster, watched the car’s flight with misgivings, for this mad race preluded one of Wayne’s outbreaks; and Joe was no mere hireling, but a devoted slave who grieved when Wayne, as Joe put it, “scorched the toboggan.”
Joe Denny’s status at the Craighill house was not clearly defined. He lodged in the garage and appeared irregularly in the servants’ dining room with the recognized chauffeur who drove the senior Craighill in his big car. It had been suggested in some quarters that Colonel Craighill employed Joe Denny to keep track of Wayne and to take care of him when he was tearing things loose; but this was not only untrue but unjust to Joe. Joe had been a coal miner before he became the “star” player of the Pennsylvania State League, and Wayne had marked his pitching one day while killing time between trains at Altoona. His sang froid—an essential of the successful pitcher, and the ease with which he baffled the batters of the opposing nine, aroused Wayne’s interest. Joe Denny enjoyed at this time a considerable reputation, his fame penetrating even to the discriminating circles of the National League, with the result that “scouts” had been sent to study his performances. When a fall from an omnibus interrupted Joe’s professional career, Wayne, who had kept track of him, paid his hospital charges, and Joe thereupon moved his “glass” arm to Pittsburg. By shrewd observation he learned the management of a motor car, and attached himself without formality to the person of Wayne Craighill. For more than a year he had thus been half guardian, half protégé. Wayne’s friends had learned to know him; they even sent for him on occasions to take Wayne home when he was getting beyond control; and Wayne himself had grown to depend upon the young fellow. It was something to have a follower whom one could abuse at will without having to apologize afterward. Besides, Joe was wise and keen. He knew all the inner workings of the Craighill household; he advised the Scotch gardener in matters pertaining to horticulture, to the infinite disgust of that person; he adorned the barn with portraits of leading ball players, cut from sporting supplements, and this gallery of famous men was a source of great irritation to Colonel Craighill’s solemn German chauffeur, who had not the slightest interest in, or acquaintance with, the American national game. Joe’s fidelity to Wayne’s interests was so unobtrusive and intelligent that Wayne himself was hardly conscious of it. Such items of news as the prospective arrival or departure of Colonel Craighill; the fact that he was trading his old machine for a new one; or that Walsh, Colonel Craighill’s trusted lieutenant, had bought a new team of Kentucky roadsters for his daily drive in the park—or that John McCandless Blair, Wayne’s brother-in-law, was threatened with a nomination for mayor on a Reform ticket—such items as these Joe collected through agencies of his own and imparted to Wayne for his better instruction.
To-night the lust for drink had laid hold upon Wayne and his rapid flight through the cool air sharpened the edge of his craving in every tingling, excited nerve. His body swayed over the wheel; he passed other vehicles by narrow margins that caused Joe to shudder; and policemen, looking after him, swore quietly and telephoned to headquarters that young Craighill was running wild again. He had started for the Allequippa Club, but, remembering that his father was there, changed his mind. The governors of the Penn, the most sedate and exclusive of the Greater City’s clubs, had lately sent a polite threat of expulsion for an abuse of its privileges during a spree, and that door was shut in his face. The thought of this enraged him now as he spun through the narrow streets in the business district. Very likely all the clubs in town would be closed against him before long. Then with increased speed he drove the car to the Craighill building, told Joe to wait, passed the watchman on duty at the door and ascended to the Craighill offices.
A lone book-keeper was at work, and Wayne spoke to him and passed on to his own room.