CHAPTER XXV.THE SHADOW DEEPENS.
As it was Sunday morning there were not as many people as usual on the piazza of the Harbor Hotel when Jack went up the steps, and seated himself in an arm chair. As it chanced, none of the men knew him, and all glanced curiously at him, wondering who he was. He knew they were looking at him, and cursed them under his breath with a bitter sense of humiliation, remembering that he was once one with them,—their equal,—whose hand they would have grasped had they known him, and whom they would have congratulated upon his sister’s marriage. Now they passed him by with a stare, while he looked after them angrily. They were so respectable and jaunty in their fresh morning suits, telling of city tailors with whom he was once familiar. He had his wedding garments in his trunk, butthe clothes he wore were travel stained and shabby with his long journey, his debauch in Chicago, and the hours he sat in the dampness upon the beach. The starch was out of his collar and cuffs; the crease was out of his trousers,—there were spots on his coat and vest and patches of sand on his shoes; seedy, those who passed him by thought him, and very seedy he looked, as the piazza began to fill with men and women who had come out for an airing before going in to their breakfast. None of the newcomers gave him more than a casual glance, although among them were some whom he had seen in Oak City before.
“Nobody knows me any more; nobody wants me,” he was thinking, when Paul Ralston came up the steps, happy and handsome and a little anxious, too, as his eyes scanned the moving crowd.
He knew Jack was in town, and had come to find him. He had spent the previous evening with Clarice, who had never been more gentle and womanly. The character of wifehood so soon to fall upon her was taking effect and making her amiably disposed towards everybody. She talked of Jack, from whom she had not heard, and said perhaps she was wrong in wishing to keep him away, and he her only brother and near male relative. She said, too, that she had neglected to send him a card and was sorry.
Paul was sorry, too. He had a feeling that Jack had not been treated quite fairly, but he could not tell Clarice so. They would make it up, he thought, when they met him West, if they did meet him. It was quite late when he said good-night to Clarice, telling her he should not see her till the next afternoon, as he had promised to sing a difficult solo in church in the morning.
“My farewell, you know, as after I am married I supposeI must sit with my wife,” he said, kissing Clarice’s blushing cheek with unwonted tenderness as he said “my wife.”
He did not tell her that Elithe had been asked to sing in the choir, that her first appearance would be on the morrow and that he would not like to miss being there to hear her. He had been greatly interested in getting her into the choir, and more interested in what she was to sing at the offertory. In the absence of the first soprano that part, at his suggestion, had been offered her, and, after a great deal of persuasion, she had accepted it. Before going to see Clarice that night he had attended the rehearsal and heard with pride Elithe’s voice rise clear and unfaltering, without a break, while the few spectators present listened wonderingly to this new bird of song.
He did not return home by way of the cottage, as he usually did, looking always for the light which, though only a light like that of many more on the ridge where Miss Hansford’s cottage stood, streamed across the green sward down towards the avenue with a softer radiance than the others, because it first shone on Elithe. If he had analyzed himself and seen what construction might have been put upon his thoughts if they were known, he would have turned from the picture with dismay, for he meant to be true as steel to Clarice, and had never loved her better than when he said good-bye to her that Saturday night and went whistling along Ocean Avenue, which took him past Harbor Hotel. A few of the guests were sitting upon the piazza, and, seeing these, Paul joined them, listened to their gay banter a few moments, and then went inside to examine the register, as he often did.
“Pretty full, arn’t you?” he said to the clerk, who replied, “Jam up. Had to turn off a lot, and among them Jack Percy. Seen him?”
“Jack Percy in town! When did he come?” Paul asked.
“On the four o’clock boat. Looked pretty hard, too,” was the clerk’s answer.
“Why didn’t he go to his mother’s?” was Paul’s next question, as he turned the leaves of the register till he found Jack’s name.
“I asked him that, and he said he wasn’t wanted, and consigned his mother to Hades,” the clerk replied, with a meaning look at Paul.
“But where did he go? Where is he now?” Paul continued.
The clerk could not tell him. “He is to take his meals here, but where he is to sleep I don’t know.”
This was all the information Paul could get, and he left the hotel half glad, half sorry that Jack had come, and determining to find him the next morning, and if his mother were willing, take him to the Ralston House until after the wedding. The house was full of guests, but Mrs. Ralston expressed her readiness to receive Jack if Paul would share his sleeping room with him.
