THE JAILBIRD
To every man come portentous moments of decision so packed with fate
that all that his after life may hold of pain or joy, seen with the
clearer view of later knowledge, may well have hung upon the issue.
Harry's one greatest moment of crisis had been when he stood in the
doorway of Cameron Craig's house, with that midnight alarm pulsing
about him--when he had chosen the course that meant safety for Echo at
such bitter cost to himself. The moment when he confronted the blunt
fact of his nomination was wellnigh as significant.
Such a possibility had never occurred to him. He saw himself now,
first with bewilderment, then with passionate resentment, in a
predicament as unprecedented as it was unescapable. He had not even
had the option of declining the nomination. By now his name, as the
new party's choice, was darting over the clicking wires to the remotest
borders of the country. How could he accept it? He, who might at any
hour, for all he knew, be faced with a charge from which (if, indeed,
flight still lay open) he must flee ignominiously, like a thief in the
night--which, in the eyes of the law, he was! Yet how evade the thing
thus thrust upon him? After his speech, in which he had championed the
new cause so ardently, could he throw ridicule upon the organisation,
make its leaders--men whom he had known and respected all his
life--laughing-stocks, throw doubt upon his own intentions, and make
his action of to-day show forth before all as a flamboyant bid for
popular applause, the gallery-appeal of a pitiful _flaneur_ and
attitudinarian, who had no mind to link himself with an inevitable
defeat at the polls?
As Harry stood in the pleasant, lighted room, with Brent's pencilled
note in his hand, a strange thought obtruded itself to grow slowly over
his confused imaginings. Behind it all was there not the same wise
Intention whose outlines he had thought he distinguished in his bitter
prison experience? And was he, in faithless presumption, to deny that
over-rule, and vanish cavalierly into some sluggish back-current of
life? The same fate that had turned Paddy the Brick's pellet of lead
the single hair's-breadth that had saved him, perhaps, from the
scaffold, had rendered his enemy, at least for the present, incapable
of harming him. And this part of his problem belonged to the present.
Why had the cards so fallen, unless in that intricate Plan, it was
meant that he should now give his hand to this work? He had trusted
fate far--might he not trust it further? Though the party that had
called him to carry its standard into the fight was destined to
failure, it was working for the future, and some other campaign--long
after the worst that could befall had come to him--would bring its
principles success. He would have done his part!
So, for good or ill to himself, Harry made his momentous decision, and
as if it had been a signal, at the same instant there came the quick,
insistent ringing of the telephone on his desk.
The next few days were days of ungrudging labour on Harry's part of
conferences with the state leaders--for Brent's prophecy had been
fulfilled and Good-Government Clubs throughout the state had placed
their local machinery in the new party's control. These earlier
meetings were, for the most part, in Harry's own apartment, or in the
library of Midfields, since Judge Allen was chairman of the Committee
on Organisation. On none of these latter occasions had he seen Echo,
nor, to his relief, had he met her elsewhere. He gave himself no
relaxation, bending all the energies of his reawakened being to the
task of detail, and the mapping out of the campaign which he was
entering. Whatever his apprehension and trepidation, he had learned
his real weight in the hour of his great speech and the sense of power,
linked with extraordinary and tangible opportunity, thrilled and
dominated him.
There came an evening, however, after a day of more than usual
concentration, when he felt that he must relax. He had dined at the
hotel with some of the party's out-of-town lieutenants, but excused
himself early and chose to dismiss his motor and to walk home afoot,
craving the lightness and gaiety of the jostling streets and gleaming
windows.
Presently he found himself passing a theatre-front and remembered that
Brent had pressed him to make one of a box-party there that same
evening. At the time he had left the matter open, pleading the dinner
engagement, but now it occurred to him suddenly that an hour of lights
and music would be welcome. It was the intermission after the first
act and men were flocking into the doors, chatting and laughing. The
spirit of frivolity attracted him and he entered with the rest.
The orchestra was playing--a Bohemian medley of uneven harmonies and
wildly plaintive alternations, strung, as on a thread, on the
airily-fantastic _motif_ of Dvorak's _Humoresque_, and the pirouetting
music seemed to belong to the flippant and shallow yet alluring
interior, with its plenteous gold-leaf and dark blue draperies
embroidered in peacock-feathers--the breath of a life of laughter, of
careless amusement, of joy in the present. Harry felt his spirits lift
and lighten at the grateful slackening of tension which the _mise en
scene_ created, and he bowed and smiled easily when the audience
testified its recognition, as he followed the attendant along the side
wall, by a hushed hand-clapping which ran across the rows of seats.
With his hand parting the rear curtains of the box, however, he halted
irresolutely--its occupants were Mrs. Spottiswoode, Brent, Lawrence
Treadwell and Echo. For an instant resentment stirred in him; he
guessed that Brent, albeit with the best intentions in the world, had
planned this meeting. Then he squared his shoulders and entered. In
another moment he had greeted Mrs. Spottiswoode and was bowing over
Echo's hand.
The men had risen. "Here is the Candidate!" exclaimed Brent, laughing.
"Mrs. Spottiswoode was just about to make me a wager that you wouldn't
descend to such triviality."
