“A LITTLE RELAXATION”
Somers watched them out of sight. Then he turned and opened the jail
door with the key Satterfield had given him. Over his shoulder he asked:
“That the constable, McGregor? Call him back, will you?”
When Rufe had strolled pompously back, puffed with pride at his success
in scattering the crowd, Somers surveyed him with distaste. Over one
lank shoulder, he remarked acidly: “You’re a fine cop! Stick around,
now. You’re quite safe; the danger’s all over, no thanks to you! Stay
there till we come out; then I’ll give you the jail key.”
“And who are you, feller, that talks so biggety?” demanded Rufe.
Somers ignored him and stalked into the dark lockup. “Come on, you two,”
he said. “We’ll give old Parker a look.”
I hesitated; but, seeing that Rufe had decided to make the best of a bad
business and wait to get his key back, I followed presently.
Fumbling for a switch, Somers turned on the lights. My poor nephew sat
in the steel cage at the right, huddled on the edge of his bunk, chin in
hands. His face was very white; he blinked in the sudden illumination,
then rose and faced us with quiet defiance.
“You’ve come to lynch me, I suppose,” he said calmly. “All right! Take
me out, and let’s get it over with.”
“My poor boy!” I cried, moved almost to tears. If I had suffered, how
dreadful this waiting must have been for him! “It’s all over, Lewis!
They’ve gone; it’s all right--all right, boy!”
He shaded his eyes. Then, as they became used to the light: “Why, it’s
you, unk! And Peter--and old Somers! Glad to see you, Floyd, old top,
how are you?”
He reached an unsteady hand through the bars and then, quite suddenly,
withdrew it and fell to sobbing. “I--I’m a fool,” he declared chokingly.
“C-can’t help it!”
I snatched the key, unlocked the inner cage, and went in to him. “There,
my boy! It’s all right now--all right now!” I patted his shoulder, but
he turned from me and buried his face in the blankets.
“All over,” repeated Somers sagely. “That’s what ails him--reaction.
Come along now; leave him alone. He’d rather we went; wouldn’t you,
Parker, old top?” The black, rumpled head nodded violently. “He prefers
to do his breaking down in private,” explained Somers softly.
“Naturally--so do I. And between friends,” he continued aloud, “I could
pull a couple of weeps myself on the very slightest provocation. It’s
been rather a drag, you know!”
I noticed suddenly that his dark face was unwontedly sallow and
colorless. His lean cheeks seemed to have hollowed further; his
curiously light eyes had receded deep into their sockets.
“Buck up, Parker!” The brusque, indifferent voice wavered, almost broke.
“Be back in the morning. ’By!” He herded us out before him, leaving
Lewis to a solitude which, I fancy, was not unwelcome. Yet it cut me to
leave the boy there so weary and broken.
Outside Somers locked the door, then beckoned Wakefield, who hung
uncertainly in the nearer shadows. “Here! Take your key and get out! And
mind”--his fierce hawk’s face was thrust out, his pale eyes glowed
coldly--“take better care of it hereafter. If anything should happen to
your prisoner, Heaven help you, that’s all! For I’ll take the matter up
with you myself.” And the huge, burly constable quailed before the
bitter menace of tone and gesture.
Somers gathered his bundle of papers and envelopes, rolled it loosely up
and tucked it under one long arm. “Come along,” he urged--almost
sullenly. “Let’s get home. I’m tired.”
We started obediently. Peter, glowing, took the taller man’s arm, though
he had to reach up to do it.
“Oh, man, man!” he declared. “You’re a wonder!”
“Let go!” he answered peevishly. “What’s that?”
The man who had withstood so nonchalantly the menace of an angry mob
flinched and gibed like a skittish colt as the shadows of a dark hallway
moved, rustling.
A little, trembling voice answered. “It’s only me, Dorothy. Are you--is
Lewis safe?”
She came forward timidly, and now I saw that Rosina was with her,
bulkily maternal, one fat arm about the girl’s slender waist.
