CHAPTER XVI.
SUSPENSE.
AN elderly man, short-statured and with his grave countenance surmounted by a pair of spectacles, glanced at them from behind the desk of the neat little hotel as they approached it. Philip drew forward the register and took up the pen proffered him. Then he checked himself.
"No! It wont do to register—at least to register our own names; and I don't like to put down others.
During the instant's hesitation came an exclamation from Gerald.
"Look! look!" he whispered in joyful surprise. "There they are—both of them!"
Sure enough, sprawled in a familiar fist, could be read "Jay Marcy" and "Gerald B. Saxton," under a stated date.
Philip turned quickly to the man. "Are Mr. Marcy and Mr. Saxtons till with you? I'm very anxious to meet them, sir."
"Two gentlemen from New York? at least one of them? No; they went from here several days ago."
The disappointment was as sudden as the hope.
"Do you know what place they left for?" asked Philip, eagerly—"their addresses? We want to get a message forwarded to them as soon as possible."
The man consulted a memorandum-book. "I don't know where they were going to. H'm! Letters to be sent to the Epoch Club, New York, and to the Ossokosee Hotel. That's Mr. Marcy's address. He's the proprietor."
"Papa belongs to the Epoch," whispered Gerald.
"You are sure they did not expect to return, here at present?"
"I don't know. They said nothing about that; and there are those addresses. The gentlemen came on because of the loss of the steamer. Mr. Saxton's son was drowned, with a clerk of Mr. Marcy's, I believe, at the same time."
The lads turned and looked at each other in astonishment. So they were really not supposed to be in the land of the living? Philip had feared it.
"Mr. Saxton's son—and the clerk?" he replied. "How was it known?"
"O, they were both upset in a boat, overturned in making for the shore. A sailor was picked up who had been in it; he told how it happened. Nobody else escaped—out of that boat. Their bodies weren't recovered."
"Mr. Marcy and Mr. Saxton—came on?"
"Yes; got here the day after. Mr. Saxton was almost distracted, I believe. I didn't see much of either of 'em. They only stayed until the folks on the steamer that came off safe were all in. Mr. Saxton's boy was a little fellow—about as big as you," he added, pointing to Gerald. "It's been a bad thing for his father, I understand—broke him all up."
Philip laid a hand on Gerald's trembling arm to warn him not to give way to the emotions almost ready to burst out. Gerald bit his lips and looked down at the register.
"Guess you must 'a' been camping somewhere that the newspapers don't get to very quick," the elderly man said, smiling.
"We haven't seen the papers," assented Touchtone, simply. "One minute, please!"
He read down the page, recognizing several names of passengers on board the Old Province. He found what he expected—"John A. Belmont, N.Y.C.," and, lo and behold! beneath it, in the same hand, "W. Jennison, N.Y.C." A rogue's device, truly!
"Is this Mr. Belmont—or is Mr. Jennison in the house?" He put the question nervously.
"Neither of 'em. Mr. Jennison I know quite well. I didn't see the other gentleman with him. They had adjoining rooms. They left the day Mr. Marcy and Mr. Saxton got here. The room was vacant. I put Mr. Marcy in it, I remember."
"Can you give me their addresses, sir?" Philip inquired, more courageously.
"H'm! Mr. Belmont's left no directions, nor Mr. Jennison either. I don't find any." He laid the memorandum-book down; he was becoming impatient.
"I'd like to see the proprietor of the hotel," said Philip. "My friend and I must make some plans about stopping here or going to New York."
"I am the proprictor," returned the elderly man. "My name is Banger. What can I do for you?"
"I'd like to talk a little while with you, somewhere else than here—where we won't be overheard, please. It won't take long."
Mr. Banger suspected some confession of a school-boy lark or a runaway, shortness of funds for hotel bills, or some appeal to his kindness of that sort. He had had boys make them before. But he called to a young man coming into the office, "Here, Joe; I've business with these gentlemen. Look after things till I get through," and led Philip toward a little room across the hall. Gerald would have accompanied them, but Touchtone prevented it. It might interfere with what details he must disclose. Gerald sat down in the office with his back to Joe, and stared at the wall with eyes full of tears, and with a heavy heart that Touchtone hoped he could soon lighten.
