ELITHE AND JACK PERCY.
Elithe had sat upstairs in the darkness praying that Jack Percy might
live, or if he died, that no harm might come to Paul. Hearing no sound
from below, and anxious to know how matters were, she ventured down at
last. In the confusion she had seen only the outline of Jack’s face and
this in semi-darkness. Now, as she entered the room she had a full view
of it as he lay on his back, with the light of a lamp falling upon it.
Clarice was sitting with her head upon a table,—Paul at the foot of the
lounge, and a doctor on either side, nodding in their chairs and paying
no attention either to Miss Hansford or Elithe, until startled by a loud
cry from the latter.
“It’s Mr. Pennington! How came he here?” and, throwing out her arms,
Elithe dropped by the side of the couch as if she had been shot. “Mr.
Pennington,” she repeated, “you must not die; you shall not.”
In an instant Clarice and Paul and the doctors were on their feet,
stupefied with what they heard and the sight of Elithe kneeling by Jack
Percy and calling him Mr. Pennington. Very slowly Jack’s eyes opened and
turned towards her with a look of ineffable tenderness which each one in
the room noticed. Then they closed again, as if the effort to keep them
open were too great, and, moving his hand very slowly towards her, he
whispered, faintly: “Elithe.”
What did it mean, and where had she known this man whom she called Mr.
Pennington, and who, at the sound of her voice, roused as nothing had
been able to rouse him, Miss Hansford thought, as she watched the
strange proceeding.
“Speak to him again. You may save him,” the doctor said.
With this incentive Elithe spoke again: “Mr. Pennington, do you hear me?
I am Elithe. Do you know me? Try to live. You must not die.”
Unconsciously she was pleading for Paul more than for the life ebbing so
fast. Nothing could save that, and the pallor of death was already
spreading itself over the face, which moved a little in response to her
appeal. The eyes opened again,—more filmy and dim than when they looked
at her before. Around the lips there was a pitiful kind of smile as he
said: “Elithe, the harvest is being reaped, and such a harvest! You
tried to make it a better one. They all tried. Tell them I am sorry, and
wish I had never left the Gulch. Tell Clarice——”
Here he stopped, while Clarice sprang forward on the other side of him
and said: “Jack! Jack! I am here,—Clarice. Speak to me. What is it you
want Elithe to tell me?”
Jack did not reply. His dulled ear had caught only the word Elithe,
which he repeated again.
“Ask him who did it?” one of the doctors said, and in an instant Elithe
stiffened, while her aunt stood more erect and listened.
“Can I ask him and run the risk of his answer?” Elithe thought, deciding
that she would not. Lifting her tear-stained face, she shook her head
and said: “I cannot.”
“Then I will,” and, bending close to Jack, the physician shrieked in his
ear: “Who did it? Who shot you?”
Both Paul and Clarice thought this a useless question to ask one who
shot himself, but Jack did not reply even if he understood.
“Thank God!” came from under Miss Hansford’s breath, as Jack made no
sign that he had heard, or sign of any sort for several minutes, when
there was the faintest possible whisper:
“Elithe, I tried my best and failed.”
They were his last words, and Elithe felt the hand she held growing
colder and clammier as the minutes went by, and there was no sound in
the room but the ticking of the clock on the mantel and the labored
breathing, which grew more and more labored and slow until, just as the
day was breaking over the sea and the white sails were coming into
sight, it ceased entirely and Jack was dead.
Elithe knew it first and rose to her feet, tottering a little from the
cramped position she had been in so long. Paul put out a hand to steady
her, but Miss Hansford was before him. She could bear the suspense no
longer, and, taking Elithe by the arm, she said: “Where did you know
Jack Percy?”
“In Samona, as Mr. Pennington; never as Mr. Percy,” was Elithe’s reply,
as she left the room, and, going to her chamber, threw herself upon her
bed, half crazed with all she had passed through.
Clarice fainted, and when she recovered Miss Hansford said to Paul:
“Take Clarice home. She is better with her mother.”
She wanted to get him away, although she knew he was going from one
danger into another. There would be as many questions asked at the Percy
cottage as at her own, where people were beginning to gather, coming
from every direction, some up the avenue, some across the bridge and the
causeway and some across the open space where she had hunted in the
darkness for the revolver.
“Somebody is sure to find it,” she thought, and watched from the kitchen
door all who came that way. “There! God help us!” she moaned, as she saw
a man stoop down and pick up something, which he examined carefully. She
knew what it was, and went to meet him, holding out her hand. “Give it
to me,” she said, and he gave it to her,—a little silver-mounted
revolver with “P. R.” engraved upon it.
She knew he had seen the lettering and said to him: “It is a mistake,
which will be explained. Don’t say you found it.”
