The Deliverance Part 57

"What's the meaning of this tomfoolery?" he demanded. "Do you mean to say you've made a beast of yourself, after all?"

Partly sobered by the shock, Will gazed back at him with a dogged misery which gave his face the colour of extreme old age.

"I'm not so drunk as I look," he responded bitterly. "I wish to Heaven I were! There are worse things than being drunk, though you won't believe it. I say," he added, in a sudden, hysterical exclamation, "you're the only friend I have on earth!"

"Nonsense. What have you been doing?"

"Oh, I couldn't help it--it wasn't my fault, I'll be blamed if it was! I did sell the breastpin and get the money, and wrapped it in the list of things that Molly wanted. I put them in my pocket," he finished, touching his coat, "the money and the list together."

"And where is it?"

For a moment Will did not reply, but stood shaking like a blade of gra.s.s in a high wind. Then removing his hat, he mopped feebly at the beads of sweat upon his forehead. His eyes had the dumb appeal of a frightened animal's. "I haven't had a morsel all day," he whimpered, "and the effect of the whisky has all worn off."

"Speak up, man," said Christopher kindly. "I can't eat you."

"Oh, it's not you," returned Will desperately; "it's Molly. I'm afraid to go home and look Molly in the face."

"Pish! She doesn't bite."

"She does worse; she cries."

"Then, for G.o.d's sake, out with the trouble," urged Christopher, losing patience. "You've lost the money, I take it; but how?"

"There was a fair," groaned Will, his voice breaking. "I met Fred Turner and a strange man who owned horses, and they asked me to come and watch the racing. Then we had drinks and began to bet, and somehow I always lost after the first time. Before I knew it the money was all gone, every single cent, and I owed Fred Turner a hundred and fifty dollars."

Christopher's gaze travelled slowly up and down the slight figure before him and he swore softly beneath his breath.

"Well, you have made a mess of it!" he exclaimed with a laugh.

"I knew you'd say so, and you're the only friend I have on earth.

As for Molly--oh, I'm afraid to go home, that's all. Do you know, I've half a mind to run away for good?"

"Pshaw! Accidents will happen, and there's nothing in all this to take the pluck out of a man. I've been through worse things myself."

"But Fred Turner!" groaned Will. "I promised him I'd pay him in two days."

"Then you'll do it. I'll undertake to see to that."

"You!" exclaimed the other, with so abject a reliance upon the spoken word that it brought a laugh from Christopher's lips. "How will you manage it?"

Oh, somehow--mortgage the farm, I reckon. At any rate, in two days you shall be clear of your debt to Fred Turner; there's my word. All I hope is that you'll learn a lesson from the fright."

"Oh, I will, I will; and by Jove! you are a bully chap!"

"Then go home and make your peace with Molly. Mind you, if you get in liquor again I warn you I won't lift a hand."

With a last cheery "good night" he swung on along the road, dismissing the thought of Will to invoke that of Maria, and meeting again in fancy the rich promise of her upturned lips.

Body and soul she was his now, flame and clay, true brain and true heart. "I will follow you, for the lifting of a finger, anywhere," she had said, and the words reeled madly in his thoughts. Her impa.s.sioned look returned to him, and he closed his eyes as a man does in the face of an emotion which proclaims him craven.

When Christopher's footsteps had faded in the distance, Will, who had been looking wistfully after him, shook together his dissolving courage and started with a strengthened purpose to bear the bad news to Molly. A light streamed through the broken shutters of her window, and when he laid his hand upon the door it shot open and she stood before him.

"So you're back at last," she said sharply; "and late again."

"I couldn't help it," he answered with a.s.sumed indifference, entering and pa.s.sing quickly under the fire of her questioning look. "I was kept."

"What kept you?"

"Oh, business."

"I'd like to know what business you have!" she retorted querulously; and a minute later: "Have you brought the medicine?"

He went over to the table and stood looking gloomily down upon the scattered remains of supper upon the sloppy oilcloth, the cracked earthenware teapot, and the plate half filled with soppy bread. "Give me something to eat. I'm almost starved," he pleaded.

A flash shot from her blue eyes, while the anger he had feared worked threateningly in the features of her pretty face. There was no temperateness about Molly; she was all storm or sunshine, he had once said in the poetic days of courtship.

"If you've brought the things, where are they?" she demanded, driving him squarely into a corner from which there was no escape by subterfuge.

A sullen defiance showed in his aspect, and he turned upon her with a muttered curse. "I haven't them, if you want the truth,"

he snarled. "I meant to buy them, but Fred Turner got me to drinking and we bet on the races. I lost the money."

"To Fred Turner!" cried Molly. "Oh, you fool!"

He made an angry movement toward her; then checking himself, laughed bitterly.

"You're as bad as grandfather," he said, "and it's like jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. I'll be hanged if I knew you were a shrew when I married you!"

Molly's eyes fairly blazed, and as she shook her head with an enraged gesture, her hair, tumbling upon her shoulders, flooded her with light. Even in the midst of his fury his ready senses responded to the appeal of her dishevelled loveliness.

"And I'll be--anything if I knew you were a drunkard!" she retorted, pressing her hand upon her panting breast.

"Well, you ought to have known it," he sneered, "for I was one.

Christopher Blake could have told you so. But if I remember rightly, you weren't so precious particular at the time. You were glad enough to get anybody, as it happened!"

"How--how dare you?" wailed Molly, in the helplessness of her rage, and throwing herself upon the lounge, she beat her hands upon the wooden sides and burst into despairing sobs. "Why, oh, why did I marry you?" she moaned between choking gasps.

"Some said it was because Fred Turner threw you over," returned Will savagely, and having hurled his last envenomed dart, he seized his hat and rushed out into the night.

The scene had worked like madness on his nerves, and in the darkness of the lane, where the trees kept out the moonbeams, he still saw the flickering lights that he had left behind him in the room. He had eaten nothing all day, and his empty stomach oppressed him with a sensation of nausea. His head spun like a top, and as he walked the road rocked in long seesaws beneath his feet. Yet his one craving was for drink, drink, more drink.

Running rather than walking, he reached the store at last, and went back to the little smoky room where Tom Spade was drawing beer from the big keg in one corner.

"Give me something to eat, Tom; I'm starving," he said; "and whisky. I must have whisky or I'll die."

"It's my belief that you'll die if you do have it," responded Tom. "As for bread and meat, however, Susan will give you a bite an' welcome." Nevertheless, he poured out the whisky, and, leaving it upon one of the dirty tables, went hastily out in search of Mrs. Spade.

Lifting the gla.s.s with a shaking hand, Will drained it at a single swallow, feeling his depleted courage revive as the raw spirit burned his throat. A sudden heat invaded him; his eyes saw clearer, and the tips of his fingers were endowed with a new quality of touch. As his hands travelled slowly over his face he became aware that he was looking through his finger ends, and he noted distinctly his haggard features and the short growth of beard which made him appear jaded and unwashed. Then almost instantly the quickness died out of his perception, and he felt the old numbness creeping back.

"Another gla.s.s--I must have another gla.s.s," he called out irritably to the empty room. His hands hung stone dead again at his sides, and his head dropped limply forward upon his breast.