The Bondboy Page 32

  “You were not,” Hammer assured her. “A wife cannot rob her husband, Mrs. Chase. And then what did you do?”

  “I went downstairs with that money in my hand and laid it on the kitchen table while I fixed my hat. It was dark in the kitchen, and when I was ready to go to meet Mr. Morgan in the place agreed on between us, I struck a match to find my way to the door without bumpin’ into a chair or something and making a noise that would wake up Joe.

  “I didn’t know he was already up and watching for me to start. He was at the door when I opened it, and he told me to light the lamp. I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t want him to see me all dressed and ready to leave, and I wanted to try to slip that sack of money off the table before he saw it, too. He came in; I guess he put his hat down on the table in the dark, and it fell on top of the sack.

  “When he lit the lamp in a minute you couldn’t have told there was anything under the hat unless you stood in a certain place, where it showed a little under the brim. Joe told me he knew all about Morgan and me, and that he’d sent him away. He said it was wrong for me to leave Isom; he said that Isom was better than Morgan, bad as he was.

  “I flared up and got mad at Joe, but he was gentle and kind, and talked to me and showed me where I was wrong. I’d kind of tried to make love to Joe a little before that,” she confessed, her face flushing hotly again, “before Mr. Morgan came, that was. I’ll tell you this so you’ll know that there was nothing out of the way between me and Joe.

  “Joe didn’t seem to understand such things. He was nothing but a boy till the night Isom was killed. He didn’t take me up on it like Morgan did. I know it was wrong in me; but Isom drove me to it, and I’ve suffered for it–more than I can ever make you understand.”

  She appealed to the judge in her manner of saying that; appealed as for the absolution which she had earned by a cruel penance. He nodded kindly, his face very grave.

  “Yes, Mrs. Chase,” said Hammer. “And then what did you do next?”

  “Well, while Joe was persuading me to go back to bed I put my arms around his neck. I wanted to smooth it over with him, so he’d go to bed first and I could take the money and put it back, for one thing; and because I really was sorry for what I’d done, and was ashamed of it, and felt lonesome and kicked out, and like nobody didn’t care.

  “Isom came in and saw us standing there that way, with my hands on Joe’s shoulders, and he rushed up and said: ‘I’ll kill you!’ He said we was standing there hugging each other, and that we’d disgraced him; but that wasn’t so. It was all my fault, but Joe didn’t tell him that.”

  “And what did Joe tell him, Mrs. Chase?” asked Hammer, aglow with the victory which he felt to be already in his hand. He looked with gloating triumph at the prosecuting attorney, who sat at the table twirling a pencil in his fingers, and did not lift his eyes.

  “Joe told Isom he was making a mistake, and then Isom ripped and swore and threatened to kill us both. He looked around for something to do it with, and he saw that sack of money under Joe’s hat. He jumped for the table and grabbed it, and then he made for the gun. I told Joe to stop him, and Joe tried. But he was too late. The rest of it happened just like Joe’s already told you.”

  Ollie’s head drooped forward wearily, and her hands lay passively in her lap. It seemed that she considered the story concluded, but Hammer was not of that mind.

  “After Isom fell–after the gun went off and Isom fell–what did you and Joe do?” he asked.

  “We heard somebody coming in a minute. We didn’t know who it could be, but I was afraid. I knew if it got out on me about my start to run off with Morgan, and all the rest of it, I’d be ruined and disgraced forever.

  “Joe knew it too, better than I did. I didn’t have to tell him, and I never even hinted for him to do what he did. I never even thought of that. I asked him what we’d do, and he told me to go upstairs and leave him to do the talking. I went. I was coward enough to go and leave him to bear the blame. When Joe lied at the inquest to save me, I backed him up in it, and I stuck to it up till now. Maybe I was a little mad at him for coming between me and Mr. Morgan, but that was just a streak. That’s the only lie Joe’s told, and you can see he never would have told that to save himself. I don’t want to see him suffer any more for me.”

