PENALTIES
Sard came into Dunstan's room with the mail. The nurse, a calm-faced,
serious woman of mature years, smiled at her. "I'm glad you've come;
we're getting a little sick of each other."
The haggard face of the boy looked out from the surgeon's trestlework
of the fractured arm and shoulder. "Drool!" said the weak voice
querulously. "Drool! she means that I've been nagging her until she's
half crying." The lad looked his sick mortification; he knew he could
not control his peevishness, not just yet. He tried to cover it with
the old impishness. "Never mind, Miss Crayden, try to imagine I'm your
husband; let me, the tender partner of your life, wipe up the floor
with you."
In spite of the humorous quirk around the mouth, the nurse seemed glad
to get away. She did not deny his self-accusation. "If you're going to
be around for a while," to the sister, "I think I'll just take a brisk
walk."
"Take a brisk walk" after the all-night vigil, "take a brisk walk" that
late August day with its breathless depths of dusty overgrowth, its
sultry world of tapestried leaf hangings. The thing made the youthful
ones smile. Dunce looked after the retreating form, firm and crisp
in its white uniform, murmuring--"A brisk walk--at ninety-two in the
shade."
"She kids herself along pretty well, doesn't she?" demanded the
invalid; then as his weak voice went into a squeak,--"Say, how long I
got to hang here like a dry worm on the end of a fish-hook? Oh, Sard,
when does this rotten weakness end? Say, why don't you get me some dog
poison and put me out of my misery?"
There was a haunted look in the boy's eyes that tried to smile
listlessly as he pawed over his mail. "Letter from Bumpy Dodge asking
about college. Well, I guess I don't get back to college---- No, Bumpy,
old sport, I guess I do a turn in jail, what?" He looked questioningly
at his sister. "Nothing from Minga, I suppose? Well, I don't blame her;
I did get her into a mess, the newspaper rot and all. I wonder," said
Dunstan soberly, "what I was thinking of," he looked at Sard curiously,
"I wonder if I thought at all. I don't believe I did think--I just
felt, and feeling isn't the whole show, I guess. Well, Minga and I
certainly gummed the game." The figure lying trussed in a bower of
splints and bandages was silent a moment. "Gimme a cigarette, Sardine,"
then, at her denying look, "Why, haven't they lifted the ban yet? Say,
when does this surgeon Sunday-school end, anyway? You'd think those
tinkering old 'Docs' were women the way they go on. Why, in the war
they gave the chaps cigarettes in their very coffins, and me with just
a cracked rib and a little allegro adrumata medulla medusa Madonna
crackiosis--can't have a smoke."
It was not the old Dunce so much as his determined imitation of the
Dunce that had been. A young chap of nineteen cannot go through the
experience of having a man of his own age shot to death across his
knees without some changes which, in spite of modern science, we
will assume are more than chemical. With the sinking down of Terence
O'Brien's fair, curly head, his gasping, his blood sprinkled over the
car in its crazy speed, the crash, their own capture, and in his own
mortal pain seeing the fugitive lying beside him, blood pouring out
of his mouth, his eyes closing on the warm summer sunset--with this
picture, Dunstan's inner youth closed. His boy's body, badly cracked
and shaken, could be mended, made almost perfect again, but his soul
with the one great wound in it now stood up and commanded strong meat
for its sustenance. Under the law! Dunstan must now stand face to face
with law!
In his first interview with his father, with his knowledge of the
process of this law, came the sense of rising to punishment that he
felt able, nay, glad to meet. After almost twenty years, and twenty
years did not seem long against the years Terry had lost, after twenty
years of glad life Dunstan instead of bringing freedom had brought
death to the wild, young Irish lad; he, who had had the advantages of
education, of some measured temperate views of life; he, who for a
reckless impulse had not considered what it is a man or woman puts in
motion when they start out to defy the accepted law, now saw reasons
for law.
Such parts of the long frame as were not pinned in plaster writhed.
