that desolate mountain—by that frozen glacier—on that little spot of
earth where the ice always threatens. There they sit desolated—by the
graves of their kindred—waiting for him. For he came to make a home for
them. Will you send him back to them? Will you send them even the wreck
you have made of him? So that he may die there and lie with his fathers?
So that he may once more embrace his young wife? Touch the hand of blind
Agra? Make smile again simple Lars?”
The advocate pauses a moment and his face grows stern with the duty he
has set himself.
“He thinks the doom of God is upon him. But it is the doom of the
American system. The doom of the American administration of justice. The
doom of the American jury—which gives never the verdict of twelve, but
of four or three or two—most often of one. In this day of reason
verdicts should be the result of reason. But they are, as they were in
the Middle Ages, the result of force. Twelve men are imprisoned together
until seven men yield to five. Not because the five have better reasons,
but because they are stronger—either in mind or body. Because they can
better endure privation and hunger and segregation. Five are set to prey
upon seven in a place they cannot escape from until the morality of the
seven is sufficiently broken and corrupted to vote, not for the
righteousness of justice, but for release from incarceration. And this
the judges permit because they must hurry. Because the hours are fixed
from ten to three—and because in that time twenty-five causes must be
heard. Because officers of courts are politicians and must work—after
hours—for the party. Because, in short, everything is well considered in
a court but the securing of exact justice. And in small cases such as
this—where it is a foreigner who does not understand us or our language
or procedure—what does it matter? He is a foreigner anyhow. This is the
doom he faces and which every one must face—until our courts concern
themselves with but the one thing for which they are—the administration
of justice—the discovery of truth!”
The district attorney sighs and knows that neither the young advocate
nor his cause nor his client has a friend within hearing now. As for
him, he is indifferent, and would gladly see the man acquitted could he
but get away to his game. What profit or honor is there in so small a
case as this?
“Are you that kind of a jury? Is this that kind of a court? Is this the
kind of victim who has come here for sacrifice time out of mind? Can
this man’s life and liberty be trusted to you? Is there a man among
you—five—six—twelve—who can stop and think only of this poor captive?
Can you so far escape from the American system as to consider pure
justice and nothing else? Dare you imagine yourselves in his place and
then consider what you would do—what you would wish done by the twelve
who sit where you do? Have you the courage to treat this as you would
treat a ‘great’ case?—with many ‘great’ attorneys? Dare you defy the
court—the district attorney—the laughter of these idlers—and send this
man back to his home? I am asking much—I know that. It is revolution to
disagree from the court—to offend the district attorney. But I do so now
and shall always.”
And now fear and embarrassment have fled from the young advocate and he
is informed only with his great theme. His voice suddenly rings and
thunders about the walls, so that the judge sits uncomfortably up and
the benchers lean forward, and even the gentlemen of the bar are silent.
“And if you will not send him back to them, what message will you send?
You cannot escape. You must do one or the other. And one will be infamy,
the other will be as the grace of the Lord. Listen, each man of you
twelve! It is a commandment you hear. Something more than myself is
speaking through me. And look! Look at him, each one of you! For you are
writing your own glorification or your own damnation in the sentence of
this humble captive. I say to you, in the presence of God, that you
cannot escape your duty. If you will not send this remnant of a man you
have wounded home to his country, what message will you send—to them
that wait and wait and wait? You! You twelve! Hope, joy, bread,
feasting, life? Or the sullen clang of the prison door—the horrid,
shuddering clang—which is a knell of death? For your verdict, whether
you will it so or not, means life or death not only to him who is
chained there before you—but to them!”
A juror shakes his head in protest—a thing which the fatuous pleader
should regard. But he speaks an answer instead:
“I tell you I know. For I have seen. There are aged heads bent low by
misfortune—there are little children, there is a wife—young and fair and
red-lipped. Do you condemn them to hunger—to cold—to slow death—these,
huddled together, waiting—waiting—in the long gray polar night—for your
word of fate, or do you send to them life and hope and joy? I ask you,
before God, what message do you send? They are in your keeping as
irrevocably as he is!”
VII
TO A HIGHER TRIBUNAL
Counsel for the prisoner sits down overcome by his own evocation of
emotion. The more somnolent jurors scowl at him. He has made them
uncomfortable. The court, now having control of the matter, hastens the
adjournment.
