CHAPTER XXII
Jake Stops the Drink for Good
By the time I got back to Jake, he had his bed hammered up into position again.
He insisted that I, as his guest, should occupy it, while he would enjoy nothing so well as being allowed to curl himself up in a blanket on the floor, in the company of the convalescing Mike.
"Say, George!—before we turn in, I want you to write two letters for me. I ain't goin' to have no more hold-ups round this joint. Them ten thousand bucks is goin' to your bank;—what do you call it?"
"The Commercial Bank of Canada," I answered.
"Write a letter to them and ask them to send somebody up to take this darned chest away. A receipt looks good enough to me after this scrap."
He smoked his pipe reflectively as I wrote out the letter to the Bank Manager, asking him to send up two men to count over Jake's hoard and take it back with them, giving him a receipt to cover.
"Know any good lawyers, George? Most of them ginks are grafters from away back,—so I've heard,—but I guess maybe there's one or two could do a job on the level."
"Of course there are, Jake. Dow, Cross & Sneddon for instance. They are Mr. Horsfal's lawyers and solicitors. They are straight, honest business men, too."
"Guess they'll fill the bill, all right."
"What is on your mind, Jake?" I asked.
"Write them as well, George. Tell them to send up a man who can draw up a will. I ain't dead yet,—not by a damn' sight,—but some day I'll be as dead as a smelt, and what's the good o' havin' dough if you ain't got nobody to leave it to?"
"Good boy!" I cried, and I wrote out letter number two, asking the lawyers, if possible, to send their representative along with the Commercial Bank men, so that we could get the whole business fixed up and off-hand at the one time.
Next morning when I awoke, although it was still early, I found Jake already dressed. Not only that, but he was at the whisky-keg in the corner, filling up a cup.
"My God! Jake,—you don't mean to tell me you are back to that stuff?"
"Yep! I ain't preachin' tee-total any more after this."
My heart sank within me. This,—after all his fighting.
I remonstrated with him all I could.
"But, man alive!" I said, "this is the early morning. Are you crazy? You never drank in the mornings before. Wait till night time. Give yourself a chance to get pulled together. You'll be feeling different after a while.
"Think! What will Rita say? What will Miss Grant think? How will you be able to face Mr. Auld? They all know of the good fight you have been putting up.
"Jake,—Jake,—for shame! Throw the stuff out at the door."
Jake only shook his head more firmly.
"It ain't no good preachin', George, or gettin' sore,—for I've quit tryin'.
"What'n the hell's the good, anyway. The more you fight, the rawer a deal you get in the finish. Forget it! I'm drinkin' now whenever I'm good and ready; any old time at all and as much as I want,—and more."
I could do no more for him. It was Jake for it.
I stopped the southbound Cloochman that afternoon and put Jake's letters aboard. Two days later, two clerks from the Commercial Bank and a young lawyer from Dow, Cross & Sneddon's came into Golden Crescent in a launch. I took them over to Jake Meaghan's. I introduced them, then busied myself outside while the necessary formalities were gone through, for I did not wish to be in any way connected with Jake's settlements. At last, however, the old fellow came to the door.
"George,—I guess you'd better take care o' them for me. That's my bank receipt. That's my death warrant," he grinned, "I mean my will. You're better'n me at lookin' after papers."
We carried the brass-bound trunk to the launch and waved it a fond farewell, without tears or regrets.
For two weeks, morning, noon and night, Jake indulged in a horror of a drinking bout.
The very thought of that orgy still sets my blood running cold.
We pleaded, we threatened; but of no avail. The minister even closeted himself with Jake for a whole afternoon without making the slightest impression on him.
It was always the same old remark:
"I've boozed for ten years and it ain't hurt me, so I guess I can booze some more."
And the strange feature of it was that the more he drank the more sober he seemed to become. He did his work as well as ever. His eyes retained their same innocent, baby-blue expression and his brain was as clear as a summer sky.
One Sunday forenoon, I was busy in the yard taking down my Saturday's washing from the clothes line, when Jake's dog, Mike, came tearing along the back path, making straight for me. That, in itself, was an unusual thing, for Mike never showed any violent affection for any one but Jake and he was more or less inclined to shun me altogether.
