Left to Themselves/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
IN THE ARBOR.
BACK of the Kossuth House was a good-sized garden, reaching through to a partially built-up street in the rear. Kitchen vegetables monopolized one half of it. In the other beds of phlox and petunias and hollyhocks gayly inclosed a broad, open grass-plot. A path divided it, and at the lower end of this, not far from the back street, was a roomy grape-arbor. It was a remote, quiet nook.
It was especially quiet about two hours after breakfast that sunny morning. Gerald sat alone in it, waiting for Touchtone to return from an errand in the town. It was decided. They would leave Knoxport for New York and Ossokosee at four o'clock, unless news came to them that explained their predicament and altered their plans. This seemed unlikely. Nothing had yet been heard. Touchtone was confounded and desperate.
A conversation with Mr. Banger added a new uneasiness. He perceived that his host of the Kossuth was really inclined to doubt the genuineness of their story and the identity of himself and Gerald. His manner, at least, was, all at once, cold and unpleasant. Besides that, the amount of money they possessed was not so great, after all, certainly not inexhaustible. Every day's moderate expenses lessened it. Their return journey was before them, besides.
"I can't stand it, Philip; I can't any longer! Papa is dead, or something dreadful has happened to him and Mr. Marcy. Let us get out of this place." After breakfast Gerald spoke thus.
"But we may just be running off from the thing we are waiting for. Perhaps this very afternoon, if we should go—"
"O, Philip, please, let us go! I can't stay shut up here, where we shall never find out any thing! It's telling on you as much as on me, for all you try to explain things away! Not another night here! Do say yes, Philip."
"Well—yes," replied Touchtone, gravely. "I think it will be best. Whatever this delay comes out of, it may last indefinitely. We'll be ready for the four o'clock train."
Mr. Banger received this decision in silence.
"Joe will bring up your bill before dinner," he said, dryly.
"It will be paid when Joe does bring it," returned Touchtone, with equal dryness. Then with a few words to Gerald, who preferred staying alone in the inn to allowing any possible telegram to wait in the absence of both, Philip passed out into the street.
Gerald went up-stairs. Not relishing solitude or companionship, he soon came down. Then it was that Mr. Banger made a sudden, tactless attempt at friendliness—and an unexpected catechism. Gerald quietly resisted. He did not fancy Mr. Banger. The boy strayed out along the garden-path and sat a while, in lonely despondency, in the thick-shaded arbor.
The book he had brought fell from his hand. He leaned his head on his arm, the sunlight between the leaves falling upon his bright hair as he looked over the sunny old garden. The caw of a crow, flying high above some neighboring field, and the click of builders' trowels, mingled with sounds from the lower end of the town. A footstep came lightly up to the arbor-path. He turned around; much astonished. He beheld Mr. Hilliard-Belmont-Jennison (known to him still by only the first borrowed name), scarcely thought of by the little boy, save as a vanished mystery, since the ride on the train from Ossokosee.
"Ah!" the new-comer exclaimed, in his former smooth voice, "I'm delighted to find you here, Gerald. Mr. Banger told me you were. How are you?" He extended his hand, smiling. "You remember me, don't you?" he asked, standing between the boy and the arbor's entrance.
Gerald stared at him in bewildered surprise. He would have been more terrified had not so much to cause fear long been spared him.
"I—I do. Yes, sir," he replied, with wide-open eyes and a pale face. "I—I hope you are well."
"Quite well, I thank you," laughed the other. "And I hope you and Mr. Touchtone have forgiven that silly trick, which I never, never meant to let go so far, that I drifted into in the train that afternoon. You remember?"
"Yes. We didn't know what to make of it. Mr. Hilliard—Mr. Hilliard said—"
"O, I saw Mr. Hilliard next evening and made it all right with him for taking his name in vain, in my little joke. I expected to clear it all up before we got to town that night. Our being separated prevented me. I would have written you and Mr. Touchtone again—"
"Again? We didn't get any letter from you!"
"What! None? Then my long apology went astray. Too bad! But never mind now. I have better things to tell you, my boy. What do you think I came out here for?"