“Gentlemen, you will find the prisoner not guilty of assaulting an
officer. It is not fully proven. As to the charge of larceny, if you
find that he took the watch out of the possession of the prosecutor, as
he seems to think, he is guilty, and I instruct you to find him so.
Otherwise, acquit him. If you are in doubt, acquit him. You have been
told that there is no evidence of the larceny. That is for you, not
counsel, to say.”
The jury, thinking from this that it is not much of a case, consult a
moment, and are ready with their verdict—while the court taps the bench
impatiently with the gilt menu. The crier asks for the verdict:
“Gentlemen of the jury, how say you? Is the prisoner at the bar guilty
or not guilty?”
“Guilty, with a recommendation to the mercy of the court,” answers the
foreman, yawning.
John Forrest rises to his feet, not knowing, in his confusion, what he
ought to do.
“If the court pleases,” he begins, “I had expected another verdict. But
since—”
“Your duty is done, sir,” smiles the chilly court, “and well done. I
congratulate you, sir.” Then he turns to the jury. “Gentlemen, I cannot
pass your recommendation to mercy lightly. I shall not forget it. It is
better that ten guilty men escape than that one suffer innocently. I am
now in a trifle of a hurry. I shall suspend sentence until I can think
your recommendation well over. Crier, adjourn the court.”
The district attorney had his golf.
The judge had his witty dinner.
The recommendation to mercy was forgotten.
The sentence of the court was never passed.
A higher tribunal claimed jurisdiction.
Christof Nielsen died in his cell.
John Hall sent this note to the judge on the same day:
“My watch was in the pocket of my Sunday vest. I forgot to change it on
Monday. Have that young man set free. I am sorry.”
“Let him be discharged as soon as possible,” said the righteous judge to
the district attorney, flinging the note on his desk.
But death is swifter than justice when her wheels turn backward.
VIII
THE SHADOWS OF DEATH
Over the sea, many months after, a runner brings a letter to those who
sit beside a failing rushlight. The faces are too white—the eyes too
brilliant for well-nourished bodies. Signs of wolfish poverty abound.
They are but three. The rest are dead of hunger. One is old and blind.
Upon his pathetic face the shadow of death has passed. Another has the
smile of the simple—tortured into pain by the tight-drawn lines of want.
Another is young and fair—yes—still young and fair—but not red-lipped
now. For these many months which might all be years they have borne
together the weariness of this watching and cold and hunger. The ice
hangs just above their small thatch now, and the sea is at the door. Yet
more than the hunger of their bodies—more than the cold and terror—have
been the hunger and the cold and the terror of their souls. They have
prayed God with agony to let their cup pass. Is there to be no word? No
sign? If God wills—yes. They have both trusted and doubted God.
Yet now they repent. Here, in this letter, is the answer to their
prayers. After all God is righteous—altogether righteous! Is it to bid
them come? Is it to tell them when he will come? If the first, they will
go in haste—for the ice is close, as he foretold. God has spoken. If the
last, he must take them quickly, or the ice will come.
They gather a little closer about the dying light. The blind one clasps
his hands hard on his staff to stop their shaking. The simple face is
all one ghastly smile. The wan one—wiping her dry eyes where there
should be tears—kneels before them, and with a quivering supplication
breaks the seal. Her face is as ashes. She has not a word in her dry
throat. The writing is not his. At her silence a shiver creeps over the
blind one. The simple one smiles anew.
“Ha, ha!” he says, “I am hungry!”
The enclosure falls into the lap of the wan one. A short note in a
stranger hand—that unruly curl she cut for him the day he went—an old
letter of her own, beginning with a love word. The note tells a brief
story ending in death.
There is nothing more. These are the tidings. This is the answer to
their prayers.
Yet still they sit there—like ghosts—until their stony eyes are
fixed—until the smile on the simple face passes into eternal calm—until
the rushlight dies, and pitying darkness falls.
When the fickle northern summer comes again it lingers wonderingly about
the idle cottage doors, fixed close in the ice, pausing at one with the
reverence which befits the unclosing of a tomb. It stays for but a
little day, then flies before the conquering ice and comes no more.
