The Bondboy Page 33

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  CHAPTER XXII

  A SUMMONS OF THE NIGHT

  There was a voice of moaning abroad in the night. It sounded as the rain swept through the rocking trees and bent its spears against Judge Maxwell’s study windows; it sighed in his chimney like an old man turning the ashes of spent dreams. It was an unkind night for one to be abroad, for the rain seemed as penetrating as sorrow. Few passed upon the street beneath the judge’s windows where his dim light glowed.

  Now and then the sound of hoofs and wheels rose above the wail of the storm, sharp for a moment as it passed, quickly dimmed, quickly lost. It was a night to be beneath one’s own roof, beside one’s own fire, feeling the thankfulness for such plain comforts which one passes over in the sunny days.

  Judge Maxwell had a fire of hickory wood in his chimney, and a tall, dark bottle on the small stand at his elbow. On the long table at his other hand stood his shaded lamp, pouring its concentrated beams upon his papers and books, leaving the corners of the room in shadows. The judge sat with his glass in his hand, studying the fire.

  All day, since the adjournment of court, the remarkable termination of and disclosures in the case of State against Newbolt had been flowing through his mind; all day, all evening, the white, strong face of the defendant youth had stood before his eyes. He could not turn from it, nor forget the appeal of those grave, gray eyes.

  Never before, in his long and honorable life, had the judge been moved by a case as this had moved him. There was nothing in all his rich experience to equal it. In all his reading––

  “Hum-m-m,” said the judge, reflectively, remembering. He rose slowly and went to the bookcase nearest the fire. He took down a leather-bound volume and returned to his chair, where he sat with his legs crossed, supporting the heavy book upon his knee. Reflectively he turned the pages, reflectively he read, shaking his head when he had done.

  “No, it is not a parallel,” said he. “The matter involved has only a remote similitude. I do not believe the annals of jurisprudence contain another case to compare with that of our own Joe Newbolt.”

  The judge put the volume back in its place, pausing at the table as he returned to his chair to turn down the flame of the lamp. It was too bright for the judge’s mood; it was inharmonious with the penitential night. Almost like a voice, strident and in discord above the sobbing music of an orchestra, thought the judge. The firelight was better for a mood such as his.

  One can see farther back by the soft glow of wood coals, leaning over and looking into them, than under the gleam of the strongest lamp. Judge Maxwell had a long vista behind him to review, and it seemed to him that night that it was a picture with more shadow than gleam. This day’s events had set him upon the train of retrospection, of moody thought.

  He had seen that boy, Joe Newbolt, leap out of the obscurity of his life into the place of heroes, as he would have had his own son do, if he could have kept him by his side and fashioned his life. But that boy was gone; long years ago he had left him, and none had come after him to stand in his place. His little, worn books, which he used to sprawl upon the floor and read, were treasured there on their sacred shelf behind the bookcase glass. The light had failed out of the eyes which had found wonders in them, more than thirty years ago.

  The lad’s mother had followed him; nobody remained to the judge now out of those days of his struggle and slow-mounting hope, save old Hiram, his negro man, a family servitor since the times of slavery, and he was trembling on the limb to fall.

  Yes, that was the way that he would have had his own boy stand, true to a trust, faithful in his honor, even under the beam of the gallows-tree; stand as that lad Joe Newbolt had stood, unschooled though he was in everything but that deep sense of duty devolving on one born free. Such nobility was the peculiar birthright of the true American.

  Scarcely behind Joe Newbolt stood that hitherto weak woman, Ollie Chase. It called for courage to do what she had done. She had only to keep her peace, and hide whatever pity she felt and pain she suffered on account of the lad who stood ready to sacrifice his life for her, to proceed upon her way clean in the eyes of men. She must have endured the tortures of hidden fires through those weeks of uncertainty and suspense, thought he.

  Yes, Ollie Chase had her own nobility; the laurel was due her poor, smirched brow, just as much as it was to Joe Newbolt’s lofty forehead. Contrition doubtless played its part in driving her to open confession, and the pain of concealment must have been hard to bear. But there was an underlying nobility in that woman’s heart which had urged her on stronger than all. It is a spark in the breast of even the most debased, thought the judge, which abnegation and sacrifice often kindle into a beautiful flame.