Whatever it was, his manner had an underlying nervousness. He looked to the right and left, toward the house and the street, especially the rear of the garden. A gate was cut in the tall fence. A horse whinnied outside of it.
"Have you any news for us? A telegram? You have heard from papa?—from Mr. Marcy?"
The lad had forgot vague perplexities and vague distrusts in hope.
"Yes, I have. Mr. Banger's just told me your trouble. Your father and Mr. Marcy are all right, my boy. I've been sent to tell you so, and to take you straight to them. Hurrah!"
The little boy uttered a cry of joy.
"O, please do! And please tell me every thing, right away! What has been the trouble? We've been so dreadfully frightened. Philip will be back in a little while. I'm so glad I stayed!"
He sat down on one of the rustic benches in intense relief and excitement.
"Well, it's too long a story for me to go through now," laughed Jennison. But the laugh was a very short one. Again he looked sharply out into the empty garden.
"There was a grand mess about every thing—telegrams, letters, and so on. You'll hear all that from your father himself, and from Marcy. The best of my news is that they are both at a farm-house, not three miles from here! I have a horse and buggy out there this minute"—he pointed to the rear gate of the garden, over which, sure enough, rose the black top of a vehicle—"to take you over to them. We needn't lose a minute."
The strain released brought its shock. The boy's heart beat violently, with an inexpressible sense of returning comfort and joy.
"How good, how very good you are, sir!" he answered, innocently, casting aside all the mysterious "joke" of the railroad train. "It will make Philip feel like a new creature. But why didn't papa come with you? or Mr. Marcy?"
"Your father's been very ill since the report of your being drowned. He's not well over it yet, and Mr. Marcy is with him. Don't be frightened; the shock's all past, but he's not strong. So don't lose a moment, please. You can come back in a few hours for your things."
"But you don't want me to go—without Philip. You don't mean that we must start this minute, do you?" The boy looked up in timid surprise, though the brightness of his face, since the news, would have been a pleasure for any one to notice except a man who seemed as absorbed and hurried as was the bringer of these tidings. "I can't."
"O, nonsense! You mustn't stop for any thing now. Time is precious, and it's cruel in you to waste a second before you satisfy your father that you are really alive. He doubts it yet. You don't know how ill he has been. We'll just slip right out of this gate here to the buggy."
"But Philip—"
"I've made it all right for Philip with Mr. Banger. Philip's to follow us the moment he gets back. He may be some time."
"No, no. Let us wait. We must stay till he comes. He won't be long, I'm sure. I'd rather keep papa—any body—waiting just a little longer than do that. O, how sudden, how strange it all is!"
"Yes, wonderfully strange. But, I tell you, my dear boy, I was specially asked not to lose minutes in bringing you when I found you. Mr. Marcy urged me. They thought Philip might be elsewhere. He's to come right after us."
Just then voices were heard in the back room of the hotel.
"Philip! Philip!" called out Gerald, joyfully and clearly, fancying that, even at that distance, he recognized him.
"Stop that! Keep still! Don't call that way! It'll only make a fuss! He's not there!" Jennison exclaimed, angrily.
"Philip!" called Gerald, determinedly, "Philip!"
Jennison sprang forward. He made an effort to seize the lad by the arm or the shoulder. At the same time came a strangely suspicious whirl of the heavy Mackintosh cloak he had carried on one arm. It caught on the table.
Deception and danger! The idea of a shameful lie, and the meaning of the gate and buggy flashed before the boy. He cried out, "Let me go!" to the man, who he now divined was a false and malicious foe, preparing absolutely to abduct him and carry him, heaven knew where, by force! "I wont go," he cried, sharply.
Jennison attempted to catch his arm again.
"Hold on there!" came a call.
Philip Touchtone dashed into the arbor. He faced the enemy. He pushed Gerald aside and stood between them. Once more, as a while ago, at that encounter with the tramp down in Wooden's Ravine, he was on hand in time to help Gerald fight a physical battle against untoward odds.
"How dare you! Don't you touch him again! Where did you come from? What are you doing?" he asked Jennison, pale with anger and astonishment.
"I'm doing what I tried before—to take that boy to his father!" answered the« other, angrily. "Again you interfere!" with an oath.
"Again you track him for mischief—track him to steal him! Stand over there, Gerald! Touch him, if you dare!"
