CHAPTER XXVII.
JACK’S STORY CONTINUED.
When the man had reached the part of his story recorded in the preceding chapter, he was greatly agitated for several moments, as if the memory of that dreadful time was even now, after the lapse of more than twenty year, more than he could bear, while Geoffrey, too, felt as if he could hardly sit there and listen to the remainder of the fearful tale.
“The horror of it all sobered me a’most as quick as if I’d been struck by lightning,” Jack at length resumed, pulling himself together with an effort. “I don’t know how long I stood there, lookin’ down on them two that I believed I’d sent out o’ world without a moment’s warning. Then I slunk out o’ the house, hardly knowin’ what I did, and went and hid myself in the barn. I must have gone to sleep, or fell into a stupor from the liquor I’d drank, for I didn’t know anything more till the roosters set up such a crowing that nobody could have slept. I never could tell ye what the horror of that wakin’ was, sir, and it’s a’most like livin’ it over again to tell it,” groaned the man, with a shudder. “It was only about two in the mornin’, but the moon was shinin’, and it was most as light as day. I crept out into the yard and listened; there wasn’t a sound except those roosters, and every crow sounded like a knell o’ doom in my ears, and made my flesh creep with fear.
“I stole up to the house and looked in at the kitchen window. I couldn’t help it—something drove me to it, though I shivered at every step. There they lay, just as they fell, with the light still burnin’, and everything just as I’d left it. But, while I stood there the little shaver stirred and moaned, and my heart leaped straight into my throat, near about, chokin’ me at the sight. It gave me hope—p’raps after all I hadn’t murdered ’em, and they might be brought to. I rushed in, took the boy up, and laid him on the bed in the bedroom just off the kitchen. He moaned all the time, till I got a wet cloth and put it on his head, when he grew quiet and dropped off into a stupor again. Then I went to her—my girl—Margery—the woman I’d sworn to love and take care of till I died, and who had done me nothin’ but kindness ever since we first met.
“I lifted her up, but she hung limp and lifeless over my arm. I laid her head on my breast and begged her to come back to me, to call me her Jack once more, and say she’d forgive me, and I’d never lift my hand ag’in her ag’in, nor touch another drop as long as I lived. But ‘twan’t no use. She lay there quiet and peaceful enough, but there was that dreadful purple mark and cut on her forehead where it had hit the stove. She wa’n’t cold or stiff as I thought dead people always were, but there wa’n’t no sign of life about her either and I laid her down again, my heart a-breakin’, and feelin’ like another Cain, only worse, for I’d killed a woman, and she my own wife!
“Then I began to think what would happen if I was found there, and I grew frightened. I couldn’t make up my mind to stay and confess what I’d done, and hang like a dog for it, so I got together a few things and all the money that Margery had in her own little box, and the boy’s safe, and wrappin’ him in a shawl—for I daren’t leave him while there was a breath o’ life in him and a chance of savin’ him—I stole out of the house, without even darin’ to give my girl a kiss after the ill I’d done her and made for a station a mile or more away.
“I had an awful time of it, for the boy moaned every minute of the time; but I told people on the cars that he’d had a fall and I was takin’ him to a doctor. I traveled all day in the fastest trains, and got to a town just about dusk. Here I called a doctor to the boy. He doubted if he could save him; but he pulled through after five weeks of terrible fever and pain, though when he got up again, lookin’ more like a spirit than like flesh and blood, he didn’t know me or remember anything that had happened. The doctor said he was a fool, and always would be one.”
It seemed very strange to Geoffrey to be sitting there in his right mind and listening to this dreadful story about himself. It seemed almost like a case of dual existence.
“As soon as he was well enough,” Jack went on, “I felt that we ought to be gettin’ out of that place; it was too near home to be safe, and the police were liable to get on my track any day. So I began my roamin’. First we went to Texas, where I got work on a cattle and sheep ranch. After a time I scraped together a little money, and started out to raise sheep for myself. It wa’n’t easy to be with any one, lest somebody should come along who had heard about what I’d done, and I might get snapped up. The boy and me lived in a cabin by ourselves, away from everybody else, but I never let him out of my sight, and I grew that fond of him I would have died rather than let harm come to him, and I’d vowed I’d do the best I could by him as long as I lived, and get together something handsome to leave him, to make up as far as I could for the deadly wrong I’d done him. As soon as I could get enough together, I meant to take him to some place where they care for them that have lost their mind.
“My sheep turned out wonderful; in five years money began to come in right fast, and I might have kep’ on an’ been a rich man by this time, if it hadn’t been that a man I knew came down that way about that time. I saw him first at the village, where I went to lay in a stock of provisions. He didn’t see me, but I heard him say he was goin’ to buy out a cattle ranch ten miles away, and that was enough to give me a scare and unsettle me. I feared I’d be recognized and seized as the murderer of my girl, and though life wa’n’t much to me with the heavy conscience and the grief I had to carry around with me all the time, yet, for the boy’s sake, I was bound to stick to it as long as I could—there was nobody else to take care of him, and I knew he’d fare hard without me.