The Bondboy Page 28

  Sam Lucas, seeing that the witness was nearing the point of mental and physical strain at which men go to pieces, and the vigil which they have held above their secrets becomes open to surprise, hung to him with his worriment of questions, scarcely granting him time to sigh.

  Joe was pestered out of his calm and dignified attitude. He twisted in his chair, where many a confounded and beset soul had writhed before him, and ran his fingers through his long hair, disturbing it into fantastic disorder. His breath came through his open lips, his shoulders sagged wearily, his long back was bent as he drooped forward, whipping his fagged mind to alertness, guarding every word now, weighing every answer a deliberate while. Sweat drenched his face and dampened the thick wisps of hair. He scooped the welling moisture from his forehead with his crooked finger and flung it to the floor with a rustic trick of the fields.

  Sam Lucas gave him no respite. Moment by moment he pressed the panting race harder, faster; moment by moment he grew more exacting, imperative and pressing in his demands for unhesitating replies. While he harassed and urged the sweating victim, the prosecutor’s eyes narrowed, his thin lips pressed hard against his teeth. The moment was approaching for the final assault, for the fierce delivery of the last, invincible dart.

  The people felt it coming, and panted with the acute pleasures of expectation; Hammer saw its hovering shadow, and rose to his feet; Mrs. Newbolt suffered under the strain until she rocked from side to side, unconscious of all and everybody but herself and Joe, and groaned.

  What were they going to do to Joe–what were they going to do?

  Sam Lucas was hurling his questions into Joe’s face, faster and faster. His voice was shaded now with the inflection of accusation, now discredit; now it rose to the pitch of condemnation, now it sank to a hoarse whisper of horror as he dwelt upon the scene in Isom Chase’s kitchen, the body of old Isom stretched in its own blood upon the floor.

  Joe seemed to stumble over his replies, to grope, to flounder. The agony of his soul was in his face. And then, in a moment of tortured desperation he rose from his seat, tall, gaunt, disordered, and clasped his hand to his forehead as if driven to the utmost bound of his endurance and to the outer brink of his resources.

  The prosecutor paused with leveled finger, while Joe, remembering himself, pushed his hair back from his brow like one waking from a hot and troubled sleep, and resumed his seat. Then suddenly, in full volume of voice, the prosecutor flung at him the lance for which he had been weakening Joe’s defenses through those long and torturing hours.

  “Tell this jury what the ‘words’ were which you have testified passed between you and Isom Chase after he made the threat to kill you, and before he ran for the gun!”

  Hammer bellowed forth an objection, which was quietly overruled. It served its purpose in a way, even though it failed in its larger intent, for the prosecutor’s headlong assault was checked by it, the force of his blow broken.

  Joe sat up as if cold water had been dashed over him. Instead of crushing him entirely, and driving him to the last corner shrinking, beaten and spiritless, and no longer capable of resistance, it seemed to give him a new grip on himself, to set his courage and defiance again on the fighting line.

  The prosecuting attorney resented Hammer’s interference at the moment of his victory–as he believed it–and turned to him with an ugly scowl. But Hammer was imperturbable. He saw the advantage that he had gained for Joe by his interposition, and that was more than he had expected. Only a moment ago Hammer had believed everything lost.

  Sam Lucas repeated the question. Joe drew himself up, cold and forbidding of front. He met the prosecutor eye to eye, challenge for challenge.

  “I can’t tell you that, sir,” he replied.

  “The time has come when you must tell it, your evasions and dodgings will not avail you any longer. What were those words between you and Isom Chase?”

  “I’m sorry to have to refuse you–” began Joe.

  “Answer–my–question!” ordered the prosecutor in loud voice, banging his hand upon the table to accent its terror.

  In the excitement of the moment people rose from their seats, women dropping things which they had held in their laps, and clasping other loose articles of apparel to their skirts as they stood uncouthly, like startled fowls poising for flight.

