The Diamond Coterie Part 29

After a time he arose from the bed, still looking as if he had seen a ghost, and, going to a desk, opened it, and took therefrom a capacious drinking flask; raising it to his lips he drained half its contents, and the stimulant acting upon overstrained nerves, seemed to restore rather than to intoxicate.

"At last," he muttered to himself, "I am at the bottom of the mystery, and--I am powerless." Then, like his sister on the previous day, he muttered, "There is but one way--only one--and _it must be done_!" Then throwing himself once more upon the bed, he moaned:

"Oh, that I, the accursed of the family, heretofore, should live to be--but pshaw! it is for Sybil I care. But--for to-day let them all keep out of my sight--I could not see them and hold my peace."

He pocketed the half empty flask, and made his way from the house to be seen by none at Mapleton for the next twenty-four hours.

After that morning interview with his father-in-law, John Burrill bl.u.s.ters less for a few days, and makes himself less disagreeable to the ladies. He accepts the situation, or seems to; he rides out on one or two sunny afternoons with Mrs. Lamotte and Sybil, and on one of these occasions they meet Constance Wardour, driving with her aunt. The heiress of Wardour smiles gayly and kisses the tips of her fingers to the ladies, but there is no chance for him--he might be the footman for all Constance seems to see or know to the contrary. This happens in a thoroughfare where they are more than likely to have been observed, and John Burrill chafes inwardly, and begins to ponder how he can, in the face of all the Lamottes, gain a recognition from Constance Wardour. In his sober moments this becomes a haunting thought; in his tipsy ones it grows to be a mania.

One day, during this lull in the family siege, Sybil and her mother visit the city, doing a mountain of shopping, and returning the next day. Sybil keeps on as she began, on the night when she listened to her father and husband, while they held council in her mother's room. She is full of energy and nervous excitement always, and the old stupor of dullness, and apathetic killing of time, never once returns. But Mrs.

Lamotte likes this last state not much better than the first; neither does Constance; but they say nothing, for the reason that it would be useless, as they know too well. Sybil goes out oftener, sits with the family more, and seems like one waiting anxiously for a long expected event.

John Burrill is a little disturbed at Sybil's visit to the city. He knows that she will go and come as she pleases there, unquestioned, and, if she choose, unattended by her mother. And, without knowing why, he feels inclined to rebel; but he is still under the spell of that morning interview, and so holds his peace.

Evan, too, under the same uncanny spell, goes about more morose than usual, more silent than usual, more sarcastic than usual. More and more, too, he attaches himself to John Burrill; they drink together in the dining room, and then repair together to "Old Forty Rods," or some other favorite haunt. Together they seek for pleasure in the haunts of the vilest, Evan continually playing upon the vanity and credulity in Burrill's nature, to push him forward as the leader in all their debauches, the master spirit, the _bon vivant, par excellence_.

And Burrill goes on and on, down and down. He begins to confide all his maudlin woes to Evan, and that young man is ever ready with sympathy and advice that is not calculated to make Jasper Lamotte's position, as bear trainer, a sinecure.

But Evan contrives to leave Sybil tolerably free from this nuisance for a time; but only for a time. John Burrill has other advisers, other exhorters, other spurs that urge him on to his own downfall.

Burrill begins to throw himself in the way of Constance Wardour; to meet her carriage here and there; to stand near by as she goes and comes on her shopping excursions; to drive past Wardour Place alone and often.

At first, this only amuses Miss Wardour; then it annoys her; then, when she finds her walks in the grounds so often overlooked by the slowly pa.s.sing Burrill, she begins to mark his maneuvers with a growing vexation.

But Burrill perseveres, and the more nearly he approaches the fourth stage of his intoxication, the more open becomes his stare, the more patent his growing admiration.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JOHN BURRILL, PLEBEIAN.

It is night, late and lowering; especially gloomy in that quarter of W---- where loom the great ugly rows of tenements that are inhabited by the factory toilers; for the gloom and smoke of the great engines brood over the roofs night and day, and the dust and cinders could only be made noticeable by their absence.

In a small cottage, at the end of a row of larger houses, a woman is busy clearing away the fragments of a none too bountiful supper. A small woman, with a sour visage, and not one ounce of flesh on her person, that is not absolutely needed to screen from mortal gaze a bone. A woman with a long, sharp nose, two bright, ferret-like brown eyes, and a rasping voice, that seems to have worn itself thin asking hard questions of Providence, from sunrise till dark.

The table has been spread for two, but the second party at the banquet, a gamin son aged seven, has swallowed his own and all he could get of his mother's share, and betakened himself to the streets, night though it be.

The woman moves about, now and then muttering to herself as she works.

The room is shabbily furnished, and not over neat, for its mistress spends her days in the great mill hard by, and housekeeping has become a secondary matter. Only the needs of life find their demands honored in this part of W----. Too often needs get choked and die of the smoke and the cinders.

It is late, for the woman has been doing extra work; it is stormy, too, bl.u.s.tering and spattering rain. Yet she pauses occasionally and listens to a pa.s.sing footfall, as though she expected a visitor.

At last, when the final touch has made the room as tidy as it ever is, or as she thinks it need be, there comes a shuffling of feet outside, and a tremendous thump on the rickety door. After which, as if he was sufficiently heralded, in comes a man, a big man, m.u.f.fled to the eyes in a huge coat, which he slowly draws down and draws off, disclosing to the half curious, half contemptuous gaze of the woman the auburn locks and highly tinted countenance of Mr. John Burrill.

"So," she says, in her shrillest voice, "It's _you_, is it? It seems one is never to be rid of you at any price."

"Yes, it's me--all of me," the man replies, as if confirming a doubtful statement. "Why, now; you act as if you didn't expect me."

"And no more I did," says the woman sullenly and most untruthfully.

