Chapter 12

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XII

For a long while, Samuel stood motionless, hearing the swish of the rain and the crashing of the thunder as an echo of the storm in his own soul. It was as if a chasm had yawned beneath his feet, and all the castles of his dreams had come down in ruins. He stood there, stunned and horrified, staring at the wreckage of everything he had believed.

Then suddenly he crossed the drawing-room and opened one of the French windows which led to the piazza. The rain was driving underneath the shelter of the roof; but he faced it, and ran toward the door.

The girl was lying in front of it, and above the noise of the wind and rain he heard her sobbing wildly. He stood for a minute, hesitating; then he bent down and touched her.

"Lady," he said.

She started. "Who are you?" she cried.

"I'm just one of the servants, ma'am."

She caught her breath. "Did he send you?" she demanded.

"No," said he, "I came to help you."

"I don't need any help. Let me be."

"But you can't stay here in the rain," he protested. "You'll catch your death."

"I want to die!" she answered. "What have I to live for?"

Samuel stood for a moment, perplexed. Then, as he touched her wet clothing again, common sense asserted itself. "You mustn't stay here," he said. "You mustn't."

But she only went on weeping. "He's cast me off!" she exclaimed. "My God, what shall I do?"

Samuel turned and ran into the house again and got an umbrella in the hall. Then he took the girl by the arm and half lifted her. "Come," he said. "Please."

"But where shall I go?" she asked.

"I know some one in the town who'll help you," he said. "You can't stay here--you'll catch cold."

"What's there left for me?" she moaned. "What am I good for? He's thrown me over--and I can't live without him!"

Samuel got the umbrella up and held it with one hand; then with his other arm about the girl's waist, he half carried her down the piazza steps. "That she-devil was after him!" she was saying. "And it was Jack Holliday set her at it, damn his soul! I'll pay him for it!"

She poured forth a stream of wild invective.

"Please stop," pleaded Samuel. "People will hear you."

"What do I care if they do hear me? Let them put me in jail--that's all I'm fit for. I'm drunk, and I'm good for nothing--and he's tired of me!"

So she rushed on, all the way toward town. Then, as they came to the bridge, she stopped and looked about. "Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"To a friend's house," he said, having in mind the Stedmans.

"No," she replied. "I don't want to see anyone. Take me to some hotel, can't you?"

"There's one down the street here," he said. "I don't know anything about it."

"I don't care. Any place."

The rain had slackened and she stopped and gathered up her wet and straggled hair.

There was a bar underneath the hotel, and a flight of stairs led up to the office. They went up, and a man sitting behind the desk stared at them.

"I want to get a room for this lady," said Samuel. "She's been caught in the rain."

"Is she your wife?" asked the man.

"Mercy, no," said he startled.

"Do you want a room, too?"

"No, no, I'm going away."

"Oh!" said the man, and took down a key. "Register, please."

Samuel took the pen, and then turned to the girl. "I beg pardon," he said, "but I don't know your name."

"Mary Smith," she answered, and Samuel stared at her in surprise. "Mary Smith," she repeated, and he wrote it down obediently.

The man took them upstairs; and Samuel, after helping the girl to a chair, shut the door and stood waiting. And she flung herself down upon the bed and burst into a paroxysm of weeping. Samuel had never even heard the word hysterics, and it was terrifying to him to see her--he could not have believed that so frail and slender a human body could survive so frightful a storm of emotion.

"Oh, please, please stop!" he cried wildly.

"I can't live without him!" she wailed again and again. "I can't live without him! What am I going to do?"

Samuel's heart was wrung. He went to the girl, and put his hand upon her arm. "Listen to me," he said earnestly. "Let me try to help you."

"What can you do?" she demanded.

"I'll go and see him. I'll plead with him--perhaps he'll listen to me."

"All right!" she cried. "Anything! Tell him I'll kill myself! I'll kill him and Dolly both, before I'll ever let her have him! Yes, I mean it! He swore to me he'd never leave me! And I believed him--I trusted him!"

And Samuel clenched his hands with sudden resolution. "I'll see him about it," he said. "I'll see him to-night."

And leaving the other still shaking with sobs, he turned and left the room.

He stopped in the office to tell the man that he was going. But there was nobody there; and after hesitating a moment he went on.

The storm was over and the moon was out, with scud of clouds flying past. Samuel strode back to "Fairview," with his hands gripped tightly, and a blaze of resolution in his soul.