Dunstan's thoughts went to Minga--what did she think of it all? Did
she feel the same way, like one carrying a great burden? The bullet of
the guard who had shot Terry had barely escaped Minga's head before the
car had overturned and he, Dunstan, who ought by his very man's nature
to have protected her, had brought her into all this. Oh, he was a nice
chap, a splendid fellow. Ah, well, civilization was a trap anyway, a
scheme, a plan to defeat frank square things. The thing to do was to
cast off the whole silly rot, get off somewhere, where a man got out of
the cheap lying pattern of things, where a man really lived, realized
himself, rode, killed, loved, hated without a pink worsted design to
remind him that he had "broken the law."
Sard looked over at him. "Stop squirming!" she ordered sternly,
then--"Dear old Pirate, don't you know that convalescing is the hardest
time of all?" She went over to the bed, scrutinizing her brother. "Is
the light in your eyes?" she asked anxiously. "Shall I read to you? Do
you want a fresh drink?"
"I want a fresh Hades," growled the invalid. "I want----" All of a
sudden Dunstan's face broke; he could not move, but lay here shaking.
The girl, looking away from him, was silent.
"If Minga would only write," at last he groaned.
"Perhaps she doesn't know what to say," comforted the sister.
"Dunce," said Sard thoughtfully; she stood by the bed. "Dunce," in a
mild patience unlike her, "I guess you and I are up against it, aren't
we? We must have, somewhere, ancestors not like Dad and little Mother
and Aunt Aurelia, race-horse ancestors that wanted things to happen and
to happen quick bang, right off, and they don't, they just won't. No
matter what we do, we have to wait, no matter how much we care," said
Sard slowly, "we just have to wait; everybody has to wait, I guess.
It's a sort of law."
"Terry didn't wait," said Dunce bitterly; "he, thank God, got out."
"I've been reading," she returned thoughtfully, she was trying to draw
him out of this mood, "a book that tells how Venice grew up out of the
sea; and it seems like life somehow. The streams came down from the
mountains carrying grains, just grains, Dunce, of sand, and the ice and
snow rolled down more clay and sand, all the currents of the sea kept
carrying deposits to one spot until," absorbedly the girl recounted the
dreamy geologic tale, her eyes fixed on distance. Dunstan heard her
through patiently.
"Sounds like the rags old Colter used to chew," he said, not
uninterestedly. "By the way, Sard, what became of that mucker; turned
out to be a ne'er-do-well, after all? What?"
His companion was silent. Something in her face contracted as she tried
to answer lightly. "Oh, I guess he's all right. Mr. Shipman has been
following him up. He was ill after he left here. Then he went to work
somewhere, and then I don't exactly know," said Sard. "Mr. Shipman is
keeping his eye on him. I don't exactly know----"
The invalid tried to change his position. "That so? Got him work,
did he?" he asked. "Say, ain't Shipman the dear old prophet? By Gad,
Sardine, what makes a gray-headed chap like that and what makes an old
spinny like Miss Crayden homely, you know, and out of the game, what
makes 'em do all they can for you and not cuss you back when you cuss
and not let you get the blue devils, but hold umbrellas of hope over
you and keep reminding you of another You that's back of you, sort of,
and ringing up your good deeds like spiritual fares and everything.
Say," said Dunstan earnestly, "I want to know. These old-timers, there
ain't much in it for them. They must know it. Why in thunder do they
keep making everybody on the Merry-go-round think they are going to get
the Gold Ring?"
His sister laughed. Sard, perching on Dunstan's bed, thoughtfully
traced out the pattern of the white counterpane. The girl, thinner,
with a look of limpid patience in the brook-clear eyes, tried to answer
the question to herself. What, indeed, had made Shipman, who she had
guessed was a baffled, lonely man, turn from his own concerns to help
and encourage her? Why should he, to whom she could give nothing, keep
the dark eyes with their look of "courage" so fixed upon her that even
when he was not there she saw the look, heard the words and knew that
the lawyer's strength and help were hers to call upon? Sard did not
know that Watts Shipman, after Colter's collapse and his subsequent
recovery and revelations, had been to Judge Bogart's with astounding
news. The lawyer had sat in the Judge's library giving fact after fact
of the distinction, nay, the actual academic fame of the Judge's hired
man.