"It's a wonder to me that you can't stay away from here, after all that's come and gone."

"Well, I can't," he retorts, amiably rubbing his hands together.

"Anyhow, I won't, which means about the same thing. Where's the little duffer?"

"He's where you were at his age, I expect," she replies grimly.

"Well, and if he only keeps on as I have, until he gets up to my present age, he won't be in a bad boat, eh, Mrs. Burrill the first."

"He's got too much of his mother's grit to be where _you_ are, John Burrill, livin' a lackey among people that despise you because you have got a hand on 'em somewhere. I want to know if you don't think they will choke you off some day when they are done using you?"

John Burrill seated himself astride a low wooden chair, and propelling it and himself forward by a movement of the feet and a "hitch" of the shoulders, he leaned across the chair back in his most facetious manner, and addressed her with severe eloquence.

"Look here, Mrs. Burrill number one, don't you take advantage of your position, and ride the high horse too free. It's something to 'ave been Mrs. J. Burrill once, I'll admit; but don't let it elevate you too much.

You ain't quite so handsome as the present Mrs. Burrill, neither are you so young, consequently you don't show off so well in a tantrum. Now the present Mrs. Burrill--"

"Oh, then she does have tantrums, the present Mrs. Burrill," sneered the woman, fairly quivering with suppressed rage. "One would think she would be so proud of you that she could excuse all your little faults. Brooks says that they all talk French up there, so that you can't wring into their confabs, John."

"Does he?" remarked Burrill, quietly, but with an ominous gleam in his ugly eyes. "Brooks must be careful of that tongue of his. You may reckon that they all stop their French when _I_ begin to talk. Now, don't be disagreeable, Nance; it ain't every man that can take a rise in the world like me, and _I_ don't put on airs, and hold myself above my old friends. Do you think that every man could step into such a family as _I_ belong to, Mrs. Burrill? No one can say that John Burrill's a common fellow after that feat."

"No, but a great many can say that John Burrill's a mean fellow, too mean to walk over. Do you think the men as you worked along side of, and drank and supped with, don't know what you are, John Burrill! Do you think that they don't all know that your outrageous vanity has made a fool of you? Chance threw into your hands a secret of the Lamottes; you need not stare, we ain't fools down here at the factories. Maybe I know what that secret is, and maybe I don't. It's no matter. I know more of your doings than you give me credit for, John Burrill. Now, what must you do? Blackmail would have satisfied a sensible man; but straightway you are seized with the idea that you were born to be a gentleman. You!

Then you form your plan; and you force, by means of the power in your hands, that beautiful young lady to marry you."

"Seems to me," interrupts the man who has been listening quite contentedly, "that you are getting along too fast with your story."

"Yes, I am too fast. When you first hatched out this plan, you came to me and put a pistol to my head, and swore that if I didn't apply for a divorce from you at once, you would blow my brains out. I had swore more than once to have a divorce; and Lord knows I had cause enough; what, with the drunkenness and the beatings, and the idleness, and the night prowlin', and all the rest; but I never expected that."

The woman paused for a moment, and then resumed her tirade of mixed eloquence and bad grammar.

"I didn't expect to be drove into the divorce court at the point of a pistol, but that's how it ended, and you was free to torment Miss Lamotte, poor young thing! Don't you let yourself think that I envied _her_! Lord knows I had had enough of you, and your meanness, but I pitied her; and if I had knocked out your brains, as I've been tempted to do a dozen times, when you have rolled in here blind drunk, I'd have done her a good turn, and myself too. The time was when Nance Fergus was your equal, and more too; but you left England with the notion that here you would be the equal of anybody, and you've never got clear of the idea. I've tried to make you understand that there's a coa.r.s.e breed of folks, same's there is of dogs, and that you are of a mighty coa.r.s.e breed. I've lived out with gentle folks over the water, and they were none of your sort. But, go on John Burrill, the low women you are so fond of, and the girls at the factory, have called you good lookin', until your head is turned with vanity. You have got yourself in among the upper cla.s.s, no matter how, and I suppose you expect your good looks to do the rest for you. I mind once when I was at service in Herefordshire, the Squire had a fine young beast in his cattle yard, black an' sleek, an' handsome to look at, and the young ladies came down from the big house and looked at it through the fence, and called it a 'beautiful creature,' but all the same they led it away to the slaughter house with a ring in its nose, and the young ladies dined off it with a relish."

John Burrill stroked his nasal organ fondly, as if discerning some connection between that protuberance and the aforementioned ring; but he made no attempt to interrupt her.

"You was bad enough in England, John Burrill; what with your poaching and your other misdeeds, and sorry was the day when I left a good place to come away from the country with you, because it was gettin' too hot for you to stay there. You couldn't get along without me then; and you can't get along now it seems, for all your fine feathers, without you come here sometimes to brag of your exploits, and pretend you are lookin' after the boy."

"Nance," said Burrill, "you're a fine old bird! 'Ow I'd like to set you at my old father-in-law, blarst him, when he rides it too rough sometimes, and, what a sociable little discourse you could lay down for the ladies too, Nance; but, are you about done? You've been clean over the old ground, seems to me, tho' I may have dozed a little here and there. Have you been over the old business, and brought me over the water, by the nape of the neck; because, if you haven't--no, I see you have not, so here's to you, Nance, spin on;" and he took from his pocket a black bottle, and drank a mighty draught therefrom.

"No, I'm _not_ done," screamed the woman. "You've come here to-night, as you have before, for a purpose; one would think that such a fine gentleman could find better society, but it seems you can't. You never come here for nothing; you never come for any good; you want something?

What is it?"

He laughed a low, hard laugh.

"Yes," he said, taking another pull at the black bottle; "I want something."

"Umph! I thought so."