  And there was Alice Price, with her fine intuition and sublime faith. What a white soul that strong young woman had, said he; what a beautiful and spotless heart. In that kiss which she had stooped to press on the young widow’s forehead she had wiped away the difference which Ollie’s sin had set between her and other women. It was an act of generosity without ostentation, which he doubted whether Alice Price herself was aware of in its farthest significance. It was the spontaneous act of womanly sympathy and unconscious charity.

  What Ollie Chase had said to them as they stood before her, Judge Maxwell did not know, but what was written in their young faces as they turned from watching her go, the whole world might have read–if it had been as watchful and wise as he. What a fitting mate she was for that young lion, Joe Newbolt, thought the judge; such a mate, indeed, as he would have chosen for his own son if God had seen fit to give him that transcendent joy.

  Judge Maxwell found himself greatly concerned about Joe Newbolt’s future. He wondered what he would make of it if left to go about it in his own way; what he would make of it if properly armed and encouraged. He followed that speculation a long way down the future, building dimly, but pleasantly, in his dream.

  A ring sounded at the front door.

  Judge Maxwell did not even withdraw his eyes from the fire. Some lawyer over in one of the other two counties embraced in that circuit telegraphing to ask some favor of delay, or favor of something else. To ask a favor, certainly; lawyers never telegraphed to confer favors. Old Hiram, dozing by the kitchen stove, would hear.

  Presently old Hiram’s shuffling feet sounded along the hall outside Judge Maxwell’s study door. The outer door opened and closed. Old Hiram came into the judge’s room, a candle in his hand.

  “There’s a man wishin’ to see you, judge, sah,” he announced.

  Judge Maxwell started from his reverie. In the minute that had passed between the ring at the door and the entry of Hiram, he had put the visitor out of his head.

  “A gentleman to see me, Hiram? Who is it?”

  “No, sah; I don’t think he’s ’zactly a gentleman, sah. I don’t know who he is; he nevah give me no card, sah, but he’s moughty sploshed and blustery lookin’.”

  “Well–” the judge rose, halting his speech as if thinking of one thing and speaking of another–“fetch him in here, Hiram.”

  “He’s drippin’ and drappin’ like a leaky pail, sah,” said Hiram, shaking his cottony old head.

  “No matter; he’ll do no harm, Hiram.”

  Hiram brought the visitor in. The judge advanced to meet him.

  The stranger’s rubber coat glistened in the light, and the hat that he carried in his hand trickled a little stream on the carpet as he crossed the room. Old Hiram lingered at the door, holding his candle aloft.

  The stranger stopped midway between Judge Maxwell and the door, as if uncertain of his welcome, or conscious just at that moment of his drenched and dripping state. He was a tall man and sparely built, and his light-colored wet hair lay in little ringlets against his temples. His mustache was short and stubby. His garments were splashed with mud, as if he had come a long distance over rough roads. There was a haggard and harried look in the man’s eyes; he seemed at the highest pitch of nervous tension. His lips
were set in a grim line, as if he struggled to hold something from utterance. His eyes were wide and wild.

  “Judge Maxwell,” he began, looking around him from side to side in quick starts, “I must apologize to you for coming into your house in this condition, and for this late call. But I’m here on important business; I ask you to give me a few minutes of your time alone.”

  The judge nodded to Hiram, who closed the door after him.

  “Take off that wet coat–give me your hat, and sit here,” said the judge, pulling a chair around to the fire.

  The visitor drew off his rubber garment.

  “Thank you, sir,” said he. “My name is Morgan, and I’ve come over hell’s highway, as the man said, to get to Shelbyville tonight.”

  “Not Curtis Morgan?” said Judge Maxwell, lifting his eyes in startled surprise, staying the stream of liquor that he was decanting into a glass.

  “Yes. You’ve heard my name before tonight, I see,” the visitor said.

  “Just so,” replied the judge, in his studious way. “Drink this, unless you have scruples?”