“I’ll do it,” Paul said. “It is his getting drunk Clarice dreads so much, and I think I can keep him sober. I’ll try it, any way. He is Clarice’s brother and is soon to be mine.”
Immediately after breakfast the next morning he started for the hotel to find Jack. He did not see him at first, and inquired for him at the office.
“Haven’t seen him,” was the answer of the clerk, and Paul went out again upon the piazza to look for him.
Spying him at last, he hastened to him, and with a cheery “Good morning, Jack. I’ve hunted everywhere for you. How are you, old fellow,” held out his hand.
It was a peculiarity of Jack that when angry he kept brooding over the fancied injury and nursing his wrath, which was augmented by every trifle. The fact that no one recognized him added fuel to the fire within him. The clear brandy he had taken was doing its work, and when Paul came upon him his temper had reached the boiling point of unreasonableness and lack of sense. To Paul’s “How are you?” he answered growlingly, “Much you care how I am, and I don’t know that it’s any of your business either.”
“Why, Jack, what’s the matter? Can’t you speak civilly to me?” Paul said in much surprise.
“No, I can’t, and I don’t wish to speak to you at all,” Jack replied.
Paul saw the condition he was in and wanted to get him away.
“Come, come,” he said soothingly. “Come home with me,” and he laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder.
“Let me alone,” Jack said fiercely, shaking the hand off and launching into a tirade of abuse, taunting Paul with having pirates and smugglers for his ancestors and still feeling so big that he didn’t wanthim,—Jack Percy,—a Virginian gentleman, to be present at his wedding.
The crowd around them had increased to quite a ring,—some standing on tiptoe to get a glimpse of the angry man. The sight of them made Jack worse, and, after finishing Paul, he took up his stepmother and Clarice, saying things of them which no sane man would ever say of women allied to him by ties of consanguinity. Paul had listened quietly while his father and grandfather and great-grandfather and himself were called thieves and cut-throats and robbers, but when Clarice became the subject of Jack’s vituperation he could bear it no longer. Usually the mildest, most forbearingof men, he had a temper when roused, and it was roused now.
“Silence! You wretch, to speak so of your sister,” he said, raising his arm as if to strike, and taking a step forward.
In an instant Jack was upon him, and, with a heavy blow, laid him flat upon the piazza. Some men deserve knocking down and are made better for it, but Paul was not one of them, and his face was livid with rage at the indignity offered him. He had sought Jack with the kindest intentions and been grossly insulted. Springing to his feet, he raised his hand again threateningly, then dropped it, and, controlling himself with a great effort, he said, “This is not the place to settle with you, Jack Percy, but I’ll make you pay for this some time, see if I don’t.”
Just what he meant he did not know. He was too much excited and mortified to reason clearly. He had been knocked down and called a coward and a snob and a pirate. His promised wife had been called a liar and a flirt and a cheat. Many of his friends had witnessed his humiliation, and amid the Babel of voices around him he heard the words, “Fight him; thrash him; he deserves it. We’ll stand by you and help lick him if necessary.”
He knew the popular feeling was with him, but it did not help him much. He was very proud and felt keenly the insult put upon him and the injustice of it. It was a disgrace to be mixed up in such a row, and all he wanted was to be alone until his temper had cooled.
“Let me out of this before I break his head,” he said, as he pushed his way to the street.
The bell in the church near the hotel was ringing its first summons for service, but Paul did not hear it, or remember that he was to sing a solo that morning and thatElithe was to sing another at the offertory, and if he had he could not enter the House of God in his present state of mind. Leaving the hotel, he walked along the beach until he reached the seat under the willow tree where Jack had sat the night before until the stars came out and the fog was creeping inland. Here Paul sat down, trying to comprehend the situation and forget the indignity offered him. But he could not. The more he thought of it the angrier he grew, with a feeling that he must do something.
“I’d like to kill him!” he said aloud, just as a shadow fell upon the sand, and looking up he saw a half-grown boy regarding him wonderingly. “Who are you and why are you staring so at me? Be off with yourself!” he said savagely.