"He's chipper enough now," he placidly told the Judge; "he's enormously
improved! Last time I saw him he was walking up and down the campus at
a reunion, laughing and talking with old comrades." The lawyer fixed
rather scrutinizing eyes on his superior. "You wouldn't," he said
tentatively, "I beg your pardon if I interfere, but your daughter is
so noble, so superb a little fighter. You wouldn't stand in the way
now--of anything?"
There was a long silence. The Judge, some obstinacy in his throat, sat
staring ahead of him. The new sense of Sard, a girl, a young unformed
girl, having somehow gotten at the fine intelligence and soul that had
dwelt concealed in this man, staggered him.
Meticulously Shipman had given him every detail. Dr. Martin Ledyard's
heroic effort to save his friends from the terrible scourge of Congo
smallpox, the desertion of the natives with canoes, the subsequent
shock of learning of his brother's trouble and suicide, the fever
in the hospital, his sudden rising and escape with only the clothes
he wore from the beginning of convalescence, the tale of his long
wandering from farm to farm, the half sustained body and mind a
blank, the exposure and terror of a partial memory, were things that
Shipman had gotten from Ledyard's own lips bit by bit, and they had
been confirmed by the specialist to whom the lawyer had taken Colter.
That the eminent scientist had completely recovered, a recovery that
had begun the very hour that Sard had recognized him as he sat on
the village curb for what he was, was an established medical fact.
"Surely," Watts Shipman leaned forward, the face he bent on the Judge
was solemn, "you could not interfere with your daughter's happiness
now. Ledyard," said the lawyer mildly, "is not likely to come to her
until he has your permission."
"Sard," said the Judge, his eyes had a light of the book of Moses in
them, "Sard is to come to her father and acknowledge her impatience and
disrespect."
"Pshaw!" The lawyer rose. He walked to the window and looked out. Then,
his mouth torn between rage and amusement, he said politely, "Ahem! I
don't exactly see how she could under the circumstances do that exact
thing."
"That is all I ask," said the Judge finally. No sense of the ridiculous
came to his rescue. He got up, went to a bookshelf and took down book
after book, examined its cover for dust and blemish, and returned it
without opening to the shelf. It was a curious habit of the Judge's
to do this when deep in thought. Somehow it was like his treatment of
human beings, thought Shipman.
"As for my son," remarked the gray-lipped mouth, "he will learn, he
will learn something about the Law." Judge Bogart went back to his
chair. He sat down, stretched out his legs and fixed his look upon the
other man. "He will learn something about the Law," said he implacably.
"I have done nothing to spare him," said the Judge with an air of
satisfaction.
Yet Dunstan's first interview with his father had not had all this
quality of implacability. The boy's fever over, his limbs lightened of
certain casts and the eyes deep and haunted, were things to meet which
the older man had braced, things from which the Judge, with all his
hardness, had shrunk; even the judicial habit could not overlook the
danger the Judge had been in, of losing his son, the man who bore his
name. With a curious sense of pride he, himself, could not understand,
a perception of the absurd gallantry, the chivalry underlying the
actions of a fool breaker of laws, the old man, his own prerogatives
negatived, had fairly to screw up his courage to begin the interview as
he determined it should be begun.
"You know that you will have to meet the penalty," he rasped.
The dark eyes met the gooseberry ones squarely.
"Yes, sir, I've looked the thing up."
"It is likely," said the Judge dryly, "that you will have to give up
college and go into business, if indeed you are spared incarceration.
The fine is very heavy; you are, in spite of bail, under arrest."
At the word "incarceration" a swift gleam in Dunstan's eyes gave his
father absurd hope. He was not injured, then--he was--all right--that
was the old impudence, curse it.