  “It looks to me like a life-preserver to a drowning man,” said Morgan, with a glimmer of his every-day facetiousness. He drained the glass; the judge motioned for him to sit down. Morgan did so, and stretched his wet feet to the fire.

  “I’ve got a story to tell you, Judge Maxwell,” said he, again casting his quick, almost fearful look around, “that will sound to you, maybe, like a wild-eyed dream. But I want to tell you right now, it ain’t no dream–not by a million miles! I wish it was,” he added, with a serious twist of the head.

  “Go on,” said the judge.

  “I’ve hurried here, Judge Maxwell, to do what I can in the name of justice and humanity,” Morgan said. “That boy, Joe Newbolt, on trial here before you for the murder of old man Chase, is innocent. That boy is telling the truth, Judge, and I’ll stake my neck on that. I’ve got a story to tell you that will clear up all he’s holding back, and I’ll tell it, if I swing for it!”

  Morgan was greatly agitated. He stopped there, looking earnestly into the judge’s face.

  “Why have you waited so long?” asked the judge, sternly.

  Morgan leaned over, clutching at the judge’s arm.

  “Am I too late–is it over–have they convicted him?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s over,” nodded the judge, studying Morgan’s face narrowly.

  “Merciful heavens!” said Morgan, springing to his feet, looking around for his coat and hat. “We must stop this thing before it’s too late, Judge–I tell you we must stop it! Isn’t there some way–have they convicted Joe?”

  “Sit down, Morgan, and calm yourself. Hold your feet out to the blaze and dry them,” the judge admonished, kindly.

  “What’s happened?” asked Morgan, wildly, not heeding the command.

  “You shall hear it all in time,” promised the judge. “Sit down here and tell me what you’ve been doing all these weeks. Where have you been?”

  “Judge, I’ve been over in Saint Joe selling books,” said Morgan, “and I’ll tell you the truth, Judge, I never intended to come back here.” He turned and faced the judge, leaning forward earnestly, his face white. He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “But I had to come back–I was sent back by–by a voice!”

  “Just so,” nodded Judge Maxwell.

  “You may think it’s a pipe-dream, Judge, but it ain’t. It’s the solemn truth, if I ever told it in my life. I intended to let Joe Newbolt go on and carry what he’d picked up, and then when he was out of the way in the pen, or worse, maybe, I intended to hunt Ollie up and marry her. I didn’t want that business that Joe Newbolt’s been keeping back let out on her, don’t you see, Judge? It concerns her and me, Judge; it ain’t the kind of a story a man’s folks would want told around about his wife, you understand?”

  The judge nodded.

  “All right,” said Morgan, wiping his forehead, which was beaded with sweat, “Last night along about ten o’clock I was in my room reading the account in the paper of how Joe had refused on the stand yesterday to tell anything, and how a young woman had stood up in the court-room and backed him up and encouraged him in his stand. I was reading along comfortable and all right, when I seemed to hear somebody call me by my name.

  “I tell you I seemed to hear it, for there wasn’t a soul in that room but myself, Judge. But that voice seemed to sound as close to my ear as if it come out of a telephone. And it was a woman’s voice, too, believe me or not, Judge!”

  “Yes?” said the judge, encouragingly, still studying Morgan’s face, curiously.

  “Yes, sir. She repeated my name, ‘Curtis Morgan,’ just that way. And then that voice seemed to say to me, ‘Come to Shelbyville; start now, start now!’

  “Say, I got out of my chair, all in a cold sweat, for I thought it was a call, and I was slated to pass in my checks right there. I looked under everything, back of everything in that room, and opened the door and took a dive down the hall, thinkin’ maybe some swift guy was tryin’ to put one over. Nobody there. As empty, Judge, I tell you, as the pa’m of my hand! But it’s no stall about that voice. I heard it, as plain as I ever heard my mother call me, or the teacher speak to me in school.

  “I stood there holding onto the back of my chair, my legs as weak under me as if I’d stayed in swimmin’ too long. I didn’t think anything about going to Shelbyville, or anywhere else, but hell, I guess, for a minute or two. I tell you, Judge, I thought it was a call!”

