Paul Ralston

Nearly all that day Elithe stayed in bed, sometimes burning with fever, but oftener shivering with cold, which the ginger tea had not counteracted. She had experienced two great shocks in quick succession and was bodily and mentally unstrung. She saw Paul Ralston fire the fatal shot which had killed Jack Percy. No questioning or cross-questioning from her aunt could leave a doubt in her mind. She saw it and was filled with dread of what her having seen it might mean for her. Second to this, and nearly as great in its effect upon her, was the knowledge that Mr. Pennington was Jack Percy, in whom she knew there was much that was good, notwithstanding the ill that was spoken of him in Oak City.

In the dining room below Miss Hansford sat like a sentinel keeping people from going up to see Elithe and answering the questions put to her in the most non-committal manner. They kept coming all the morning and a part of the afternoon, bringing the news from time to time of what was being done at the Percy cottage. Paul was there with Clarice, who had refused to see any one and sat in a dark room crying all the time. There were to be short services at the house early the next day, and then the body was to be taken to Washington and buried at Beechwood, the old Percy homestead, which still belonged to the family. Mrs. Percy was nearly as bad as Clarice, and had a doctor in attendance.

To all this and more Miss Hansford listened, evincing no particular interest until the last bulletin was brought her to the effect that the bullet had been extracted and that they were still hunting for the revolver which the ball fitted, but could not find it.

“Some think now that it wasn’t suicide, if the jury did so decide. There’s queer things being talked which I don’t believe,” one caller said, with a meaning look at Miss Hansford, who knew that the train was fired which would certainly overtake Paul and crush him.

She was a woman of strong nerve, but this news unmanned her and she sat motionless in her chair, making no comment, and when her informer was gone, locking the door to keep out others who might come spying upon her misery. Would the man who found the revolver keep silent? She did not think so. He would tell. The weapon would be traced to its hiding place, and with its initials, “P. R.,” bear deadly evidence against her boy. She called him that many times, wondering what she ought to do and why he did not speak. And so the day wore on, and, late in the afternoon, Elithe, who had slept for two hours or more, insisted upon dressing herself and coming down to tea with her aunt. It was taken in the kitchen, with the shades down and the door bolted. Several times there had been knocks, which were not answered, but as they were finishing their supper there came one so loud and oft repeated that the door was opened tremblingly by Miss Hansford, who half expected to be met by an officer come to demand the revolver and perhaps to arrest her for complicity in the matter. It was a boy from the Percy cottage with a note from Clarice to Elithe.

“Miss E. Hansford,” it read: “There are some things relating to my poor brother which you alone can tell me. Will you come to me this evening? We leave to-morrow for Washington, and I must see you before I go. Hastily,—

“Oh, I can’t go! What does she want?” Elithe said as she read the note aloud.

“Wants to know all about Jack. Natural enough. I thought ’twould come. You’ll have to stand it. I’ll go with you,” Miss Hansford replied, and, going to the boy waiting upon the doorstep, she bade him tell Miss Percy that Miss Hansford would call upon her between eight and nine. “It’ll be dark then. It’s raining now, thank the Lord,” she said to Elithe, whose chill increased at the thought of meeting Clarice and talking with her of Jack.

“What shall I say to her?” she asked her aunt.

“Tell her how you found him at the mines, and what kindness did for him. It’s my opinion he would not be lying as he is now if they had treated him decent.”

She was beginning to espouse Jack’s cause, and encouraged Elithe and kept her up until the clock struck eight, when, under the cover of darkness and rain and umbrellas, they started for the Percy Cottage.

Clarice had spent a wretched day, stunned by the calamity which had overtaken her,—grieving for her brother’s tragic death,—wishing she had treated him better while living, and regretting the grand spectacle in which she was to have been the central figure and which must now be given up. The invitations and orders must be countermanded,—her bridal trousseau exchanged for crape, which she detested, and the wedding march turned into a funeral dirge. It was hard, and Paul tried in vain to console her, telling her there was still a bright future in store for them. Clarice would not be consoled, and with her head on Paul’s shoulder and his arm around her, sat blaming Providence for having dealt so harshly with her, when Elithe was announced.

“Show her in,” she said, without removing herself from Paul’s encircling arm.

She was to have been his wife the next Thursday, and was quite willing that Elithe, of whom she had been jealous, should be witness to her ownership of him.

