THE PRISONER
Harry King did not at once consult an attorney, for Milton Hibbard,
the only one he knew or cared to call upon for his defense, was an old
friend of the Elder's and had been retained by him to assist the
district attorney at the trial. The other two lawyers in Leauvite, one
of whom was the district attorney himself, were strangers to him.
Twice he sent messages to the Elder after his return, begging him to
come to him, never dreaming that they could be unheeded, but to the
second only was any reply sent, and then it was but a cursory line.
"Legal steps will be taken to secure justice for you, whoever you
are."
To his friends he sent no messages. Their sympathy could only mean
sorrow for them if they believed in him, and hurt to his own soul if
they distrusted him, and he suffered enough. So he lay there in the
clean, bare cell, and was glad that it was clean and held no traces of
former occupants. The walls smelled of lime in their freshly plastered
surfaces, and the floor had the pleasant odor of new pine.
His life passed in review before him from boyhood up. It had been a
happy life until the tragedy brought into it by his own anger and
violence, but since that time it had been one long nightmare of
remorse, heightened by fear, until he had met Amalia, and after that
it had been one unremitting strife between love and duty--delight in
her mind, in her touch, in her every movement, and in his own soul
despair unfathomable. Now at last it was to end in public exposure,
imprisonment, disgrace. A peculiar apathy of peace seemed to envelop
him. There was no longer hope to entice, no further struggle to be
waged against the terror of fear, or the joy of love, or the horror of
remorse; all seemed gone from him, even to the vague interest in
things transpiring in the world.
He had only a puzzled feeling concerning his arrest. Things had not
proceeded as he had planned. If the Elder would but come to him, all
would be right. He tried to analyze his feelings, and the thought that
possessed him most was wonder at the strange vacuity of the condition
of emotionlessness. Was it that he had so suffered that he was no
longer capable of feeling? What was feeling? What was emotion: and
life without either emotion, or feeling, or caring to feel,--what
would it be?
Valueless.--Empty space. Nothing left but bodily hunger, bodily
thirst, bodily weariness. A lifetime, for his years were not yet half
spent,--a lifetime at Waupun, and work for the body, but vacuity for
the mind--maybe--sometimes--memories. Even thinking thus he seemed to
have lost the power to feel sadness.
Confusion reigned within him, and yet he found himself powerless to
correlate his thoughts or suggest reasons for the strange happenings
of the last few days. It seemed to him that he was in a dream wherein
reason played no part. In the indictment he was arraigned for the
murder of Peter Craigmile, Jr.,--as Richard Kildene,--and yet he had
seen his cousin lying dead before him, during all the years that had
passed since he had fled from that sight. In battle he had seen men
clubbed with the butt end of a musket fall dead with wounded temples,
even as he had seen his cousin--stark--inert--lifeless. He had felt
the strange, insane rage to kill that he had seen in others and
marveled at. And now, after he had felt and done it, he was arrested
as the man he had slain.
All the morning he paced his cell and tried to force his thoughts to
work out the solution, but none presented itself. Was he the victim of
some strange form of insanity that caused him to lose his identity and
believe himself another man? Drunken men he had seen under the
delusion that all the rest of the world were drunken and they alone
sober. Oh, madness, madness! At least he was sane and knew himself,
and this was a confusion brought about by those who had undertaken his
arrest. He would wait for the Elder to come, and in the meantime live
in his memories, thinking of Amalia, and so awaken in himself one
living emotion, sacred and truly sane. In the sweetness of such
thinking alone he seemed to live.
He drew the little ivory crucifix from his bosom and looked at it.
"The Christ who bore our sins and griefs"--and again Amalia's words
came to him. "If they keep you forever in the prison, still forever
are you free." In snatches her words repeated themselves over in his
mind as he gazed. "If you have the Christ in your heart--so are you
high--lifted above the sin." "If I see you no more here, in Paradise
yet will I see you, and there it will be joy--great--joy; for it is
the love that is all of life, and all of eternity, and lives--lives."
Bertrand Ballard and his wife and daughter stood in the small room
opening off from the corridor that led to the rear of the courthouse
where was the jail, waiting for the jailer to bring his keys from his
office, and, waiting thus, Betty turned her eyes beseechingly on her
father, and for the first time since her talk with her mother in the
studio, opened her lips to speak to him. She was very pale, but she
did not tremble, and her voice had the quality of determination.
Bertrand had yielded the point and had taken her to the jail against
his own judgment, taking Mary with him to forestall the chance of
Betty's seeing the young man alone. "Surely," he thought, "she will
not ask to have her mother excluded from the interview."
"I don't want any one--not even you--or--or--mother, to go in with
me."
