CHAPTER XXIV.THE SHADOW BEGINS TO FALL.
It was the Saturday before the wedding, which was to take place on Thursday of the next week. Many of the guests from a distance had arrived. The Ralston House was full, Miss Hansford’s cottage was full, as were some of the other cottages engaged for the occasion. The Harbor Hotel, as the largest and most expensive and most fashionable house in Oak City, was crowded to its utmost capacity. “Positively no more room, if you take a shelf in a closet,” the distracted clerks said to the mob of people who cameas usual in the afternoon boat clamoring for accommodations. Those who had families and were expected for Sunday were easily disposed of, while the rest were turned away. There was a good deal of fault-finding and some swearing among the disappointed ones, as they left the hotel, not knowing where to go next.
One of the number stayed with his lips pressed tightly together and a look of determination in his dark eyes, as he leaned against the railing around the office. He had fought his way to that place and kept it through all the jostling and pushing around him. He had heard scores refused and sent away, and, either because his brain was muddled or because he overrated his influence and powers of persuasion, he hoped to get in somewhere, “if it is in the attic,” he said, when he at last stood alone and reached out his hand for the register in which to sign his name.
“No room in the attic; no use to register,” the worn-out clerk said, trying to take the book back.
But the stranger held it fast and wrote in a round, plain hand, “John Percy, Washington, D. C.”
“That’s who I am,” he said, pointing to his name with an assured manner, as if it would at least secure him a cot in the parlor.
The clerk glanced at it and shook his head, then called his companion’s attention to it.
“Oh, Jack Percy,” the young man said, looking at the stranger, whom he remembered to have seen three or four years before. “I am very sorry, Mr. Percy,” he said, coming forward, “but really, there is not a foot of spare room in the house. We might give you your meals if you are willing to wait for the second table. We have two now, the hotel is so full.”
“I’ll take my meals here then and sleep on the beach,” Jack answered, taking up his grip-sack.
“There is your mother’s. Why don’t you go there?” the clerk asked, regretting his question when he saw the look on Jack’s face, as he sent his stepmother to a very warm place and added: “She don’t want me.”
Nobody wanted him, and he had come so far and was so tired and faint and angry, too, as he sat down outside in a cool angle of the building, where he was shielded from observation and could think. He had received Clarice’s letter, which had been forwarded to him from Denver. Reading between the lines he understood that he was not wanted at the wedding, which she said was to be a quiet affair, not worth his coming so far to see. The Boston Herald, which Mr. Hansford took, told a different story, and so did Elithe’s letter to her mother. Rob, with whom he was very intimate, repeated to him with a good deal of pride an account of the fine doings in Oak City, of which Elithe was to be a part, in a white muslin gown, made in Boston and trimmed with ribbons and lace. Jack listened without any comment, but to himself he said: “I shall go to this wedding.”
He left Samona suddenly, with no word of explanation as to where he was going or when he should return. At Chicago he stopped for a day to rest and get a present as a peace offering for Clarice. He wanted to stand well with her, if possible, and meant to do his best. The present was bought,—a lovely silver vase with Clarice’s name upon it and the date of her marriage. All might have ended well but for his falling in at the hotel with two of his old comrades in dissipation. To resist their persuasions and keep from drinking was impossible. He forgot his pledge,—forgot Elithe and everything else but the pleasure of themoment, and when the train which he intended taking for Boston left the station, he was lying like a log in the bed to which his friends had taken him, and in his pockets were two bottles of brandy, which they had put there as souvenirs of their spree. Mortified beyond measure and weak from the effects of his debauch, Jack shook himself together and started again for the East, drinking occasionally from the brandy to steady his nerves, until the boat was reached at New Bedford. It was packed, but he managed to find a seat and sat with his back to the passengers. Behind and close to him were two or three young men bound for Oak City and talking of the wedding.
Nothing like it had ever been seen in that vicinity, they said, discussing the fireworks and the lanterns and the bands and the tent and the flowers and the twenty waiters, and wondering how Mrs. Percy could afford it, as they had never supposed her wealthy.
“Poor, but proud as Lucifer, and her daughter is prouder,” one said, adding that possibly Paul Ralston furnished some of the wherewithal.
“I don’t think so,” another replied. “Miss Percy would not allow that. More likely it’s the brother. She has one, I believe. Where is he, anyway?”
“Oh!” and the first speaker laughed, derisively. “You mean Jack.”
A shiver like ice ran through Jack’s body as he heard his name spoken in the way it was and by one whose voice he recognized as belonging to an old friend. But he sat perfectly still and listened while the talk went on.
