The Iron Game Part 49

TWO BLADES OF THE SAME STEEL.

It was too late to follow up the discovery that night. Kate, after a feverish rest, set out early in the morning. She went first to Acredale, where she could get her own equipage and driver. The tenants of the house did not know her. She rang boldly at the door, and when a maid answered, quite taken aback by the girlish figure in deep black, Kate asked, confidently:

"I want to see the sick man, Mr. Jones."

"Yes'm, come right in. This way, please, ma'am." The girl led the way up a flight of stairs, but if she had been part of the bal.u.s.trade Kate could not have been more immovable. Whom was she about to see? Jack, wan, emaciated, on the verge of the grave? They had said in Was.h.i.+ngton that the journey would kill him; was it to that end her relentless father had persisted in the removal? Was she about to see the dying brought to death's door by her own flesh and blood? She reeled against the stair-post and brought her veil over her face. The girl had turned above and was waiting in wonder. With a desperate gathering together of her relaxed forces, she mounted the stairway. In the corridor the girl turned to a closed doorway and knocked lightly. There was no sound within; but the door swung open, and Elisha Boone stood on the threshold. He did not in the dim light observe the figure in black, but, looking at the maid, said, softly:

"What's wanted, Sarah?"

"A young lady to see Mr. Jones, sir," and, stepping slightly aside for Kate to enter, the father recognized the visitor.

"You here, Kate? What does this mean?"

With a great throb of joy she flung herself into his arms; too happy, too relieved to take into consideration the defeat of her purpose involved in the meeting. For an instant she lost all thought of anything but that her estranged parent was in her arms, that she would not let him quit her sight again, that her pleading would keep him from any act that could cause her or any one else unhappiness.

"Ah, father, I'm so relieved, so glad! I was miserable, and did not know where you were. I--I will not let you leave me again."

"But my child, you must not be here; this is a house of sickness; there is dangerous illness here."

"It's no more dangerous for me than for you. I know who is here." She looked archly at him, as he started in surprise. "I will help nurse Mr.

Jones." She said this with immense knowingness in her manner as she squeezed the astonished man to her heart. The maid meanwhile had retreated to a safe distance, where she lurked in covert to make report of the extraordinary goings on.

"Impossible, Kate; you must not be here. I will not have it; you must go." His voice grew stern. "You must go, I say, Kate; you must go down-stairs this instant."

"Come, Boone, I say, this isn't fair; let the lady come in if she wants to see valor laid low." Boone, who had been insensibly moving Kate from the open doorway, caught her eye fixed on the room, and looking over his shoulder at these jocular words he saw Jones leaning against the post, a wan smile on his face. Boone turned, almost flinging Kate from him, and, fairly lifting the invalid, carried him back into the room.

"This is madness; you are in no condition to rise. I won't be responsible for your life if you persist in this course."

"So much trouble off your hands, old man. I'll be more use to you dead than living. Better let me blow my own flame out. It won't burn long at best or worst."

In the overwhelming revulsion of feeling brought about by the actual sight of Jones, Kate stood, interdicted, in the corridor, uncertain what to do. She heard the man's words and shuddered at the bantering levity with which he spoke of his own death. Who could it be? It was not Jack, as she had feared and hoped. But he must know something of Jack. She must speak with him. How? It would not do to irritate her father. She caught Boone's almost whispered words:

"I tell you, Jones, you shall be brought about, but you know the danger of seeing any Acredale people. My daughter knows you--knows the Perleys.

I should think that would be reason enough why you should not be seen by her."

"Oh, I don't mind; the sight of a pretty girl is the best medicine I know of. I'd risk all Acredale for that."

Kate turned softly and waited at the foot of the stairs for her father.

He came presently, looking worried and embarra.s.sed.

"Now don't go to imagining mysteries here. This is a man who has been on my hands a good many years. He is an irreclaimable spendthrift. He was in other days a man of repute and station. I am interested in him, through old ties, since the days we were boys."

"The carriage is here, papa; won't you come home with me?"

"Yes; you get into the carriage."

He reappeared presently, the face of a strange woman, that Kate had not seen, peering over his shoulder into the carriage as he came down the steps. Kate instantly divined that he had been warning the landlady against admitting strangers to the sick man's room. During the drive home Kate strove to rea.s.sert her old dominion over the moody figure at her side. It was useless. As the carriage stopped at the door he turned toward her and said, not unkindly:

"Daughter, there are some things I know better how to manage than you do. You have been spying on your father. This is another count in the long score of grudges I owe the Sprague tribe and their scoundrel son.

Understand me clearly, my child; you must not speak of this matter again. The whole business will soon be at an end; that end is in my hands, and no power this side the grave can alter a fact in the outcome.

You are very dear to me; you are all I have left in the world; you must trust me, and you must believe that I am doing everything for the best.

Try to think that the world is not coming to an end because I insist on having my own way for once."

