THE AWAKENING
An automobile speeding through the starry dark! No hesitant progress
through congested traffic, no frequent swerving for daylight wayfarers.
The city was far behind now--only the clear, well-nigh deserted road,
winding like a tremulous magenta ribbon through the swooping gloom that
seemed to shrink and cringe from the metal monster hurtling after its
golden halo through the eddying dust.
A practised hand was on the throttle and the yellow-lined face bent
over the wheel was shrewd and keen. There had been no supper for Bob
that night and no evening at Black Joe's billiard parlour, but the
chauffeur knew his master. "Go like the devil till I tell you to
stop," the other had said, and without the word from the moveless
figure on the rear seat, he would obey till the engine stopped or his
hand went numb on the wheel. Hamlets flashed by--huddles of flaring
street-lights--then shadow and blankness again. Now and then a hollow
rumbling marked a bridge, or a jovial, beckoning doorway betokened a
road-house. Ten, twenty, thirty miles. A turn of the wheel and the
car swept into a divergent highway. Another mile and again a turn--Bob
was shuttling back and forth now, fearful of an impossible distance
from home.
The man behind him sat as if graven in stone. At first, while his
senses instinctively resisted the intoxication, Harry had been
conscious only of blind movement, a frantic flight to escape the
unescapable. Yet his whole body was tense, his eyes never wavered, his
hand was as steady as his chauffeur's. He was sharply conscious of all
about him, every sense recording its message unerringly. He felt the
wind-flung dust, heard the chatter of the exhaust, grasped acutely at
each detail of sight and sound in the reeling panorama through which
they passed with such arrow-like swiftness, under a sky that was a
wild, blue field of silver flowers. Yet the governance of the mind,
the sole arena in which the intoxicant ravened and rioted, the logical
faculty to which sense-impression is but material, was astray. And at
length the intoxication had wholly conquered.
And with the acknowledged dominance of the sinister thing that held
him, the mental turmoil had swiftly stilled. There had come sudden
composure--a strange, appalling peace, in which was no appreciation of
place or time or fact, but yet a curious exaltation, a sensation of
seeing not through a glass darkly, but with a further mental vision
which knew no material bars.
Three hours, four hours--and still no sign. Bob stole a glance behind
him. "Wonder what's the matter?" he muttered. "He sure never did want
to go hell-bent-for-election like this before. Lucky I filled the tank
plumb full this morning. She's good for another forty mile, I reckon."
As he withdrew his eyes he became aware of a red light swinging down
into the road--a railway-crossing. He threw himself forward on the
gear and with a grinding roar the brakes took hold. Plunging and
shuddering, the car stopped dead, its forward lamps jingling against
the warning bar.
With the sudden stop Harry lurched forward. And, curiously, with the
abrupt cessation of motion and roar, the vast, vague distance through
which his mind had been shuttling, closed instantly up. The baleful
intoxication had lifted as it had come. He did not wake fully at once,
for the breaking of the spell left him in a strange confusion through
which he saw but dimly the outlines of the real present. He found
himself sitting dazed and shaken in his motor--staring at the broad
back of his chauffeur beyond which, an isolated point in the darkness
of the night, swung the angry red lantern of the crossing. He put a
hand to his forehead--what was he doing there?
It was coming back to him. He remembered the straining trial, the hour
in his inner office--with the little wall-cabinet! He saw the crowded
courtroom, saw himself standing impotent before the bar, saw the
despairing face of the man beside him, the puzzled countenances about
him, the dim lamps. He heard verdict and sentence. He saw himself
turn to gaze into the face of the girl across the court-room--knew the
swift rush of the motor, the blazing arc lights and that final stab of
realisation!
His lips tightened to shut back something like a groan, as there rushed
upon him a sense of horror, of disgust, of shame. The Harry Sevier he
had been--the Harry Sevier of good repute, of disdain for the
intemperate, of brilliant accomplishment and regular habit, was gazing
with horrified eyes at the Harry Sevier he had unwittingly become, the
slave of the spirit he had so long invoked, whose coarse debauch had
to-day betrayed his client, and sent an innocent man to the wretched
cell of a convict!
He spoke. "Bob, where are we?"
The chauffeur stole a quick glance behind him--there was relief in it.
"Penitentiary-Crossing, sir," he said. "There's the Black Maria." He
pointed to one side, where the gloomy vehicle, a wheeled ark with a
narrow barred window set in its rear, waited with its patient mules.
The train was at the crossing now and the rumble of the brakes swelled
to a vibrant screech, the long dotted line of dimly-lighted windows
shuddering to a stop right athwart the road. A train-man with a
lantern jumped down, followed by a couple of passengers. Harry opened
the door of the tonneau and suddenly conscious that he was stiff and
aching in every joint, achieved the ground and took a step toward the
train.
Two figures just then emerged from the glare. He saw that they were
linked together by a wrist and as the coat of one blew aside, the
lights of the motor glinted from a nickel star--the badge of a
deputy-sheriff. They had passed him, and the train was moving again to
the _chug-chug_ of the engine, when the officer turned back, biting the
end from a cigar.
"Could you give me a light?" he asked.
"Certainly." Sevier took a silver match-box from his pocket.
The other struck the match, hauling irritably at his lagging prisoner,
and the red light, flaring up, for an instant showed the two faces, the
sheriff's grim and tenacious, and the one beside it--a white, dogged
face, with red-rimmed eyes and a shock of sand-coloured hair.
Sevier shrank as though at a blow in the face. He drew a sharp breath,
for the sight pierced to the excoriate spot that lay like a live coal
in his soul. There before him stood his client of that day's trial, on
the last lap of his dismal journey, the man whom he, Harry Sevier, had
sent there! Back of this man of the law, with his gleaming star and
pocket revolver, he saw himself standing, the real mainspring of that
blatant enginery.
The flare of the match fell. "Well, good night to you," said the
deputy-sheriff.
"Hold on," said Harry. "Can a prisoner use money?"
"They're not supposed to, but I reckon money talks as loud in a
concrete cell as anywhere else."
Sevier had taken some crisp yellow-backs from his pocket and now he
held them out--to the jailbird. "Here!" he said. "Take this."
The other looked at the bills with a suddenly contorted face, then with
a whirl of his unfettered hand dashed them on the ground. "Keep your
money!" he snarled. "I'm a thief--that's what _I_ am now! When I want
money I'll steal it!"
The sheriff made an exclamation, and jerked viciously on the tethered
wrist. "Don't you mind, sir," he said. "You mean it well, but this is
an ugly one. Lord love you, they'll soon take that out of him over
there! Come along, you," he added to the other, pulling him toward the
Black Maria, "and if you open your face like that I'll give you what
for!"
Sevier stood an instant looking dully after them, then mechanically
picked up the fallen bills, fumblingly replaced them in his pocket, and
climbed into the motor. He felt his face suddenly hot. In those flung
words his judicial mind recognised the indictment. From the little
wall-cabinet in his inner-office had crept a thing of shame and
humiliation to himself. He saw this now suddenly swell and grow--as
did the vapour from the fisherman's cruse--to a blighting, tentacled
thing, reaching interminably into the future, holding in its coils a
human life of pain, of desperate warfare, of social outlawry.
He sat down on the leather cushions like one in a dream.
"Home now, Bob," he said, heavily.