"I shall be glad," said the young fellow slowly, "to take any penalty
that is rightfully mine, that would come to any man that did what I
did, that had," the boy gulped a moment, "that had broken the law he
lived _under_."
"Ah," the old gray face, the hard-boiled eyes, looked watchfully upon
the young face with its fierce pride--"then you realize that you were
a fool, that you risked my name, your own honor, to save from just
punishment a ruffian who had broken the law?"
Something wild, desperate, leaped into the face on the pillows; it
was a hurt, appealing look, different from Sard's fiery pride and
steady intention; it was not so defiant, it was the more helpless and
miserable, as who would say, "I am punished enough." The Judge's eyes
on the thin young face at sight of this look felt a sudden strange
pang. It reminded him of--
"We love Foddy--Foddy won't put us in prison with the naughty
prisoners."
Oh, little woman lips; oh, soft little hands and sweet voice; oh,
hundred innocent tendernesses and faiths and needs----
The Judge stared at his son; the dark eyes closed and Dunstan lay there
like death, only one long, thin hand clenched and unclenched on his
chest.
They rise up sometimes, these who were our forbears and become our
good angels; when we need them and call sincerely they rise up in our
eyes and hearts and speak for us. If we have kept the house garnished
and clean only the best of them will come to us bearing in their hands
lamps to light our paths; when we call out in sheer agony for light and
leading, all the noblest and fairest of our line rise up for a hundred
comforting and strengthening ministries, to lead us on our blind path.
Dunstan's mother, standing in his lad's eyes, had risen once and looked
at her husband. "Dearest," said the little timid voice, "what are you
doing with my son--our boy? Treat our little Dunstan fairly."
For a long time the old Judge stood at the window, the gray lips
trembling, the gooseberry eyes desperately blinking. "The heart bowed
down with weight of woe," thought the Judge, "I will go down and play
that record--she--she was fond of it."
At last he turned toward his son's bed. "There," said the Judge.
He cleared his throat with a rasp that could have been heard in
the garage. "Hum--I--I guess I've been breaking a law, too, hey?"
He glanced up at the nurse who had just entered. "I don't want to
disobey the doctor's laws." He stood for a moment looking down at his
son. "I have a letter from that little vixen Minga," said Dunstan's
father; then as he saw the slow red creep into the boy's cheek, "I
think--ahem--I think she shows character--she seems to realize that her
conduct was--I'll send it up to you," said the Judge. He held out his
hand. "You and I must protect Minga," he said slowly; "we must keep
her out of this thing. Hey, What? Have her out here, hey? Cheer us up
some--hey--What?"
The two men looked at each other; under their differing ages was the
same cool facing of facts. Dunstan did not turn from his knowledge of
himself, a man who had incurred the penalty of the law; neither did
the Judge as father turn from that fact. Facts are sometimes the most
wholesome curative things of life. When two people resolutely face
them together, with the same degree of earnestness and honesty, they
construct a bridge over great abysses of distrust, misunderstanding and
heart-break.
The Judge started for the door. "Take care of yourself," he said as he
looked wistfully at those dark eyes that had held just for one moment
the dear wife's look. Then the Judge remembered Dunstan's love of a
joke. "If you ever steal a murderer again," he said, "I'll thrash you
within an inch of your life."
It was a joke! It was made with an effort; the very machinery creaked
and the finished product looked dusty and wizened, but it was a joke!
Dunstan, the dark-eyed humorist, saw it and grinned. The Judge returned
to the bed. Two hands went spontaneously out, a grim, dry, purple one
and a slim, thin, weak one. They clinched--then the door closed and the
Judge went down-stairs.
Late that evening Miss Bogart heard the phonograph circling forth
the "heart bowed down with weight of woe."... She turned another
page in the "pleasant" book. "My poor brother," said Miss Aurelia to
herself; "he seems to turn naturally to the--er--melancholy--but I
should think," the lady thought sleepily, "that now that Colter isn't
Colter at all, but the celebrated scientist Dr. Ledyard, that he, she,
they----"