Nothing but the sense of having giving hostages to good behavior rather than honor upheld Kate in the line she had marked out for herself. She was not, in the modern sense of the word, a strong-minded young woman, this sorely beset champion of the overborne. She hadn't even the perversity of the s.e.x in love. Chivalrously as she loved the lost soldier, she loved her father with that old-fas.h.i.+oned veneration which made her see all that he did with the moral indistinctness, without which there could not be the perfect filial devotion that makes the family a union in good report and evil. She had not even that, by no means repellent, secondary egoism which upholds us in doing ungrateful things that abstract good may follow. Opposition, which becomes delightful when we can call it persecution, had no charm for her. If her father had suddenly adopted the _role_ of the stern parent in novels and ordered her to her chamber, Kate would have regarded it as a joke, and felt rather relieved that she could thus escape the pledge given to the Spragues. But, as it was, she felt morally bound by her promise to Olympia; and, though she realized dimly that her instrumentality was slowly involving her father in a coil of unloveliness, she resolutely braced herself for the worst. In spite of herself she had believed in conquering her father's severity and changing his mind. She had rescued him from revenges quite as dear to him as this, at least so far as she understood it, forgetting that her father believed himself to be pursuing the deliberate murderer of his son. When we have achieved a victory over our own less n.o.ble impulses and put the sophistries that misled us behind us, it is impossible to realize that others have not the same vision, the same mind as our own. Kate had accused Jack of cold-blooded murder. She had reasoned herself out of that hateful spirit, and, forgetting that her father had not the vital force of love to act as a fulcrum, she could not quite comprehend how difficult it was to s.h.i.+ft the wrathful burden in his mind. She had gone too far to recede now with honor. Olympia had trusted her, had indeed given over into her hands the active work of finding the strangely lost clew of Jack's whereabouts. Perhaps for her father's sake it was better that she should be the instrument. She might be able to dissemble his intervention, s.h.i.+eld him from obloquy--if, as she feared, he was responsible for anything doubtful.

She knew her father too well to suppose that he would flinch from any measure he had proposed to himself. She knew that she need not count any further upon her accustomed powers of persuasion. His own words were final on that score. If she could only learn his intentions! If she could be sure that he was ulteriorly shaping events against Jack--was acquainted with his whereabouts--she would have known exactly what to do. But, pilloried in doubt, shackled by the dread of exposing him in some hateful malevolence which would forever disgrace him in the community, she hardly dared stir, though she felt that every hour's delay was a new peril to Jack in some way. The more she thought of the scene of the morning, the surer she felt that Jones--or Mr. d.i.c.k, as her father sometimes called him--was in some way an instrument in the paternal scheme. If she could but see Jones ten minutes! Her father, she well knew, had guarded against that. Whom could she send in her place?

Ah! there was the double check. She couldn't expose her father to a stranger; yet if her apprehensions were grounded on anything more substantial than fear, strangers must in time know all. Could Merry be made use of? No--that would not do. The libertine tone of the invalid, his impudent allusion to herself, convinced Kate that a man must be her agent, if any one were to be. But what man did she know? If she sent any of the servants, her father would recognize them, and the attempt fail.

She had trusted Elkins. He seemed an honest, incurious lad, just the one to be trusted in the business. She could invent a fable which would satisfy his ready credulity without compromising her father. It was plain that he was the only resource. She dressed at once and returned to the Alburn. Thence she dispatched a note to Elkins, begging him to call at his earliest leisure. While waiting his return, she wrote a letter to be handed to Jones. This was a work of no little ingenuity, forced as she was to avoid all allusion to her father and the scene of the morning. When completed, this stroke of the conspiracy ran:

"DEAR SIR: A mother and sister who have exhausted all official sources in vain to get trace of a lost son and brother, John Sprague of the Caribees, have reason to believe that you can give them a clew to his whereabouts. Will you therefore kindly confide in the bearer of this letter, giving him by word of mouth such facts as will enable John Sprague's relatives to work intelligently in the search for him, living or dead?

"Very truly yours,

"KATHERINE BOONE."

It was hardly written when Elkins himself appeared, radiant with satisfaction and blus.h.i.+ng like a peony under lamplight.

"Yeour note came just in th' nick o' time. I have leave of absence for twenty-four hours, and was just goin' inter teown."

"If you can spare me the day, I have a very important matter I think you can attend to for me. I want you to go to the sick man Jones. You must see before entering whether he is alone or not. I don't know how you can find out, but you can invent some way. If you see the man who brought him from Was.h.i.+ngton, you are not to enter. But if you find that he is not in the house, ask boldly for Jones, and when you reach him hand him this note. He will give you an answer, and you must be careful not to lose a word, for life depends on the accuracy of your report. I fancy that your regimentals and hospital badge can gain you admission, if, as I have reason to believe, there are orders to refuse strangers admission. I depend on you to overcome any difficulty you may meet. If you knew how much depends upon it, I'm sure you would not be baffled by anything less than force."

The big blue eyes were fairly bulging, like two monster morning-glories, as Elkins, putting the note carefully in his jacket pocket, said, softly:

"Ef I don't get thet 'ere letter into Jones's hands, you may have me drummed out o' camp by the mule-drivers."

"I believe you, and trust you. I shall be here to-morrow morning early, and shall hope to hear something from you. Good-by."

"Good-by, miss. Just you make up your mind I am goin' to do what you command."

When she reached home she found her father in the library. He looked at her inquiringly as she came over and kissed him.

"I have been in town all day, and am run out."

"Still plotting?"

"Yes, still plotting."

"You're wasting your time, my dear. You'll know all you care to soon enough, if you'll just keep quiet."

"Yes; but I can't. I want to know all you know, and I want to know it now."

"All I know wouldn't be much, according to the Spragues, who gave me my status in this town, long ago, as an ignoramus."

"Perhaps you were then, papa."

"Yes; I hadn't been schooled fifteen years by my accomplished daughter."