  Joe folded his arms across his chest and looked into the prosecutor’s inflamed face. He seemed to erect between himself and his inquisitor in that simple movement an impenetrable shield, but he said nothing. Hammer was up, objecting, making the most of the opportunity. Captain Taylor rapped on the panel of the old oak door; the crouching figures in the crowd settled back to their seats with rustlings and sighs.

  Sam Lucas turned to the judge, the whiteness of deeper anger sweeping the flush of excitement from his face. His voice trembled.

  “I insist, your honor, that the witness answer my question!”

  Hammer demanded that the court instruct his client regarding his constitutional privileges. Mrs. Newbolt leaned forward and held out her hands in dumb pleading toward her son, imploring him to speak.

  “If the matter which you are withholding,” began the judge in formal speech, “would tend to incriminate you, then you are acting within your constitutional rights in refusing to answer. If not, then you can be lodged in jail for contempt of court, and held there until you answer the question which the prosecuting attorney has asked you. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes, sir; I understand,” said Joe.

  “Then,” said the judge, “would it incriminate you to reply to the prosecuting attorney’s question?”

  A faint flush spread on Joe’s face as he replied:

  “No, Judge Maxwell, it wouldn’t incriminate me, sir.”

  Free for the moment from his watchful sword-play of eyes with the prosecutor, Joe had sought Alice’s face when he replied to the judge. He was still holding her eyes when the judge spoke again.

  “Then you must answer the question, or stand in contempt of court,” said he.

  Joe rose slowly to his feet. The sheriff, perhaps thinking that he designed making a dash for liberty, or to throw himself out of a window, rushed forward in official zeal. The judge, studying Joe’s face narrowly, waved the officer back. Joe lifted a hand to his forehead in thoughtful gesture and stroked back his hair, standing thus in studious pose a little while. A thousand eyes were bent upon him; five hundred palpitating brains were aching for the relief of his reply. Joe lifted his head and turned solemnly to the judge.

  “I can’t answer the prosecuting attorney’s question, sir,” he said. “I’m ready to be taken back to jail.”

  The jurors had been leaning out of their places to listen, the older ones with hands cupped to their ears. Now they settled back with disappointed faces, some of them shaking their heads in depreciation of such stubbornness.

  “You are making a point of honor of it?” said the judge, sharply but not unkindly, looking over his glasses at the raw citadel of virtue which rose towerlike before him.

  “If you will forgive me, sir, I have no more to say,” said Joe, a flitting shadow, as of pain, passing over his face.

  “Sit down,” said the judge.

  The prosecutor, all on fire from his smothered attempt to uncover the information which he believed himself so nearly in possession of, started to say something, and Hammer got the first syllable of his objection out of his mouth, when the judge waved both of them down. He turned in his chair to Joe, who was waiting calmly now the next event.

  Judge Maxwell addressed him again. He pointed out to Joe that, since he had taken the witness-stand, he had thus professed his willingness to lay bare all his knowledge of the tragedy, and that his reservation was an indication of insincerity. The one way in which he could have withheld information not of a self-incriminating nature, was for him to have kept off the stand. He showed Joe that one could not come forward under such circumstances and tell one side of a story, or a part of it, confe
ssing at the same time that certain pertinent information was reserved.

  “No matter who it hurts, it is your duty now to reveal the cause of your quarrel between yourself and Isom Chase that night, and to repeat, to the best of your recollection, the words which passed between you.”

  He explained that, unless Joe should answer the question, it was the one duty of the court to halt the trial there and send him to jail in contempt, and hold him there, his case undecided, until he would answer the question asked.

  Joe bowed respectfully when the judge concluded, conveying in that manner that he understood.

  “If anything could be gained by it, sir, by anybody–except myself, perhaps–or if it would bring Isom back to life, or make anybody happier, I wouldn’t refuse a minute, sir,” said Joe. “What Mr. Lucas asks me to tell I’ve refused to tell before. I’ve refused to tell it for my own mother and Mr. Hammer and–others. I respect the law and this court, sir, as much as any man in this room, and it pains me to stand in this position before you, sir.

