CHAPTER XXI
SOUNDINGS IN DEEP WATERS
SHE left him abruptly and ran up to her room. He lighted a cigarette and pondered the rapid succession of events that had so filled the afternoon and evening. He tried to find a natural explanation for everything, but the effort left him vexed and confused. He had reasoned with Mrs. Craighill plausibly enough, but the appearance of Walsh and Wingfield had been extraordinary; it was wholly unaccountable, and he did not like it. That these men should be spying upon his actions passed belief; but what did this odd alliance between the men argue? He roamed the rooms restlessly. All was silent above. Under the same roof, here in his father’s house, were two women, unrelated and irreconcilable, pointing him to different paths. He flashed on the lights in the dining room and leaned in the doorway, gazing at the empty table and recalling the dinner hour. Jean Morley had sat there; the soft overhead light had fallen like a benediction on her head; her grave voice still sounded in his ears, her questioning eyes still spoke to him when, turning off the lights, he stood a moment staring into the dark.
Then he struck his hands together and went to the back hall whose windows looked toward the garage. The lights were burning on the second floor and passing out through the kitchen he ran across the snowy court and up the rough stairway to Joe’s room.
Joe lay sprawled on his narrow iron bed with his face to the wall. The room was lighted by a single electric lamp that hung from the low ceiling. He sat up and rubbed his eyes as Wayne spoke to him.
“What’s the matter, Joe? Are you sick?”
“Well, I wasn’t feeling very well. I guess I got a cold.”
“I came in to speak about your behaviour this afternoon. You were annoying a young woman out there at Rosedale; you must have been following her from the time she left town; she is a friend of my sister’s and I’ve got to explain to both of them just how you came to be frightening a woman in that fashion. What have you to say for yourself?”
Joe threw his legs over the side of the bed and shook himself together. He passed his hands over his face wearily.
“Oh, my God, I don’t know! That’s what I’ve been lying here thinking about ever since I brought you home. I don’t know why I did it. I meant her no harm. She and I were friends together up in the anthracite country where I come from. We went to school together; I’ve known Jean a long time.”
“That doesn’t give you any right to scare her to death. I ought to fire you for this. It puts me in a nice position, having my chauffeur running after one of my sister’s friends. If she should tell Mrs. Blair what you did you’d have to go. My family are not so warm for you, anyhow.”
“Yes; I know that. The Colonel doesn’t like having me round, and I guess you don’t need me; but you don’t have to bounce me; I’ll quit. I guess I’m all in. I’m no good, anyhow.”
His dejection was complete; his tame submission blunted the edge of Wayne’s wrath.
“This isn’t a good job for you; there isn’t enough to do. You say”—— He hesitated. Many questions as to Jean Morley thronged through his mind; but the girl was a guest in his house; he could not seek information about her from a servant. Joe, as though divining his thoughts, straightened himself suddenly.
“She’s a fine girl; there ain’t a finer in the world. She ain’t like me—she’s smart, she’s got ambition and she’ll make good. You don’t need to think because I followed her that I meant any harm to her. I’m watching her; I’m looking after her. If any man means any harm to her I’ll kill him; yes, by God!”
“Don’t be a fool; you seem to be the only person that’s trying to injure her,” replied Wayne coldly. “Just another such performance as that of this afternoon and you’ll give her friends cause for wonder.”
Wayne had spoken quietly, for Joe was utterly unlike himself. He was either ill or drunk and Joe’s record for sobriety was flawless. The chauffeur rose now and pointed an accusing finger at Wayne, crying out huskily:
“I want to know why you’re takin’ so much interest in her! I’d like to know what she is to you! She’s not for you rich chaps that think you can get any poor girl you want with money! I tell you, Mr. Wayne Craighill, you can’t have her. If I can’t have her, nobody can. Now, you remember that; remember it or it’ll be the worse for you!”
“Shut up, you fool,” cried Wayne, closing the door. “You needn’t shout to the whole town. Now, I’m done with you; I want you to clear out; I don’t want to find you on the place to-morrow.”