Now, he stood in front of me and barked. I kept on with my work. He followed every step I took and kept on barking and yelping excitedly, looking up into my face.
"What the dickens is the matter, old man?" I asked.
When he saw me interested in him, he turned and ran down toward the beach. I did not follow.
He came back and went through the same performance. Then he got angry and caught me by the foot of the overalls, trying to pull me in the direction he wanted.
It struck me then that an old stager, like Mike was, would not misbehave himself as he was doing for the mere fun of it. I left my newly dried clothes and followed him. He ran on ahead and into my boat, getting up on the side and barking toward Jake's place.
I became anxious. I pushed off hurriedly and rowed as hard as I could up the Bay in the direction of the cove.
As I was turning in at Jake's landing, Mike grew excited again, running to the right side of the stern and whining.
"What on earth can the dog mean?" I soliloquised, making up my mind to call in at the shack first, at any rate, and investigate.
But Mike jumped out of the boat and swam off further up, turning back to me every few yards and yelping.
The dog evidently knew more than I did, so I followed him.
He led me to Jake's favourite clam-hunting ground.
As soon as I turned into that little cove, I saw my old helper lying on his back on the beach. I pulled in and hurried over to him.
The dog was there before me, his tongue out and his tail wagging as if to say:
"It is all right now."
The old man's eyes were wide open and glazed. He was blowing stentoriously through his closed mouth and a white ooze was on the corners of his lips. His body was tense and rigid, as if it had been frozen solid in the Arctic snows.
Poor old Jake! I knew what had seized him. I had seen something of the trouble before.
I lifted him gently and carried him into the boat, pushing off and rowing as quickly as possible for his home.
I got him into bed, but it was an hour before he showed any signs of consciousness, for I could do nothing for him,—only sit and watch.
At last he recognised me and tried to talk, but his speech was thick and nothing but a jabber of sounds.
He cast his eyes down his right side as if to draw my attention to something. His eyes, somehow, seemed the only real live part of him. I examined him carefully and saw what he meant.
Poor fellow! Tears ran down my cheeks in pity for him.
His right side was numb and paralysed.
I hurried over to Mary's. She and Mrs. Malmsbury returned with me and attended him, hand and foot, until the minister came in late that afternoon.
Mr. Auld was a medical missionary, and he confirmed what I had feared. Jake had had a stroke.
The only articulate words Meaghan uttered in his mumblings were, "Rita, Rita, Rita." Again and again he came over the name. At last I promised him I would run over and bring her to him.
That seemed to content him, but his eyes still kept roving round restlessly.
Mr. Auld injected some morphine through Jake's arm in order to give his brain the rest that it evidently sorely needed.
"There is little we can do, George," said the minister. "He may be all right to-morrow, but for his physical helplessness;—and, even that may abate. Between you and me, I pray to God he may not live."
"But what can have caused it, Mr. Auld?"
"If Jake only could have been able to drink as other men do,—drink, get drunk and leave off,—he never would have come to this. His constitution was never made for such drinking as he has indulged in. No man's constitution is."
"Are you going to send him down to the city?" I asked.
"Not if you will bear with him here. It would do no good to move him. I would advise his remaining here. He will be happier, poor fellow. I shall run in early to-morrow."
I fetched Rita over that night and she remained with the old miner right along.
Her cheery presence brightened up the stricken man wonderfully.
Next day, he could talk more intelligibly and, with help, he got up and sat on a chair.
The Rev. William Auld called and left a jar containing some hideous little leeches in water. He gave me instructions that, if Jake took any sudden attack and the blood pressure in his head appeared great, I was to place two of these blood-sucking creatures on each of his temples, to relieve him.
He showed me how to fix them to the flesh.
"Once they are on, do not endeavour to pull them off," he explained. "When they have gorged themselves, they will drop off. After that, they will die unless you place them upon a dish of salt, when they will sicken and disgorge the blood they have taken. Then, if you put them back into a jar of fresh water, they will become lively as ever and will soon be ready for further use."