He was just in time to see the automobile at the door, and the company taking their departure. They passed him, singing hilariously; and then he found himself confronting his young master.

"Who's that?" exclaimed Bertie, startled.

"It's me, sir," said Samuel.

"Oh! Samuel! What are you doing here?"

"I've been with the young lady, sir."

"Oh! So that's what became of her!"

"I took her to a hotel, sir."

"Humph!" said Bertie. "I'm obliged to you."

The piazza lights were turned up, and by them Samuel could see the other's face, flushed with drink, and his hair and clothing in disarray. He swayed slightly as he stood there.

"Master Albert," said Samuel very gravely, "May I have a few words with you?"

"Sure," said Bertie. He looked about him for a chair and sank into it. "What is it?" he asked.

"It's the young lady, Master Albert."

"What about her?"

"She's very much distressed, sir."

"I dare say. She'll get over it, Samuel."

"Master Albert," exclaimed the boy, "you've not treated her fairly."

The other stared at him. "The devil!" he exclaimed.

"You must not desert her, sir! It would be a terrible thing to have on your conscience. You have ruined and betrayed her."

"WHAT!" cried the other, and gazed at him in amazement. "Did she give you that kind of a jolly?"

"She didn't go into particulars"--said the boy.

"My dear fellow!" laughed Bertie. "Why, I've been the making of that girl. She was an eighteen-dollar-a-week chorus girl when I took her up."

"That might be, Master Albert. But if she was an honest girl--"

"Nonsense, Samuel--forget it. She'd had three or four lovers before she ever laid eyes on me."

There was a pause, while the boy strove to get these facts into his mind. "Even so," he said, "you can't desert her and let her starve, Master Albert."

"Oh, stuff!" said the other. "What put that into your head? I'll give her all the money she needs, if that's what's troubling her. Did she say that?"

"N--no," admitted Samuel disconcerted. "But, Master Albert, she loves you."

"Yes, I know," said Bertie, "and that's where the trouble comes in. She wants to keep me in a glass case, and I've got tired of it."

He paused for a moment; and then a sudden idea flashed over him. "Samuel!" he exclaimed "Why don't you marry her?"

Samuel started in amazement. "What!" he gasped.

"It's the very thing!" cried Bertie. "I'll set you up in a little business, and you can have an easy time."

"Master Albert!" panted the boy shocked to the depths of his soul.

"She's beautiful, Samuel--you know she is. And she's a fine girl, too- -only a little wild. I believe you'd be just the man to hold her in."

Bertie paused a moment, and then, seeing that the other was unconvinced, he added with a laugh, "Wait till you've known her a bit. Maybe you'll fall in love with her."

But Samuel only shook his head. "Master Albert," he said, in a low voice, "I'm afraid you've not understood the reason I've come to you."

"How do you mean?"

"This--all this business, sir--it's shocked me more than I can tell you. I came here to serve you, sir. You don't know how I felt about it. I was ready to do anything--I was so grateful for a chance to be near you! You were rich and great, and everything about you was so beautiful--I thought you must be noble and good, to have deserved so much. And now, instead, I find you are a wicked man!"

The other sat up. "The dickens!" he exclaimed.

"And it's a terrible thing to me," went on Samuel. "I don't know just what to make of it--

"See here, Samuel!" demanded the other angrily. "Who sent you here to lecture me?"

"I don't see how it can be!" the boy exclaimed. "You are one of the fit people, as Professor Stewart explained it to me; and yet I know some who are better than you, and who have nothing at all."

And Bertie Lockman, after another stare into the boy's solemn eyes, sank back in his chair and burst into laughter. "Look here, Samuel!" he exclaimed. "You aren't playing the game!"

"How do you mean, sir?"

"If I'm one of the fit ones, what right have you got to preach at me?"

Samuel was startled. "Why sir--" he stammered.

"Just look!" went on Bertie. "I'm the master, and you're the servant. I have breeding and culture--everything--and you're just a country bumpkin. And yet you presume to set your ideas up against mine! You presume to judge me, and tell me what I ought to do!"

Samuel was taken aback by this. He could not think what to reply.

"Don't you see?" went on Bertie, following up his advantage. "If you really believe what you say, you ought to submit yourself to me. If I say a thing's right, that makes it right. If I had to come to you to have you approve it, wouldn't that make you the master and me the servant?"

"No, no--Master Albert!" protested Samuel. "I didn't mean quite that!"

