His Father's Son

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

HIS FATHER'S SON

BY MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
AUTHOR OF “A CONFLICT OF AUTHORITIES,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER DE MARIS

MRS. PRIESTLEY put down the cup of coffee at her son's elbow, and stood hesitatingly beside his chair.

“When you're through, Jim,” she said slowly, “I'll—I have something to tell you.”

He put down his cup hastily, and half turned toward his mother.

“What is it?” he said. “Anything about Molly?”

“No, it's not Molly. Jim, your father's coming home.”

She drew back a little then, frightened by the expression in her son's eyes. Her still rounded face lost some of its color, and she seemed to shrink in her plain, ugly calico dress. At the crash of Jim's overturned chair she put out her hands deprecatingly.

“Don't, now, Jim,” she begged. “Don't carry on about it! It would have been only a year or so more, anyhow.”

Speech did not come easily to Jim Priestley. Like his father before him, he was a silent man, to whom a blow came more quickly than a word, and whose rage was of the brooding, sullen kind. Now, as he walked past his mother and took his hat from its nail on the kitchen-door, there was no outburst of anger; only the straight line of his lips showed that her words had had any effect on him. He was a tall, loose-limbed young fellow, with heavy black hair, and eyes that were almost childishly blue—eyes like those of the little old woman who watched him.

At the door he stopped and turned around.

“He's not coming here,” he said, the very lack of inflection making his tone menacing.

“It's the only place he's got, Jim?” she pleaded. “I know it's yours now, but where else can he go? You wouldn't turn your own father out in the street, would you? He was a good father to you for fifteen years, Jimmie.” There was a haunting note of reproach in the thin old voice, and the corded, calloused hands under the gingham apron were twisting desperately. “I've seen trouble,” she went on in her strained treble, “but I never thought to see the day a child of mine would turn his father out in the street.”

Jim opened the door with an air of finality; then he closed it again, and came slowly back into the room.

“He's been a good father, has he?” he sneered. “He was a fine one, he was—a credit to his family! We're proud of him, aren't we? Ten years I've walked the streets and seen people turn to look at me, because my father killed a man and was doing time for it. And if you think, after all that, that I'm going to have any shave-pated, lock-stepping ex-convict in my house—my house,” he repeated, “you're wrong, that's all. He doesn't come here!”

The painful tears of old age came into her dim eyes, and she fumbled in the bosom of her dress for a handkerchief. Her son watched her irritably, with the unreasoning anger we feel at those we have wounded.

“You know as well as I do, mother,” he said more mildly, “that Molly's people wouldn't let her look at me if he came back here. You know what her folks are.”

“Molly wouldn't give you up, Jim. If it was her father, she'd stick to him. Every one knows it was an accident; it was a quarrel, Jim—just the kind of a quarrel your temper may get you into any day. It wasn't murder. You know that Ragan had pulled his revolver, and it was his life or your father's. And he's an old man now—an old man, Jim!”

She dropped weakly into a chair beside the table, still set with the remains of supper, and rested her head on her hand. The young fellow stood for a moment, creasing the crown of his straw hat; then he came over and put an awkward hand on his mother's shoulder.

“Just forget about it, mother,” he said, not unkindly. “He spoiled your life and mine, and he isn't worth worrying about. He can't come here, that's settled. Now just don't think about it any more.”

He closed the door behind him quietly; but, once away from his mother's pleading voice, all the wrongs of the last years, all the shame, all the covert malice of his associates, all the burning humiliations, came over him in a tidal wave of resentment; and the ebb, when it came, left him sullen and ugly.

“JIM, YOUR FATHER'S COMING HOME”

II

It was Saturday night. The corners around the market-house and the city hall were crowded with men, loud-voiced and laughing, with here and there a reeling, tottering group, who punctuated their unsteady progress: with noisy, braggart oaths. From somewhere out of sight came the rhythmic beat of a drum and the shrill song of the Salvation Army, and a waffle-vender was crying his wares with the metallic jangle of a beaten triangle. Through the crowds Jim Priestley, his mind a seething whirlpool of shame and pride, walked alone, savagely brooding, brushing past women with babies and men with baskets, shouldering the loafers aside, ruthlessly deaf to the men who called to him.