“Shall both come in?” the maid inquired.

“Both? Whom do you mean?” Clarice asked, and the maid replied: “The elder Miss Hansford is here, and wishes to see you with her niece.”

“Yes, let her come,” Paul said, moving a little as if he would rather Clarice should sit upright in the presence of visitors.

She took the hint and sat up, but kept her place close to him, with her hand on his, and plunged at once into her motive for sending for Elithe.

“You knew my brother,” she began. “I want you to tell me all about your acquaintance with him, but first about this ring. It was not on his finger when he died. It was there when they brought him home. You must have put it there. Why? Didn’t you care for my brother?”

She was asking questions such as Elithe had not expected, and for a moment she shook like a leaf, and turned so white that Paul feared she was going to faint. Clarice had the ring upon her own finger, turning it round and round as she talked, and the indelicacy and bad taste of appropriating it to herself so soon struck Elithe forcibly and disarmed her of all fear of Clarice.

“She’s a fool,” Miss Hansford thought, but she said to her niece: “Tell her all you know, if she wants to hear it.”

“Yes, tell me,” Clarice rejoined.

Thus abjured, Elithe began: “I put the ring on his finger. It was never on mine. I did not know he had given it to me until it was too late to return it. I could never wear it. I only cared for your brother as a friend,—never could have cared for him otherwise.”

Clarice looked puzzled, and said: “That’s queer. Tell me how you came by it and where you first saw him. I know something from his letter to you which I found in his valise. Here it is.”

She held Jack’s letter towards Elithe, who took it from her, and with a voice and manner which would not have shamed her aunt, said, slowly: “You read a letter directed to me?”

Her face flushed and her eyes blazed with indignation and surprise.

“I beg your pardon,” Clarice replied, more abashed than she had ever thought it possible for herself to be before a girl like Elithe. “It was not directed. It was in his bag with his present for me, bought in Chicago, and which I did not deserve. It touched me very closely. Poor Jack.”

There were tears in her eyes as she continued: “There was no address on the letter, and, seeing my name so often I read it. My brother loved you. Did you return it?”

Before Elithe could reply her aunt interposed: “You have no right to ask such personal questions. It is none of your business whether she loved your brother or not. But I will answer for her. She did not, and never could. That he cared for her is evident. Poor fellow. I never liked him much. I think better of him now in the light of what my niece has told me and what she will tell you.”

She turned to Elithe, who began at the miners’ camp and the night spent with Jack, dwelling at some length upon what he said in his delirium of Mignon. At this point Clarice put both hands to her face and the tears trickled through her fingers, while Elithe went on with her narrative of Jack’s life in Samona, his efforts to reform and the pledge which he drew up himself and carried in his pocket.

“He spoke of that in his letter, and said he tore it up after what happened in Chicago,” Clarice said, interrupting her.

Elithe bowed and went on to tell of his intimacy in her father’s family, his interest in her, and his giving her the ring when he left the car in Helena. She did not speak of his note; that was not necessary. She only added: “I never saw him again; never knew he was not Mr. Pennington till he was dying. You think he was bad. Everybody thinks so. In some respects he was, but he was trying to do better; he was doing better. He was susceptible to good influences and kind treatment, and tried to come up to one’s standard of him. Treat him like a dog, and he was a dog; treat him like a man, and he was a man. He was respected in Samona and among the miners. There will be mourning in Deep Gulch when they hear he is dead, and in Samona, too. Why he fell the last time and came here in the condition he did I do not know. Some influence he could not withstand was brought to bear upon him.”

Elithe had not read Jack’s letter, but Clarice had. She knew what had caused Jack’s downfall, and Elithe’s words were like sharp lashes to her conscience. Paul, too, knew, but kept silent and admired Elithe for her defense of Jack. Clarice had read to him a part of Jack’s letter, and the message to him had removed all his animosity and sense of injury. Jack was the friend of his boyhood, and he would have given much to bring him to life again. Clarice was also greatly softened, partly because of her money refunded and the present bought for her. This appealed to her baser nature, while something told her she had in one sense been her brother’s keeper and failed. Elithe’s words struck home, and she sobbed aloud as she listened.

“Thank you for telling me what you have,” she said. “It makes me think better of my brother. I wish I had done differently.” Then, removing the ring from her finger and offering it to Elithe, she continued: “Take it, please. It is yours. He gave it to you. He would like you to have it.”

