The Bondboy Page 17

  The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs and faltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Sol and Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.

  “Ain’t it terrible!” said one woman.

  “Scan’lous!” agreed the other.

  Mrs. Greening shook her fist toward the parlor.

  “Old sneaky, slinkin’, miserly Isom!” she denounced. “I always felt that he was the kind of a man to do a trick like that. Shootin’ was too good for him–he orto been hung!”

  In her room upstairs Ollie, while entirely unaware of Mrs. Greening’s vehement arraignment of Isom, bitterly indorsed it in her heart. She sat on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled between her fingers.

  Perhaps Isom had a son, unknown to anybody there. There was that period out of his life when he was at business college in St. Louis. No one knew what had taken place in that time. Perhaps he had a son. If so, they would oust her, turn her out as poor as she came, with the memory of that hard year of servitude in her heart and nothing to compensate for it, not even a tender recollection. How much better if Joe had not come between her and Curtis Morgan that night–what night, how long ago was it now?–how much kinder and happier for her indeed?

  With the thought of what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by his meddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed, cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan that hour. Old Isom would have been living still, going about his sordid ways as before she came, and the need of his money would have been removed out of her life forever.

  Joe was at the bottom of all this–spying, prying, meddling Joe. Let him suffer for it now, said she. If he had kept out of things which he did not understand, the fool! Now let him suffer! Let him hang, if he must hang, as she had heard the women say last night he should. No act of hers, no word––

  “The wagons is coming, honey,” said Mrs. Greening at her door. “We must git ready to go to the graveyard now.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XI

  PETER’S SON

  Mint grew under the peach-trees in Colonel Henry Price’s garden, purple-stemmed mint, with dark-green, tender leaves. It was not the equal of the mint, so the colonel contended with provincial loyalty, which grew back in Kentucky along the clear, cool mountain streams. But, picked early in the morning with the dew on it, and then placed bouquet-wise in a bowl of fresh well-water, to stand thus until needed, it made a very competent substitute for the Kentucky herb.

  In that cool autumn weather mint was at its best, and Colonel Price lamented, as he gathered it that morning, elbow-deep in its dewy fragrance, that the need of it was passing with the last blaze of October days.

  Yet it was comforting to consider how well-balanced the seasons and men’s appetites were. With the passing of the season for mint, the desire for it left the palate. Frosty mornings called for the comfort of hot toddy, wintry blasts for frothing egg-nog in the cup. Man thirsted and nature satisfied; the economy of the world was thus balanced and all was well. So reasoned Colonel Price comfortably, after his way.

  Colonel Price straightened up from his mint-picking with dew on his arm and a flush of gathered blood in his cheeks above his beard. He looked the philosopher and humanitarian that he was that morning, his breast-length white beard blowing, his long and thick white hair brushed back in a rising wave from his broad forehead. He was a tall and spare man, slender of hand, small of foot, with the crinkles of past laughter about his eyes, and in his face benevolence. One would have named him a poet at first look, and argued for the contention on further acquaintance.

  But Colonel Price was not a poet, except at heart, any more than he was a soldier, save in name. He never had trod the bloody fields of war, but had won his dignified and honorable title in the quiet ways of peace. Colonel Price was nothing less than an artist, who painted many things because they brought him money, and one thing because he loved it and could do it well.

  He painted prize-winning heifers and horses; portraits from the faces of men as nature had made them, with more or less fidelity, and from faded photographs and treasured daguerreotypes of days before and during the war, with whatever embellishments their owners required. He painted plates of apples which had taken prizes at the county fair, and royal pumpkins and kingly swine which had won like high distinctions. But the one thing he painted because he loved it, and could do it better than anybody else, was corn.

  At corn Colonel Price stood alone. He painted it in bunches hanging on barn doors, and in disordered heaps in the husk, a gleam of the grain showing here and there; and he painted it shelled from the cob. No matter where or how he painted it, his corn always was ripe and seasoned, like himself, and always so true to nature, color, form, crinkle, wrinkle, and guttered heart, that farmers stood before it marveling.

