Part 11 (1/2)

”Come! Hear that?”

”Watch the back door,” someone was crying. ”He's probably dead drunk, but he's a dangerous man and we can't take chances.”

It was the constable's voice.

Gleazen was already running through the long hall, and we followed him at our best speed.

As we left the room, the landlord fell and carried down with a crash a table on which a tray of gla.s.ses was standing. I would have stayed to help him, but I knew that other help was near, and to tell the truth I was beginning to fear the consequences of even so slight a part as mine had been in the ghastly happenings of the night. So I followed the others, and we noiselessly slipped away through the orchard, just as the men sent to guard the back door came hurrying round the house and took their stations.

With the distant fire flaming against the sky, with the smell of smoke stinging in our nostrils, and with the clamor of the aroused town sounding on every side, we hurried, un.o.bserved, through dark fields and orchards, to my uncle's house, where Arnold and Sim and Abe were impatiently waiting.

They started up from beside the wagon as we drew near, and crowded round us with eager questions. But there was no time for mere talking. Already we could hear voices approaching, although as yet they were not dangerously near.

”Come, boys,” my uncle cried, ”into the wagon, every one. Come, Neil, come--for heaven's sake--”

”Be still, Seth, I am sober.”

”Sober!” Uncle Seth put a world of disgust into the word.

”Yes, sober, curse you.”

”Very well, but do climb in--”

”Climb in? I'll climb in when it suits my convenience.”

Jostling and scrambling, we were all in the wagon at last. Uncle Seth held reins and whip; Neil Gleazen, who was squeezed in between him and me on the seat, snored loudly; and the others, finding such seats as they could on boxes or the bed of the wagon, endured their discomfort in silence.

The whip cracked, the horses started forward, the wheels crunched in gravel and came out on the hard road. Turning our backs on the village of Topham, we left behind us the benches on the green, the fine new platform, the banquet that was already half prepared, and all our antic.i.p.ations of the great farewell.

We went up the long hill, from the summit of which we could see the lights of the town s.h.i.+ning in the dark valley, the great flare of fire at the burning barn, and the country stretching for miles in every direction, and thence we drove rapidly away.

Thus, for the second time, twenty years after the first, Cornelius Gleazen left his native town as a fugitive from justice. But this time the fortunes of five men were bound up with his, and we whom he was leading on his mad quest knew now only too well what we could expect of our drunken leader.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRIG ADVENTURE

We drove for a long time in silence, with the jolting of the chaise and the terrible scenes behind us to occupy our minds; and I a.s.sure you it was a grim experience. In all the years that have intervened I have never been able to escape from the memory of the burning barn, with the dark figures running this way and that; the shrill cries of Cornelius Gleazen, staring drunk, and his talk of the man he had killed; the landlord at the tavern, with the blood spurting from his shoulder where the hook had pulled through the flesh.

In a night the whole aspect of the world had changed. From a care-free, selfish, heedless youth, put to work despite his wish to linger over books, I had become of a sudden a companion of criminals, haunted by terrible memories, and through no fault of my own. After all, I thought, by whose fault was it? Cornelius Gleazen's, to be sure. But by whose fault was I forced to accompany Cornelius Gleazen in his flight? Certainly I was guiltless of any unlawful act--for that matter, we all were, except Gleazen. I had not a jot of sympathy for him, yet so completely had he interwoven our affairs with his that, although the man was a drunken beast, we dared not refuse to share his flight. By whose fault? I again asked myself.

For a while I would not accept the answer that came to me. It seemed disloyal to a well-meaning man who at one time and another had given a thousand evidences of his real affection for me, which underlay the veneer of sharpness and irascibility that he presented to the world at large. It seemed to me that I could hear him saying again, ”You're all I've got, Joey; you're all that's left to the old man and I'm going to do well by you--”; that I could hear again the clink of gold thrown down before me on the table; that I could feel his hand again on my shoulder, his voice again trembling with despair when he cried, ”I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! But now--heaven keep us all!” Yet, as we jounced away over that rough road and on into the night, and as I thought of things that one and another had said, I felt more and more confident that at bottom Seth Upham was to blame for our predicament. To be sure, he had _meant_ well, even in this present undertaking; and though he was said to drive sharp bargains, he lived, I well knew, an honest life. Yet I was convinced that at some time in the past he must have been guilty of some sin or other that gave Neil Gleazen his hold over him. It fairly staggered me to think of the power for good or evil that lies in every act in a man's life. To be sure, had Seth Upham been a really strong man, he would have lived down his mistake long since, whatever it might have been, and would have defied Gleazen to do his worst. But the crime, if such there was, was his, none the less; and that it was the seed whence had sprung our great misfortunes, I was convinced.

Looking back at Arnold Lamont, I caught his eye by the light of the rising moon and found great comfort in his steady glance. As if to rea.s.sure me further, he laid his hand on my arm and slightly pressed it.

On and on and on we drove, past towns and villages, over bridges and under arching trees, beside arms of the sea and inland ponds, until, as dawn was breaking, we came down the road into Boston, with the waters of the Charles River and of the Back Bay on our left and Beacon Hill before us.

Here and there in the town early risers were astir, and the smoke climbed straight up from their chimneys; but for the most part the people were still asleep, and the shops that we pa.s.sed were still shuttered, except one that an apprentice at that very moment was opening for the day. Down to the wharves we drove, whence we could see craft of every description, both in dock and lying at anchor; and there we fell into a lively discussion.