  “But I can’t talk about that. It wouldn’t change what I’ve told about the way Isom was killed. What I’ve told you is the truth. What passed between Isom and me before he took hold of the gun isn’t mine to tell. That’s all there is to be said, Judge Maxwell, sir.”

  “You must answer the prosecuting attorney’s question,” said Judge Maxwell sternly. “No matter what motive of honor or fealty to the dead, or thought of sparing the living, may lie behind your concealment of these facts, the law does not, cannot, take it into account. Your duty now is to reply to all questions asked, and you will be given another opportunity to do so. Proceed, Mr. Prosecutor.”

  Hammer had given it up. He sat like a man collapsed, bending over his papers on the table, trying to make a front in his defeat before the public. The prosecuting attorney resumed the charge, framing his attack in quick lunges. He was in a clinch, using the short-arm jab.

  “After Isom Chase came into the room you had words?”

  “We had some words,” replied Joe slowly, weary that this thing should have to be gone over again.

  “Were they loud and boisterous words, or were they low and subdued?”

  “Well, Isom talked pretty loud when he was mad,” said Joe.

  “Loud enough for anybody upstairs to hear–loud enough to wake anybody asleep up there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Joe coldly, resentful of this flanking subterfuge.

  He must go through that turmoil of strain and suffering again, all because Morgan, the author of this evil thing, had lacked the manhood to come forward and admit his misdeeds.

  The thoughts will travel many a thousand miles while the tongue covers an inch; even while Joe answered he was thinking of this. More crowded upon him as he waited the prosecutor’s next question. Why should he suffer all that public misjudgment and humiliation, all that pain and twisting of the conscience on Morgan’s account? What would it avail in the end? Perhaps Ollie would prove unworthy his sacrifice for her, as she already had proved ungrateful. Even then the echo of her testimony against him was in his ears.

  Why should he hold out faithfully for her, in the hope that Morgan would come–vain hope, fruitless dream! Morgan would not come. He was safe, far away from there, having his laugh over the muddle that he had made of their lives.

  “I will ask you again–what were the words that passed between you and Isom Chase that night?”

  Joe heard the question dimly. His mind was on Morgan and the white road of the moonlit night when he drove away. No, Morgan would not come.

  “Will you answer my question?” demanded the prosecutor.

  Joe turned to him with a start. “Sir?” said he.

  The prosecutor repeated it, and stood leaning forward for the answer, his hands on the table. Joe bent his head as if thinking it over.

  And there lay the white road in the moonlight, and the click of buggy wheels over gravel was in his ears, as he knew it must have sounded when Morgan drove away, easy in his loose conscience, after his loose way. Why should he sacrifice the promise of his young life by meekly allowing them to fasten the shadow of this dread tragedy upon him, for which Morgan alone was to blame?

  It was unfair–it was cruelly unjust! The thought of it was stifling the breath in his nostrils, it was pressing the blood out of his heart! They were waiting for the answer, and why should he not speak? What profit was there in silence when it would be so unjustly interpreted?

  As Ollie had been thoughtless of Isom, so she might be thoughtless of him, and see in him only a foolish, weak instrument to use to her own advantage. Why should he seal his lips for Ollie, go to the gallows for her, perhaps, and leave the blight of that shameful end upon his name forever?

  He looked up. His mind had made that swift summing up while the prosecutor’s words were echoing in the room. They were waiting for his answer. Should he speak?

  Mrs. Newbolt had risen. There were tears on her old, worn cheeks, a yearning in her eyes that smote him with an accusing pang. He had brought that sorrow upon her, he had left her to suffer under it when a word would have cleared it away; when a word–a word for which they waited now–would make her dun day instantly bright. Ollie weighed against his mother; Ollie, the tainted, the unclean.

  His eyes found Ollie’s as he coupled her name with his mother’s in his mind. She was shrinking against her mother’s shoulder–she had a mother, too–pale and afraid.