“I--I just couldn’t stay at home,” she explained, talking very fast, as
against an expected rebuke. “So I persuaded Rosina to come along, and
started for the j-jail. I thought maybe if I talked to them, or
something--I--I----And anyway I wanted to be there my own self, if
anything dreadful h-happened. I thought maybe I could s-save him.”
“Yah!” sneered Doctor Somers. “Schoolgirl romantics!” His voice was
unpleasant; Peter let go his arm abruptly.
“I s-suppose so,” replied Dorothy meekly. “Anyway we were there, right
around the corner. I came near running out, one time. But then they
began to laugh that way, and I was sure, pretty near, that it must be
all right. We were just starting home again.”
“You ought to have had more sense,” declared Somers severely. “Roaming
around alone at this time of night! Didn’t I tell you Parker was
perfectly safe? Well, come along. McGregor, where did you park that
flivver? Let’s get home; there’s been foolishness enough for one night.”
He stalked off, and we followed. Dorothy took my arm and squeezed it. “I
don’t care,” she whispered rebelliously. “I think he’s just _mean_!
Anybody’d think Lewis belonged to some other body, instead of to me.
Why, I had to come, Uncle George; I l-love him! What happened, anyway?”
Feminine curiosity triumphed over her pique. “What made them laugh so?”
“It was Somers,” answered Peter. “He’s a wonder, that man! He stood ’em
off with a basket of eggplants--made ’em think they were hand
grenades--bombs, you know. He bluffed ’em to a standstill. Oh, he’s a
prince, Somers is!”
“Yah!” said the “prince,” overhearing this last. “Don’t be a fool!”
Peter helped Dorothy and Rosina into the flivver’s rear seat, then
clambered after. “Oh, yes!” he whispered to me. “But, my word, his
manners are atrocious.”
In silence we drove back to Fort House. It was a clear, starlit night,
and at my urging Peter left the flivver outside. To take it over to
Lewis’ house, lock it in the garage and walk back seemed, to my
weariness, an impossible labor.
We entered the big living room, and Peter snapped on the lights.
“Ho-hum!” he said, as he yawned. “I’m for bed.” His pistol was in one
hand, the shotgun in the other.
“Careful of that gun,” said Somers. “You’ll shoot somebody.” He advanced
to the table and laid down his big bundle of note paper. “Oh, no, Peter,
my son,” he went on amiably. His ill temper seemed to have dissipated
itself entirely; he gave us that sudden, disarming smile. “None of you
are for bed yet, except, maybe, Uncle George here.” He eyed my face,
which was haggard enough, I suppose, with compassion. The familiar name
came from his lips with such unaffected kindliness that I warmed to him
again. “You’re done out, Uncle George; better get some rest. We young
folks can manage.”
I shook my head. Between curiosity and stubborn pride, I was bound to
remain. “I’m not superannuated yet,” I told him tartly. “What are you up
to now?”
Somers laughed, and it was a friendly sound. “Oh, just a little
relaxation after our late excitement,” he replied, unwrapping his
bundle. “Peter, get ink and some pens. Dorothy”--and again the first
names came so naturally, with such unassuming intimacy, that we could
not but be softened--“you get your list--the addresses of all the people
to whom you sent invitations. You saved it, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes,” said Dorothy, wondering. “What of it?”
Somers smiled at her rebellious glance. It was as if he had elected
himself a member of the family and therefore ignored such little flashes
of pettishness, as, I began to see, he expected us to ignore his
brusqueness, his irritability.
“We’ve got to address all these notes,” he explained, “so they can be
mailed in the morning. It’s pretty late, of course, but I hope most of
your guests will get them in time. Don’t you see”--as the girl still
looked at him blankly--“your wedding’s got to be postponed?”
“Oh-h! I f-forgot.”
A sudden light struck me. I stared at our amazing visitor with my mouth
wide open. “Is that what you wanted the paper for?”
“Of course! I’ve done a hundred and four. Better write fifty more, to be
safe.” He unfolded a note and handed it to Dorothy.