  Ollie concluded her recital in the same low, dragging and spiritless voice in which she had begun it. Conscience whipped her through, but it could not make her unafraid. Hammer turned to the prosecutor with questioning eyes. Lucas announced that he did not desire to cross-examine the witness, and the judge dismissed her.

  Ollie went back to her mother. No demonstration accompanied her passing, but a great sigh sounded over the room as the tenseness of the listening strain relaxed, and the fulness of satisfaction came in its place.

  Mrs. Newbolt still clung to her son’s hand. She nodded at the prosecuting attorney with glowing eyes, as if glorying over him in the moment of his defeat. Alice Price smiled joyously, and leaned back from her posture of concentration. The colonel whispered to her, bringing the palms of his hands together in silent but expressive applause. The prosecuting attorney stood.

  “Your honor–” he began, but Judge Maxwell, lifting his head from the reflecting pose into which he had fallen when Ollie left the stand, silenced him with an impatient gesture.

  “One moment, Mr. Prosecutor,” said he.

  The prosecutor flushed, and sat down in ruffled dignity.

  “I merely wanted to make a motion for dismissal,” said he, sarcastically, as if it was only the merest incidental in the day’s proceedings.

  “That is not the procedure,” said the judge. “The state owes it to this defendant to absolve him before the public of the obloquy of this unfounded and cruel accusation.”

  “Vindication is what we demand, your honor,” said Hammer grandly; “vindication before the world!”

  He spread his arms wide, as if the world stood before him, fat and big of girth like himself, and he meant to embrace it with the next breath.

  “You shall have it, Mr. Hammer,” said the judge. He turned to the jury. “Gentlemen of the jury, this case has come to a sudden and unexpected end. The state’s case, prosecuted with such worthy energy and honorable intention, has collapsed. Your one duty now, gentlemen, is to return a verdict of not guilty. Will it be necessary for you to retire to the jury room?”

  The jurymen had been exchanging glances. Now the foreman rose, tall and solemn, with beard upon his breast.

  “Your honor, it will not be necessary for the jury to retire,” said he. “We are ready to return our verdict.”

  According to the form, the foreman wrote out the verdict on the blank provided by statute; he stood with his fellows while the clerk of the court read it aloud:

  “We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

  The judge looked down at Joe, who had turned to his mother, smiling through his tears.

  “You are free, God bless you!” said he.

  When a judge says so much more upon the bench than precedent, form, and custom prescribe for him to say; when he puts down the hard mask of the law and discovers his human face behind it, and his human heart moving his warm, human blood; when a judge on the bench does that, what can be expected of the unsanctified mob in front of him?

  It was said by many that Captain Taylor led the applause himself, but there were others who claimed that distinction for Colonel Price. No matter.

  While the house did not rise as one man–for in every house there are old joints and young ones, which do not unlimber with the same degree of alacrity, no matter what the incitement–it got to its feet in surprising order, with a great tossing of arms and waving of hats and coats. In the midst of this glad turmoil stood Uncle Posen Spratt, head and shoulders above the crowd, mounted on a bench, his steer’s horn ear-trumpet to his whiskered lips, like an Israelitish priest, blowing his famous fox-hound blast, which had been heard five miles on a still autumn night.

  L
ess than half an hour before, the public would have attended Joe Newbolt’s hanging with all the pleasurable and satisfactory thrills which men draw from such melancholy events. Now it was clamoring to lift him to its shoulders and bear him in triumph through the town.

  Judge Maxwell smiled, and adjourned court, which order nobody but his clerk heard, and let them have their noisy way. When the people saw him come down from the bench they quieted, not understanding his purpose; and when he reached out his hand to Joe, who rose to meet him, silence settled over the house. Judge Maxwell put his arm around Joe’s shoulder in fatherly way while he shook hands with Mrs. Newbolt. What he said, nobody but those within the bar heard, but he gave Joe’s back an expressive slap of approval as he turned to the prosecuting attorney.