When he finally met Molly, she was not alone. Two or three girls were with her, and just behind them, keeping up a running fire of compliments and small talk, were as many young men. Molly looked at Jim as he approached.

“Good evening, Mr. Priestley,” she said pertly.

Jim lifted his hat and passed on, black anger and jealousy in his heart. He knew the men; one of them—Hallowell, a mechanic like himself—had been his rival for Molly's favor, and had boasted that he would oust him yet. And so he swung along the street, his head down, seeing nothing of the crowd around, occupied always with the pictures conjured up by his own brooding fancy. Now, it was his mother, sobbing at the table. Now, it was his father as he remembered him, standing to receive that awful sentence of imprisonment for what promised to be the remainder of his life. Oftenest of all it was Molly he saw—Molly, with her mischievous brown eyes and sensitive red lips; and finally the face of Hallowell, his hated rival, would come between him and the picture of the girl he loved.

It was two hours later when Jim, after standing sullenly with a crowd in the pool-room down the street, came back through the market-place. The streets were less crowded now; the late buyers had gone home with their baskets; the sleepy babies were tucked in their beds; the butchers, after twenty hours of work, had shut up their stands and gone away. Molly had disappeared, and the percentage of drunkards among the corner loafers had increased. Then Jim saw Hallowell.

“RUN! GET OUT, QUICK! HE'S DEAD!”

HE SAW THINGS HE HAD NOT SEEN FOR YEARS

The cumulative rage of the evening surged up in him and maddened him. He walked up to the other man with the lust of battle in his face. For a moment each glared a challenge at the other. Neither had been drinking, but both were blind with the intoxication of passion. Hallowell greeted Jim with a taunt, and then, mistaking his rival's speechless fury for moderation, grew facetious for the benefit of the bystanders.

“Say, stripes,” he said sneeringly, “next time you go down to the pen I wish you would have your father knit me some socks. They make—”

But Jim's heavy fist had gone home on the point of his chin, and he went down with a crash and lay still. Some of the men around stooped over his prostrate figure. The crowd began to grow rapidly, although street-fights on Saturday night were too common to cause much excitement. Jim leaned against a post with folded arms, disdaining escape, although a policeman was rounding the corner. Then one of the men who had been examining Hallowell straightened up and came swiftly toward him.

“Run! Get out, quick!” he said under his breath. “He's dead!”

III

Jim didn't run. He stepped quietly through an open door into the darkened market-house, which was just closing for the night, went through it and out into the deserted street beyond, took a détour through alleys familiar from childhood, and so made his way home. He was dazed with the revulsion of feeling—too numb with horror to think of escape. He did not rouse his mother, but made his way over the roof of the coal-shed to an up-stairs window, and crawled through.

For a while he stood there, the cold night air blowing in on him, the deadly languor of reaction creeping over him. Across the narrow strip of hall he could hear his mother moving about, as if he had awakened her. He brushed back his damp hair, and tried to steady his voice.

“Go to bed, mother,” he called. “I'm here now.”

He went to his own room and lighted the lamp. Then he blew it out again suddenly. They would be after him soon, and he might want to get away—might, because from the chaos of his mind he had not been able to evoke a plan for the future.

He sat by the window, leaning out, watching the street to see if he were pursued, not knowing or caring that it was raining, and that he was wet and cold. He could remember, sitting there in the dark, every incident of his father's arrest ten years ago—the crowd of neighbors that gathered at the door; his mother's sobs; his father's bowed white head and hopeless face. Then the long days of waiting, the trial and conviction, the appeal, which took their last penny—and failed.

Some one came down the street, looking at the numbers. When he was opposite the house, he crossed the street and knocked. In an instant Jim was one his feet and at his mother's door.

