CHAPTER VIII
THE KISS
In coming to Gissing, Thomas Alvin had not had the remotest idea that the Barrimores lived at Hastings. It had been in London that his brother and Eweretta had met Philip, and it had been to the Savage Club that the communication of Eweretta’s supposed death and burial had been sent. Thomas Alvin had heard his brother say that Philip was a member of that club.
Gissing had been fixed upon as a residence because of its loneliness, and because it was within reach of Hastings, and Thomas Alvin had years ago visited that watering-place (when in partnership with a man who afterwards threw him over) and taken a great liking to it.
His plot to possess himself of his niece’s fortune had succeeded admirably up to now.
Kept under the influence of drugs, Eweretta had been very little trouble.
But lately she had refused her food, and had had terrifying sane moments in which she had outbursts of denunciation.
Thomas Alvin regretted the occasions when he had exercised physical cruelty; strange to say, from pity for the defrauded and outraged girl, but also because he was superstitious. To his curiously constructed conscience, it had seemed only a clever business transaction to get hold of Eweretta’s fortune. Moreover, did he not permit her to share it? But to treat the girl with cruelty was monstrous, and might bring disaster on him. He had never treated her badly when sober. Ill-luck had followed him all his life, as being the thirteenth child of his father, and he was ever watching for some new calamity to befall him.
On each occasion on which he had inflicted cruelty on his niece he had been seized with terror, and had flown to the brandy bottle again. He was not a drunkard, but at these times he got drunk.
Drink is not a Canadian vice, and Thomas Alvin had passed most of his life in Canada.
The thing he feared most, after a glass or two of the fiery fluid, was the spirit of his brother John, Eweretta’s father—the one member of the large family who had succeeded in making a fortune.