"My child, be wise--and be guided."
"Yes, father,--but I want to go in alone." She slipped her hand in her
mother's, but still looked in her father's eyes. "I must go in alone,
father. You don't understand--but mother does."
"This young man may be an impostor. It is almost unmaidenly for you to
wish to go in there alone. Mary--"
But Mary hesitated and trusted to her daughter's intuition. "Betty,
explain yourself," was all she said.
"Suppose it was father--or you thought it might be father--and a
terrible thing were hanging over him and you had not seen him for all
this time--and he were in there, and I were you--wouldn't you ask to
see him first alone? Would you stop for one moment to think about
being proper? What do I care! If he is an impostor, I shall know it.
In one moment I shall know it. I--I--just want to see him alone. It
is because he has suffered so long--that is why he has come like
this--if--they aren't accusing him wrongfully, and I--he will tell me
the truth. If he is Richard, I would know it if I came in and stood
beside him blindfolded. I will call you in a moment. Stand by the
door, and let me see him alone."
The jailer returned, alert and important, shaking the keys in his
hand. "This way, please."
In the moment's pause of unlocking, Betty again turned upon her
father, her eyes glowing in the dim light of the corridor with wide,
sorrowful gaze, large and irresistibly earnest. Bertrand glanced from
her to his wife, who slightly nodded her head. Then he said to the
surprised jailer: "We will wait here. My daughter may be able to
recognize him. Call us quickly, dear, if you have reason to change
your mind." The heavy door was closed behind her, and the key turned
in the lock.
Harry King loomed large and tall in the small room, standing with his
back to the door and his face lifted to the small window, where he
could see a patch of the blue sky and white, scudding clouds. For the
moment his spirit was not in that cell. It was free and on top of a
mountain, looking into the clear eyes of a woman who loved him. He was
so rapt in his vision that he did not hear the grating of the key in
the lock, and Betty stood abashed, with her back to the door, feeling
that she was gazing on a stranger. Relieved against the square of
light, his hair looked darker than she remembered Peter's ever to have
been,--as dark as Richard's, but that rough, neglected beard,--also
dark,--and the tanned skin, did not bring either young man to her
mind.
The pause was but for a moment, when he became aware that he was not
alone and turned and saw her there.
"Betty! oh, Betty! You have come to help me." He walked toward her
slowly, hardly believing his eyes, and held out both hands.
"If--I--can. Who are you?" She took his hands in hers and walked
around him, turning his face to the light. Her breath came and went
quickly, and a round red spot now burned on one of her cheeks, and her
face seemed to be only two great, pathetic eyes.
"Do I need to tell you, Betty? Once we thought we loved each other.
Did we, Betty?"
"I don't--don't--know--Peter! Oh, Peter! Oh, you are alive! Peter!
Richard didn't kill you!" She did not cry out, but spoke the words
with a low intensity that thrilled him, and then she threw her arms
about his neck and burst into tears. "He didn't do it! You are alive!
Peter, he didn't kill you! I knew he didn't do it. They all thought
he did, and--and--your father--he has almost broken his bank
just--just--hunting for Richard--to--to--have him hung--and oh!
Peter, I have lived in horror,--for--fear he w--w--w--would, and--"
"He never could, Betty. I have come home to atone. I have come home to
give myself up. I killed Richard--my cousin--my best friend. I struck
him in hate and saw him lying dead: all the time they were hunting him
it was I they should have hunted. I can't understand it. Did they take
his dead body for mine--or--how was it they did not know he was struck
down and murdered? They must have taken his body for mine--or--he
must have fallen over--but he didn't, for I saw him lying dead as I
had struck him. All these years the eye of vengeance has been upon me,
and my crime has haunted me. I have seen him lying so--dead. God!
God!"
Betty still clung to him and sobbed incoherently. "No, no, Peter, it
was you who were drowned--they found all your things and saw where you
had been pushed over, and--but you weren't drowned! They only thought
it--they believed it--"
He put his hand to his head as if to brush away the confusion which
staggered him. "Yes, Richard lay dead--and they found him,--but why
did they hunt for him? And I--I--living--why didn't they hunt me,--and
he, dead and lying there--why did they hunt him? But my father would
believe the worst of him rather than to see himself disgraced in his
son. Don't cry, little Betty, don't cry. You've had too much to bear.
Sit here beside me and I'll tell you all about it. That's why I came
back."
"B--b--ut if you weren't drowned, why--why didn't you come home and
say so? Didn't you ever see the papers and how they were hunting
Richard all over the world? I knew you were dead, because I knew you
never would be so cruel as to leave every one in doubt and your father
in sorrow--just because he had quarreled with you. It might have
killed your mother--if the Elder had let her know."