  People rushed forward with the suddenness of water released, to shake hands with Joe when they understood that the court was in adjournment. They crowded inside the rail, almost overwhelming him, exclaiming in loud terms of admiration, addressing him familiarly, to his excessive embarrassment, pressing upon him their assurances that they knew, all the time, that he didn’t do it, and that he would come out of it with head and tail both up, as he had come through.

  Men who would have passed him yesterday without a second thought, and who would no more have given their hands to him on the footing of equality–unless they had chanced to be running for office–than they would have thrust them into the fire, now stood there smiling and jostling and waiting their turns to reach him, all of them chattering and mouthing and nodding heads until one would have thought that each of them was a prophet, and had predicted this very thing.

  The old generals, colonels, majors, and captains–that was the lowest rank in Shelbyville–and the noncommissioned substantial first citizens of the county, were shaking hands among themselves, and nodding and smiling, full of the fine feeling of that moment. It was a triumph of chivalry, they said; they had witnessed the renaissance of the old spirit, the passing of which, and the dying out and dwindling of it in the rising generation, they had so long and lamentably deplored.

  There, before their eyes, they had seen this uncouth grub transformed into a glorious and noble thing, and the only discord in the miraculous harmony of it was the deep-lying regret that it was not a son of Shelbyville who had thus proved himself a man. And then the colonels and others broke off their self-felicitation to join the forward mob in the front of the room, and press their congratulations upon Joe.

  Joe, embarrassed and awkward, tried to be genial, but hardly succeeded in being civil, for his heart was not with them in what he felt to be nothing but a cheap emotion. He was looking over their heads, and peering between their shoulders, watching the progress of a little red feather in a Highland bonnet, which was making its way toward him through the confusion like a bold pennant upon the crest of battle. Joe pushed through the wedging mass of people around, and went to the bar to meet her.

  In the time of his distress, these who now clamored around him with professions of friendliness had not held up a hand to sustain him, nor given him one good word to shore up his sinking soul. But there was one who had known and understood; one whose faith had held him up to the heights of honor, and his soul stood in his eyes to greet her as he waited for her to come. He did not know what he would say when hand touched hand, but he felt that he could fall down upon his knees as a subject sinks before a queen.

  Behind him he heard his mother’s voice, thanking the people who offered their congratulations. It was a great day for her when the foremost citizens of the county came forward, their hats in their hands, to pay their respects to her Joe. She felt that he was rising up to his place at last, and coming into his own.

  Joe heard his mother’s voice, but it was sound to him now without words. Alice was coming. She was now just a little way beyond the reach of his arm, and her presence filled the world.

  The people had their quick eyes on Alice, also, and they fell apart to let her pass, the flame of a new expectation in their keen faces. After yesterday’s strange act, which seemed so prophetic of today’s climax in the case, what was she going to do? Joe wondered in his heart with them; he trembled in his eagerness to know.

  She was now at the last row of benches, not five feet distant from him, where she stood a second, while she looked up into his face and smiled, lifting her hand in a little expressive gesture. Then she turned aside to the place where Ollie Chase sat, shame-stricken and stunned, beside her mother.

  The women who had been sitting near Ollie had withdrawn from her, as if she had become unclean with her confession. And now, as Alice approached, Ollie’s mother gave her a hard, resentful look, and put her arm about her daughter as if to protect her from any physical indignities which Alice might be bent on offering.

  Ollie shrank against her mother, her hair bright above her somber garb, as if it was the one spot in her where any of the sunshine of her past remained. Alice went to her with determined directness. She bent over her, and took her by the hand.

  “Thank you! You’re the bravest woman in the world!” she said.

  Ollie looked up, wonder and disbelief struggling against the pathetic hopelessness in her eyes. Alice bent lower. She kissed the young widow’s pale forehead.

  Joe was ashamed that he had forgotten Ollie. He saw tears come into Ollie’s eyes as she clung closer to Alice’s hand, and he heard the shocked gasping of women, and the grunts of men, and the stirring murmur of surprise which shook the crowd. He opened the little gate in the railing and went out.