Yet, that tomb, far out toward the eternal ice cap, where the cottage is
in the embrace of the ice, was “made in America,” the land of the brave
and the home of the free—while the gentlemen of the bar and the benchers
laughed, and in that city whose proudest boast is of the sublime quality
of its justice—because a judge was impatient for his dinner—because a
prosecuting officer would play golf. Was it wrong? And who will right
the wrong? And where will it be righted? Is there a forum for such
causes as these? And who will be punished for it? The judge—the jury—the
district attorney—all of them?
GUILE
I CHILLY WISDOM
“Guile,” said John Estover, savagely, to his wife, “is as communicable
as—as—tuberculosis!”
“Yes, John,” sighed his wife.
“And when there is a predisposition to it—segregation is absolutely
imperative.”
“Yes—yes! But I confessed _my_ frivolities before the Great Meeting, and
they prayed for me in our silent fashion—and said: Go in peace! Does
thee remember?”
Estover’s face relaxed a trifle.
“I meant our child.”
“We were bride and groom then, John,” his little wife whispered, on
seeing his softening.
She did not see, though, that he had at once forbidden the softness to
his face, and went on.
“You didn’t care then that I was French and had a most unquakerish
name—”
“Say ‘thee,’ please, Ann (her name was Jeanne), and when thee thinks
‘Quaker’ say Friend.”
“Yes, John.”
It is true that the smiles the thought of her bridehood brought had gone
from her face with the sigh which followed. But another smile was
there—for him. For she knew perfectly what was beneath this
ecclesiastical chill. The very man who had been her bridegroom, and had
never been anything else.
“Some people blame it on heredity—their poor parents; some upon
temperament. But it is neither thee nor me now. I think it is nothing
but temptation—the getting into contact with evil—just as that is
necessary to contract tuberculosis.”
“But, John,” smiled the wife, “_I_ was a wicked little girl when thee
found me in Paris—”
“And saved thee!” thundered John.
“Yes, John. Wasn’t it queer that I should like thee with no collar on
thy coat? At first I think it was because thee was so different—so very
strong thee seemed.”
“It proves,” said John, with chilly wisdom, “that if evil is
communicable, goodness, also, is, and that it is stronger than evil.”
“But what, then, brought thee to the theatre, where I danced? I had
never before seen a Quaker there—I had never before seen one anywhere.”
She laughed happily.
“I had heard of thee—thy grace and beauty—and I desired to know if God
permitted such gifts to be so sadly used.”
“And then?”
“After I saw thee I wished to save thee.”
“Thank thee, my dear, dear John.”
“I think, Ann,” said John Estover, reflectively, “that I am not telling
the exact truth. There is such a thing, thee knows, as telling the truth
without exactness.”
“Oh, yes,” admitted his wife with an alacrity which would have alarmed
any one less good than her husband.
“I have often supposed that the exact truth is, that, travelling to cure
an illness becomes, when the illness is cured, a travelling for
pleasure. This, I fear, was my sinful state when I reached wicked but
beautiful Paris. I was, therefore, the prey of all temptation. And no
temptation, we are told, is so potent as woman. Observe the matter of
Adam and Eve, then Rahab and Jezebel—and, indeed, countless instances,
where good men have fallen by the way at the beckoning of a woman. I
think, Ann dear, that perhaps the world, the flesh, and the devil had an
undue grip upon my soul there in Paris, and that I was saved by suddenly
seeing what it had made of thee. It was an example I shall never forget.
Nor shall I ever cease to return thanks for its outcome.”
“Nor I, John dear,” laughed his little wife, with an incontinent
embrace.
“There, there,” said John, putting her off tenderly. “Yet—it all remains
to us in this one greatest difficulty of our lives—this keeping from our
child the history of thy life. But I am convinced that it is best. A
daughter must respect and look up to her mother. She must seem to her to
have always been immaculate. And this could not be if she knew all about
thee. She would not understand how well thee has redeemed thyself. She
would despise thee, and thy precepts would be of little avail. Yet must
thou continue thy exhortations to good.”
Ann smiled. The unwisdom of husbands kept him from the knowledge that
these exhortations were made in each other’s arms. This the mother not
only thought likely to be most effective, but much more lovely than any
other way.
She threatened a caress.
“Yes—yes,” said John, suppressing a suspicious movement of the arms
toward her. “But it is of Mary Ann. She is of an age. And she is as
pretty as thee—in that day thee speaks of. Therefore watch that she
enter not into any temptation.”
“Such as thee was to me?” laughed his wife. “Oh, John!”