Some persons have a faculty of not being surprised. Mr. Banger generally believed he had. But it is improbable that any Knoxport citizen was ever quite so astonished as he was by the first sentence of Philip's account. During the process of mastering the details that came after it he fairly reveled in such a story as it unfolded. He could hardly be kept from calling Joe and all Knoxport to draw near and partake of such a feast.
"I do, I do congratulate you with all my heart!" he declared over and over. "Your escape has been a miracle. And to think they have been mourning and lamenting and giving you both quite up," he continued. "But the mourning is nothing to make light of when it's a father's for his son, or such a kind of grief as Mr. Marcy's. I'm glad I didn't say more before that little fellow. Never did I see a man so cut to the heart in all my life as his father. Marcy had to keep with him every minute of the little time they were in town."
"The thing is, then, to get word to them both just as soon as can be. Unless they went straight back to town or to the Ossokosee—"
"Somehow I doubt if they did. I think I heard to the contrary. We'll wire at once. Will you stay here with young Saxton till you get answers to your telegrams?"
"I guess that's the best thing for us."
"I'll see to it you're comfortable. And, look here, do you know what I'd do next—the very minute you've got through your dispatch?"
"No; what, sir?"
"I'd go down to the office of the Knoxport Anchor and ask for Benny Fillmore, the editor. Fillmore sends all the news from this part of the country to some of the New York and Boston papers. He'll telegraph your whole story to two or three, to-night. It'll be in print to-morrow, and that's a way of telling all your friends that you're alive and waiting to hear from them that likely will beat any other."
"That is a good idea," Philip replied, struck with it. "It's doubtful how soon we can get direct word."
But as he spoke he remembered a reason why Mr. Banger's last suggestion was not a good one, after all. No, better not adopt it.
"I'll just step to the desk and register for you, or let you do it for yourselves. Eh? What's that?"
"I think it would be better for us not to register," Philip said, slowly, "if you don't mind; and, on second thoughts, perhaps we hadn't better be telegraphed about—to the papers."
"Why not, for pity's sake? You can keep as much to yourselves while you are here as you like. You needn't be pestered by visitors out of curiosity, if that's what you're thinking of."
"No, not that. The fact is, there is—a person who might give us a great deal of trouble and upset all our plans badly if he happened to know that we were here alone—if this person could get here before Mr. Marcy or Mr. Saxton."
Mr. Banger was nonplused. He deprecated keeping from all the rest of Knoxport and of creation this romantic return of the dead to life. Good could be done by it; and besides his own name and his hotel's would attain the glory of New York print. What foolishness was this?
"I don't understand," he said. "What kind of a person? How could you be annoyed? I'll look after you."
There was no helping it. Philip had to explain as much of the Hilliard-Belmont persecution as made its outlines clear. He hurried it over. But of the names, and especially of his discovery that the man Belmont and Mr. Winthrop Jennison were the same person, he uttered not a syllable. "Where's the use?" he thought. "I ought not to give you the name," he repeated, firmly—"at least not now."
Mr. Banger looked at him and then at the ceiling, and nodded his head slowly to show that he was considering, or would let this or that point pass for the present. Then he asked sundry questions. Philip answered them with an uncomfortable feeling that after piling Ossa on Pelion in this way he might be—doubted. But he fought off that notion.
"Well," said Mr. Banger, "I don't see that you'd best let Fillmore go without his news. If this man comes, as you say he might, I will see that you get rid of him. It's a great mistake, it's downright cruel, not to use the newspapers."
"I think we'd better not," Philip said, firmly.
"It may save hours and days. Those men may have gone where letters will be slower than print."
"I know it; but I can't have that man bothering us again. If I were alone I shouldn't care."
"But you are not alone," persisted Mr. Banger. "I tell you. I'll be here to look after him, if he makes new trouble."
