The Bondboy Page 22

  He turned to her with apologetic appeal, as if to excuse himself for having wandered away from her in his thoughts.

  “I put it over the mantel,” she nodded; “it lasts all winter.”

  “The wahoo’s red now, too,” said he. “Do you care for it?”

  “It doesn’t last as long as bitter-sweet,” said she.

  “Bitter-sweet,” said he reflectively, looking down into the shadows which hung to the flagstones of the floor. Then he raised his eyes to hers and surprised them brimming with tears, for her heart was aching for him in a reflection of his own lonely pain.

  “It is emblematic of life,” said he, reaching his hand out through the bars to her, as if to beg her not to grieve over the clouds of a day; “you know there are lots of comparisons and verses and sayings about it in that relation. It seems to me that I’ve always had more of the bitter than the sweet–but it will all come out right in time.”

  She touched his hand.

  “Do you like mignonette?” she asked. “I’ve brought you some.”

  “I love it!” said he with boyish impetuosity. “I had a bed of it last–no, I mean the summer before last–before I was–before I went to work for Isom.”

  She took the flowers from her bosom and placed them in his hand. The scent of them was in his nostrils, stirring memories of his old days of simple poverty, of days in the free fields. Again he turned his face toward the window, the little flowers clutched in his hand. His breast heaved as if he fought in the deep waters of his soul against some ignoble weakness.

  She moved a little nearer, and reached timidly through the bars with the breathless quiet of one who offers a caress to a sleeper. Her finger-tips touched his arm.

  “Joe,” said she, as if appealing in pity to him for permission to share his agony.

  He lifted the flowers to his lips and kissed the stems where her hand had clasped them; then bowed his head, his strong shoulders against the bars.

  “Joe!” Her voice was a whisper in his ear, more than pity in it, so it seemed to him in the revelation of that moment; more than entreaty, more than consolation.

  Her hand was on his arm; he turned to her, shaking the fallen locks of his wild hair back from his brow. Then her hand was in his, and there was a warm mist, as of summer clouds, before his eyes. Her face was before him, and near–so near. Not red like the bitter-sweet, but pale as the winter dawn. Her eyes were wide, her chin was lifted, and he was straining her to him with the jail door bars against his breast.

  Love comes that way, and death; and the blow of sorrow; and the wrench of life’s last bitter pang. Only life is slow; tedious and laggard with its burdens and its gleams.

  He remembered in a moment; the pressure of the bars against his breast recalled him to his sad estate. He released her hand and fell back a step from her, a sharp cry on his lips as if he had seen her crushed and mangled just beyond his reach.

  “I didn’t mean to do that, Alice; I didn’t mean to do that!” said he, dropping to his knees before her as if struck down by a stunning blow. He bowed his head in contrite humiliation.

  “I forgot where I was, Alice; I forgot!”

  There was no displeasure in her face as she stood panting before the barred door, her hands to her heaving breast, her head thrown back. Her lips were parted; there was a light of exaltation in her eyes, as of one who has felt the benediction of a great and lasting joy. She put her hand through the bars again, and touched his bowed head.

  “Don’t do that, Joe,” said she.

  The sheriff’s key sounded in the lock of the corridor gate.

  “Time’s up,” he called.

  “All right; I’m coming,” Alice returned.

  Joe stood, weak and trembling. He felt as if he had, in the heat of some great passion, rashly risked life, and more than life; that he had only now dragged his battered body back to the narrow, precarious ledge from which he had leaped, and that safety was not his.

  “I must go now,” said she, soft and low and in steady voice. “Good-bye.”

  She gave him her hand, and he clung to it like a nestling fastening upon the last branch interposing between it and destruction.

  “I forgot where I was,” said he weakly, his shaken mind incapable of comprehending things as they were, his abasement over the breach that he had committed being so profound. She withdrew her hand. When it was gone out of his, he remembered how warm it was with the tide of her young body, and how soft for his own work-roughened fingers to meet and enfold.

  “I must go now,” said she again. Her feet sounded in the corridor as she ran away. A little way along she stopped. She was beyond his sight, but her voice sounded near him when she called back “Good-bye!”

  She had not gone in anger nor displeasure, thought he, getting hand of his confused senses after a while, standing as she had left him, the flowers in his hand. Strangely exulting, strangely thrilling, mounting a moment like an eagle, plunging down now like a stone, Joe walked his cell.

  What had he done, drawn on by that which he had read in her eyes in that poignant moment! In jail, locked behind a grated door of steel, he had taken her hand and drawn her to him until the shock of the bars had called back his manhood. He had taken advantage of her friendship and sympathy.

  Prison was no place for love; a man locked in jail charged with a crime had no right to think of it. It was base of him, and unworthy. Still–mounting again in a swift, delicious flight–it was sweet to know what her eyes had told him, sweeter to rest assured that she had not left him in scorn. Down again, a falling clod. Unless he had misinterpreted them in the ignorance of his untutored heart. Yet, that is a language that needs no lexicon, he knew.

  Who is so simple, indeed, as to be unaware of that? How different this passion from that which Ollie’s uncovered bosom had stirred; how he burned with shame at the memory of that day!