And this time John did not resist her.
“I meant our child,” said he softly, “not thee.”
Now all of this might have been said concerning one Doctor John Rem, of
whom they had never heard. And John Estover might have added that, when
two people predisposed to what he had called guile met, one as tempter,
one willing to be tempted, the danger was excessive.
Nay, had he known this Doctor Rem, he would have taken every precaution
that he and his daughter Mary Ann should not meet. For Rem had left
behind at college an example for the emulation of sophomore hoodlums.
And now, just returned from college, filled with really valuable
learning concerning disease, but having no practice at all and much
idleness, it was exceedingly dull and he exceedingly ready for amorous
experiment. And you may be sure that if it should happen to come in the
shape of a pretty Quaker, it would be only a little more piquant.
All these sayings are necessary—though, I admit, somewhat dull—that you
may understand the doings between this very doctor and this very Quaker
maid. For you cannot suppose that I have them both in the same story for
any other purpose than such troublous joys as make up that curious thing
called love.
II
PATCHOULY
Now it happened that while their discussion was at this point, the
subject of it arrived. She did not at all come as a Quaker maiden ought,
but like a breeze when the door is let suddenly open. And, indeed, in
the coming, she had left the door open.
Her father solemnly closed it.
Meanwhile she had pounced upon her mother and kissed her, and now she
attacked her father in the same way.
“Thank thee, daddy,” she laughed, and when he put her off, none too
strongly, she ran up the stairs, still laughing, whence she called
downward for her mother.
John stopped Ann as she would have gone, and, sniffing stealthily,
pointed with his glasses up the stairs, saying ominously:
“Perfume!”
She sniffed and smiled.
“Patchouly!” she murmured. “John, it is my fault. I told her some things
about myself the other day. They made us both very happy. I _must_ tell
some one. I think I mentioned patchouly. I thought it was extinct. What
a time she must have had getting it!”
John frowned.
“Yea, yea—she takes after thee.”
“And is that so bad—as long as it is only kisses and perfume?”
He had sat quite hopelessly in his chair, with his head turned. Before
he could resist, her arms were about him and she had kissed him and was
gone to the steps. There she paused—on the third step—looking as she had
looked long ago—she never seemed to get older—as John thought she
ought—and called:
“John!”
Her husband looked. And, looking, he had to smile. No one could have
helped doing that.
“John, I love thee, anyhow!”
And she rebelliously and defiantly sniffed the perfume and ran up the
stair—precisely as Mary Ann had done.
“Takes after her mother,” he sighed—and smiled.
For another thought had come with the smile.
“Or does her mother take after her?”
At this moment a double laugh came down the stair. And he, down there,
answered it. So that you will understand that John Estover, Friend and
Overseer, and John Estover, Husband, were very different individuals.
Upstairs it was hard to distinguish one from the other of these two
pretty women—which was daughter, which mother—for they were locked in a
laughing, weeping embrace, and the one was showing the other a
long-necked, old-fashioned bottle, labelled
“PATCHOULY.”
Well, she was like her mother, and so, when I describe the one, you will
see the other. The daintiest of retroussé noses, eyes entirely too large
for her face, a mouth that _would_ smile her very thoughts—and
sometimes, tell them—a curiously deep dimple in her chin. But for her
attire no one would have thought her a subdued Quaker. Yet upon that
even the little mother insisted.
“First,” she said, “your father wishes it. Second, you will never be so
pretty in anything else. Dearie, you make me think of a blush rose
hidden in the heart of a lily every time I look into your bonnet. Think
what a surprise that will be to your prince that day he comes! To look
into the prim, gray bonnet and find—YOU!”
And she kissed what she found there.
“And, oh, my beloved, there are ways and ways! Men must be managed and
women must be pretty—and both are possible—even in Quaker garments.”
“My beloved!” cried the one.
“My sweet Marian!” responded the other.
Whereby you will know what even John Estover did not know concerning his
wife and child—that they had changed the fearful name he had chosen, to
the next best thing they could devise, and keep the faith. For, in her
“management” of John Estover and his affairs, the little French woman
kept so close to the thing he insisted upon, that when her innovations
were discovered, as they sometimes were, they were considered venial
instead of criminal—and this is just the difference between wisdom and
folly. For, upon one occasion, when he had said:
“What was that—Marian?”