“I used to know him some seasons ago; pretty wild chap; nothing really bad about him, if he’d let whisky alone. He is only Clarice’s half brother, and cuts no figure whatever. If he can take care of himself he does well. Used to drinklike a fish and howl like a hyena when he had too much down him. He’s West somewhere, and I’ve heard that they want him to stay there; but there are so many lies told you can’t tell what’s true and what isn’t. I know Ralston don’t want him, for I heard some one ask him if he were coming and Paul said ‘It is to be hoped he will not.’”
Here the speakers moved to another part of the boat, while Jack sat as still as if he were dead, his hands clenched and his eyes red with passion, staring out upon the white foam the boat left in its track. Once he started up, half resolved to throw himself overboard into that foaming water and disappear forever. He was shaken to his very soul with what he had heard. His suspicions were more than confirmed. His stepmother did not want him, Clarice did not want him, Paul did not want him, and this hurt him more than all the rest. Paul had always been friendly; now he had turned against him.
“I wish I had stayed away,” he said to himself, growing dizzy from the motion of the boat and the strong excitement under which he was laboring.
His brain whirled like a top, and everything grew dark around him. Brandy would stop that and steady his nerves, if taken moderately. Thanks to his Chicago friends, he had it in his side pocket, and when sure no one was looking he took out the bottle and drank a swallow or two of the clear fluid, which burned as it went down and spread itself over his system in a pleasant glow which quieted him in one sense and roused him in another. He didn’t care for his stepmother, nor Clarice, nor Paul, nor the whole world, except one. He gasped when he thought of that one, then put the thought aside and was only conscious of a hard, dogged feeling, which would make him dare and do almost anything,—shame Clarice, if he felt like it,—thrash PaulRalston, if he felt like it,—and be a devil generally, if he felt like it.
In this state of mind he reached Oak City and passed unrecognized through the crowd of people, some of whom would have known him had they stopped to look at him. They were, however, too eager to push on either to their cottages, where they were expected, or to the hotels, where many of them were not expected. When Jack left Samona he had intended going directly to his stepmother’s as the natural place for him to go. Now nothing could tempt him to go there. Once he thought to take the next boat which left for New Bedford and go back to the Rockies. Then he thought, “I’ll stay till Monday, and maybe get a glimpse of her. It will be something to take away with me.”
So he insisted upon entering his name upon the register at the Harbor Hotel. Where he would sleep was another matter. He was not hungry. He never was after a spree, and the brandy kept him up. Going down at last upon the sands he sat a long time on a bench under a willow tree, watching the fishing boats as they went by, homeward bound to Still Harbor; watching the sun as it went down in the West; watching the groups of young people sauntering on the beach to his right and left, straining his eyes to see if perchanceshewas there with them; then cursing himself for a fool to care whether she were there or not, and taking a drink of brandy when he felt himself growing faint and dizzy. Finally he fell asleep and dreamed he was a boy again, playing with Paul in the smuggler’s room at the Ralston House, and worrying Miss Hansford. He stole the melon a second time, and a second time lay under the clump of scrub oaks and dreamed that he was dead. When he awoke the lights in the city were out. The water infront of him was black, except where the stars were reflected in it. His clothes were wet with the heavy dew; he was cold and hungry and sober. It was not very far to a small hotel he knew, and, taking his hand-bag, he made his way to it along the shore. The drowsy clerk whom he roused from sleep was not very cheerful in his greeting, and made some profane remarks about disturbing a feller that time of night, and gave him an inferior room on the third floor back. Jack didn’t care. It was all of a piece with the rest of his reception, and he accepted it as his due. The night was hot, his room close, and, taking off his coat and vest, he sat a while by the window, trying to catch a breath of fresh air and wishing so much for a sight of the cottage pictured so distinctly in his mind. It was the opposite side of the hotel,—away from his range of vision. He could not see it, and if he left in the morning, as he now meant to do, instead of waiting till Monday, he might not see it at all; but he could write. Strange he had not thought of that; he could write, and then good-bye forever to everybody he had ever seen or heard of. He had material in his satchel, and by the dim light of his kerosene lamp he began a letter which was to be read with blinding tears, and which made his own come occasionally as he pitied himself for what he was and where he was and what had brought him there.
The dawn was breaking when his letter was ended, and he could discern the outlines of many houses on the Heights. Conspicuous among them was the Ralston House. Jack looked at it awhile,—then shook his fist and swore at it as the home of Paul Ralston, his prospective brother-in-law, who did not want him at the wedding.
“Well, I shan’t be there,” he said, folding his letter, and placing it in an envelope, but forgetting to direct it.
His mind was confused with loss of sleep and his long fast.
“I must have something to eat, or drink, or both,” he thought, fortifying himself with brandy, and then, as he heard sounds from below, going down to the dining room to order his breakfast.
No one saw him but the waiter to whom he gave his order and the clerk to whom he paid his bill.
“Queer customer; been on a high old jinks, I reckon. I wonder who he is,” the clerk thought, looking after him as he left the house and went along the beach towards the Harbor Hotel.