The boy, who did not know Paul, went off, but remembered the incident, which was to form a link in the dark chain of evidence tightening around Paul Ralston. He heard the last note of St. Luke’s bell and the answering ring of other bells floating out to sea, and knew that service was commencing in all the churches. Then he remembered his solo and Elithe. Had she heard of the fray? Had all the people heard of it, and what would they say? He knew what Miss Hansford would say, and laughed as he thought of the epithets she would heap upon Jack. The laugh did him good, and he could think of the sore spot in his side where Jack had struck him. “His fist was like a sledge hammer and would have felled an ox,” he said to himself, beginning to wonder what had happened to rouse Jack to such a pitch. He was in no hurry to go home, for, although he could not think himself in any way to blame, he shrank from meeting his people with a kind of shame that he had been in a broil.
At last, when he heard the one o’clock bell, he startedfor home, which he reached just as the family were sitting down to lunch. He did not care to join them, and bade the maid bring him something to his room. “I’ll take a bath and get cooled off before I see Clarice,” he thought, after his lunch was over. Going to the bath room he divested himself of his light gray coat, noticing as he did so a brown stain on the sleeve, which in his fall had come in contact with a pool of tobacco juice. Paul was very fastidious with regard to his clothes; a misfit or soil of any kind ruined them for him, and Tom Drake, who was in one sense his valet and who was just his height and figure, seldom had need to buy a new garment, as all Paul’s castoffs were given to him. Paul found him on the rear piazza and said to him, “Here, Tom, is another coat I’m through with. There’s a stain on the sleeve. Maybe you can get if off.”
Tom was so accustomed to these gifts that he took them as a matter of course, and was very proud of his general resemblance to Paul, whom he admired greatly, trying to walk like him and talk like him as far as possible. He had not yet heard of the trouble with Jack, and did not know why the coat was given to him, unless it were for the stain. Thanking Paul for it, he put it on at once, with the remark that it fitted him to a T. “We do look in our backs as near alike as two peas,” he said to himself when he saw Paul leave the house, habited in another coat nearly the same style and color as the one he was wearing.
Paul was going to see Clarice, whom he found in hysterics, while her mother was in a state of collapse, with several lady friends in attendance. They had heard of Jack’s arrival and the scene at the hotel. Of this the most extravagant stories had been told them. That Jack was intoxicated went without saying. Another story was thathe and Paul had fought like wild beasts, rolling together on the hotel piazza. A third, that without the slightest provocation Jack had flown at Paul, knocked him down, broken his arm and further disabled him. This seemed probable, as Paul did not come at the time he was expected, and a messenger was about to be sent to the Ralston House to inquire for him when he appeared.
At sight of him Clarice redoubled her sobs, while Paul tried to quiet her, assuring her he was not harmed and making light of the matter. When she grew calm he began to relate the particulars, and as he talked and heard the expressions of sympathy for himself and indignation against Jack, his temper began to rise again, and he said many things not very complimentary to Jack,—threatening things natural in themselves under the circumstances, but which came up afterward as proof against him. Clarice was the most excited, declaring that Jack should not come there and begging Paul to find him and keep him away. This Paul promised to do, although shrinking from another encounter with the enemy.
The summer day was drawing to a close and the sun was setting when he left the Percy cottage and started for home. As he crossed the causeway between Lake Wenona and Lake Eau Claire he saw Jack turning into a cross road on the Heights, and guessed that he had started for his mother’s cottage, though why he should go that way, which was longer, he could not guess. Dreading the result for Mrs. Percy and Clarice if Jack went to them in a state of intoxication, as he probably was, he decided to overtake him and if possible persuade him to turn back. The quickest way to reach the oaks in which he had disappeared was to cross the open space between Miss Hansford’s cottage and the woods. Seated on the steps and piazza were three orfour of the lodgers, together with Miss Hansford. They had all heard of the encounter at the hotel and were discussing it when Paul came rapidly up the path from the avenue. His face was flushed and he looked excited and flurried, and seemed unwilling to be stopped.
“Hallo, Ralston,” one of the young men called out to him. “Glad to know you are alive. Come here and tell us about it. Heard first your leg was broken, then your arm. Why didn’t you smash his head for him?”
“I’d like to,” Paul said, “but I can’t stop now. I am looking for him. He is up this way somewhere, and I must find him. Have any of you seen him?”
No one had seen him, and Paul passed on hurriedly, while one of the party on the steps remarked, “I don’t believe the trouble is over yet. Ralston was pretty well wrought up for him.”