“And you put the ring on his finger?” was Miss Hansford’s next question.
“Yes, I put it on his finger,” Elithe repeated, with a shudder. “Please cover me up; I am so cold.”
She was huddled in a little heap, and Miss Hansford pulled the blanket over her and said: “You are shaking as if you had an ager fit. Ginger tea will help that.”
She brought the tea and made Elithe drink it, and put another blanket over her, wondering that she should be so cold when the air was so hot and sultry, and never suspecting that it was the chill of Jack’s dead hand which Elithe felt in every nerve, and which would take more than ginger tea to remove. She stayed in bed all day, and Miss Hansford was glad to have her out of the way of the people who came at intervals during the morning to ask questions and wonder why Jack killed himself. Miss Hansford’s mouth was shut on the subject, and when they asked if they could see Elithe she answered: “No, you can’t. She’s sick,—worn out with excitement and being up all night just as I am.”
She wanted so much to be alone, and was glad that her lodgers had the good sense to spend the day at the hotel, where the affair was freely discussed. Paul was with Clarice at the cottage, from the doors of which yards of crape were streaming, while in the darkened room, where, on the following Thursday night, the bridal party was to have stood, Jack lay in his coffin, his thick hair concealing the wound from which the bullet had been extracted.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
POOR JACK.
With all his faults there was much that was good in him, and right influences could have brought it out. Neglected by his stepmother, treated with indifference by his sister, called a bad boy by nearly all who knew him, it was natural that the worst part of his nature should thrive until it bore its fruitage of vice.
“I am a sort of Ishmael, anyway,” he used to say to himself, “and may as well have a good time being so.”
And he had a good time according to his definition of the term. Drinking and gambling were his besetting sins, and during the last three years of his life, when his mother and sister saw but little of him, he sank low in the scale of respectability, although managing to preserve the semblance of a gentleman, for he was very proud, and not without his seasons of remorse and resolutions to reform. One of these was strong upon him after he had squandered the money Clarice entrusted to him to invest in Denver.
“I’ll pay back every dollar if I live,” he said to himself, and on a piece of paper he wrote: “I hereby solemnly promise to pay Clarice all I owe her with compound interest from date.—Jack Percy, Denver, Jan. ——, 18——.”