The man bowed and did not reply. Covering the telltale witness with her
apron, Miss Hansford took it to the house, and, hiding it in a deep
chest in the back chamber where she kept her bed linen, went down to
meet the people who were talking of the inquest, which it was thought
best to have at once before the body was removed. It was a hurried,
informal affair, held by an incompetent coroner, new to the office and
conducting his first case. No one of those who saw Paul go by just
before the shooting and heard what Elithe said had spoken. The doctor
for whom Elithe had been sent had been hurriedly called away immediately
after Jack died. Suicide had been suggested by Paul and Clarice and
accepted as highly probable, and a verdict to that effect was rendered
with very little discussion. Miss Hansford felt that the matter was
finished and Paul was safe. The next moment her spirits fell. They were
inquiring for the revolver which did the deed. It must be near where
Jack was found, and search must be made for it. Here was a trouble she
had not foreseen, and she felt as if her heart would burst as she tried
to appear natural and put aside her dread of impending evil. All her
lodgers and some of the neighbors had heard Elithe. Sooner or later they
were sure to talk, and then a hundred verdicts of suicide would not
avail to save Paul from suspicion and possible arrest. If he would only
speak out now and tell how it happened he would be believed. Evidently
he had no thought of speaking out. He had gone with Clarice without
doing so, and she could only pray that no inquiries might be made when
the missing weapon was not found.
Now that the inquest was over and the people began to go she had time to
think of Elithe. She was lying on her bed benumbed with the great
horror, not the least of which was the knowledge that Mr. Pennington was
Jack Percy. That he had cared for her more than for a mere friend, she
could not doubt, and it seemed to her that “Elithe,” spoken as with his
dying breath he had spoken it, would sound in her ears forever. It never
occurred to her what construction with regard to herself might be put
upon that death scene. She could think of nothing except that Mr.
Pennington was Jack Percy, and Jack Percy was dead,—shot by Paul
Ralston.
“Oh, I can’t bear it!” she cried. “I cannot bear it. Why did I ever come
here?” Then she remembered the ring, and started to her feet. What
should she do with it now? “I’ll give it back to him,” she said, and,
putting the box in her pocket, she stole downstairs into the kitchen,
keeping herself from sight, as much as possible and watching her
opportunity to enter the sitting room when no one was there.
An undertaker had been sent for, and while waiting for him Miss Hansford
had closed the door to keep intruders out. This was Elithe’s chance.
Stealthily, as if she were guilty of a misdemeanor, she crossed the
threshold, shut the door and was alone with the dead. She had no time
more than to glance at the white face, handsomer in death than in life,
because of the peaceful expression which had settled upon it at the
last. His hands were folded one over the other upon his chest, where
Miss Hansford put them. “He wore it on his right,” Elithe thought,
remembering just how the ring looked when she first saw it in Stokes’s
cabin. Taking the hand in hers, she pushed the ring on to the third
finger, knowing it would stay there, as she had some trouble to get it
over the joint. Very carefully she placed the left hand over the right,
shivering from head to foot with the awful chill it gave her and
recoiling once as she fancied the stiffened fingers clasped hers as the
living ones had done just before Jack died. As she left the room she saw
the undertaker on the walk, and with him a number of people, who were
just coming to the scene of the tragedy. “I was none too soon,” she
thought, as she escaped up the stairs and ran into her chamber.
Miss Hansford met the undertaker, and, conducting him to where the body
lay, stayed by while the preparations were made for taking it to the
Percy cottage. When all were gone except a few who lingered round the
house and near the spot where Jack was found and where his blood was
still staining the low shrubs and sand, she went to Elithe’s room and
said, just as she had never spoken to her before: “Now tell me all you
know about Jack Percy.”
At the sound of her stern voice, Elithe, who was lying down, sat up,
and, shedding her hair back from her throbbing temples, said,
pleadingly: “Must I tell you now, when I am so tired and my head aches
so hard?”
“Yes, now; and tell it as it is,—no prevarication!”
Elithe took her hands from her head and looked at her aunt in surprise.
“Why should I prevaricate? There is nothing to conceal,” she said. “I
told you something about him once, and I will tell you again,” and,
beginning at the beginning, she repeated every particular of her
acquaintance with Jack from the day she first saw him to the present
time.
As she talked Miss Hansford felt her knees giving out and she sat down
upon the bed, with a feeling that she was living in the midst of a
romance as well as of a tragedy.
“And are you sure you did not care for him,—love him, I mean?” she
asked, and Elithe answered, quickly: “No; oh, no, I did not! I could
not; he was my friend,—father’s friend; that is all.”
“And you put the ring on his finger?” was Miss Hansford’s next question.
“Yes, I put it on his finger,” Elithe repeated, with a shudder. “Please
cover me up; I am so cold.”
She was huddled in a little heap, and Miss Hansford pulled the blanket
over her and said: “You are shaking as if you had an ager fit. Ginger
tea will help that.”
She brought the tea and made Elithe drink it, and put another blanket
over her, wondering that she should be so cold when the air was so hot
and sultry, and never suspecting that it was the chill of Jack’s dead
hand which Elithe felt in every nerve, and which would take more than
ginger tea to remove. She stayed in bed all day, and Miss Hansford was
glad to have her out of the way of the people who came at intervals
during the morning to ask questions and wonder why Jack killed himself.
Miss Hansford’s mouth was shut on the subject, and when they asked if
they could see Elithe she answered: “No, you can’t. She’s sick,—worn out
with excitement and being up all night just as I am.”
She wanted so much to be alone, and was glad that her lodgers had the
good sense to spend the day at the hotel, where the affair was freely
discussed. Paul was with Clarice at the cottage, from the doors of which
yards of crape were streaming, while in the darkened room, where, on the
following Thursday night, the bridal party was to have stood, Jack lay
in his coffin, his thick hair concealing the wound from which the bullet
had been extracted.