THE DEATH OF TOM WELCOME
Both Harry Boland and Grogan fell silent after having reached their
agreement to return to Chicago immediately. To a degree both men
regretted the decision.
Grogan had accomplished the purpose for which the elder Boland had
despatched him to Millville--that of disentangling Harry from his
romance--but what he had seen of Patience Welcome had led him to dislike
his task.
Harry had no sooner promised to drive back to Chicago in the night than
he was assailed with yearning to see the girl again. Each occupied
himself with his own thoughts. Dusk descended on the village. They had
reached the corner of the street that led to their hotel when they were
arrested by a maudlin voice.
"I'm all right, I tell you, Harve."
Two men came out from beneath the shadow of the trees and could be seen
dimly under the sickly gleam of a street light. One leaned heavily
against the other.
"Sure, you're all right," replied the drunken man's companion in a voice
both recognized as that of Harvey Spencer. "I'm just going to see you as
far as your house." He spoke in the voice people use in humoring drunken
men and children.
"I hain't drunk, Harve," insisted Harvey's companion.
"Of course, you ain't," replied Harvey, "come on."
"I'm just overcome with the heat. I--"
The reeling man broke off suddenly. He saw Harry and Grogan.
"Who the devil are you?" he demanded truculently.
"My name is Harry Boland," replied the young man.
"Oh, the son of John Boland, eh?" jeered the drunken man. "Son of John
Boland, 'lectric light king. John Boland's son, eh?"
"Yes," replied Harry sharply, "what of it?"
"Nothing I can prove," retorted Welcome, grimly, "only--give my regards
to your father. Just tell him Tom Welcome sends his regards. He'll know."
He began to whimper softly. "Poor old Tom Welcome, who might have been
riding in his carriage this day." He stopped whining abruptly and snarled
at the young man: "If there was any justice on God's earth--"
Welcome lurched forward. Harry grasped his wrist and peered into his
bloated face.
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.
Grogan interrupted a good deal agitated. "He doesn't mean anything," he
said, "he's just drunk. Come, boy, let's get out of here."
"I want to know--" persisted Harry, but he dropped Welcome's arm.
"Don't be a fool," commanded Grogan, "can't you see the man's drunk? Come
on."
"But I tell you I want to know--"
"Oh, you don't know anything!"
Harry was about to retort angrily when Grogan seized his wrist with an
iron grip and swung him around the corner. Half dragging the young man
along with him he got him to the hotel. There Grogan succeeded in
convincing him of the folly of engaging in a street argument with a
dipsomaniac he did not know.
Meanwhile Harvey and Welcome continued their slow and stumbling journey
to the Welcome cottage. Welcome, after his interview with Harry Boland
was in a savage mood. A debauch of two days had left him virtually a mad
man. It required all of Harvey's diplomacy to get him into his house
quietly.
The lights were burning in the living room when they arrived. Harvey
convoyed his swaying companion to the back of the house, opened the door
quietly and pushed him in. Mrs. Welcome and the two girls were in the
living room, but the wind was sighing without and they heard nothing. A
storm had come up with the setting of the sun and occasional flashes of
lightning lighted the darkened room where Welcome found himself while the
thunder deadened the sound of his stumbling feet. He made his way through
the kitchen to a bedroom and sank down exhausted on a bed.
But Tom Welcome could not sleep. Every nerve in his body jangled. The
interview with young Boland, for reasons which will be apparent to the
reader later, had aroused in him a smouldering anger. He tossed
restlessly on his couch.
While he lay there he heard some one knocking at the front door. All of
his perceptions had grown abnormally keen. He heard a boy's voice and
recognized it as that of a neighbor's son.
"It's me, Jimmie," said the boy. "Pa sent me over with Elsie's veil. She
dropped it while she was out in the auto this afternoon."
He heard the door close and then the accusing voice of his wife
demanding:
"Elsie, who have you been out with, automobiling?"
"I was out this afternoon with Martin Druce," replied the girl defiantly.
"Then," went on the mother, conscious that a crisis of some sort between
her and her daughter was approaching, "you were talking to him this
evening and not to Harvey Spencer? You told me a falsehood?"
"What if I did?" Elsie's tone was low and stubborn.
Mrs. Welcome began to sob.
"Mother, mother," pleaded Patience, "Elsie didn't mean--"
"I did mean it," flared back Elsie. "I did mean it! Why shouldn't I go
autoing when I have the chance? Isn't life in Millville hard enough
without--" She paused overcome by a wave of passion. "I'm tired of
Millville," she exclaimed, "I'm tired of the factory. I'm tired of living
here as we do in this miserable, tumble-down place we call home. I'm
tired of working like a slave, while a drunken father--"
The words had scarcely left the girl's lips when Tom Welcome, red-eyed,
dishevelled, swaying, appeared in the doorway behind her. His face was
lit with demoniac passion. He rushed at the girl and she screamed in
terror. With a vicious lunge he struck her down and then, seizing her by
the hair, dragged her into the bedroom where, amid her cries, he rained
blow after blow upon her.
Harvey Spencer, just passing through the gate, heard the first scream. He
rushed back into the house as Welcome, finished for the moment with
Elsie, had returned to the cottage living room and was approaching his
wife menacingly. He seized the raging man by the collar and hurled him
into a corner.
"Stay there," he said, "or I'll brain you."
Welcome stood for a moment glaring at the intruder. He attempted to
speak, but foam flecked his lips and seemed to choke his voice. His eyes
acquired a fixed and unearthly stare. He raised his fist as though to
strike and then plunged headlong to the floor.
Patience was the first to reach her father's side. A vivid flash of
lightning followed by a terrific detonation of thunder rocked the
cottage.
"He's dying," screamed Patience.
Mrs. Welcome, forgetting past injuries, sprang to her husband's side.
"Tom," she wailed, "speak to me. Tom--Tom, I'm your wife--"
The dying man tried to sit up. His mania had passed. He patted his wife's
shoulder feebly and smiled. A great weakness had come into his face.
"Forgive me," he said, "I didn't know--I didn't know what I was doing. It
was the drink. I am going. Call Elsie!"
Patience sprang toward the bedroom, but it was empty. The open doors
through the kitchen showed how she had fled. As she searched frantically
for her sister, the little clock on the mantel slowly struck the hour of
eight.
"She's gone," cried Patience. A premonition of the tragedy of Elsie's
flight flashed upon her mind. "Oh," she cried, "my little lost sister! My
little lost sister!"
"Gone," cried Harvey. "Gone where?" He opened the door. The rain was
falling pitilessly. "Not out into this storm. Someone must find her." He
rushed out into the darkness.
"Gone!" echoed Tom Welcome. His voice was hollow as a knell. The
drink-racked body stiffened in a spasm and then dropped limply into his
weeping wife's arms. "Gone!" he gasped.
Tom Welcome was dead.
Another flash of lightning and a roar of thunder. The two women strove to
revive the corpse. At last the dreadful realization came to them that Tom
Welcome would never speak again. The wind smote the cottage and the light
in the single lamp in the room fluttered as though in mortal terror. The
skies were shattered with a final climactic crash of thunder. The mother
and daughter, alone in that chamber of death, clung to each other
silently feeling themselves isolated from all mankind, with even the
elements storming against them.
While they waited, blanched and terror-stricken, for the last
reverberations of the thunder, the whistle of the Fast Express, bound
from Millville to the great city, rose wildly on the air, like the scream
of an exultant demon, and died away in a series of weird and mocking
echoes into the night.