"I hope to God I may not have to use them," I exclaimed fervently, shuddering at the gruesome thoughts the sight of the hideous little reptiles conjured up in me.
And I was saved from having to participate in the disgusting operation, for, at the end of the week, Jake was seized through the night for the second time. Toward morning, he revived and spoke to Rita and me like the dear old Jake we used to know.
"Guess I got to pass in my checks, folks. I ain't been very good neither. But I ain't done nobody no harm as I can mind;—nobody, but maybe Jake Meaghan.
"Say, George! You like me,—don't you?"
"I like you for the real gentleman you are, Jake," I answered, laying my hand on his brow.
"You like me too, Rita,—don't you?"
"You bet I do!" she replied, dropping back into the slang that Jake best understood.
He was happy after that and smiled crookedly. But, in the early morning, a violent fit of convulsions, in all its contorting agonies, caught hold of him. His head at last dropped back on Rita's arm and Jake Meaghan was no more.
I covered up his face with a sheet, and we closed the door, leaving the faithful Mike alone by the bedside.
I led the little, sorrowing Rita down to her boat and kissed her as I sent her across the Bay, home. Then, with a leaden heart, I went back, to sit disconsolately in my own cottage, feeling as if I had lost a part of myself in losing my old, eccentric, simple-minded friend.
I opened up the papers Jake had left in my care and, as I read his will, it made me feel how little I knew of him after all and what a strange way he had of working out his ideas to what he considered their logical conclusion.
His will was a short document, and quite clear.
He wished to be buried in Vancouver. All he possessed, he left to Rita 'because Rita was always a good girl.' If Rita married George Bremner, the ten thousand dollars lying in the bank was to become her own, under her immediate and full control; but, should she marry any other man, or should she remain unmarried for a period of three years from Jake's death, this money was to be invested for her in the form of an annuity, in a reliable insurance company whose name was mentioned.
He left Mike, the dog, to the care of George Bremner.
The more I thought over that will, the more I cogitated over what was really at the back of Jake's mind.
Did he think, in some way, that there was an understanding between Rita and me? or, as probably was more likely, was it an unexpressed desire of his that Rita,—my little, mercurial pupil, Rita,—and I should marry and settle down somewhere at Golden Crescent?
Alas! for old Jake. Who knows what was in that big, wayward heart of his?
Mike kept faithful watch over Jake's body, until they came to take it away. He neither ate nor slept. He just lay on the floor, with his head resting on his front paws and his eyes riveted on the bed where Jake was.
We had to throw a blanket over Mike and hold him down bodily before the undertakers could remove his dead master.
All the way out to the steamer, we could hear Mike's dismal howling. Never did such cries come from any dog. They did not seem the howls of a brute, but the wailings of a human soul that was slowly being torn to shreds.
My heart ached more for that poor creature than it did even for Jake.
All afternoon, all through that first night and still in the early hours of the next morning, the dog sobbed and wailed as if its more-than-human heart were breaking.
At last, I could stand the strain no longer. I went down with some food and drink for him and in the hope that I would be able to pacify him and comfort him in his loss. But the moment I opened the door, he tore out, as if possessed, down on to the beach and into the water. Out, out he went, in the direction the steamer had gone the day before.
I got into Jake's boat and followed him as quickly as I could, but we were a long way out before I got up with him,—swimming strongly, gamely, almost viciously; on,—on,—heading for the Ghoul Rock and for the cross-currents at the open sea.
I reached alongside him, but always he sheered away.
I spoke to him kindly and coaxingly, but all I got from him in reply was a whimpering sob, as if to say:—
"Oh! you are only a human: how can you understand?"
I succeeded in catching hold of him and I lifted him into the boat. He struggled out of my grasp back into the water. Three times I brought him in and three times he broke from me and plunged into the sea, swimming always out and out.
I had not the heart to trouble him any more.
After all, what right had I to interfere? What right had I to try to go between the soul of a man and the soul of a dog?
"God speed!—you brave, old, lion-hearted Mike. God speed!" I cried. "Go to him. You were two of a kind. May you soon catch up with him, and may both of you be happy."