Touchtone held to his point. There was to be no publicity of their affairs even in Knoxport. So Mr. Banger gave in, without the best grace. The matter was not being adjusted as he thought proper. Nevertheless, both returned in good humor to Gerald, whose quiet distress had given place to restlessness at the prolonged absence of Philip.
They were put down on the register as "Mr. Philip and brother." Their room was assigned them. Newspapers sent up were read eagerly, with the accounts of the steamer's fate. The two hurried down the street to the station where was the telegraph-office. All idea of leaving Knoxport until word came was abandoned.
"I am going to send to the Ossokosee—just that—for addresses, and to Mr. Hilliard in New York. They will be glad to hear about us, I know, and perhaps the news will reach your father or Mr. Marcy sooner."
"Mr. Hilliard said he was to leave town that day for the West."
"So he did! But here goes!"
The operator took the dispatches leisurely.
"Of course you know these may not get off this evening; perhaps they will, sometime tonight."
"Why not?" Philip asked, in dismay.
"The storm has broken our connections. They've been working on the line all day. It may be running as usual any hour now, or not until to-morrow."
Another set-back!
"Please do the best you can with them," he replied. "I will come down from the hotel after supper, to inquire."
They turned toward the post-office and sent the letters, and a card to the Probascos. There was some shopping that was absolutely necessary. That mild distraction was good for both of them. They bought whatever they needed, including a small trunk.
"Well, there's one good thing—we've money enough to get through quite a siege, Gerald. Mr. Marcy allowed us a wide margin over traveling expenses. We can wait and wait, here or elsewhere, without danger of being on the town."
"But how long must we wait, I wonder?" replied Gerald, tremulously. "O, Philip, it seems to me every thing gets into a worse muddle each minute. You're trying to hide it from me. When will they get word from us?"
"By to-morrow we shall hear from them, depend on it. Perhaps in the forenoon. I don't know what you can think I'm hiding, you lost Gerald Saxton, you! It's all a queer jumble."
His effort at cheerfulness failed.
"I'm sick of it all! so sick!" exclaimed Gerald. "We're in a fix, a regular fix! I believe it will get worse instead of better. What did you and Mr. Banger have to say that took so terribly long—without me?"
"Well, I had to explain all our story to him, you know. I was sorry to leave you alone. Come, now, don't be down-hearted! There's nothing for you to be afraid of. I think the adventure is very funny, take it all in all. It's a little tiresome now, but we shall laugh over it next week—you and your father and Mr. Marcy and I. Don't you think Halifax is a small sort of a country city?" And he pointed, laughing, at Knoxport's main street and tiny green square, with its black-painted anchors and chains.
"Yes," Gerald answered, without a smile. "Poor papa!" he went on, presently. "How strange it will seem to him! He will be so glad to hear!"
Touchtone thought this opportunity not bad for bringing truth home.
"Glad? In spite of all the nonsense that you've talked now and then about his being so cool and careless toward you? Now you can't help seeing what stuff that's been, and I hope you wont ever think it again. Why, he'll be the happiest man in the world when he gets that message."
"I shall be the happiest boy to get his."
They did not see much of Mr. Banger on their return to the Kossuth House. He was engaged with some business matters, and merely called out, "Did you send them off all right?" to Philip, as they walked through the office. They had supper. Philip was anxious to escape unnecessary observation. There were not many guests; but two or three, as well as some of the towns-people, tried to engage him in chat without success.
The telegrams left Knoxport at nine o'clock, not before. It was with a sigh of relief that Philip received this news. He and Gerald, on whom it had a decidedly good effect, came up slowly from the station. Of course there was no chance of any word before some time in the next day. In fact, how fast the different dispatches were likely to go was a subject Touchtone would not let Gerald discuss. The storm had played havoc far and wide. Three or four connections between this little place and New York! And as many, perhaps, before at last the click of the instrument in the office at the Ossokosee would begin to be heard!
More than that, it was late in the season. Was the Ossokosee open yet? "It must be!" he exclaimed to himself. "Or, rather, Mr. Marcy must have gone back there to wind up the accounts and close the house, probably taking Mr. Saxton with him." But the more he thought of this, and felt that confusion of mind which is apt to occur when one worries over details, the more he came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake in not adopting Mr. Banger's suggestion as to Fillmore, the newspaper correspondent.