  Colonel Price’s heifers might be–very frequently they were–hulky and bumpy and out of proportion, his horses strangely foreshortened and hindlengthened; but there never was any fault to be found with his corn. Corn absolved him of all his sins against animate and inanimate things which had stood before his brush in his long life; corn apotheosized him, corn lifted him to the throne and put the laurel upon his old white locks.

  The colonel had lived in Shelbyville for more than thirty years, in the same stately house with its three Ionic pillars reaching from ground to gable, supporting the two balconies facing toward the east. A square away on one hand was the court-house, a square away on the other the Presbyterian church; and around him were the homes of men whom he had seen come there young, and ripen with him in that quiet place. Above him on the hill stood the famous old college, its maples and elms around it, and coming down from it on each side of the broad street which led to its classic door.

  Colonel Price turned his thoughts from mint to men as he came across the dewy lawn, his gleanings in his hand, his bare head gleaming in the morning sun. He had heard, the evening before, of the arrest of Peter Newbolt’s boy for the murder of Isom Chase, and the news of it had come to him with a disturbing shock, almost as poignant as if one of his own blood had been accused.

  The colonel knew the sad story of Peter marrying below his estate away back there in Kentucky long ago. The Newbolts were blue-grass people, entitled to mate with the best in the land. Peter had debased his blood by marrying a mountain girl. Colonel Price had held it always to Peter’s credit that he had been ashamed of his mésalliance, and had plunged away into the woods of Missouri with his bride to hide her from the eyes of his aristocratic family and friends.

  Back in Kentucky the colonel’s family and the Newbolt’s had been neighbors. A few years after Peter made his dash across the Mississippi with his bride, and the journey on horseback to his new home, young Price had followed, drawn to Shelbyville by the fame of that place at a seat of culture and knowledge, which even in that early day had spread afar. The colonel–not having won his title then–came across the river with his easel under one arm and his pride under the other. He had kept both of them in honor all those years.

  On the hopes and ambitions of those early days the colonel had realized, in a small way, something in the measure of a man who sets to work with the intention of making a million and finds himself content at last to count his gains by hundreds. He had taken up politics as a spice to the placid life of art, and once had represented his district in the state assembly, and four times had been elected county clerk. Then he had retired on his honors, with a competence from his early investments and an undivided ambition to paint corn.

  Through all those years he had watched the struggles of Peter Newbolt, who never seemed able to kick a foothold in the steps of success, and he had seen him die at
last, with his unrealized schemes of life around him. And now Peter’s boy was in jail, charged with slaying old Isom Chase. Death had its compensations, at the worst, reflected the colonel. It had spared Peter this crowning disgrace.

  That boy must be a throw-back, thought the colonel, to the ambuscading, feud-fighting men on his mother’s side. The Newbolts never had been accused of crime back in Kentucky. There they had been the legislators, the judges, the governors, and senators. Yes, thought the colonel, coming around the corner of the house, lifting the fragrant bunch of mint to his face and pausing a step while he drank its breath; yes, the boy must be a throw-back. It wasn’t in the Newbolt blood to do a thing like that.

  The colonel heard the front gate close sharply, drawn to by the stone weight which he had arranged for that purpose, having in mind the guarding of his mint-bed from the incursions of dogs. He wondered who could be coming in so early, and hastened forward to see. A woman was coming up the walk toward the house.

  She was tall, and soberly clad, and wore a little shawl over her head, which she held at her chin with one hand. The other hand she extended toward the colonel with a gesture of self-depreciation and appeal as she hurried forward in long strides.

  “Colonel Price, Colonel Price, sir! Can I speak to you a minute?” she asked, her voice halting from the shortness of breath.

  “Certainly, ma’am; I am at your command,” said the colonel.

