Jap Herron Part 16

"You are," stormed Bill. "j.a.p knows that he is not your equal, and he never will marry."

"Who said that j.a.p Herron was not more than the equal of any man on earth?" she blazed. "If j.a.p will ask me, I'll marry him to-morrow."

She whirled away in her wrath, and ran into the arms of j.a.p Herron, standing half paralyzed with the wonder of it. Bill, who had been watching the unconscious j.a.p approaching for several minutes, discreetly withdrew.

"Gee!" he said, "but they ought not to be kissing in such a public place."

There were a dozen customers in the store, but neither j.a.p nor Isabel knew it. And it is to the credit of Bloomtown that they all looked the other way, as they hurriedly transacted their business and departed.

Blanke declared afterward that he filled fifteen prescriptions with epsom salts in his abstraction, and accidentally cured Doc Horton's best paying patient. Moss, the paper hanger, went out with his rolls of paper, and hung the border on the walls, instead of the siding. The mistakes reported were legion; but the town was all courting Isabel with j.a.p, at heart.

Bill rambled into the bank and suggested that Tom go over to Blanke's and lead j.a.p and Isabel out, as Blanke might want to close the store.

Half an hour later Tom came from the drug store, with an arm locked with each of the glowing pair. Straight across Main street they marched, and down the shady walk that flanked the little park until they were opposite the front gate of the Granger home. Then they went in to break the news to Isabel's invalid mother.

Flossy heard about it, almost before j.a.p had awakened to his own joy, and he never knew of the hour she spent in pa.s.sionate grief. In some vague way it seemed to tear open the old wound. Without knowing why, she resented the fact that Isabel's brunette beauty had won j.a.p. She told herself that it was not a fitting match for him. Flossy, in her maternal soul, had looked to heights undreamed of by the retiring boy.

She had planned a future for him that would be sadly hampered by marriage with a village belle. But only smiles met him when he brought Isabel to her, his plain features glorified by joy in her possession.

Somehow the story of j.a.p Herron, the youthful Mayor of Bloomtown, his advent in its environs, and the story of his romance with the banker's daughter, crept into the country press, was carried over into the city papers and flung broadcast, so that friend and foe might seek him out.

One dreary fall day, when the rain was beating sullenly down on the sodden leaves, a haggard, dirty woman straggled into the office.

"I'm lookin' for Jasper Herron," she mumbled. "They told me I'd find him in here."

j.a.p looked at her in horror. His heart sank.

"I am his poor old mother, that he run away from and left to starve,"

she said viciously.

And j.a.p, just on the threshold of his greatest happiness, was turned aside by this grizzly, drunken phantom from the past.

CHAPTER XIV

Little J. W. crawled out from under Bill's case, his brown eyes wide with surprise at this vagrant who called j.a.p "son."

"Run like sin," counselled Bill, in a whisper, "and bring your mother.

She will know what to do."

While the boy went to do his bidding, Bill slipped out of the rear door of the office and was waiting in front of the bank when Flossy came hurrying along.

"Oh, Bill, what has j.a.p said?" she asked breathlessly. From J. W.'s lisping description--he always lisped when he was excited--she had come to fear the worst.

"Nothing," said Bill bluntly. "He's sitting at his case, sticking type as if he was hired by the minute."

"And she--that awful woman?"

"Gee!" Bill spat the word. "You don't know anything yet. Wait till you lamp her over."

"That bad, Bill?"

"Worse," muttered Bill. And when Flossy came inside and looked into the little inner office where the woman sprawled, half asleep and muttering incoherently, the fumes of liquor and the presence of filth all too evident, her stomach rebelled and she retreated swiftly.

Softly she slipped into the composing room through the wide-open door.

Timidly she approached j.a.p and touched his arm. He looked at her with eyes utterly hopeless.

"Oh, j.a.p, what can I do!"

"You cannot do anything," his voice flat and emotionless. "No one can.

Could you take her in? No! She is impossible, and yet--she is my mother. Perhaps if I had stayed with her it would have been different, so I must make up for it."

Flossy looked into his set face in affright.

"I am going away--with her." j.a.p's tones were calm. "You can see, Flossy, that it is the only way. I cannot be Mayor of Ellis's town with such a disgrace to shame me. I must give up Isabel and--and the _Herald_."

Flossy clung to his arm.

"Listen to me, j.a.p Herron," she cried shrilly. "You shall not do it!

You shall not let this horrible old woman drag you down in the dirt."

j.a.p smiled sadly.

"What could I do, Flossy? She must be cared for. She has been all over town. Everybody has seen her. They know the truth, that my mother is--what she is."

Suddenly he threw himself forward on the case and began to sob, such hard, racking sobs as might tear his very breast. Flossy threw her arms around him and cried aloud. Bill stood in the little private office, looking down upon the snoring woman with a murderous glare. He turned as Tom Granger came noiselessly from the outer office and stood beside him. Grief was in Granger's face.

"I heard what j.a.p said just now," he whispered, "and he is right. It would be impossible for him to stay with her in the town. She has ruined j.a.p."

"You're a gol-dinged fool," shouted Bill, dragging him across the big office and out of the front door. "Pretty sort of friend you are, anyway. I'll fight you, or a half-dozen like you, if you murmur a word like that to j.a.p."

He whirled as his father ambled up the street, his round face wearing a grin.

"What is that greasy smirk for?" demanded Bill. "If you have any business in the _Herald_ office, spit it out."

"I knowed it would come out sooner or later," spluttered Bowers, s.h.i.+fting his position to avoid a pool in the pavement, left by the recent rain. "With half an eye, anybody could see the mongrel streak in----"

He stopped as his son advanced swiftly toward him.

"What kind of a streak?" he threatened. "I dare you to say that again, and hitch anybody's name to it."

"Why, William," expostulated his father, "you sh.o.r.ely ain't goin' to have j.a.p and his mammy hitched up to the _Herald_? Barton 'll ride Bloomtown proper."

"It will give Jones a whack at the _Herald_," suggested Granger mildly.

"And it will be his last whack!" foamed Bill. "For I'll finish him and his filthy paper before I go to the pen for burning down the _Herald_ office. The day that j.a.p Herron leaves the _Herald_, there will be the h.e.l.l-firedest bonfire that Bloomtown ever saw!" His eyes were blazing.

"Get away from here," he cried fiercely, "you--you milksop friends!"

He stopped as Isabel, her eyes swollen from crying, crossed the street.

She had come across the corner of the park, and her face was white and drawn. Bill stepped up into the doorway and awaited her.