"I can't tell you all my reasons, Betty; mostly they were coward's
reasons. I did my best to leave evidence that I had been pushed over
the bluff, because it seemed the only way to hide myself. I did my
best to make them think me dead, and never thought any one could be
harmed by it, because I knew him to be dead; so I just thought we
would both be dead so far as the world would know,--and as for you,
dear,--I learned on that fatal night that you did not love me--and
that was another coward's reason why I wished to be dead to you all."
He began pacing the room, and Betty sat on the edge of the narrow jail
bedstead and watched him with tearful eyes. "It was true, Betty? You
did not really love me?"
"Peter! Didn't you ever see the papers? Didn't you ever know all about
the search for you and how he disappeared, too? Oh, Peter! And it was
supposed he killed you and pushed you over the bluff and then ran
away. Oh, Peter! But it was kept out of the home paper by the Elder so
your mother should not know--and Peter--didn't you know Richard
lived?"
"Lived? lived?" He lifted his clasped hands above his head, and they
trembled. "Lived? Betty, say it again!"
"Yes, Peter. I saw him and I know--"
"Oh, God, make me know it. Make me understand." He fell on his knees
beside her and hid his face in the scant jail bedding, and his frame
shook with dry sobs. "I was a coward. I told you that. I--I thought
myself a murderer, and all this time my terrible thought has driven
me--Lived? I never killed him? God! Betty, say it again."
Betty sat still for a moment, shaken at first with a feeling of
resentment that he had made them all suffer so, and Richard most of
all. Then she was overwhelmed with pity for him, and with a glad
tenderness. It was all over. The sorrow had been real, but it had all
been needless. She placed her hand on his head, then knelt beside him
and put her arm about his neck and drew his head to her bosom,
motherwise, for the deep mother heart in her was awakened, and thus
she told him all the story, and how Richard had come to her, broken
and repentant, and what had been said between them. When they rose
from their knees, it was as if they had been praying and at the same
time giving thanks.
"And you thought they would find him lying there dead and know you had
killed him and hunt you down for a murderer?"
"Yes."
"Poor Peter! So you pushed that great stone out of the edge of the
bluff into the river to make them think you had fallen over and
drowned--and threw your things down, too, to make it seem as if you
both were dead."
"Yes."
"Oh, Peter! What a terrible mistake! How you must have suffered!"
"Yes, as cowards suffer."
They stood for a moment with clasped hands, looking into each other's
eyes. "Then it was true what Richard told me? You did not love me,
Betty?" He had grown calmer, and he spoke very tenderly. "We must have
all the truth now and conceal nothing."
"Not quite--true. I--I--thought I did. You were so handsome! I was
only a child then--and I thought I loved you--or that I ought to--for
any girl would--I was so romantic in those days--and you had been
wounded--and it was like a romance--"
"And then?"
"And then Richard came, and I knew in one instant that I had done
wrong--and that I loved him--and oh, I felt myself so wicked."
"No, Betty, dear. It was all--"
"It was not fair to you. I would have been true to you, Peter; you
would have never known--but after Richard came and told me he had
killed you,--I felt as if I had killed you, too. I did like you,
Peter. I did! I will do whatever is right."
"Then it was not in vain--that we have all suffered. We have been
saved from doing each other wrong. Everything will come right now. All
that is needed is for father to hear what you have told me, and he
will come and take me out of here--Where is Richard?"
"No one knows."
"Not even you, Betty?"
"No; he has dropped out of the world as completely as you did."
"Well, it will be all right, anyway. Father will withdraw his charge
and--did you say his bank was going to pieces? He must have help. I
can help him. You can help him, Betty."
"How?"
Then Peter told Betty how he had found Richard's father in his
mountain retreat and that she must write to him. "If there is any
danger of the bank's going, write for me to Larry Kildene. Father
never would appeal to him if he lost everything in the world, so we
must do it. As soon as I am out of here we can save him." Already he
felt himself a new man, and spoke hopefully and cheerfully. He little
knew the struggle still before him.
"Peter, father and mother are out there in the corridor waiting. I
was to call them. I made them let me come in alone."
"Oh, call them, call them!"
"I don't think they will know you as I did, with that great beard on
your face. We'll see."
When Bertrand and Mary entered, they stood for a moment aghast, seeing
little likeness to either of the young men in the developed and
bronzed specimen of manhood before them. But they greeted him warmly,
eager to find him Peter, and in their manner he missed nothing of
their old-time kindliness.
"You are greatly changed, Peter Junior. You look more like Richard
Kildene than you ever did before in your life," said Mary.