“What you’re doing,” cried Joe, not heeding, but intent upon some train of thought of his own—“what you’re all doing is to try to jolly that girl so she’ll keep old man Gregory off of you. I know about that business—how the Colonel swindled him and lied to him. And now it’s your sister, and now it’s you and the Colonel’s wife that’s trying to fool her. It’s rotten, it’s rotten, the way you’ve all of you treated the old man.”
Wayne sat down on the single chair in the room. He was quite calm, for it was clear that Joe was really ill; the fever shone in his eyes and his voice was hoarse and strained. But there was something here that required explanation.
“Sit down, Joe, and stop shouting. You seem to be about half out of your head. Now what has Miss Morley to do with old man Gregory and how do you come to know him and his affairs?”
“How do I come to know?” Joe, huddled on the edge of the bed, stared stupidly.
“He’s Jean’s grandfather—her mother’s father. They live up there in Denbeigh. Old man Gregory used to live down here; he had a little mine in the Sand Creek district, and ran it himself, but he couldn’t make it go. Then the Colonel got it away from him to put into the combine. He told the old man it was no good anyhow, but to help him out he’d pay him something down and more on the tonnage if they ever opened it again. See? Gregory had run a grocery on the side and bought goods of the Wayne-Craighill Company away back there. But the old man thinks the Colonel handed him the chilly mitt. And now the old man knows he is about all in and he wants to get what’s coming for Jean. And he’ll play the game out—he’s that kind. Every time he’s got ready to land one on the Colonel the Colonel side-steps—he side-steps, see? And Gregory’s a fine old gent that everybody’s robbed all his life. And if you didn’t know he was Jean’s grandfather, why have you all been chasing her—what’s she to you, say?”
Joe had flung much scorn into his recital—the fine scorn of his kind, with much use of the stiffened right arm and hand by way of gesticulation.
“This Gregory matter is none of your business, but to straighten you out a little, I’ll tell you that this is the first I knew of Miss Morley’s relationship to Gregory. As for my sister, I doubt if she ever heard of Gregory. Her interest in Miss Morley is pure friendliness and good will. And my father has never heard of Miss Morley, I’m sure of that. I’m telling you this not because you are entitled to it, but because you’ve always been a decent fellow and if you know these people it’s just as well you should have the straight of it as to our treatment of them. If old man Gregory has a just claim against my father it will be paid; and Miss Morley has nothing to do with it. And if you weren’t sick I’d give you a thrashing for speaking of that young woman as you have. I ought to do it for your outrageous conduct this afternoon anyhow. That’s too rank to be overlooked.”
“Well, you let her alone, you let her alone; that’s what I say! I saw you walkin’ with her; I followed you that night you took her home from the concert. I tell you, you can’t do it; you can’t do it! It’s all right about what you’ve done for me; I ain’t forgot it, and I ain’t goin’ to forget it. But you can’t have her; you can’t have her! And I’m goin’ away from here; I ain’t goin’ to work for you any more.”
Wayne rose to the spur of his own dignity. He could not be placed in the position of accounting to a half-delirious servant for his attentions to a young woman. He looked down at the crumpled figure on the bed contemptuously.
“You poor damned fool,” he said, and walked slowly toward the door.
He had not been in these upper rooms of the old barn since he had played in them as a child, during the reign of a favourite coachman. He glanced about for traces of the old times. There was an old-fashioned bureau between the windows littered with Joe’s humble toilet articles. Photographs of mighty lords of the diamond were tacked to the walls. With his hand on the door, Wayne’s glance fell upon the framed likeness of Jean Morley—a face younger than that he knew and sweet with the charm of young girlhood. The eyes met his; the lips smiled wistfully. He bent his head slightly and went out.
Joe crossed to the window and pressing his face to the cold pane watched Wayne running swiftly toward the house. Then he drew down the shade and snatched the picture from the wall. He gazed at it long and earnestly, with awe and wonder and fear alight in his eyes; then he restored it to its place with shaking hands and crept back to bed.