Paul drew a breath of suspense, and Miss Hansford straightened her shoulders as they waited for Elithe’s reply.

“No,” she said, “I never wore it; never can wear it. I only cared for him as a friend. If it is mine I give it to you.”

Miss Hansford’s shoulders dropped and Paul breathed more freely.

“Thanks. I’ll accept it for Jack’s sake,” Clarice said.

She was very gracious now, and as Elithe arose to go said to her: “Come and see Jack. He looks so peaceful and happy, as if he were asleep.”

“I can’t,” Elithe gasped, but Clarice insisted and led the way into the room where Jack lay in his coffin ready for the early boat.

On his handsome face there was a look as if death had kindly washed it clean from every mark of dissipation and left upon it the beauty and innocence of childhood. Elithe was crying,—so was Clarice, and Miss Hansford’s eyes were wet with tears. Paul alone was calm.

“Poor Jack. We were always friends until the last, when he was not responsible for what he did,” he said, laying his hand on the forehead of the dead.

“D-don’t,” Miss Hansford stammered, thinking of the old tradition as to what would happen if the slayer touched the corpse of the slain.

Paul had touched Jack, and nothing had happened. The white forehead showed just as white in the lamp light, and around the mouth there was the same smile which had settled there when the dying lips whispered, “Elithe.” The old tradition had not worked. Paul was not afraid of Jack, and he astonished Miss Hansford still more by saying: “Perhaps you know they extracted the bullet.”

She nodded, and he continued: “They have not found the revolver. Strange, too, as it must have fallen near him. I remember the one he used to have. It was very small, and expensive. Some one may have picked it up and is keeping it for its value, or it was trampled into the sand by the many feet which have visited the place from curiosity.”

Miss Hansford was horrified at his coolness and duplicity, while Elithe looked at him with eyes full of pain and surprise. “I saw him; I saw him,” she thought, while her aunt was thinking of the revolver at the bottom of her chest, with “P. R.” upon it. On the piazza, as they were saying good-night, Clarice threw her arms around Elithe’s neck and kissed her, as she said: “I shall never forget what you were to my brother, or your kindness to him. Will you come to the funeral to-morrow morning and sit with us?”

“No,—no. Don’t ask me to do that. There is no reason why I should,” Elithe cried, putting up her hands in deprecation.

Clarice was making altogether too much of her relations with Jack, and once out upon the avenue she almost ran to get away from the house and its atmosphere.

“Oh, auntie,” she said, “it is all so dreadful, and Mr. Ralston does not mean to explain. What shall we do if he is suspected?”

“Hold our tongues and trust to the Lord,” was Miss Hansford’s answer, and that night, long after Paul was asleep, she was kneeling in her room and sobbing. “My boy, my boy, will the good Father, who knows how it happened, make him speak out and clear himself?”

Elithe, too, was awake and sitting by her window, which faced the woods. On her return from the Percy Cottage she had read Jack’s letter, in which he told her who he was,—what he had been,—why he had taken another name,—and of his love for her,—when it began,—how it had grown,—and how for her sake he had tried to be a man. He told her of his mortification at the slight Clarice put upon him,—of his resolution to attend her wedding, more to see her again than to be a guest where he was not wanted. Of his downfall in Chicago, where he tore up his pledge,—his experience on the boat and what he heard of himself,—his taking the brandy which made him worse,—his determination to leave without seeing any one. This was written in the Beach House, where he spent the night. The encounter with Paul in the morning he described in the P. S., telling how it happened, saying he was sorry,—saying he was a brute, and had sunk so low that now he had no hope, no star to guide him,—nothing to remember of a journey from which he had hoped so much but her face as he saw it in church that morning and the sound of her voice, which he could never forget.

Over this letter Elithe’s tears fell so fast that the words were blurred and blotted almost past the possibility of deciphering them. Miss Hansford did not ask what was in the letter, but Elithe read her parts of it calculated to exculpate Jack from intentional wrong doing, and the two sore-hearted women wept together until the clock struck twelve. Then they separated, each going to her own room, where, in an agony of grief and fear, Miss Hansford prayed for her boy, while Elithe sat by the window from which she had talked with Paul, and asked herself again and again: “Could I be mistaken?”

The answer was always the same: “I saw him; I saw him.”