"Yes, but when we see Richard, we may find that a change has taken
place in him also, and they will stand in their own shoes hereafter."
"Since the burden has been lifted from my soul and I know that he lives,
I could sing and shout aloud here in this cell. Imprisonment--even
death--means nothing to me now. All will come right before we know it."
"That is just the way Richard would act and speak. No wonder you have
been taken for him!" said Bertrand.
"Yes, he was always more buoyant than I. Maybe we have both changed,
but I hope he has not. I loved my friend."
As they walked home together Mary Ballard said, "Now, Peter ought to
be released right away."
"Certainly he will be as soon as the Elder realizes the truth."
"How he has changed, though! His face shows the mark of sorrow. Those
drooping, sensitive lines about his mouth--they were never there
before, and they are the lines of suffering. They touched my heart. I
wish Hester were at home. She ought to be written to. I'll do it as
soon as I get home."
"Peter is handsomer than he was, in spite of the lines, and, as you
say, he does look more like his cousin than he used to--because of
them, I think. Richard always had a debonair way with him, but he had
that little, sensitive droop to the lips--not so marked as Peter's is
now--but you remember, Mary--like his mother's."
"Oh, mother, don't you think Richard could be found?" Betty's voice
trailed sorrowfully over the words. She was thinking how he had
suffered all this time, and wishing her heart could reach out to him
and call him back to her.
"He must be, dear, if he lives."
"Oh, yes. He'll be found. It can be published that Peter Junior has
returned, and that will bring him after a while. Peter's physique
seems to have changed as well as his face. Did you notice that
backward swing of the shoulders, so like his cousin's, when he said,
'I could sing and shout here in this cell'? And the way he lifted his
head and smiled? That beard is a horrible disguise. I must send a
barber to him. He must be himself again."
"Oh, yes, do. He stands so straight and steps so easily. His lameness
seems to have quite gone," said Mary, joyously,--but at that, Bertrand
paused in his walk and looked at her, then glancing at Betty walking
slowly on before, he laid his finger to his lips and took his wife's
arm, and they said no more until they reached home and Betty was in
her room.
"I simply can't think it, Bertrand. I see Peter in him. It is Peter.
Of course he's like Richard. They were always alike, and that makes
him all the more Peter. No other man would have that likeness, and it
goes to show that he is Peter."
"My dear, unless the Elder sees him as we see him, the thing will have
to be tried out in the courts."
"Unless we can find Richard. Hester ought to be here. She could set
them right in a moment. Trust a mother to know her own boy. I'll write
her immediately. I'll--"
"But you have no authority, Mary."
"No authority? She is my friend. I have a right to do my duty by her,
and I can so put it that it will not be such a shock to her as it
inevitably will be if matters go wrong, or Peter should be kept in
prison for lack of evidence--or for too much evidence. She'll have to
know sooner or later."
Bertrand said no more against this, for was not Mary often quite
right? "I'll see to it that he has a barber, and try to persuade the
Elder to see him. That may settle it without any trouble. If not, I
must see that he has a good lawyer to help in his defense."
"If that savage old man remains stubborn, Hester must be here."
"If the thing goes to a trial, Betty will have to appear against
him."
"Well, it mustn't go to a trial, that's all."
That night two letters went out from Leauvite, one to Hester Craigmile
at Aberdeen, Scotland, and one to the other end of the earth, where
Larry Kildene waited for news of Harry King, there on the mountain
top. On the first of each month Larry rode down to the nearest point
where letters could be sent, making a three days' trip on horseback.
His first trip brought nothing, because Harry had not sent his first
letter in time to reach the station before Larry was well on his way
back up the mountain. He would not delay his return, for fear of
leaving the two women too long alone.
After Harry's departure, Madam Manovska had grown restless, and once
had wandered so far away as to cause them great alarm and a long
search, when she was found, sitting close to the fall, apparently too
weak and too dazed to move. This had so awakened Amalia's fears that
she never allowed her mother to leave the cabin alone, but always on
one pretext or another accompanied her.
The situation was a difficult one for them all. If Amalia took her
mother away to some town, as she wished to do, she feared for Madam
Manovska's sanity when she could not find her husband. And still, when
she tried to tell her mother of her father's death, she could not
convince her of its truth. For a while she would seem to understand
and believe it, but after a night's rest she would go back to the old
weary repetition of going to her husband and his need of her. Then it
was all to go over again, day after day, until at last Amalia gave up,
and allowed her mother the comfort of her belief: but all the more she
had to invent pretexts for keeping her on the mountain. So she
accepted Larry's kindly advice and his earnestly offered hospitality
and his comforting companionship, and remained, as, perforce, there
was nothing else for her to do.