"I've a good mind to do it. What harm can come of it, especially as Mr. Banger is here to help me any minute? It's ten to one that that rascal don't meddle with us."
Mr. Banger was still talking in the office.
"I believe I'll step down to the newspaper you spoke of and find that Mr. Fillmore and let him send his account," he said.
"This gentleman is Mr. Fillmore—just dropped in here," returned the hotel proprietor, pushing his neighbor, a red-faced young man with hair to match his complexion.
It would not be kind to cast any doubts on Mr. Banger's honor or on his ability to hold his tongue about even a remarkable secret; but it seemed to Philip that the editor had already numerous ideas of the story that he hastily dashed down in his note-book, and certainly Mr. Banger had been in close confab with him for an hour. Perhaps that paragraph on the escape of Philip and Gerald, and their waiting at Knoxport for word from their friends, would have appeared, without Philip's leave, in The Tribune and The Herald and The World and The Advertiser of the following morning exactly as it did—not to speak of the longer statements which graced the next day's Anchor's columns. But this cannot be decided by the present chronicler. Certain it is that Mr. Fillmore seemed reasonably astonished. He hurried away with his notes to the telegraph office, where, the wires being now in order, it was promised that his news should be "rushed through;" and it really was.
The next day, from the hour that they rose until dinner, and from dinner until supper, was simply—expectation, and expectation without reward. Nothing came! They hung about the hotel, Philip abandoning even his intentions of making Gerald look about the town and its pretty suburb. The suspense gathered and increased. The fact was they were both, the older boy as well as his friend, reaching its severest limits. Touchtone had counted on some word before noon. When afternoon became a confirmed blank, his excitement increased, till he had all he could do to be reasonably tranquil—for two. What could it mean? The distance—the storm inland—some carelessness?
"There is a dead-lock—a dead-lock somewhere!" Touchtone exclaimed to himself over and over. Some of the telegrams had been duplicated. Two to other persons at Ossokosee—Farmer Wooden one of them—were added. They had no available New York acquaintances. Further dispatches were useless. If the enigma had a simple answer it was as effective as one in which lay a tragedy. The silence might any moment explain itself as a calamity or a burlesque. Must they wait another day for a solution—or for none?
"We wont do that, I think, Gerald," he said. "No. If this delay keeps on we will leave here to-morrow and start for home, the Ossokosee. Even if we find the doors shut in our faces we'll find people glad to take us in, forlorn creatures that we are." There was not much mirth in his laugh.
"I—I think we'd better go home," said Gerald; and this prospect brightened him a little.
Mr. Banger was on jury duty all that day, and, much to his disgust, he was locked up for the night with eleven other good and true men. He sent word to his viceroy, Joe, that he "couldn't tell when Wilson Miller (the town undertaker) would know black wasn't white, and let them all get home to their business—it was all his pig-headedness!" But about ten o'clock Mr. Banger was released and made his way back, quite put out with life and with the ways of administering justice in these United States. He had not thought of Philip and Gerald and of their mysterious detention. But it surprised him to now infer, from what Joe said, that they had not yet been able to get replies from their friends.
"Things must be decidedly out of order somewhere," he exclaimed to Joe, as they were sitting together in the office, chatting about the day's affairs. From the bar-room came the sound of a few voices, and the hotel was settling down for the night.
"Does that young fellow seem to have as much money about him as he'd ought to—by what he said to me?"
"I don't know," Joe replied. "You told me not to bother 'em."
"I wonder if his story is all made out of cloth that will wash? To look at either of the two would make one suppose so. But I've been sold before now by people, old and young."
As he spoke Philip walked in sight. He had left a package in the office, and came down-stairs for it. He looked pale and anxious,
"Nothing turned up yet?" queried Mr. Banger. "Odd! I should think you'd feel quite nonplused."