  Up and down he strode the morning through, his long, thin legs now spare in his boot-tops, his wide, bony shoulders sharp through his coat. The strong light fell on his gaunt face as he turned toward the window; shadows magnified its hollows when he turned toward the door. Now that the panic of it had left him, the sweetness of it remained.

  How soft her hand was, how her yielding body swayed in his arm! How delicious her breath was on his face; how near her eyes, speaking to him, and her lips; how near her parted, warm, red lips!

  He took up the Book, and turned with trembling hands to a place that he remembered well. There was something that he had read, not feeling, not understanding, words of which came back to him now. The Songs of Songs, Which is Solomon’s.

  Ah, the Song of Songs! The music of it now was written in his heart. It was not the song in glorification and exaltation of the church that the translators had captioned it; not a song full of earthly symbols meant to represent spiritual passions. Joe had read it, time and again, in that application, and it had fallen flavorless upon his understanding. No; it was the song of a strong man to the woman whom he loved.

  And the music of it, old but ever new in its human appeal, now was written in his heart.

  Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.... Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved....

  Ah, until the day break!

  In his rapt exaltation the boy’s face beamed as he strode swiftly the length of his cell. It would not be long until daybreak now. The judge would understand him, and would not press a man to tell what he had delicate reasons for concealing, when the concealment could bring harm to nobody, but boundless good to one weak creature who must wither otherwise in the blaze of shame.

  He remembered the strong face and the long iron-gray hair of Judge Maxwell; only a little while ago Joe had given him some apples which he had stopped to admire as he drove past Isom’s orchard in his sagging, mud-splashed, old buggy. He was a good man; the uprightness of his life spoke from his face. Judge Maxwell was a man to understa
nd.

  Poor Ollie; poor weak, shrinking Ollie! Her frightened eyes glowed hot in his memory of the day of the inquest, carrying to him their appeal. Poor, mistaken, unguided Ollie! He would protect her to the last, as he had done at the beginning, and trust and hope that the judge, and Alice, and the colonel, and the whole world, would understand in due and proper time.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV

  DESERTED

  John Owens, the surviving witness to Isom Chase’s will, spent his dreary days at the poorhouse whittling long chains of interlocking rings, and fantastic creatures such as the human eye never beheld in nature, out of soft pine-wood. He had taken up that diversion shortly after the last of his afflictions, blindness, fell upon him and, as white pine was cheap, the superintendent of the institution indulged him without stint.

  Uncle John, as he was called long years before the hard-riding world threw him, was a preacher back in the days of his youth, middling manhood and prosperity. He had ridden the country in the Campbellite faith, bringing hundreds into the fold, with a voice as big as a bull’s, and a long beard, which he wore buttoned under his vest in winter. And now in his speechlessness, darkness, and silence, he still preached in his way, carving out the beast with seven heads and ten horns, and female figures of hideous mien, the signification of which nobody rightly knew.

  Uncle John had a little slate upon which he wrote his wants, but nobody had discovered any way of communicating with him save by taking his hand and guiding it to the object for which he had asked. For a long time he had written the one word “Paint” on his slate. That was the beginning of his use of it, when one word was all that he could get on a side of it at a time. After his fingers had become sensitive through his new art of whittling and feeling, he improved his writing, until he made it plain that he wanted paint to adorn his carved figures, so they could be sold.

  It was the hope of the poor old soul that he could whittle himself out of the poorhouse, and live free and independent upon the grotesque productions of his knife, if they would give him paint to make them attractive, and thus get a start. He did not know how fantastic and ridiculous they were, having only his own touch to guide him to judgment of their merits.

  Perhaps he was no less reasonable in this belief than certain painters, musicians, and writers, who place their own blind value upon the craft of their hands and brains, and will not set them aside for any jury that the world can impanel.

  Uncle John never came to realize his hopes of freedom, any more than he ever came to realize the uselessness of paint for his angels when he had no eyes for applying it. He whittled on, in melancholy dejection, ring upon ring in his endless chains of rings, forging in bitter irony the emblems of bondage, when his old heart so longed to be free.

  It was a bright day in the life of Uncle John Owens, then, when Ollie’s lawyer called at the poorhouse and placed under his hands some slender slips of cardboard bearing raised letters, the A B C of his age.

  His bearded old face shone like a window in which a light has been struck as his fluttering fingers ran over the letters. He fumbled excitedly for his slate which hung about his neck, and his hand trembled as he wrote:

  “More–book–more.”

  It had been an experiment, the lawyer having doubted whether Uncle John’s untrained fingers, dulled by age, could pick out the letters, large as they were. He had nothing more to offer, therefore, and no way of answering the appeal. But that night an order for the New Testament in raised characters for the blind went out from Shelbyville.

  Judge Little was making no progress in establishing the will. Nobody had come forward in answer to his advertisements in the city papers, claiming for himself the distinction of being Isom Chase’s son. But the judge gave Ollie to understand, in spite of his quiescence while he searched for the heir, that the courts must settle the question. If there were fees to be had out of that estate, Judge Little was the man to get them.

