Thrice Armed Part 21

The last trace of color ebbed from Jimmy's face, and he stood very still, with set lips and tightly clenched hands. Then he turned aside with a groan of horror.

"Lord!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "That, at least, might have been spared him."

In another moment he swung around on his comrade almost savagely, with a bitter laugh. "And you want to marry my sister Eleanor?"

"Yes," said Jordan; "just as soon as it can decently be done. Jimmy, you daren't blame him."

"Blame him!" and Jimmy's voice was strained. "If I had had his load to carry and felt it as he did, I should probably have gone under long ago."

He leaned heavily on the rail for a minute or two, and then, apparently rousing himself with an effort, turned toward his comrade. "As you say, I must stand up to it. How is Eleanor bearing it?"

"Quietly--too quietly. I'm 'most afraid of her. She's here--I went over to Forster's for her. Insists on staying in the house. I'll send somebody around with your papers, and then go along with you."

Five minutes later they went ash.o.r.e together, and it was falling dusk when they reached a little four-roomed frame-house which stood near a row of others of very much the same kind amidst the tall fir-stumps which straggled up a rise on the outskirts of the town. It was such a one as the few wharf and sawmill hands who were married usually lived in--comfortless, primitive, and rickety. Jimmy remembered how he had determined when he sailed south with the _Shasta_ full to the hatches that his father should not stay another month in it.

He was almost startled when his sister led them into the little general room, for it was evident that there had been a great change in her.

That, at least, was how he regarded it then, but afterward he understood that it was only something which had been in her nature all the time making itself apparent. He did not remember whether she kissed him, but she sat down and looked at him with the light of the lamp upon her, while Jimmy, who could find nothing at all to say, gazed at her.

Eleanor had already provided herself with somber garments, and they emphasized the severity of contour of her supple figure. They also forced up the pallor of her face, which was relieved only by a faint blotch of color in either cheek, and, in spite of this, in a curious fashion made her beautiful. Jimmy had hitherto admitted that his sister was pretty, but, as he recognized, that word was not the right one now.

She was imperious, dominant, a force embodied in a woman's shape, and her brother was vaguely conscious that he shrank a little from her.

Eleanor did not seem to want his sympathy. The coldness of her face repelled him, the fastidious neatness of her gold-bronze hair appeared unnatural, and her pale-blue eyes had a hard glitter like that of a diamond in them. It was evident that in place of being crushed, she was filled with an intense suppressed virility. Indeed, there was something in her appearance and manner that was suggestive of a beautifully tempered spring, one that would fly back the moment the strain slackened, and, perhaps, cut deep into the hand that compressed it. It was the girl who spoke first, and her voice had a certain incisive quality in its evenness.

"Charley has told you," she said; "I can see that by your face. He insisted on doing so to save me. Well, I am grateful, Charley--that is, as grateful as I am capable of being--but I will not keep you."

Jordan looked disconcerted. "Can't you let me stay? There are one or two ways in which I could be of service."

Eleanor made a little imperious sign, and, though Jimmy once more found it difficult to realize that this woman, whose coldness suggested a white-heat of pa.s.sion, was his sister, he was not altogether astonished when Jordan slowly rose.

"Then I'm going no farther than the first fir-stump that's low enough to make a seat," he said. "If I'm wanted, Jimmy has only to come out and call."

He went out, and Eleanor turned to her brother. "I am afraid Charley is going to be sorry I promised to marry him," she said. "Still, I think I am fond of him, or I might have been, if this horrible thing hadn't come between us. It is horrible, Jimmy--one of the things after which one can never be quite the same. I have a good deal to say to you--but you must see him."

Jimmy made a sign of concurrence, and his sister rose. "First of all, there is something else. It is a hard thing, but it must be done."

She turned to a cupboard, and, taking out a bottle of corn whisky, laid it before him with a composure that jarred on the man. Her portentous quietness troubled him far more than a flood of tears or a wild outbreak would have done. Then she laid her finger on the outside of the bottle, as though to indicate how much had been taken out of it.

"I think that accounts for everything," she said. "Still, he was driven to it. I want you to remember that as long as you and the man who is responsible live. Prescott knows, and Charley--I had to tell him. But n.o.body else must ever dream of it."

"Of course you had to tell Charley," said Jimmy hoa.r.s.ely. "Still, the inquest?"

A scornful glitter crept into Eleanor's eyes. "That you will leave to me. I have been drilling Prescott as to what he is to say, and if they question Charley, who got here before the doctor when Prescott sent for him, he will stand by me."

Jimmy looked somewhat startled; but when he strove to frame his thoughts the girl silenced him. "If it were necessary to corrupt everybody who had ever been acquainted with him, and I could do it--at any cost--it would be done. Now"--and she quietly took up the lamp--"you will come with me."

Jimmy shivered a little as he went with her into the adjoining room, and set his lips tight when with a steady hand she drew the coverlet down.

Then, while his eyes grew a trifle hazy, he drew in a little breath of relief, for Tom Wheelock lay white and serene at last, with closed eyes and no sign of pain in his quiet face, from which all the weariness had vanished. Only a clean linen bandage, which ran from one temple to behind the other ear, was laid upon it. There was nothing that one could shrink from, and Jimmy made a gesture of protest when Eleanor laid her hand on the bandage.