  “Colonel, you don’t know me,” said she, a little inflection of disappointment in her tone.

  She stood before him, and the little shawl over her hair fell back to her shoulders. Her clothing was poor, her feet were covered with dust. She cast her hand out again in that little movement of appeal.

  “Mrs. Newbolt, Peter Newbolt’s widow, upon my soul!” exclaimed the colonel, shocked by his own slow recognition. “I beg your pardon, madam. I didn’t know you at first, it has been so long since I saw you. But I was thinking of you only the minute past.”

  “Oh, I’m in such trouble, Colonel Price!” said she.

  Colonel Price took her by the arm with tender friendliness.

  “Come in and rest and refresh yourself,” said he. “You surely didn’t walk over here?”

  “Yes, it’s only a step,” said she.

  “Five or six miles, I should say,” ventured the colonel.

  “Oh, no, only four. Have you heard about my boy Joe?”

  The colonel admitted that he had heard of his arrest.

  “I’ve come over to ask your advice on what to do,” said she, “and I hope it won’t bother you much, Colonel Price. Joe and me we haven’t got a friend in this world!”

  “I will consider it a duty and a pleasure to assist the boy in any way I can,” said the colonel in perfunctory form. “But first come in, have some breakfast, and then we’ll talk it over. I’ll have to apologize for Miss Price. I’m afraid she’s abed yet,” said he, opening the door, showing his visitor into the parlor.

  “I’m awful early,” said Mrs. Newbolt hesitating at the door. “It’s shameful to come around disturbin’ folks at this hour. But when a body’s in trouble, Colonel Price, time seems long.”

  “It’s the same with all of us,” said he. “But Miss Price will be down presently. I think I hear her now. Just step in, ma’am.”

  She looked deprecatingly at her dusty shoes, standing there in the parlor door, her skirts gathered back from them.

  “If I could wipe some of this dust off,” said she.

  “Never mind that; we are all made of it,” the colonel said. “I’ll have the woman set you out some breakfast; afterward we’ll talk about the boy.”

  “I thank you kindly, Colonel Price, but I already et, long ago, what little I had stomach for,” said she.

  “Then if you will excuse me for a moment, madam?” begged the colonel, seeing her seated stiffly in an upholstered chair.

  She half rose in acknowledgment of his bow, awkward and embarrassed.

  “You’re excusable, sir,” said she.

  The colonel dashed away down the hall. She was only a mountain woman, certainly, but she was a lady by virtue of having been a gentleman’s wife. And she had caught him without a coat!

  Mrs. Newbolt sat stiffly in the parlor in surroundings which were of the first magnitude of grandeur to her, with corn pictures adorning the walls along with some of the colonel’s early transgressions in landscapes, and the portraits of colonels in the family line who had gone before. That was the kind of fixings Joe would like, thought she, nodding her serious head; just the kind of things that Joe would enjoy and understand, like a gentleman born to it.

  “Well, he comes by it honest,” said she aloud.

  Colonel Price did not keep her waiting long. He came back in a black coat that was quite as grand as Judge Little’s, and almost as long. That garment was the mark of fashion and gentility in that part of the country in those days, a style that has outlived many of the hearty old gentlemen who did it honor, and has descended even to this day with their sons.

  “My son’s innocent of what they lay to him, Colonel Price,” said Mrs. Newbolt, with impressive dignity which lifted her immediately in the colonel’s regard.

  Even an inferior woman could not associate with a superior man that long without some of his gentility passing to her, thought he. Colonel Price inclined his head gravely.

  “Madam, Peter Newbolt’s son never would commit a crime, much less the crime of murder,” he said, yet with more sincerity in his words, perhaps, than lay in his heart.

  “I only ask you to hold back your decision on him till you can learn the truth,” said she, unconsciously passing over the colonel’s declaration of confidence. “You don’t remember Joe maybe, for he was only a little shaver the last time you stopped at our house when you was canvassin’ for office. That’s been ten or ’leven–maybe more–years ago. Joe, he’s growed considerable since then.”