  Mrs. Newbolt stretched out her hands. The scars of her toilsome years were upon them; the distortion of the labor she had wrought for him in his helpless infancy was set upon their joints. He was placing his liberty and his life in jeopardy for Ollie, and his going would leave mother without a stay, after her sacrifice of youth and hope and strength for him.

  Why should he be called upon to do this thing–why, why?

  The question was a wild cry within his breast, lunging like a wolf in a leash to burst his lips. His mother drew a step nearer, unstayed by the sheriff, unchecked by the judge. She spread her poor hands in supplication; the tears coursed down her brown old cheeks.

  “Oh, my son, my son–my little son!” she said.

  He saw her dimly now, for tears answered her tears. All was silent in that room, the silence of the forest before the hurricane grasps it and bends it, and the lightnings reave its limbs.

  “Mother,” said he chokingly, “I–I don’t know what to do!”

  “Tell it all, Joe!” she pleaded. “Oh, tell it all–tell it all!”

  Her voice was little louder than a whisper, yet it was heard by every mother in that room. It struck down into their hearts with a sharp, riving stab of sympathy, which nothing but sobs would relieve.

  Men clamped their teeth and gazed straight ahead at the moving scene, unashamed of the tears which rolled across their cheeks and threaded down their beards; the prosecutor, leaning on his hands, bent forward and waited.

  Joe’s mind was in a tornado. The débris of past resolutions was flung high, and swirled and dashed in a wild tumult. There was nothing tangible in his reasoning, nothing plain in his sight. A mist was before his eyes, a fog was over his reason. Only there was mother, with those soul-born tears upon her face. It seemed to him then that his first and his most sacred duty was to her.

  The seconds were as hours. The low moaning of women sounded in the room. Somebody moved a foot, scraping it in rude dissonance across the floor. A girl’s voice broke out in sudden sobbing, which was as quickly stifled, with sharp catching of the breath.

  Judge Maxwell moved in his chair, turning slowly toward the witness, and silence fell.

  They were waiting; they were straining against his doubts and his weakening resolution of past days, with the concentration of half a thousand minds.

  A moment of joy is a drop of honey on the tongue; a moment of pain is bitterer than any essence that Ignatius ever distilled from his evil bean. The one is as transitory as a smile; the other as lingering as a broken bone.

  Joe
had hung in the balance but a matter of seconds, but it seemed to him a day. Now he lifted his slim, white hand and covered his eyes. They were waiting for the word out there, those uplifted, eager faces; the judge waited, the jury waited, mother waited. They were wringing it from him, and honor’s voice was dim in its counsel now, and far away.

  They were pressing it out of his heart. The law demanded it, justice demanded it, said the judge. Duty to mother demanded it, and the call of all that lay in life and liberty. But for one cool breath of sympathy before he yielded–for one gleam of an eye that understood!

  He dropped his hand at his side, and cast about him in hungry appeal. Justice demanded it, and the law. But it would be ignoble to yield, even though Morgan came the next hour and cleared the stain away.

  Joe opened his lips, but they were dry, and no sound issued. He must speak, or his heart would burst. He moistened his lips with his hot tongue. They were demanding his answer with a thousand burning eyes.

  “Tell it, Joe–tell it all!” pleaded his mother, reaching out as if to take his hand.

  Joe’s lips parted, and his voice came out of them, strained and shaken, and hoarse, like the voice of an old and hoary man.

  “Judge Maxwell, your honor––”

  “No, no! Don’t tell it, Joe!”

  The words sounded like a warning call to one about to leap to destruction. They broke the tenseness of that moment like the noise of a shot. It was a woman’s voice, rich and full in the cadence of youth; eager, quick, and strong.

  Mrs. Newbolt turned sharply, her face suddenly clouded, as if to administer a rebuke; the prosecutor wheeled about and peered into the room with a scowl. Judge Maxwell rapped commandingly, a frown on his face.