Pretty Mrs. Spottiswoode smiled as she closed her fan. "If I had, I
shouldn't begrudge the loss," she said. "You've missed the first act,
Mr. Sevier, but then openings are always dull, aren't they?" Treadwell
shook hands with him with frank friendliness. Politically he belonged
to the party in power, but his liking for Harry was sincere and of
long-standing.
The lights in the house were fading and the orchestra had swung into a
soft and measured air. The rustle and chatter among the seats stilled:
the curtain was rising. After the few words of greeting, Harry dropped
into the vacant chair behind Echo's, in the rear of the enclosure. He
had a feeling that again a satiric chance had snatched the reins of
conduct from his hands. His unseeing gaze was set upon the crowded
tiers beneath, but he was conscious of nothing but that small,
delicately-shaped head like one in a Greek frieze, that clear-cut
profile softly tinged by the dim rose-lamps of the box, the clasped,
unringed hands, the lacy sweep of the pale evening-dress silhouetted
against the curtain. Beyond the range of his vision manikins came and
went upon the stage, speaking meaningless words. At the other side of
the box Mrs. Spottiswoode was whispering some humorous adventure to
Treadwell and Brent, whose heads were bent toward her. Everything else
seemed unreal and far-away, and he and Echo the only realities in a
chapter of banality.
He became conscious all at once that her head was turned toward him,
and as though by magnetic compulsion his own eyes looked into hers.
"I want to say something to you." The words were the merest whisper on
her parted lips, yet he heard. He drew his chair nearer till his bent
head was at her shoulder. "Yes," he said.
Her lips trembled, but she spoke in a clear undertone, audible only to
him, which faltered the merest trifle:
"I don't know whether--now--it makes any difference to you," she said.
"But I--I was not myself when I--wrote you that note, the day you--went
away. There was a reason why I--acted as I did. You--"
The low voice failed. There had been in the hesitant words failing
pride and shame, mingled with the love that had been so long denied--a
revelation which welled from the pure, outspoken honesty of heart that
compelled it, demanding, at all odds, so far as he was concerned,
openness and understanding. The shaken voice, the tremulous lips, the
moon-soft fire of her eyes and the faint scent of her clothing, all the
sweet suggestions of her presence were crying aloud to Harry, tempting
him with a vision of promise. What if she had failed him--then? What
if that courage he had dreamed, put to the touch, had shown but
cowardice, that love of him a secondary thing to her? She was what he
wanted--to yield himself to her arms as a swimmer to the sea! As much
as she loved any one--save herself--she loved him! Was not a half loaf
better than no bread? The icy barrier of reserve which he had reared
crumbled down, and he felt the thing he had tried to imprison leap up,
savage and not to be denied. His groping hand went out and touched her
arm.
"Echo!" he whispered hoarsely. "Echo--"
His voice died in his throat. Her hands in her lap held the theatrical
programme, and words in heavy black-letter--the title of the
piece--were staring up at him from the white paper--
THE JAILBIRD
In the shadow, he felt his limbs suddenly trembling. With a kind of
fascination his gaze, for the first time since his entrance, lifted to
the stage.
It was set as a long flagged corridor of vertical steel bars, into
which doors were let at regular intervals, and behind each door showed
a bare, forbidding room, furnished with two iron cots, one above the
other, and two wooden stools. As he gazed in consternation, a bell
clangored and along the corridor came tramping a line of men clad in
dingy stripes, pallid face close to shabby shoulder, one knee rising
and falling to the damnable rhythm of the prison lock-step.
Harry felt an algid chill creep over him. He sat upright, his whole
body rigid, each detail of the significant picture stamping itself upon
his quivering perception. Midway of the line a turnkey unlocked a door
in the barred wall and two links of the human chain detached themselves
and entered--one stooped and crafty and cringing; the other clean-cut
and erect with no stamp of vice upon his face. The clanging bolt shot
home, the line moved off. Then, in the silence of the house the comely
figure leaned against the bars, and John Stark's voice--or was it his,
Harry Sevier's?--cried in broken agony:
"And I am innocent--innocent!"
As the curtain descended on the act, amid a crash of orchestral music,
Mrs. Spottiswoode turned to Harry with a little shrug.
"It _is_ moving, really, isn't it? But how _terribly_ unnatural! Of
course in real life nothing like that could happen to an innocent man.
What do you think, Mr. Treadwell?"
But Treadwell did not answer at once. He had turned in surprise to the
rear of the box, where a youth in a grey silver-buttoned uniform had
parted the curtains. The messenger was looking at Brent, who rose and
went to him.
"I beg pardon, sir," the boy said in a low voice, "but they told me at
the box-office you were here. Will you please come over to the club?
Something is the matter. Perhaps Mr. Sevier will come too."
Brent looked at him--there was agitation in the youthful face. He
turned.
"Will you ladies excuse Sevier and me for a few minutes?" he said. "I
dare say we shall be back before the curtain goes up again."
At the words Harry had risen also, with a quick relief at this summons,
whatever it was, that offered the instant escape. Though his bow took
in Echo, he did not look at her, as turning, he followed Brent quickly
from the box.