“‘Miss Mary McGregor regrets,’” she read, “‘that the marriage of her
niece, Dorothy May, must be postponed indefinitely because of a serious
accident.’”
“The wording may not be exactly right,” Somers apologized. “I didn’t
have a chance to consult you about that. I thought it was as well to
make the explanation rather vague.”
“Why, you wonderful man!” Dorothy beamed on him, holding his long, bony
hand in both of hers. “It’s just perfect! How did you ever think of it?
We--we’ve all been so upset.” Her lips quivered, and her soft eyes
filled with tears. It was a dreadful situation for the poor child; no
wonder she had forgotten this detail.
But my mind was filled with a wondering admiration for this lank, bony
alienist. He had seemed brusque, casual, culpably indifferent to our
troubles; yet it was he whose ready wit had saved my nephew. And it was
he who, in the hurry and excitement of planning a defense against a
lynching party, had yet found time and forethought to buy this note
paper and, while waiting on the jail steps for an angry mob, had coolly
phrased this unexceptionable announcement and had written it over and
over, more than a hundred times!
I opened an envelope at random and glanced at the note which Dorothy
still held; then I picked up the last note, still unfolded and only half
written. All were done in the same flowing, copperplate script; they
seemed facsimiles, each of the other. Not a letter was misformed, not a
comma out of place; “postponed,” the last word of the unfinished note,
was as carefully written as any, and the pen had not trembled or made a
scrawl, as he laid his writing by to face the mob. Truly this Somers was
a remarkable man, and I resolved that hereafter no mannerisms of his
should irritate me.
Dorothy ran upstairs, to return presently with a long list of names and
addresses. Somers divided the pile of envelopes, gave us each pen and
ink, and set us to work around the library table.
“Working together we ought to be able to finish in two hours,” he
declared. “When does the morning train leave? Eight-ten? I’ll take them
down and get them stamped in time for that.”
Silence fell, broken only by the scratching of four pens.
It might have been an hour later--the hall clock had just struck
two--when Miss Christie appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were heavy,
her round face was flushed with sleep, and I noted for the first time
how thick and glossy was her fine, fair hair. She was muffled to the
chin in a shapeless, woolly bath robe; she yawned, shielding her mouth
with a slender, well-modeled hand.
“Miss McGregor can’t sleep,” she explained in her pleasant, throaty
drawl. “She sent me out to ask if you-all aren’t ever going to bed?” Her
eyes widened a little; they were beautiful eyes; and a demure smile
tugged at her mouth corners. “She says nobody thinks about her any more;
and she wants to see you, Miss Dorothy. She says she just knows
something underhand is going on in this house, and everybody’s trying to
keep it from her.” And then, with a flash of curiosity unusual in her,
normally the most incurious of women, she asked: “What _has_ happened
anyway? And why are you-all sitting up so late?”
“Doctor Parker was nearly lynched to-night,” said Peter. “But it’s all
right now; and Somers can prove he couldn’t have killed Gaskell
anyhow--that the body was cold before he came out.”
“Oh-h-h!” Miss Christie’s cheeks went white, and her violet eyes opened.
Again a sudden shock had brought startling beauty into her dull face.
After a breathless moment she disappeared.
“Go see to your aunt, Dorothy,” said Somers, his eyes still fixed on the
waving portières. “We’ll finish these up.”
When she had gone, he sat for a moment, staring absently at the doorway.
“Hypothyroidism,” he murmured vaguely. “You know, Uncle George, that
girl’s got the makings of a raving beauty in her!”
“Who, Dorothy? She’s a beauty now,” I replied.
“Huh? Oh, she’s well enough, but I meant the other one, Miss Christie.
Wait till I’ve treated her a while, and you’ll see what I mean.”
He sighed, passed a lank, bony hand across his eyes, and picked up his
pen once more: “Mr. and Mrs. R. Lawton McGregor, 42 Bank Street,
Toronto, Canada.”