CHAPTER XLI.TOM, YOU DID IT!
This was what Elithe said to Tom, sitting in the Baptist Tabernacle just where she sat when he came asking her to help him liberate Paul, and where he now came to tell her of Paul’s fixed determination to go back, as he termed it. No arguments or entreaties had been of any avail to deter him from his purpose. Anything was preferable to the lifehe was living, he said, and when the court which was to try the firebugs was in session he should give himself up, trusting Providence for the result. From the moment when this was settled Tom appeared like a new man, and his cheery whistle, which had not been heard since Paul’s arrest, sounded in the stables and yard again as he busied himself with his work. The second day after Paul’s decision he put on the coat and hat he had not worn since the Sunday when Jack was shot and started for a walk in the woods. It was late November, and the dead leaves rustled under his feet with a dreary sound which awoke a mournful feeling in his heart.
“It makes me sorry like to think I shan’t be walking here much longer, but I’m going to do it,” he said, just as he saw Elithe sitting in the Tabernacle in the distance.
She did not see him till he was close to her, and then she started as she had done before with a thought that it was Paul.
“It’s his coat and hat, or they were once,” Tom said, “and in ’em I b’lieve I look so much like him that in a fading light I might easily be mistaken for him, if he had been seen and spoken to a few minutes before. I might be shootin’ at some animal, you know,—a rabbit, or woodchuck. Do you see?”
He was looking at Elithe, in whose mind a whirlwind of emotions were contending with wild suspicions, which culminated at last in her springing up and with her finger pointed towards him saying: “Tom you did it!”
Tom answered, “I did,” and listened while she heaped upon him the most scathing scorn for his cowardice and wickedness in letting another suffer in his stead.
“And you would have seen him sent to prison, perhaps to death, and never spoken,” she said, “Oh, Tom, I havethought you so good and true, and all the time you were hiding your own sin. I’m going to town as fast as I can to tell it.”
She was hurrying away when Tom took hold of her arm and made her sit down again.
“You are not going to tell it,” he said. “I claim that privilege myself. I’ve been mean as dirt, but not so bad as you think. Let me tell you how it was.”
Very rapidly he told his story, how, arrayed in Paul’s coat, trousers and hat, he had started for a stroll in the woods as he often did on a Sunday afternoon, taking Paul’s revolver with him in hopes he might find some animal to fire at. He had no idea of Jack’s proximity to him, and when a rabbit ran in that direction he fired at it, as Elithe saw him do. The shot was followed by a groan, telling him he had wounded some one. In his fright he threw the pistol away, but did not know why he did it. His first impulse was to go to the clump of bushes and see who was there. Then he heard Elithe call out that some one was shot, and, like a coward, he skulked behind the trees, hearing the confusion of voices and some one saying, “He is dying.” Thoroughly frightened, he hurried through the woods and across the fields in the direction of Still Haven, seeing no one until he was near New York wharf. Here he met and spoke to two or three, but heard nothing of the disaster. On Highland Avenue he was joined by Paul, coming from the direction of the brick kiln. They walked together until nearly home, when they were told that some one had been shot and carried into Miss Hansford’s cottage. Paul had at once started for the cottage, and he, Tom, had gone on, hearing later that Jack had committed suicide. He had no thought that Paul would be suspected,and when he knew he was he was too much frightened to speak out and say that he did it.
“I tried a hundred times. I swan I did,” he said, as he saw the contempt in Elithe’s face, “but something always gripped my tongue and kept me still. And then I didn’t b’lieve they’d go so far with him,—he was so popular and rich, and when they put him in jail I swore on the Bible that if he was convicted I’d own up, and I meant it, too, though life and liberty is as sweet to me as to him, and because they are so sweet and I hated so to give up everything and be hung or sent to State’s Prison, I contrived a plan to liberate him and get him out of the country, where he’d be safe, and then I needn’t tell.”
“But leave him all his life with that cloud upon him. Oh, Tom, I am disappointed in you, and I thought you so good, standing by Mr. Ralston as you have,” Elithe exclaimed, feeling sorry the next moment for the man who looked so abject and crushed and on whose face drops of sweat were standing, although the day was cold and gusty.
“Infernal mean, I know,” he said, “but I’ve suffered more than he, I do believe. Look how poor I’ve grown, and how baggy my clothes set on me. It’s remorse that did it, and the knowing I must take his place if he didn’t get off. I was as tired of his hidin’ with me and Sherry keepin’ watch as he was. I knew it couldn’t last forever, and I was that glad I could have shouted when he settled it that he would go back. I am happier than I have been since the shootin’.”