  “They do, they shoot up,” said the colonel encouragingly.

  “Yes; but Joe he’s nothing like me. He runs after his father’s side of the family, and he’s a great big man in size now, Colonel Price; but he’s as soft at heart as a dove.”

  So she talked on, telling him what she knew. When she had finished laying the case of Joe before him, the colonel sat thinking it over a bit, one hand in his beard, his head slightly bowed. Mrs. Newbolt watched him with anxious eyes. Presently he looked at her and smiled. A great load of uncertainty went up from her heart in a sigh.

  “The first thing to do is to get him a lawyer, and the best one we can nail,” the colonel said.

  She nodded, her face losing its worried tension.

  “And the next thing is for Joe to make a clean breast of everything, holding back nothing that took place between him and Isom that night.”

  “I’ll tell him to do it,” said she eagerly, “and I know he will when I tell him you said he must.”

  “I’ll go over to the sheriff’s with you and see him,” said the colonel, avoiding the use of the word “jail” with a delicacy that was his own.

  “I’m beholden to you, Colonel Price, for all your great kindness,” said she.

  There had been no delay in the matter of returning an indictment against Joe. The grand jury was in session at that time, opportunely for all concerned, and on the day that Joe was taken to the county jail the case was laid before that body by the prosecuting attorney. Before the grand jury adjourned that day’s business a true bill had been returned against Joe Newbolt, charging him with the murder of Isom Chase.

  There was in Shelbyville at that time a lawyer who had mounted to his profession like a conqueror, over the heads of his fellow-townsmen as stepping-stones. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that the chins of the men of Shelbyville were the rungs in this ladder, for the lawyer had risen from the barber’s chair. He had shaved and sheared his way from that ancient trade, in which he had been respected as an able hand, to the equally ancient profession, in which he was cutting a rather lu
dicrous and lumbering figure.

  But he had that enterprise and lack of modesty which has lately become the fashion among young lawyers–and is spreading fast among the old ones, too–which carried him into places and cases where simply learning would have left him without a brief. If a case did not come to Lawyer Hammer, Lawyer Hammer went to the case, laid hold of it by force, and took possession of it as a kidnaper carries off a child.

  Hammer was a forerunner of the type of lawyer so common in our centers of population today, such as one sees chasing ambulances through the streets with a business-card in one hand and a contract in the other; such as arrives at the scene of wreck, fire, and accident along with the undertaker, and always ahead of the doctors and police.

  Hammer had his nose in the wind the minute that Constable Frost came into town with his prisoner. Before Joe had been in jail an hour he had engaged himself to defend that unsophisticated youngster, and had drawn from him an order on Mrs. Newbolt for twenty-five dollars. He had demanded fifty as his retainer, but Joe knew that his mother had but twenty-five dollars saved out of his wages, and no more. He would not budge a cent beyond that amount.

  So, as Mrs. Newbolt and Colonel Price approached the jail that morning, they beheld the sheriff and Lawyer Hammer coming down the steps of the county prison, and between them Joe, like Eugene Aram, “with gyves upon his wrists.” The sheriff was taking Joe out to arraign him before the circuit judge to plead to the indictment.

  The court convened in that same building where all the county’s business was centered, and there was no necessity for taking the prisoner out through one door and in at another, for there was a passage from cells to court-rooms. But if he had taken Joe that way, the sheriff would have lost a seldom-presented opportunity of showing himself on the streets in charge of a prisoner accused of homicide, to say nothing of the grand opening for the use of his ancient wrist-irons.

  Lawyer Hammer also enjoyed his distinction in that short march. He leaned over and whispered in his client’s ear, so that there would be no doubt left in the public understanding of his relations to the prisoner, and he took Joe’s arm and added his physical support to his legal as they descended the steps.