Even above the discordant dash of his startled sensibilities rose the fear, instantaneously born, that Honora had heard. All the vague uneasiness which had possessed him at Thomas Gust's return solidified into a recognizable, leaden dread—the conviction that his wife must learn the story of his misadventure, told with animus and lies. Then a more immediate dread held him rigidly attentive: there might be a second cry, a succession of them shouted discordantly to the sky. Honora would come out, the servants gather, while that accusing voice, indistinguishable and disembodied by the night, proclaimed his error. This was not the shooting of Eddie Lukens, but the neglect to comprehend Honora Canderay.
Absolute silence followed. He made a motion toward the wall, but, oppressed by the futility of such an act, arrested himself in the midst of a step and stood with a foot extended. The stillness seemed to thicken the air until he could hardly breathe; he was seized by a sullen anger at the events which had gathered to betray him. The crying tones had been like a chemical acting on his complexity, changing him to an entirely different entity, darkening his being; the peace and fragrance of the night were destroyed by the anxiety that now sat upon him.
Convinced that nothing more was to follow here, he was both impelled into the house, to Honora, and held motionless by the fear of seeing her turn toward him with her familiar light surprise and a question. However, he slowly retraced his way over the terraces, through a trellis hung with grape vines, and into the hall. As he hoped, Honora was on the opposite side of the dwelling. She had heard nothing. Jason sat down heavily, his gaze lowered and somber.
The feeling smote him that he should tell Honora of the whole miserable business at once, make what excuse for himself was possible, and prepare her for the inevitable public revelation. He pronounced her name, with the intention of doing this; but she showed him such a tranquil, superfine face that he was unable to proceed. Her interrogation held for a moment and then left him, redirected to a minute, colorful square of glass beads.
A multiplication of motives kept him silent, but principal among them was the familiar shrinking from appearing to his wife in any little or mean guise. It was precisely into such a peril that he had been forced. He felt, now, that she would overlook a murder such as the one he had committed far more easily than an intangible error of spirit. He could actually picture Honora, in his place, shooting Eddie Lukens; but he couldn't imagine her in his humiliating situation of a few minutes before.
He turned to the consideration of who it might be that had called over the wall, and immediately recognized that it was one of a small number, one of “Pack” Clower's gang: Thomas Gast would have gravitated quickly to their company, and their resentment of his, Jason Burrage's, place in life must have been nicely increased by Gast's jealousy. The latter, Jason knew, had not washed an honest pan of gravel in his journey and search for a mythical easy wealth; he had hardly left the littered fringe of San Francisco, but had filled progressively menial places in the less admirable resorts and activities.
With so much established beyond doubt he was confronted by the necessity for immediate action, the possibility of yet averting all that threatened him, of preserving his good opinion in Honora's eyes. Clower and Emery Radlaw and the rest, with the balance of neither property nor position, lawless and inflamed with drink, were a difficult opposition. He repeated that he had mastered worse, but out in California, where a man had been nakedly a man; and then he hadn't been married. There he would have found them at once, and an explosion of will, perhaps of powder, would soon have cleared the atmosphere. But in Cottarsport, with so much to keep intact, he was all but powerless.
Yet, the following day, when he saw the apothecary's brother enter the combined drug and liquor store, he followed; and, to his grim satisfaction, found Thomas Gast already inside. The apothecary gave Jason an inhospitable stare, but the latter ignored him, striding toward Gast. “Just what is it you've brought East about me?” he demanded.
The other avoided the query, his gaze shifting over the floor. “Well?” Jason insisted, after a pause. Thomas Gast was leaning against a high counter at one side, behind which shelves held various bottles and paper boxes and tins. The counter itself was laden with scales and a mortar, powders and vividly striped candy in tall glass jars.
“You know well as I do,” Gast finally admitted.