His little wife had answered:
“Mary!—Ann!” making each a staccato note, and adding, “Will I never
speak the English?”
She spoke the language perfectly.
III
THE CALYXLIKE BONNET
Now it was into this lily calyx that the unregenerate Doctor John Rem
looked one day, with precisely the emotions which the mother of Mary Ann
had foretold—though, of course, he had not time to formulate them with
such beauty. It was only a moment. And he was bewildered.
And the wonder of it was that he had found her with the wife of his
friend Jarn, whom they both called Bell-Bell, for no better reason than
that her name was Belle, and that she was the wisest and brightest and
best of young wives and comrades—even though that does sound like a
certain hymn.
“In heaven’s name, Bell-Bell, what does it mean?”
Mrs. Jarn became mysterious.
“Little boys must be seen, not heard.”
“I am not a little boy. Observe the bald spot on my head.”
“Any unmarried man is as a little boy concerning women, be he as old as
you. Moral: Get married. And I wish you would hurry. I can’t employ you
till you do. And until I employ you, you will have no patients.”
Doctor Rem laughed good-naturedly.
“Well, you know, I have such an awful reputation for being a brute—”
“She has never heard of you. I have been too ashamed.”
“But she will. There’s that horrible story of my having crippled
Leggett. Some of the newspapers said I killed him, and that story still
survives. She couldn’t miss that!”
Rem sighed hopelessly.
“She doesn’t read the newspaper—it isn’t permitted in Quaker families,
you know, until it has been expurgated. Then it has lost all interest
for her, and her mind _will_ fix itself only upon the holes where the
awful things have been excised. Once or twice I have taken the
precaution to let her see what they were in my copy. But not often—not
before I myself have been over them. For, say what you please, her
Quaker innocence is the loveliest attribute she will ever have—the
worldliness I shall teach her is not a half compensation—and she shall
not be spoiled—she shall always be a Quaker. Yes, sir—but I shall teach
her just enough worldliness to make some one—not you—want her enough
to—Oh, I haven’t mentioned you. I have been ashamed to do it. Therefore,
she is assailable.”
“Huh! She flew away the moment I came.”
“Fear of your fascinations.”
“Say,—Bell-Bell, _was_ it on my account?”
“It was. But not because of your fascinations. You are a rather rude
diamond. It was because we have a deep, dark, deadly secret from you.”
She whispered it, in quite the conspirator fashion.
“Oh!” said Rem, stiffly. “Then I was de trop?”
“Decidedly.”
“All right. When I hear both of you pounding the piano, I won’t come in.
She is learning to play.”
“I know perfectly well that the more you hear that piano in the future,
the more you will come in.”
“It _is_ dull practising medicine and trying to get a reputation for
steadiness. No one thinks it possible for me,” sighed Rem.
“Poor boy! Nothing is so dreadful as reformation. And I will continue to
help you. So shall she!”
Rem brightened at once.
“Say, Bell-Bell, will she, though?”
“Aha! Piquant, isn’t it?—an affair with a little dove of a Quaker!
Remember that I can protect her. So you may come whenever you hear the
piano—just to help you to reform, and we will stop and put on our other
clothes and entertain you gravely. Then some day, when you have proved
that you are quite respectable, and are received at the bedsides of
elderly ladies, we will confess all—what sort of crime we are up to—what
sort of clothes we wear at our rehearsals—where and when we met. No, all
that must wait until I have her safely married and out of your reach.
For, I tell you frankly, she says that she has one reason for liking
you—you are tall.”
“Oh!” laughed Doctor Rem. “But, say, I have never made love to a Quaker
in my life. However, thanks! I’m willing.”
“You are to be nothing but friends, do you hear? I won’t have her mouth
turned down instead of up at the corners!”
Then, as a woman will, she forthwith tempted him to his destruction:
“She’s lovely, John! The very loveliest human being I have ever known!
Oh, she and I are old friends. And that is the only reason I permit you
and she to become old friends. While you were busy at such nasty things
as administering the two parts of a seidlitz powder so that ebullition
would take place in the stomach of the poor person at your college
dispensary, I was making love to the little Quaker—who would have
preferred a man.”
“Of course,” said John Rem.
“Oh, not ‘of course.’ But if you were not what you are, I would let you
try to interest her. Nothing would please me better.”
“And, her—be hanged!” cried the young physician, with enthusiasm.