"Why, I might just as well give you my money and be done with it," insisted the other.

"Then you could fix everything up to suit yourself."

"That isn't what I mean at all!" cried the boy in great distress. "I don't know how to answer you, sir--but there's a wrong in it."

"But where? How?"

"Master Albert," blurted Samuel--"it can't be right for you to get drunk!"

Bertie's face clouded.

"It can't be right, sir!" repeated Samuel.

And suddenly the other sat forward in his chair. "All right," he said- -"Maybe it isn't. But what are you going to do about it?"

There was anger in his voice, and Samuel was frightened into silence. There was a pause while they stared at each other.

"I'm on top!" exclaimed Bertie. "I'm on top, and I'm going to stay on top--don't you see? The game's in my hands; and if I please to get drunk, I get drunk. And you will take your orders and mind your own business. And what have you to say to that?"

"I presume, sir," said Samuel, his voice almost a whisper, "I can leave your service."

"Yes," said the other--"and then either you'll starve, or else you'll go to somebody else who has money, and ask him to give you a job. And then you'll take your orders from him, and keep your opinions to yourself. Don't you see?"

"Yes," said Samuel, lowering his eyes--"I see."

"All right," said Bertie; and he rose unsteadily to his feet. "Now, if you please," said he, "you'll go back to Belle, wherever you've left her, and take her a message for me."

"Yes, sir," said Samuel.

"Tell her I'm through with her, and I don't want to see her again. I'll have a couple of hundred dollars a month sent to her so long as she lets me alone. If she writes to me or bothers me in any way, she'll get nothing. And that's all."

"Yes, sir," said Samuel.

"And as for you, this was all right for a joke, but it wouldn't bear repeating. From now on, you're the gardener's boy, and you'll not forget your place again."

"Yes, sir," said Samuel once more, and stood watching while his young master went into the house.

Then he turned and went down the road, half dazed.

Those had been sledge-hammer blows, and they had landed full and hard. They had left him without a shred of all his illusions. His work, that he had been so proud of--he hated it, and everything associated with it. And he was overwhelmed with perplexity and pain--just as before when he had found himself in jail, and it had dawned upon him that the Law, an institution which he had revered, might be no such august thing at all, but an instrument of injustice and oppression.

In that mood he came to the hotel. Again there was no one in the office, so he went directly to the room and knocked. There was no answer; he knocked again, more heavily.

"I wonder if she's gone," he thought, and looked again at the number, to make sure he was at the right room. Then, timidly, he tried the door.

It opened. "Lady," he said, and then louder, "Lady."

There was no response, and he went in. Could she be asleep? he thought. No--that was not likely. He listened for her breathing. There was not a sound.

And finally he went to the bed, and put his hand upon it. Then he started back with a cry of terror. He had touched something warm and moist and sticky.

He rushed out into the hall, and as he looked at his hand he nearly fainted. It was a mass of blood!

"Help! Help!" the boy screamed; and he turned and rushed down the stairs into the office.

The proprietor came running in. "Look!" shouted Samuel. "Look what she's done!"

"Good God!" cried the man. And he rushed upstairs, the other following.

With trembling fingers the man lit the gas; and Samuel took one look, and then turned away and caught at a table, sick with horror. The girl was lying in the midst of a pool of blood; and across her throat, from ear to ear, was a great gaping slit.

"Oh! oh!" gasped Samuel, and then--"I can't stand it!" And holding out one hand from him, he hid his face with the other.

Meantime the proprietor was staring at him. "See here, young fellow," he said.

"What is it?" asked Samuel.

"When did you find out about this?"

"Why, just now. When I came in."

"You've been out?"

"Why of course. I went out just after we came."

"I didn't see you."

"No. I stopped in the office, but you weren't there."

"Humph!" said the man, "maybe you did and maybe you didn't. You can tell it to the police."

"The police!" echoed Samuel; and then in sudden horror--"Do you think _I_ did it?"

"I don't know anything about it," replied the other. "I only know you brought her here, and that you'll stay here till the police come."

By this time several people had come into the room, awakened by the noise. Samuel, without a word more, went and sank down into a chair and waited. And half an hour later he was on his way to the station house again--this time with a policeman on either side of him, and gripping him very tightly. And now the charge against him was murder! _

Read next: Chapter 13

Read previous: Chapter 11

Table of content of Samuel the Seeker


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book