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 new-comer.
“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. Clagg, 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.