“Tell him I'm not here!” he whispered hoarsely. “Call out to him—don't go down!”

“He's not in his room,” she quavered from the window, in answer to an inquiry.

The man below hesitated, then turned away.

“I'll be back,” he said briefly.

She turned to Jim, but he was gone. Back in his room he was turning over feverishly the litter of neckties and handkerchiefs in the upper drawer of the yellow-pine bureau. When he had found his revolver, he went cautiously past his mother's door, climbed the attic stairs, entered the attic, and shut and bolted the door at the top.

“WELCOME HOME, FATHER. WELCOME HOME!”

He groped his way through the darkness to the window beneath the sloping roof. The rain was coming down heavily now, close to his head, and the attic was musty and heavy with the smell of drying soap. Jim settled himself on his knees at the window, the revolver on the floor beside him. Through all the turmoil in his mind, one thing was clear he would never go to the living death of the penitentiary. The six chambers of the revolver were six sure roads of escape.

Below, the gutters were filled with water that sparkled and bubbled in the electric light. Some one was standing across the street, in the shadow of a doorway, and Jim knew at once that the house was watched.

After a time the rain slackened, and the man across the street sat down on a door-step, an umbrella over his head. Jim watched him steadily. He grew cramped in his constrained position; his knees ached when he tried to straighten them, and his eyes burned from peering through the darkness. Below, through the thin flooring, he could hear his mother walking. A sudden shame for this new trouble he had brought on her came over him. He who had been so self-righteous, who that very night had refused to give his convict father a home—he was a murderer!

When he looked out again, the man across the street had gone. It was dawn now—a cold, wet dawn, gray and cheerless. Here and there the chimneys of the houses around began to show faint blue lines of smoke, in preparation for the early breakfast of the neighborhood. He heard his mother go stiffly down-stairs, heard the shutters open, and the rush and yelp of his setter as it dashed into the little yard after a night in the kitchen. Then there were voices. He picked up the revolver and held it clumsily, his fingers stiff with cold; but no one came up the stairs, and he relaxed again.

The trunks and boxes around him were taking shape now. He saw things he had not seen for years. There was the quaint high chair, battered with the heels of lusty babies. He could remember his youngest brother, dead long ago, sitting in it. There was the old squirrel-cage, rusty now, and over in a corner, still showing traces of its gorgeous paint of years before, was the red wagon his father had painstakingly made for him from a wooden box. The tongue was gone, and one clumsy wheel lay forlornly in the wagon-bed; but Jim could see, with the distinctness that long-past events sometimes assume, his father's head, gray even then, bent over that uncouth wagon, painting it with unaccustomed fingers and lettering a name on the side. The name was quite clear still—the “Jim Dandy.”

Jim got up and sat on a trunk to rest his cramped muscles. The walls of the narrow room began to oppress him, like the walls of a cell, and the little red wagon stood out, a very passion of color, in the gray of its surroundings. He could not escape it; it was a symbol of the joy of the past in the hopelessness of the present.

Jim turned his back to it and gazed down at the street. Men with dinner-buckets—the Sunday shift at the mill—were leaving the houses around, their hats drawn down, their coat-collars turned up around their ears. When they overtook one another they fell into step silently, morosely. One man stopped, just across, and looked over at the Priestley house. Jim opened the window and whistled softly. The other man stepped to the curb and made a trumpet with his hands.

“I hung around here half the night, waiting for you,” he called. “Say, Hallowell's all right. He came around in half an hour, and went home.”

The revolver clattered to the floor and lay there. Jim nodded silently and closed the window. As he turned, a thin, watery shaft of yellow sunlight came through the window, and the little red wagon gleamed joyously.

When Jim went into the kitchen, the table was laid for breakfast. The setter leaped at him with moist caresses, but Jim's eyes were on a stooped figure in a chair by the stove. His mother held out a pleading hand, but Jim did not see it. He went across the room to the old man in the rocking-chair, and leaned over him, his hands on the bent shoulders.

“Welcome home, father,” he said huskily. “Welcome home!”