She met his eyes with something that suggested contempt in hers, and quietly drew back the bandage, and then the soft white sheet from the shoulder of the rigid figure. Jimmy sickened suddenly, and seized her arm in a constraining grasp.

"Put it back!" he said. "That is enough--enough, I tell you!"

Then, while the girl obeyed him, he turned from her with a groan, gasped once or twice, and sat down limply. He could not look around again until her task was concluded, and he would not look at her. It seemed an almost interminable time before she spoke.

"Still," she said, "you must look at him again; I should like you to remember him as he is now. Perhaps you can, Jimmy, but that relief is not for me."

Jimmy rose, and in another few moments turned his head away. He stood still, with a whirl of confused emotions that left him half-dazed rioting within him, while he glanced vacantly round the room. It was scantily furnished, and generally comfortless and mean. Long smears of resinous matter exuded from the rough frame boarding of its walls, and there were shrinkage rents in part of it that let the cool night air in.

In one place he could see where a drip from the shingle roof had spread into a wide damp patch on the uncovered floor, and it seemed an almost insufferable thing that his father should have spent his last days in such surroundings. Then he glanced at Eleanor, standing a rigid, somber figure with the lamp in her hand, and it seemed that she guessed what he was thinking.

"It does not matter now--but he was once considered a prosperous man,"

she said. "The contrast was one of the things he never complained of; but I think he felt it."

Jimmy turned and went out with her, and, sitting down in the adjoining room, she looked at him with the quietness he was commencing to shrink from. She seemed to understand that, too.

"You think I am unnatural," she said. "Perhaps you are right--but even if you are, what does it matter? Still, I believe I was fonder of him than you ever were. If I hadn't been, could I have done all this for you and him?"

She stopped for a moment, and the hard gleam flashed back into her pale-blue eyes. "He was horribly burned, Jimmy, and until the last few minutes crazed with drink and pain. Still, he was driven to his death and degradation."

Jimmy only gazed at her with a tightening of his lips, and the girl went on in the clear, incisive tones that so jarred on him. "I think it was more than murder. Can you remember him as anything but abstemious, and only unwise in his easy kindliness, until the man who crushed him held him in his clutches? Weak! There are people who would tell you that, and perhaps he was. It was the load he had to bear made him so. Try to remember him, Jimmy, as he used to be--brave and gentle, devoted to your mother and mine; the man who, they said, never ran for shelter in the fiercest breeze of wind. Try--I want you to."

Jimmy turned to her abruptly, moistening his dry lips with his tongue.

"Eleanor, have done; I can't stand any more."

"You must;" and the girl laughed harshly. "I hold that he was murdered.

Is there any real distinction between the man who holds you up with a pistol and kills you for your money, suddenly and, in one way, mercifully, and the one who with cold cunning slowly sucks your blood until he has drained the last drop out of you? Still, that is not all.

If he had only died as most men die. You must remember the upset lamp and the whisky, Jimmy."

"Stop!" said Jimmy hoa.r.s.ely, clenching a brown hand while the perspiration started from him. "I can't stand it! It is horrible, Eleanor! You are a woman--you have promised to marry my comrade."

The girl rose, and, crossing to where he sat, laid a hand on his shoulder as she looked down at him. "I feel all that you feel, with a greater intensity; but I can bear it, and you must bear it too. Charley will not complain, and I would be his slave or mistress as long as he would stand by me until I carry out my purpose. He is only my lover, but you are Tom Wheelock's son. What are you going to do?"

"What can I do?" and Jimmy made a little hopeless gesture. "Perhaps it would be only justice, but I can't waylay Merril with a pistol. The man has no human nature in him. I couldn't even provoke him to strike me."

"No," said Eleanor, with a bitter laugh; "that would be foolishly theatrical, and in one way too easy. It would not satisfy me. You will wait, ever so long if it's necessary, and command the _Shasta_ while you take his trade away. Then we will find other means--business means; it can, I think, be done. He must be slowly drained and ruined, and flung aside, a broken man, as your father was. Then it would not matter whether he dies or not."

Jimmy shrank from her a little, and she smiled as she noticed it. "There is a good deal of our mother's nature in both of us, and you cannot get away from it. It will make you a man, Jimmy, in spite of all your amiable qualities."

"Still," said Jimmy vaguely, "one has to be practical. I'm afraid it isn't easy to ruin a man like Merril just because you would like to--I've met him, you see. The _Shasta_ Company was not started with that purpose either, and it was only because Jordan is a friend of mine that I was put in as skipper."

"Didn't old Leeson say that the _Shasta_ Company would never have been formed if it hadn't been for me? It is a struggling little company, and Merril is a big man, and apparently rich; but there are often chances for the men with nerve enough."

Jimmy rose. "If one ever comes in my way, I shall try to profit by it.

That is all I can say. I'm a little dazed, Eleanor. I think I'll go out and try to clear my brain again. You won't mind? I hear Prescott."

He met Prescott in the doorway, and walking past the few frame-houses found Jordan sitting, cigar in hand, upon a big fir-stump. When Jimmy stopped beside him he made a little sign of comprehension and sympathy.

"I guess I know what Eleanor has told you," he said. "In one way, it's not astonishing that she should feel what she does, and I can't blame her, though it's a little rough on me. This is a thing she'll never quite get over--while the other man lives prosperous, anyway--and, of course, I'm standing in with her."

"But it's not your affair."