“Have you told him?” Elithe asked, and Tom replied: “No, and don’t mean to either till the next trial. You see, it will look better for him and more innocent like to go back, knowing nothing, and then, Lord, won’t there be a sensation when they bring in the defence, and I am calledas a witness and spring it on ’em. I can see your aunt’s face now. Wouldn’t wonder if she jumped up and hugged me. She’s great on Mr. Paul.”
He laughed and cried both and Elithe cried, too, with pity for him and joy for Paul, who was virtually free.
“I must tell auntie,” she said. “I shall burst if I have to keep it from every one. She is safe as I am, and then she will not be so excited when she has to testify as she was before.”
Tom laughed as he recalled Miss Hansford’s manner on the stand, but fully appreciated Elithe’s dislike to have it repeated.
“Well, tell the old lady if you wish to,” he said, “and maybe she’ll bring me apple pies and things when I’m in jail instead of him. You’ll come and see me some time?”
Elithe took his hand and said:
“I’ll come, yes,—and so will everybody, and I don’t believe they’ll do anything to you, either, when they know just how it happened. They’ll blame you for keeping still so long,—but giving yourself up voluntarily will wipe that out. I was very angry with you at first. I think you a hero now, so will Mr. Ralston, and he and his father will do everything to save you.”
She pressed his hand warmly, and then hurried home with the news, feeling herself grow stronger with every step and looking so bright and happy when she entered the house that her aunt noticed the change and asked what had happened.
“The man is found,—the man is found,” Elithe replied, curveting around the room and finally dropping into the two-step she had practiced with Paul on the causeway, and whistling an accompaniment.
“Be you crazy? What man is found?” Miss Hansford asked, divining the answer before it came.
“The man who shot Mr. Percy. It was not Paul. I was mistaken. It was Tom. He has told me all about it and is going to give himself up.”
Miss Hansford’s knees, which had played her false so many times of late, weakened as they had never done before, and, although she was sitting down, she straightened out in her chair until the Bible she was reading slipped from her lap to the floor, followed by her spectacles, while her hands followed them and hung beside her. There was a spasmodic movement of her lower jaw and a clicking sound of her teeth as she said: “Tell me what you mean?” Elithe told her all she had heard from Tom, whom Miss Hansford first called a scamp and a scoundrel who deserved hanging and ended by praising and pitying, saying, as Elithe had said, that the Ralstons would do everything to save him and most likely nothing would be done to punish him. The change in Miss Hansford after this was as rapid as it had been in Elithe and manifested itself in a peculiar way. Usually the most particular of housekeepers, she had, since Paul’s arrest, paid but little attention to anything beyond the necessary preparation of meals and clearing them away. Her autumnal house cleaning had been neglected. She didn’t care how much filth she wallowed in, feeling as she did, she said. Now, however, she woke as from a trance, and, declaring her house “dirty as the rot,” went to work with a will to renovate it. Before the sun was up next morning her mattresses and blankets and pillows were out in the November wind; much of her furniture was on the piazza; her carpets were on the line and grass ready to be whipped, and within an hour, with her sleeves rolled up and a towel on her head, she was makinga raid on dust and spiders and flies, wondering she didn’t find more and urging on the two Portuguese men outside with the carpets, and the two Portuguese women inside with the cleaning, as they had never been urged before.
The next day was Sunday, and she went to church for almost the first time since Paul’s escape.
“Somebody is sure to ask me if I have any idea where Paul is. Of course I have, and with wrigglin’ and beatin’ round the bush I’ve told so many lies that I’m afraid I’ll never be forgiven, and I don’t want to see people,” she had said to Elithe as an excuse for staying at home.
Now she did not care and she held her head high as she entered the church, and her knees did not bend at all until she went down upon the floor with a silent prayer of fervent thanksgiving for what was coming to Paul and forgiveness for the sins she had committed in trying to shield him and keep his whereabouts a secret. She did not have to do this much longer, for the town was soon electrified by Paul’s walking boldly out before the public and surrendering himself to justice.
“This beats all. Seems as if we had stood about all we can stand,” the people said, as they talked the matter over, growing more excited, if possible, than they had been when Paul was first accused and arrested.
As is natural, many of them said they had known as well as they wanted to know that he was at the Ralston House. Others shook their heads, wondering why Tom Drake hadn’t managed to get him away, and predicting it would go hard with Paul, as giving himself up was a proof that he was guilty. Others took a different view, and thought he had done a magnanimous thing which would tell in his favor, and so the discussion went on, and Miss Hansford’s house was cleaned and her knees recovered their strengthand she put a dollar in the contribution box two successive Sundays and did not appear at all disturbed about the coming trial.