Margaret Millar
The Weak-Eyed Bat
Chapter One
It was, thought professor Henry Frost, a pitiable state of affairs that he, a gentleman and a scholar, author of an authoritative work on the Ionic dialect in Homer, should have sired two such oddities as the Misses Joan and Susan Frost. In Joan's case his paternity was open to doubt, since the second Mrs. Frost had been notoriously liberal-minded along certain lines; but Susan was undoubtedly his own flesh and blood.
“A poor thing,” said Professor Frost over his bacon and eggs, “but mine own.”
Susan was, as usual, picking listlessly at her food in the faint hope that someone would comment on her lack of appetite. She raised her large doleful brown eyes at her father’s remark.
“What did you say, Father?” she asked in a voice which left no doubt that she was using up her last few pitiful ergs in an effort to be polite.
“I said,” Professor Frost said mildly, “that the bacon is delicious this morning.”
Susan blushed. “Really? How nice! I had it made especially for you, Father. It was especially—”
“She raised the pig herself in an incubator,” Joan remarked, “especially for you, Papa, because you are such a dear good papa, the hell you are.”
“Joan!” Susan said in mechanical shock.
Professor Frost regarded them both with distaste, but since Joan had resumed reading her letters, his distaste began to distill like dew on his elder daughter, Susan.
Certainly no one could say that he was not a man of kindly disposition and infinite patience, but Susan’s ability to strain one’s patience went far beyond infinity. Nobility on a large scale was Susan’s forte, he reflected. When a neighbor fell sick it was Susan who sat at the bedside shedding cheer with a false vivacity that was horrible even to contemplate. It was to this habit of Susan’s that Professor Frost attributed his unfailing good health. Far better to die in one’s boots, he thought.
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” Susan said sadly. “Muskoka has such a lovely climate.”
She waited for a reply to this conversational tidbit but none came, so she chewed with faint sorrow on a piece of toast.
Hattie Brown, a local girl hired for the summer, shuffled into the dining room and set the coffee percolator in front of Susan. Susan began to pour.
Joan thumped her last letter on the table and yawned audibly, stretching her brown arms over her head.
“You have quite a range of pretty noises,” her father said, “but it’s hardly necessary to display them at the breakfast table.”
“I agree,” Susan said automatically.
“Oh, dry up.” Joan reached for her coffee. “You’re both very boring. Such a perfect gentleman and such a perfect lady making such polite conversation.”
Yes, Professor Frost reflected, when one contemplated Joan, one was forced to admit the virtues of Susan. Whereas one could and often did ignore Susan, one had Joan thrust upon one.
One could only describe Joan as violent — violently blonde, violently eighteen, and violently female. A large, handsome Amazon with a loud laugh, Joan was as uninhibited as a tornado.
People were likely to miss small sums of money or pieces of jewelry after a visit from Joan. No charge had ever been laid against her, but doors were locked and husbands put out on leashes by vigilant wives.
She pushed her coffee cup away and lit a cigarette. “Got a hundred?” she asked casually.
Her father frowned at her across the table. “A hundred what?”
“Dollars, dear Papa.”
“What for?”
“For dear Mamma. One of my letters is from Mamma. She’s in Mexico and needs a hundred dollars, and after all you were married to her.”
“Let me see the letter,” Professor Frost said.
“The hell I will! Don’t you believe me?”
“No.”
“All right. I’ll settle for fifty.”
It promised to be an uncomfortable scene and Susan said quickly: “I see Dr. Prye arrived last night.”
Joan’s interest was immediately diverted. Her pale blue eyes began to gleam and Professor Frost sighed.
For Joan all Gaul was divided into two parts, male and female. It was an eminently simple division and it was only natural and just that Joan, who had an eminently simple mind, should accept it. But still it disheartened the author of a book on the Ionic dialect in Homer. Perhaps there were places where one sent girls like Joan, a kind of combined finishing school and reformatory. He must ask Prye. Prye would know what to do.
Restored once more to his scholastic calm, Professor Frost excused himself and went up to his study. Joan stared after him, looking unusually thoughtful.
“The lousy bastard,” she said.
Susan jumped to her feet, her small thin hands clenched at her sides. “Don’t you dare!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare to say that word. You of all people!”
Joan threw back her head and began to laugh, a brittle, unpleasant laugh that shattered against the walls.
“God, you’re funny.” She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in Susan’s face. “What are you trying to do, insult me? Do you think I’d waste my anger on a poor anemic sniveling little hypocrite like you? Get out.”
Susan pointed a shaking finger at her.
“You’re a bad woman,” she hissed. “You and Tom Little. Don’t you suppose that everyone—”
“Oh, get out.”
Susan collapsed into a damp trembling bundle.
Although such scenes were not uncommon in the Frost household, Miss Hattie Brown found them freshly interesting each time. Via Hattie, the residents of the six cottages and the surrounding countryside were apprised of the situation in the Frost family play by play.
In her bedroom in the huge white house which was the only year-round residence in the community, Miss Emily Bonner was sitting in her wheelchair by the window. She had an excellent view of the other five houses, and with the aid of a pair of field glasses she was enjoying it.
The leather on her field glasses was well worn, a fact which would have alarmed her neighbors had they known it. But Emily’s love for voluminous clothing was not without its advantages. Even so bulky an article as a pair of field glasses could be popped up a large sleeve or down a well-padded bosom. And surely a poor old crippled woman had a right to some pleasure.
Miss Bonner’s age increased by unmathematical leaps and bounds. While lesser women were subtly subtracting a year here and a year there, Miss Bonner did not hesitate to add ten years when the spirit moved her. After all, if one couldn’t retain the privileges of extreme youth one might as well claim those of extreme age. The result was that at the age of sixty-five Miss Bonner was variously credited with seventy to eighty-five years, and people agreed that she was remarkably well preserved.
On occasions her nephew and heir, Ralph Bonner, had been tactless enough to question her antiquity. Although he was not astute, Ralph calculated that since his late father had been only a few years younger than his aunt Emily she could not be over sixty-five. Miss Bonner took a firm stand over this heresy: either she was seventy-five, as currently claimed, or she would leave her money to a home for poor old crippled women like herself.
Ralph made few such excursions into the realm of logic. There were already other more important points of disagreement between himself and his aunt. The chief of these was his residence in the Muskoka house. There was no amusement for a young man of twenty-three living all year round in a lonely country house in northern Ontario with only an aged aunt and a staff of servants for company. Ralph wanted to go out into the world, to meet life face to face.
“Oh, nonsense!” was Miss Bonner’s retort to these ravings. “I find it much more strategic to avoid a personal encounter with life.”