Both Harry Boland and Grogan fell
silent after having reached their agreement to return
to Chicago immediately. To a degree both men
regretted the decision.
Grogan had accomplished the purpose
for which the elder Boland had despatched him to Millville that
of disentangling Harry from his romance but
what he had seen of Patience Welcome had led him to
dislike his task.
Harry had no sooner promised to drive
back to Chicago in the night than he was assailed
with yearning to see the girl again. Each occupied
himself with his own thoughts. Dusk descended
on the village. They had reached the corner of
the street that led to their hotel when they were
arrested by a maudlin voice.
“I’m all right, I tell you, Harve.”
Two men came out from beneath the
shadow of the trees and could be seen dimly under
the sickly gleam of a street light. One leaned
heavily against the other.
“Sure, you’re all right,”
replied the drunken man’s companion in a voice
both recognized as that of Harvey Spencer. “I’m
just going to see you as far as your house.”
He spoke in the voice people use in humoring drunken
men and children.
“I hain’t drunk, Harve,” insisted
Harvey’s companion.
“Of course, you ain’t,” replied
Harvey, “come on.”
“I’m just overcome with the heat.
I ”
The reeling man broke off suddenly. He saw Harry
and Grogan.
“Who the devil are you?” he demanded truculently.
“My name is Harry Boland,” replied the
young man.
“Oh, the son of John Boland,
eh?” jeered the drunken man. “Son
of John Boland, ’lectric light king. John
Boland’s son, eh?”
“Yes,” replied Harry sharply, “what
of it?”
“Nothing I can prove,”
retorted Welcome, grimly, “only give
my regards to your father. Just tell him Tom
Welcome sends his regards. He’ll know.”
He began to whimper softly. “Poor old Tom
Welcome, who might have been riding in his carriage
this day.” He stopped whining abruptly and
snarled at the young man: “If there was
any justice on God’s earth ”
Welcome lurched forward. Harry
grasped his wrist and peered into his bloated face.
“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
Grogan interrupted a good deal agitated.
“He doesn’t mean anything,” he said,
“he’s just drunk. Come, boy, let’s
get out of here.”
“I want to know ” persisted
Harry, but he dropped Welcome’s arm.
“Don’t be a fool,”
commanded Grogan, “can’t you see the man’s
drunk? Come on.”
“But I tell you I want to know ”
“Oh, you don’t know anything!”
Harry was about to retort angrily
when Grogan seized his wrist with an iron grip and
swung him around the corner. Half dragging the
young man along with him he got him to the hotel.
There Grogan succeeded in convincing him of the folly
of engaging in a street argument with a dipsomaniac
he did not know.
Meanwhile Harvey and Welcome continued
their slow and stumbling journey to the Welcome cottage.
Welcome, after his interview with Harry Boland was
in a savage mood. A debauch of two days had left
him virtually a mad man. It required all of Harvey’s
diplomacy to get him into his house quietly.
The lights were burning in the living
room when they arrived. Harvey convoyed his swaying
companion to the back of the house, opened the door
quietly and pushed him in. Mrs. Welcome and the
two girls were in the living room, but the wind was
sighing without and they heard nothing. A storm
had come up with the setting of the sun and occasional
flashes of lightning lighted the darkened room where
Welcome found himself while the thunder deadened the
sound of his stumbling feet. He made his way through
the kitchen to a bedroom and sank down exhausted on
a bed.
But Tom Welcome could not sleep.
Every nerve in his body jangled. The interview
with young Boland, for reasons which will be apparent
to the reader later, had aroused in him a smouldering
anger. He tossed restlessly on his couch.
While he lay there he heard some one
knocking at the front door. All of his perceptions
had grown abnormally keen. He heard a boy’s
voice and recognized it as that of a neighbor’s
son.
“It’s me, Jimmie,”
said the boy. “Pa sent me over with Elsie’s
veil. She dropped it while she was out in the
auto this afternoon.”