Philip was of good size and weight for his age, as has been said, and all the old and new resolution and protection revealed itself in his manly, defiant attitude and upraised walking-stick.
"I will touch him! You spoil my plans again, do you? You shall rue it, Mr. Philip Touchtone."
He made a step forward; but fine villainy means often physical cowardice, and Philip looked no trifling adversary.
"He says he comes from papa—and Mr. Marcy," said Gerald. "He says—"
"Never mind what he says! It isn't true! He is trying to hurt us both. Aren't you ashamed of yourself to lie to that little fellow, Mr. Winthrop Jennison?" he demanded.
Of his own muscle he was not altogether sure, if an actual wrestle over Gerald came. He wished by loud talking to attract any kind of attention over in the hotel.
"You—spoil my plans—again!" repeated Jennison, regarding him indecisively, but with a look of such malignant anger, especially at the sound of that name, that it has remained in Philip's memory all his life, in his mental photograph gallery of looks.
"Yes, Mr.—Jennison. And I hope to spoil them for good and all now. I wondered whether I'd seen the last of you. I mean to, soon! What have you got to say about this new trick? Not what you've been trying to make him believe, Mr. Jennison."
Jennison was silent for an instant. He was, truly, on the last trial to carry forward that daring scheme which had suggested itself so suddenly, been abandoned, then taken up again, as circumstances seemed to throw in his way the chance to complete it. It was characteristic of the man and of his hap-hazard recklessness, as well as of his sense of the desperateness of his position, that he cast aside one attempt for another, and changed one position for another, each of sheer audacity, during the rest of the scene. His judgment, if bold and masterful, was ill-balanced. But he must have cowed and driven many an opponent to whatever wall seemed hardest to escape over, or he would not have changed falsehoods and purposes so swiftly as he now did. He knew his perils! Standing before the door of the summer-house, he eyed Philip. With that quick turn from force to a kind of blustering wheedle which he had resorted to on the altercation on the Old Province, he said, disregarding Gerald's presence altogether
"See here, now, Touchtone, keep cool! We're not overheard yet, and there's no reason why we should be. I wont hurt you—"
"Hurt me!"
"No. Do you remember the last thing I said to you that night we talked? What I promised you? It's not too late now for you to ask me to keep my promise, and—once more—to save us both lots of trouble."
"You mean for me to second you in your plans, whatever they are? And if I do I'm to be rewarded? Eh?"
The other nodded and gnawed his lip.
"If I don't I'm to be made to suffer, I believe? Even if you can't gain what you're after?"
"You'll do that, depend on it."
"I told you then that I knew, I knew, that you could not bluff me nor cheat other people long enough to hurt Gerald or me! I tell you so again. I've no more to say. If you want to talk further here, I don't. Come up to the hotel and do it out loud. I believe I dared you to try that once before, too."
Jennison smiled savagely.
"I will, you young—hound!" he exclaimed, losing his self-control. "You seem to think you can have things all your own way."
I do not know what sincerity lay in this assent. Just then Mr. Banger came strolling around the walk. The last loud words reached his ears. He looked toward the arbor and turned toward the disputants.
"Do you mean to say that you will play a part before him," cried Philip, pointing to Mr. Banger, "as you threatened to do before Captain Widgins?"
Jennison's only answer was to look at his watch. Then he called out, "Mr. Banger! Mr. Banger! Will you step here?"
Mr. Banger regarded the scene in astonished disapproval. The anger in Philip's face, Jennison scowling darkly, Gerald, very white, tearful, trembling visibly with fear. But Gerald was the first of the three to accost the newcomer.
"Mr. Banger, that man is trying—he wants to—"
Without any regard to Gerald's voice Jennison began in a hard but reasonably controlled manner:
"Mr. Banger, I think it is as I told you. I have been telling that young man there that you and I have suspected his imposture, and the help he has taught this little scamp here to give him. I've begged him to make a clean breast of it. He has confessed, under my promise to intercede for them both with you and others. His name is Samuel Peters, and he has run away from a Boston orphan asylum with this younger lad. They are both very sorry that they have tried to play the parts of those unfortunate boys mentioned in the papers, but—"
Touchtone was aghast at this astonishing statement. Yet if his foe chose to resort to new falsehoods he would ignore them for the truth.