  “You didn’t have to do that for me, Ollie,” said he, kindly; “I could have got on, somehow, without that.”

  “Both of you–” said Ollie, a sob shaking her breath; “it was for both of you!”

  There was a churchlike stillness around them. Colonel Price had advanced, and now stood near the little group, a look of understanding in his kind old face. Ollie mastered her sudden gust of weeping, and shook her disordered hair back from her forehead, a defiant light in her eyes.

  “I don’t care now, I don’t care what anybody says!” said she.

  Her mother glanced around with the fire of battle in her eyes. In that look she defied the public, and uttered her contempt for its valuation and opinion. Alice Price had lifted her crushed and broken daughter up. She had taken her by the hand, and she had kissed her, to show the world that she did not hold her as one defiled. Judge Maxwell and all of them had seen her do it. She had given Ollie absolution before all men.

  Ollie drew her cloak around her shoulders and rose to her feet.

  “Remember that; for both of you, for one as much as the other,” said she, looking into Alice’s eyes. “Come on, Mother; we’ll go home now.”

  Ollie walked out of the court-room with her head up, looking the world in the face. In place of the mark of the beast on her forehead, she was carrying the cool benediction of a virtuous kiss. Joe and Alice stood looking after her until she reached the door; even the most careless there waited her exit as if it was part of some solemn ceremony. When she had passed out of sight beyond the door, the crowd moved suddenly and noisily after her. For the public, the show was over.

  Alice looked up into Joe’s face. There was uncertainty in his eyes still, for he was no wiser than those in their generations before him who had failed to read a woman’s heart. Alice saw that cloud hovering before the sun of his felicity. She lifted her hands and gave them to him, as one restoring to its owner something that cannot be denied.

  Face to face for a moment they stood thus, hands clasped in hands. For them the world was empty of prying eyes, wondering minds, impertinent faces. For a moment they were alone.

  The jurors had come out of the box, and were following the crowd. Hammer was gathering up his books and papers, Judge Maxwell and the prosecuting attorney were talking with Mrs. Newbolt. The sheriff was waiting near the bar, as if he had some duty yet before him to discharge. A smile had come over Colonel Price’s face, where it spread like a benediction as Jo
e and Alice turned to enter the world again.

  “I want to shake hands with you, Joe,” said the sheriff, “and wish you good luck. I always knowed you was as innercent as a child.”

  Joe obliged him, and thanked him for his expression, but there were things in the past which were not so easily wiped from the memory–especially a chafed ring around his left wrist, where the sheriff’s iron had galled him when he had fretted against it during the tense moments of those past days.

  Sam Lucas offered Joe his hand.

  “No hard feeling, Joe, I hope?” said he.

  “Well, not in particular–oh, well, you were only doing your duty, as you saw it,” said Joe.

  “You could have saved the county a lot of money, and yourself and your friends a lot of trouble and anxiety, if you’d told us all about this thing at the beginning,” complained Lucas, with lingering severity.

  “As for that–” began Colonel Price.

  “You knew it, Miss Price,” Lucas cut in. “Why didn’t you make him tell?”

  “No,” said Alice, quietly, “I didn’t know, Mr. Lucas. I only believed in him. Besides that, there are some things that you can’t make a gentleman tell!”

  “Just so,” said Judge Maxwell, coming down from the bench with his books under his arm.

  “Bless your heart, honey,” said Mrs. Newbolt, touching Alice’s hair with gentle, almost reverent hand, “you knew him better than his old mother did!”

  Colonel Price bowed ceremoniously to Mrs. Newbolt.

  “I want you and Joe to come home with us for some refreshment,” said he, “after which the boy and I must have a long, long talk. Mr. Hammer, sir,” said he, giving that astonished lawyer his hand, “I beg the honor of shaking hands with a rising gentleman, sir!”