He heard the door close and then the
accusing voice of his wife demanding:
“Elsie, who have you been out with, automobiling?”
“I was out this afternoon with Martin Druce,”
replied the girl defiantly.
“Then,” went on the mother,
conscious that a crisis of some sort between her and
her daughter was approaching, “you were talking
to him this evening and not to Harvey Spencer?
You told me a falsehood?”
“What if I did?” Elsie’s tone was
low and stubborn.
Mrs. Welcome began to sob.
“Mother, mother,” pleaded Patience, “Elsie
didn’t mean ”
“I did mean it,” flared
back Elsie. “I did mean it! Why shouldn’t
I go autoing when I have the chance? Isn’t
life in Millville hard enough without ”
She paused overcome by a wave of passion. “I’m
tired of Millville,” she exclaimed, “I’m
tired of the factory. I’m tired of living
here as we do in this miserable, tumble-down place
we call home. I’m tired of working like
a slave, while a drunken father ”
The words had scarcely left the girl’s
lips when Tom Welcome, red-eyed, dishevelled, swaying,
appeared in the doorway behind her. His face was
lit with demoniac passion. He rushed at the girl
and she screamed in terror. With a vicious lunge
he struck her down and then, seizing her by the hair,
dragged her into the bedroom where, amid her cries,
he rained blow after blow upon her.
Harvey Spencer, just passing through
the gate, heard the first scream. He rushed back
into the house as Welcome, finished for the moment
with Elsie, had returned to the cottage living room
and was approaching his wife menacingly. He seized
the raging man by the collar and hurled him into a
corner.
“Stay there,” he said, “or I’ll
brain you.”
Welcome stood for a moment glaring
at the intruder. He attempted to speak, but foam
flecked his lips and seemed to choke his voice.
His eyes acquired a fixed and unearthly stare.
He raised his fist as though to strike and then plunged
headlong to the floor.
Patience was the first to reach her
father’s side. A vivid flash of lightning
followed by a terrific detonation of thunder rocked
the cottage.
“He’s dying,” screamed Patience.
Mrs. Welcome, forgetting past injuries, sprang to
her husband’s side.
“Tom,” she wailed, “speak to me.
Tom Tom, I’m your wife ”
The dying man tried to sit up.
His mania had passed. He patted his wife’s
shoulder feebly and smiled. A great weakness had
come into his face. “Forgive me,”
he said, “I didn’t know I didn’t
know what I was doing. It was the drink.
I am going. Call Elsie!”
Patience sprang toward the bedroom,
but it was empty. The open doors through the
kitchen showed how she had fled. As she searched
frantically for her sister, the little clock on the
mantel slowly struck the hour of eight.
“She’s gone,” cried
Patience. A premonition of the tragedy of Elsie’s
flight flashed upon her mind. “Oh,”
she cried, “my little lost sister! My little
lost sister!”
“Gone,” cried Harvey.
“Gone where?” He opened the door.
The rain was falling pitilessly. “Not out
into this storm. Someone must find her.”
He rushed out into the darkness.
“Gone!” echoed Tom Welcome.
His voice was hollow as a knell. The drink-racked
body stiffened in a spasm and then dropped limply into
his weeping wife’s arms. “Gone!”
he gasped.
Tom Welcome was dead.
Another flash of lightning and a roar
of thunder. The two women strove to revive the
corpse. At last the dreadful realization came
to them that Tom Welcome would never speak again.
The wind smote the cottage and the light in the single
lamp in the room fluttered as though in mortal terror.
The skies were shattered with a final climactic crash
of thunder. The mother and daughter, alone in
that chamber of death, clung to each other silently
feeling themselves isolated from all mankind, with
even the elements storming against them.
While they waited, blanched and terror-stricken,
for the last reverberations of the thunder, the whistle
of the Fast Express, bound from Millville to the great
city, rose wildly on the air, like the scream of an
exultant demon, and died away in a series of weird
and mocking echoes into the night.