  Meantime, in his cell in the county jail, Joe Newbolt was bearing the heaviest penance of his life. Alice had not come again. Two visiting days had passed, and there would be no more before the date of the trial, which was set for the following Monday. But since that dun morning when she had given him the mignonette, and he had drawn her unresisting body to the barrier of his prison door, she had visited him no more.

  Joe reproached himself for it. He accused himself of having offended beyond forgiveness. In the humiliation which settled upon him, he wasted like water in the sun. The mignonette which she had given him withered, dried; its perfume vanished, its blossoms turned gray. She came no more. What did it matter if they convicted him before the judge, said he, now that Alice had condemned him in her heart. He lamented that he had blundered into such deep offending. His untutored heart had seen only the reflection of his own desire in her eyes that day. She did not care for him. It was only pity that he had distorted into love.

  He had inquired about her, timidly, of the sheriff, who had looked at him with a slow wink, then formed his mouth into an egg-shaped aperture and held it so an exasperating while, as if he meant to whistle. The sheriff’s clownish behavior nettled Joe, for he was at a loss to understand what he meant.

  “I thought maybe she’d sent over some books,” said Joe, blushing like a hollyhock.

  “Books!” said the sheriff, with a grunt.

  “Yes, sir,” Joe answered, respectfully.

  “Huh, she never sent no books,” said the sheriff, turning away.

  After a little he came back and stood before Joe’s door, with his long legs far apart, studying the prisoner calculatively, as a farmer stands when he estimates the weight of a hog.

  “Cree-mo-nee!” said he.

  He laughed then, much to Joe’s confusion, and totally beyond his comprehension. The sheriff left him with that. From the passage his laugh came back.

  The day was Friday; Joe plucked up a little hope when he heard the sheriff conducting somebody to the corridor gate. It was Colonel Price, who had exercised his political influence over the sheriff and induced him to set aside his new regulations for the day. The colonel made apologies to Joe for what might seem his lack of interest in his welfare.

  Joe inquired of him concerning Alice, with respectful dignity. She was well, said the colonel, and asked to be remembered. What else the colonel said on that occasion Joe did not recall. All that he could think of was that Alice had desired to be remembered.

  What an ironical message to send him, thought Joe. If she only had come herself, and given him the assurance with her eyes that there was no stored censure, no burning reproach; if she had come, and quieted the doubt, the uncertainty, of his self-tortured soul. His case had become secondary beside Alice. The colonel talked of it, but Joe wondered if the mignonette in her garden was dead. The colonel shook his head gravely when he went away from the jail that day. It was plain that the boy was suffering with that load on his mind and the uncertainty of the outcome pressing upon him. He mentioned it to Alice.

  “I think we’d better try to get him another lawyer,” said the colonel. “Hammer never will be equal to that job. It will be more the size of Judge Burns, or one of the old heads. That boy’s in a pickle, Alice, and a mighty tight one, at that.”

  “But he’s innocent–you don’t doubt that?” said she.

  “Not for a minute,” the colonel declared. “I guess I should have been looking after him closer, but that picture intervened between us. He’s wearing away to a shadow, chafing and pining there in jail, poor chap.”

  “Do you think he’ll consent to your employing another lawyer for him?” she asked, searching his face wistfully.

  “I don’t know; he’s so set in the notion of loyalty to Hammer–just as if anybody could hurt Hammer’s feelings! If the boy will consent to it, I’ll hire Judge Burns at my own expense.”

  “I don’t suppose he will,” sighed she.

  “No, I reckon not, his notions are so high-flown,” the colonel admitted, with evident
pride in the lofty bearing of the widow’s son.

  “He’s longing for a run over the hills,” said she. “He told me he was.”

  “A year of it in there would kill him,” the colonel said. “We must get him a lawyer who can disentangle him. I never saw anybody go down like that boy has gone down in the last month. It’s like taking a wild Indian out of the woods and putting him in a cage.”

  The colonel put aside the corn picture for the day, and went out to confer with Judge Burns, a local lawyer who had gained a wide reputation in the defense of criminal cases. He was a doubly troubled man when he returned home that evening, for Joe had been firm in his refusal either to dismiss Hammer or admit another to his defense. In the library he had found Alice, downcast and gloomy, on the margin of tears.

  “Why, honey, you mustn’t mope around this way,” he remonstrated gently. “What is it–what’s gone wrong with my little manager?”

  She raised up from huddling her head against her arms on the table, pushed her fallen hair back from her eyes and gave him a wan smile.

  “I just felt so lonely and depressed somehow,” said she, placing her hand on his where it lay on the table. “Never mind me, for I’ll be all right. What did he say?”

  “Judge Burns?”

  “Joe.”

  The colonel drew a chair near and sat down, flinging out his hand with impatient gesture.

  “I can’t do anything with him,” said he. “He says one lawyer will do as well as another, and Hammer’s doing all that can be done. ‘They’ll believe me or they’ll not believe me, colonel, and that’s all there is to it,’ says he, ‘and the best lawyer in the world can’t change that.’ And I don’t know but he’s right, too,” the colonel sighed. “He’s got to come out with that story, every word of it, or there’ll never be a jury picked in the whole State of Missouri that’ll take any stock in his testimony.”