Part 36 (1/2)
The priest glanced sharply at him, noting with a swift, informed scrutiny how he sprawled against the wall, and what vacuity his eyes and loosened lips expressed.
”Then you have a talent for the inopportune amounting to positive genius,” said Father Forbes, with a stormy smile.
”Tell me this, Father Forbes,” the other demanded, with impulsive suddenness, ”is it true that you don't want me in your house again? Is that the truth or not?”
”The truth is always relative, Mr. Ware,” replied the priest, turning away, and closing the door of the parlor behind him with a decisive sound.
Left alone, Theron started to make his way downstairs. He found his legs wavering under him and making zigzag movements of their own in a bewildering fas.h.i.+on. He referred this at first, in an outburst of fresh despair, to the effects of his great grief. Then, as he held tight to the banister and governed his descent step by step, it occurred to him that it must be the wine he had had for breakfast. Upon examination, he was not so unhappy, after all.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
At the second peal of the door-bell, Brother Soulsby sat up in bed.
It was still pitch-dark, and the memory of the first ringing fluttered musically in his awakening consciousness as a part of some dream he had been having.
”Who the deuce can that be?” he mused aloud, in querulous resentment at the interruption.
”Put your head out of the window, and ask,” suggested his wife, drowsily.
The bell-pull sc.r.a.ped violently in its socket, and a third outburst of shrill reverberations clamored through the silent house.
”Whatever you do, I'd do it before he yanked the whole thing to pieces,”
added the wife, with more decision.
Brother Soulsby was wide awake now. He sprang to the floor, and, groping about in the obscurity, began drawing on some of his clothes. He rapped on the window during the process, to show that the house was astir, and a minute afterward made his way out of the room and down the stairs, the boards creaking under his stockinged feet as he went.
Nearly a quarter of an hour pa.s.sed before he returned. Sister Soulsby, lying in sleepy quiescence, heard vague sounds of voices at the front door, and did not feel interested enough to lift her head and listen.
A noise of footsteps on the sidewalk followed, first receding from the door, then turning toward it, this second time marking the presence of more than one person. There seemed in this the implication of a guest, and she shook off the dozing impulses which enveloped her faculties, and waited to hear more. There came up, after further muttering of male voices, the undeniable c.h.i.n.k of coins striking against one another. Then more footsteps, the resonant slam of a carriage door out in the street, the grinding of wheels turning on the frosty road, and the racket of a vehicle and horses going off at a smart pace into the night. Somebody had come, then. She yawned at the thought, but remained well awake, tracing idly in her mind, as various slight sounds rose from the lower floor, the different things Soulsby was probably doing. Their spare room was down there, directly underneath, but curiously enough no one seemed to enter it. The faint murmur of conversation which from time to time reached her came from the parlor instead. At last she heard her husband's soft tread coming up the staircase, and still there had been no hint of employing the guest-chamber. What could he be about? she wondered.
Brother Soulsby came in, bearing a small lamp in his hand, the reddish light of which, flaring upward, revealed an unlooked-for display of amus.e.m.e.nt on his thin, beardless face. He advanced to the bedside, shading the glare from her blinking eyes with his palm, and grinned.
”A thousand guesses, old lady,” he said, with a dry chuckle, ”and you wouldn't have a ghost of a chance. You might guess till Hades froze over seven feet thick, and still you wouldn't hit it.”
She sat up in turn. ”Good gracious, man,” she began, ”you don't mean--”
Here the cheerful gleam in his small eyes rea.s.sured her, and she sighed relief, then smiled confusedly. ”I half thought, just for the minute,”
she explained, ”it might be some bounder who'd come East to try and blackmail me. But no, who is it--and what on earth have you done with him?”
Brother Soulsby cackled in merriment. ”It's Brother Ware of Octavius, out on a little bat, all by himself. He says he's been on the loose only two days; but it looks more like a fortnight.”
”OUR Brother Ware?” she regarded him with open-eyed surprise.
”Well, yes, I suppose he's OUR Brother Ware--some,” returned Soulsby, genially. ”He seems to think so, anyway.”
”But tell me about it!” she urged eagerly. ”What's the matter with him?
How does he explain it?”
”Well, he explains it pretty badly, if you ask me,” said Soulsby, with a droll, joking eye and a mock-serious voice. He seated himself on the side of the bed, facing her, and still considerately s.h.i.+elding her from the light of the lamp he held. ”But don't think I suggested any explanations. I've been a mother myself. He's merely filled himself up to the neck with rum, in the simple, ordinary, good old-fas.h.i.+oned way.
That's all. What is there to explain about that?”