"That is a lie!" he burst forth. "Do you know who that man is, Mr. Banger? He is Winthrop Jennison, who owns the island opposite Chantico, and—"
"You young fool! Do you think I don't know that?" asked Banger, "I think so, and I thought so, Mr. Jennison! Scape-graces that you both are—"
"And he is Mr. 'Hilliard,' or 'Mr. John Belmont,' too; and he has tried to steal Gerald Saxton from his father, and from me—and—"
"You are crazy," interrupted Mr. Banger, coolly, "Mr. Winthrop, I guess we'd better—"
"I guess you'd better not be so sure you know him, nor be so ready to think I am a cheat," Philip continued, impetuously. "That man has been a forger and a blackmailer. He leads a regular double life that you don't know any thing about. Give me time, Mr. Banger! Please wait! I promise you—I give you my solemn word of honor—I can prove every thing I say. If you refuse to listen you will surely be sorry."
Mr. Banger looked angrily from Touchtone to Jennison.
"The boy has lost his senses because his trick's burst up," he said, in an undertone. Then to Philip: "Be silent, sir! Follow me, both of you, to the house this minute! The more you say the more you expose yourself. We will see what is best to do about you in a few moments."
"If you don't believe me, send to Chantico Island and bring Mr. and Mrs. Probasco to stand up for us. Or get Mr. Flagg, the lawyer, to tell you what he knows about him. I don't deny he is Mr. Jennison. But he is a bad man—he is half-a-dozen bad men, besides. He keeps his mask on for you as for the most of the world. Look at him. Can't you see he knows I am speaking the truth."
"A constable will quiet your tongue, my boy, soon enough," exclaimed Jennison in haughty wrath. But Philip's acquaintance with some facts and names last mentioned must have astonished and confused him somewhat. "You are a young blackguard of the first water, and shall be put in a place you ought to have been familiar with long ago. Will you hold your tongue and follow Mr. Banger?"
"A constable is a thing I've no fear of! Let me be put where any one likes. The truth will get me out of it soon enough. Mr. Banger, that man tried to steal Gerald the day we left the Ossokosee. He tried to get me to give him up to him on the Old Province. He is a kidnaper."
"Peters," began Mr. Banger, "I warn you—"
"I am not Samuel Peters. I am Philip Touchtone. Ask all Ossokosee County."
His eyes flashed, and he threw back the false name with infinite disdain.
"You choose a fine alias—that of an unconvicted felon, a burglar's cat's-paw. Banger, I knew a man of that name once."
"Ah!" cried Touchtone, "a man—that you knew! The man that you yourself told me you knew! I believe you did! and that you could clear the stain on his memory to-day by something you have always known, too, about that miserable charge. Mr. Banger, my father was Reginald Touchtone, who was accused of—"
Mr. Banger interrupted him sharply.
"I want no more of this farrago, sir, about yourself or any one else. If you are, indeed, a criminal's son, your asylum's authorities did well to change your name. Once for all, will you come back to the house with me, and perhaps to leave it, as—as—your conduct and—and candor shall allow me to decide, or shall I have you dragged off my premises by force?"
Touchtone checked himself.
"Gerald, we will go with them to the house," he said, in a firm tone, looking down at the younger boy with profound sorrow in his eyes at realizing all at once what an experience was this for Gerald to be obliged to endure. "You and I are not afraid of this man nor of any one, are we? It'll all be set right soon. Try not to cry."
He took Gerald's cold hand tightly in his own.
"We will go with you," said he, turning to Mr. Banger. "It's only a question of time to make you learn the truth. All right, Gerald; you'll be with me, you know, whatever happens."
"You are a cool young adventurer!" exclaimed Banger. "You'll make your mark in the world before you die, at this rate. Come, Mr. Jennison, I shall want your help"—(this last in an undertone.)
"Will you really need it?" inquired Jennison.
He again had been looking at the white gate. The horse was fidgeting. "The fact is, that—I—well, after all, I'd rather not help to make a stir in town, if you don't wish it."