  Morgan was sweating again in the recollection of that terrible experience. He wiped his face, and looked around the room, listened as the rain splashed against the window, and the wind bent the branches of the great trees beside the wall.

  “Well?” said Judge Maxwell, leaning forward in his turn, waiting for Morgan’s next word.

  “I tell you, Judge, I kept hearing that thing in my ear that way, every little while, till I threw some things in my grip and started for the depot. There wasn’t any train out last night that’d fetch me within fifty miles of here. I went back to my room and went to bed. But it didn’t let up on me. Off and on, all night, just about the time I’d doze off a little, I’d seem to hear that voice. I went to the depot this morning, and caught the eight o’clock train out. I’d ’a’ made it in here at two this afternoon if it hadn’t been for a washout between here and the junction that put the trains on this branch out of service.

  “I took a rig and I started to drive over. I got caught in the rain and lost the road. I’ve been miles out of my way, and used up three horses, but I was bound to come. And I’m here to take my medicine.”

  “I see,” said the judge. “Well, Morgan, I think it was the voice of conscience that you heard, but you’re no more to blame than any of us, I suppose, because you failed to recognize it. Few of us pay enough attention to it to let it bother us that way.”

  “Believe me or not, it wasn’t any pipe-dream!” said Morgan, so earnestly that the flippancy of his slangy speech did not seem out of place. “It was a woman’s voice, but it wasn’t the voice of any woman in this world!”

  “It’s a strange experience,” said the judge.

  “You can call it that!” shuddered Morgan, expressive of the inadequacy of the words. “Anyhow, I don’t want to hear it again, and I’m here to take my medicine, and go to the pen if I’ve got to, Judge.”

  Judge Maxwell put out his hand, impatiently.

  “Don’t try to make yourself out a martyr, Morgan,” said he. “You knew–and you know–very well that you hadn’t done anything for which you could be punished, at least not by a prison sentence.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Morgan, twisting his head argumentatively, as if to imply that there was more behind his villainy than the judge supposed, “but I thought when a feller got to foolin’ with another man’s wife––”

  “Oh, pshaw!” cut in the judge. “You’re thinking of it as it should be, not as it is. The thing that you’re guilty of, l
et me tell you for your future guidance and peace, is only a misdemeanor in this state, not a felony. In a case like this it ought to be a capital offense. You’ve shown that there’s something in you by coming back to take your medicine, as you say, and voice or no voice, Morgan, I’m going to give you credit for that.”

  “If the devil ever rode a man!” said Morgan.

  “No, it was far from that,” reproved the judge.

  “It got me goin’, Judge,” said Morgan, scaring up a little jerky laugh, “and it got me goin’ right! It stuck to me till I got on that train and headed for this town, and I’ll hear the ring of it in my ear to my last–what’s that?”

  Morgan started to his feet, pale and shaking.

  “It was the wind,” said the judge.

  “Well, I’m here, anyhow, and I came fast as I could,” said Morgan, appealingly. “Do you think it’ll stick to me, and keep it up?”

  “Why should it?” said the judge. “You’ve done your duty, even though whipped to it.”

  “If the devil ever whipped a man!” breathed Morgan, “I’m that man.”

  Judge Maxwell had doubted the man’s sanity at first, when he began to talk about the voice. Now he only marveled at this thing, so elusive of all human science to explain, or human philosophy to define. He recalled an experience of a friend–one who had been for many years court stenographer–who, in a distant city, had been impelled to seize his pencil on a certain night, and write a message which he seemed to hear plainly dictated into his ear by one in Shelbyville. As soon as the post could carry a message to the man whose voice the stenographer had heard, he was asked about the telepathic communication. He at once mailed to the man who had taken it down, more than two thousand miles away, the identical message, word for word. It had been an experiment, he said.

  Perhaps something like that had occurred in Morgan’s case, or perhaps the man merely had dreamed, a recurring dream such as everybody has experienced, and the strong impression of his vision had haunted him, and driven him to the act. And perhaps someone of vigorous intellect and strong will had commanded him. Perhaps–no matter. It was done.