"I do," replied Philip, pausing. "It is—rather curious." He did not wish to seem uncomfortable. "I think we shall hear something to-morrow. Good-night, sir." And he went up-stairs again, too weary and dejected to talk over his worry with any comparative stranger.
Just as he closed his bed-room door, and as sounds from below were shut out, wheels came crackling up to the front piazza. Mr. Banger walked to the door. Somebody was standing beside his vehicle. "In half an hour," he was saying; "and rub him down well before you bring him back."
Mr. Banger recognized the voice.
"Ah, Mr. Jennison!" he exclaimed, as that gentleman came up the steps leisurely, "where do you hail from at this time of the evening?"
"When most decent people are going to sleep, ourselves the bright exceptions?" Mr. Winthrop Jennison returned.
"When most decent people are thinking about going to sleep," the landlord answered humorously.
"Well," returned Mr. Jennison, looking back solicitously after the horse, "I've been near Morse's Farms for several days. I found I must drive over here to-night on some business. So on I came, Mr. Banger."
"You'll stop here, sir, till morning? I thought I heard you say—"
"Unfortunately, I can only rest here a half an hour, as you might have heard. I have promised to—to—give a friend of mine on the Point some important papers before to-morrow. He is expecting me. My horse is so blown that I find I must get there a little later than I like."
"The Point Road! That's six miles, at least! and you've driven twelve since you started, and in a hurry, too!"
"I know it. But it's a special matter, and I must get to that house some time this evening. My friend will sit up for me. Can you give me a good cigar, Mr. Banger? Sorry I can't stop."
Joe bustled off to the bar-room to fetch a box. Mr. Jennison glanced at the hotel register with an air of indifference,
"Are those young fellows that were on the steamer—the two that were thought drowned—still with you? I read about the thing a while ago in the paper."
"Yes; I disguised the names on the register there to oblige them. 'Mr. Philip and brother.' Odd circumstance. They haven't heard from their folks yet. Queerer still."
"They haven't?" asked Mr. Jennison. He twisted his mustache and pored over the book. Suddenly he looked up as Joe brought the cigars for his selection, and said, "'Mr. Philip and brother.' I think I have some recollection about that name. I wonder if—" He stopped, and cut and lighted the cigar deliberately.
"By the bye, one of them, the elder, inquired after you and your friend Mr. Belmont. I forgot it, I declare!"
"Inquired after me? After that Mr. Belmont who happened to be with me? I hardly know Belmont. That's singular. But they may have heard my name. Describe them to me, if you please, Mr. Banger."
Whatever in this dialogue was acting would have done credit to any player on the boards. The tones of voice, the looks, gestures, were alike highly artistic.
Mr. Banger described. He had not talked with Mr. Jennison often; but he had respect for that gentleman's supposed knowledge of the world, though he was inclined to suspect that it took in a peculiarly shady side of it. He liked Mr. Jennison; but he did not altogether understand him.
"Really, they might—they might be a pair of young impostors after all," laughed Mr. Jennison. "It's one way to get half a week's board out of you, you see, unless you've got your money or unless their story is backed."
Mr. Banger fidgeted.
"That has occurred to me, sir. This uncommon delay—"
"Well, I hope not. I'll be coming back from my friend's to-morrow morning, and you can tell me if any thing turns up then. It may be they are not what they profess in this sensation story; and they may give you the slip. I certainly do recall something about that name, Philip, and about such a pair of lads. Don't say any thing, though. Remember that, please."
The horse came up shortly. Mr. Jennison drove off. Perhaps it is as well to say whither. He did not go forward, to reward the patience of any weary householder waiting for "important papers." He rode to the junction of the Point Road with a cross-track, turned down the latter, and made his way in the moonlight to a certain deserted saw-mill, standing back among some poplars. He tied his horse, whistled, and presently was met by two men who seemed thoroughly glad to see him.
"Well, I couldn't get here sooner," he explained, tartly. "That little affair of my own, that I spoke of, has come up again and detained me."
The three disappeared in the dark building. They talked there almost until the red and yellow dawn began to shimmer between the poplar-tops.