"Eh? What's that, sir?" asked Mr. Banger, turning on the threshold of the summer-house. "I not wish to make a stir? I do! Pray don't hesitate. I need you, certainly! These lads' confessions—"
"Of course, of course! I'll join you in a moment, then. I left my horse yonder. I'll drive him around the corner to the front." He addressed himself nervously, menacingly, to Philip: "Are you going with the landlord? Don't take all day about it. You are at his mercy."
Now, with this impudent demand an idea must have struck him, or else it had been suggesting itself within a half minute (Philip never has decided this point).
"Take Peters with you," he said, in a quick, low voice to the landlord; "he may bolt. I'll bring the little fellow around in my buggy."
But Gerald overheard.
"No, no, no!" he cried in fear, defiance, and resistance. "I will not go with him! He shall not touch me! He—he will run away with me! I will not leave Philip! Philip, Philip! don't let them take us apart!"
Jennison burst into a loud, coarse laugh. Even Mr. Banger was struck with its peculiarity, the curious hint in it of another man beneath this one, masquerading as an aid of justice.
"Young fool! how much trouble you've given me!" Jennison exclaimed, in open fury, stamping his foot.
Truer words he never spoke. They contained all the history of a rash wickedness and of its defeat; for they were almost his last on the topic. He stepped down into the path, saying to Banger, "Don't wait. I'll be with you immediately."
But the white gate had opened. Two strangers came down the walk, hurrying, and straight toward them. Jennison glanced about him once more, but with a wildness suddenly flashing out in his eyes and a low exclamation as if he forgot himself and feared something. Ah, that hasty, searching glance! The men came directly up to him. One of them, a thick-set personage, nodded hastily to the others. He struck his hand on Jennison's shoulder.
"Mr. Winthrop Jennison? I arrest you, sir," he said, sharply.
"Arrest me?" demanded Jennison, as white as his collar. "Arrest me?"
Mr. Banger stood with his mouth open, most unmannerly,
"Yes," retorted the red-haired man; "here's the writ—'Winthrop Jennison, otherwise called John A. Belmont, otherwise called Murray Nicoll, otherwise called Gray Hurd. Forgery in Boston. You know, I guess. The others in it have all been looked after. No trouble, please. Billy!"
What did Mr. Jennison-Belmont-Nicoll-Hurd do? He held out his wrists mechanically. They were suitably embellished. Then he turned to Mr. Banger, Gerald, and Touchtone. His look, as much as his odd words (which were the beginning of that day's memorable disconcertment of the luckless proprietor of the Kossuth House), showed that he knew thoroughly that the "double life" and the relics of such local respect as was left in this place, near the house of his ancestors, were forever shattered.
"I bid you good-day, Mr. Banger," he said, smiling with all his fine teeth. "I shall leave Mr. Touchtone to tell his story again. It is, likely, a perfectly true one. At least, I withdraw mine as being—substantially incorrect. Please remember that, Mr. Touchtone. You have beaten in this fight. I shall not trouble you again. Good-morning."
He turned, with his easiest manner, to the officers in plain clothes, muttering something.
If an evil spirit had suddenly risen before Mr. Banger—or, for that matter, before the two lads still facing him, Gerald holding Philip's arm in a desperate grip—Mr. Banger could not have been more frightened and mute. He gasped. Then he ejaculated, with difficulty, "Mr. Jennison! You don't—" But as the Jennison party moved away Gerald leaned forward and uttered a cry.
"Philip! They're coming yonder! Look at them! Papa! Papa! Mr. Marcy! Both of them!"
And then, as those two gentlemen, in flesh and blood indeed, came running from the hotel up the path toward them, Marcy hurrahing and waving his hat, Saxton calling out, "Gerald, Gerald! my son!" and when Philip found himself seized in a mighty hug by Mr. Marcy, with a general turmoil and uproar and hand-shaking and questioning beginning in a most deafening and delightful manner—then he did something that he never did afterward. He staggered to the arbor-steps, holding Mr. Marcy's big hand, and exclaiming with something like a laugh, "Well, here you are—at last! We'd nearly—given you up! We're—not left to ourselves any more!" Then the stress of responsibility was over, and he dropped on the step, unconscious.