Part 29 (1/2)

After a time he arose from the bed, still looking as if he had seen a ghost, and, going to a desk, opened it, and took therefrom a capacious drinking flask; raising it to his lips he drained half its contents, and the stimulant acting upon overstrained nerves, seemed to restore rather than to intoxicate.

”At last,” he muttered to himself, ”I am at the bottom of the mystery, and--I am powerless.” Then, like his sister on the previous day, he muttered, ”There is but one way--only one--and _it must be done_!” Then throwing himself once more upon the bed, he moaned:

”Oh, that I, the accursed of the family, heretofore, should live to be--but pshaw! it is for Sybil I care. But--for to-day let them all keep out of my sight--I could not see them and hold my peace.”

He pocketed the half empty flask, and made his way from the house to be seen by none at Mapleton for the next twenty-four hours.

After that morning interview with his father-in-law, John Burrill bl.u.s.ters less for a few days, and makes himself less disagreeable to the ladies. He accepts the situation, or seems to; he rides out on one or two sunny afternoons with Mrs. Lamotte and Sybil, and on one of these occasions they meet Constance Wardour, driving with her aunt. The heiress of Wardour smiles gayly and kisses the tips of her fingers to the ladies, but there is no chance for him--he might be the footman for all Constance seems to see or know to the contrary. This happens in a thoroughfare where they are more than likely to have been observed, and John Burrill chafes inwardly, and begins to ponder how he can, in the face of all the Lamottes, gain a recognition from Constance Wardour. In his sober moments this becomes a haunting thought; in his tipsy ones it grows to be a mania.

One day, during this lull in the family siege, Sybil and her mother visit the city, doing a mountain of shopping, and returning the next day. Sybil keeps on as she began, on the night when she listened to her father and husband, while they held council in her mother's room. She is full of energy and nervous excitement always, and the old stupor of dullness, and apathetic killing of time, never once returns. But Mrs.

Lamotte likes this last state not much better than the first; neither does Constance; but they say nothing, for the reason that it would be useless, as they know too well. Sybil goes out oftener, sits with the family more, and seems like one waiting anxiously for a long expected event.

John Burrill is a little disturbed at Sybil's visit to the city. He knows that she will go and come as she pleases there, unquestioned, and, if she choose, unattended by her mother. And, without knowing why, he feels inclined to rebel; but he is still under the spell of that morning interview, and so holds his peace.

Evan, too, under the same uncanny spell, goes about more morose than usual, more silent than usual, more sarcastic than usual. More and more, too, he attaches himself to John Burrill; they drink together in the dining room, and then repair together to ”Old Forty Rods,” or some other favorite haunt. Together they seek for pleasure in the haunts of the vilest, Evan continually playing upon the vanity and credulity in Burrill's nature, to push him forward as the leader in all their debauches, the master spirit, the _bon vivant, par excellence_.

And Burrill goes on and on, down and down. He begins to confide all his maudlin woes to Evan, and that young man is ever ready with sympathy and advice that is not calculated to make Jasper Lamotte's position, as bear trainer, a sinecure.

But Evan contrives to leave Sybil tolerably free from this nuisance for a time; but only for a time. John Burrill has other advisers, other exhorters, other spurs that urge him on to his own downfall.

Burrill begins to throw himself in the way of Constance Wardour; to meet her carriage here and there; to stand near by as she goes and comes on her shopping excursions; to drive past Wardour Place alone and often.

At first, this only amuses Miss Wardour; then it annoys her; then, when she finds her walks in the grounds so often overlooked by the slowly pa.s.sing Burrill, she begins to mark his maneuvers with a growing vexation.

But Burrill perseveres, and the more nearly he approaches the fourth stage of his intoxication, the more open becomes his stare, the more patent his growing admiration.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JOHN BURRILL, PLEBEIAN.

It is night, late and lowering; especially gloomy in that quarter of W---- where loom the great ugly rows of tenements that are inhabited by the factory toilers; for the gloom and smoke of the great engines brood over the roofs night and day, and the dust and cinders could only be made noticeable by their absence.

In a small cottage, at the end of a row of larger houses, a woman is busy clearing away the fragments of a none too bountiful supper. A small woman, with a sour visage, and not one ounce of flesh on her person, that is not absolutely needed to screen from mortal gaze a bone. A woman with a long, sharp nose, two bright, ferret-like brown eyes, and a rasping voice, that seems to have worn itself thin asking hard questions of Providence, from sunrise till dark.

The table has been spread for two, but the second party at the banquet, a gamin son aged seven, has swallowed his own and all he could get of his mother's share, and betakened himself to the streets, night though it be.

The woman moves about, now and then muttering to herself as she works.

The room is shabbily furnished, and not over neat, for its mistress spends her days in the great mill hard by, and housekeeping has become a secondary matter. Only the needs of life find their demands honored in this part of W----. Too often needs get choked and die of the smoke and the cinders.

It is late, for the woman has been doing extra work; it is stormy, too, bl.u.s.tering and spattering rain. Yet she pauses occasionally and listens to a pa.s.sing footfall, as though she expected a visitor.

At last, when the final touch has made the room as tidy as it ever is, or as she thinks it need be, there comes a shuffling of feet outside, and a tremendous thump on the rickety door. After which, as if he was sufficiently heralded, in comes a man, a big man, m.u.f.fled to the eyes in a huge coat, which he slowly draws down and draws off, disclosing to the half curious, half contemptuous gaze of the woman the auburn locks and highly tinted countenance of Mr. John Burrill.

”So,” she says, in her shrillest voice, ”It's _you_, is it? It seems one is never to be rid of you at any price.”

”Yes, it's me--all of me,” the man replies, as if confirming a doubtful statement. ”Why, now; you act as if you didn't expect me.”

”And no more I did,” says the woman sullenly and most untruthfully.