brighter she looked, it makes me sick to think of her as dead. She had
been doing a lot of things on the sly, helping folks. It was her has been
sending the money for the jail dinner on Christmas, and the ice-cream on
the Fourth, and books, too. ‘It’s so terrible to be a prisoner,’ says
she. Wonder, didn’t she know? I declare I _hate_ her to be dead! Ain’t it
possible—Lord! wouldn’t that be a go?” He did not express even to himself
his sudden flash of light on the mystery. But he went his ways to the
armory of the militia company, the office of the chief of police (which
was the very next building), and to the fire department. At one of these
places he wrote out an advertisement, which the reporters read in the
evening papers, and found so exciting that they all flocked together to
discuss it.
All this did not take an hour’s time. It was to be observed that at every
place which he visited he first stepped to the telephone and called up
the jail. “Are you all right there, Raker?” he asked. Then he told where
he was going. “If you need, you can telephone me there,” he said.
“I guess Amos isn’t taking any chances on this,” the youngest reporter,
who encountered him on his way, remarked to the chief of police.
The chief replied that Amos was a careful man; he wished some others
would be as careful, and as sure they were right before they went ahead;
a good deal of trouble would be avoided.
“That’s right,” said the reporter, blithely, and went his lightsome way,
while the chief scowled.
Amos returned to the jail. He found the street clear, but little knots
of men were gathering and then dispersing in the street facing the jail.
Amos thought that he saw Foley’s face in the crowd, but it vanished as
he tried to distinguish it. “No doubt he’s egging them on,” muttered
Amos. He was rather taken aback when Raker (to whom he offered his
suspicions) assured him, on ear evidence, that Foley was preaching peace
and obedience to the law. “He’s an Irishman, too,” muttered Amos; “that’s
awful queer.” He spent a long time in a grim reverie, out of which he
roused himself to despatch a boy for the evening papers. “And you mark
that advertisement, and take half a dozen copies to Foley”—thus ran his
directions—“tell him I sent them; and if he knows anybody would like to
read that ‘ad,’ to send a paper to _them_. Understand?”
“Maybe it’s a prowl after a will-o’-wisp,” Amos sighed, after the boy was
gone, “but it’s worth a try. Now for our young man!”
Allerton was sitting in his cell, in an attitude of dejection that would
have been a grateful sight to the crowd outside. He was a slim-waisted,
broad-shouldered, gentle-mannered young fellow, whose dark eyes were very
bright, and whose dark hair was curly, and longer than hair is usually
worn by Northerners not studying football at the universities. He had a
mildly Roman profile and a frank smile. His clothes seemed almost shabby
to Amos, who never grudged a dollar of his tailor’s bills; but the
little Southern village whence he came was used to admire that glossy
linen and that short-skirted black frock-coat.
At Amos’s greeting he ran forward excitedly.
“Are they coming?” he cried. “Say, sheriff, you’ll give me back my pistol
if they come; you’ll give me a show for my life?”
Amos shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “Your life’s all right,” said
he; “it’s how to keep from hurting the other fellows I’m after. The fire
department will turn out and sozzle ’em well, and if that won’t do they
will have to face the soldiers; but I hope to the Lord your aunt won’t
let it come to that.”
“Do you think my aunt is living?”
“I don’t see how she could be burned up so completely. But see here, Mr.
Allerton, wasn’t there no trap-door in the room?”
“No, sir; there was no carpet on the floor; she hadn’t a carpet in the
house. Besides, how could she, sick as she was, get down through a
trap-door and shut it after her? And you could _see_ the boards, and
there was no opening in them.”
“So Mrs. O’Shea says, too,” mused the sheriff; “but let’s go back. Had
your aunt any motive for trying to escape you?”
“I’m afraid she thought she had,” said the young man, gravely.
“Mind telling me?”
“No, sir. I reckon you don’t know my aunt was crazy?”
“I’ve had some such notion. She lost her mind when they all died of
yellow-fever—or was it when Colonel Cary was killed?”
“I don’t know precisely. I imagine that she was queer after his death,
and all the family dying later, that finished the wreck. There were some
painful circumstances connected with the colonel’s death—”
“I’ve heard them.”
“Yes, sir. Well, sir, my mother was not to blame—not so much to blame
as you may think. She was almost a stranger to her sister, raised in
another State; and she had never seen her or Colonel Cary, her betrothed;
and when she did see him—well, sir, my mother was a beautiful, daring,
brilliant girl, and poor Aunt Margaret timid and awkward. _She_ broke the
engagement, not Cary.”
“It was to see your mother he came to the plantation!”
“Yes, sir. And he was killed. Poor Aunt Margaret saw it. She came back to
the house riding in a miserable dump-cart, holding his head in her lap.
She wouldn’t let my mother come near him. ‘Now he knows which loved him
best,’ she said ‘He’s _mine_!’ And it didn’t soften her when my mother
married my father. She seemed to think that proved she hadn’t cared for
Colonel Cary. Then the yellow-fever came, and they all went. Her mind
broke down completely then; she used to think that on the day Colonel
Cary was shot they all came back for a while, and she would set chairs
for them and offer them wine and cake—as if they were visiting her. And
after they left she would pour the wine in the glasses into the grate
and burn the cake. She said that they enjoyed it, and ate really, but
they left a semblance. She got hold of some queer books, I reckon, for
she had the strangest notions; and she spent no end of money on some
spiritual mediums; greedy harpies that got a heap of money out of her.
My father and mother had come to Cary Hall, then, to live, and of course
they didn’t like it. The great trouble, my mother often said to me, was
that though they were sisters, they were raised apart, and were as much
strangers as—we are. You can imagine how they felt to see the property
being squandered. Ten thousand dollars, sir, went in one year—”
“Are you sure it did go?” said the sheriff.
“Well, the property was sold, and we never saw anything afterwards of the
money. And the estate wasn’t a bottomless well. It isn’t so strange,
sir, that—that they had poor Aunt Margaret cared for.”
“At an insane asylum?”
“Yes, sir, for five years. I confess,” said the young man, jumping up and
pacing the room—“I confess I think it was a horrible place, horrible.
But they didn’t know. It was only after she recovered her senses and
was released that we began to understand what she suffered. Not so much
then, for she was shy of us all. She was so scared, poor thing! And
then—we began to suspect that she was not cured of her delusions. Maybe
there _were_ consultations and talk about her, though indeed, sir, my
mother has assured me many times that there was no intention of sending
her back. But she is very shrewd, and she would notice how doors would
be shut and the conversation would be changed when she entered a room,
and her suspicions were aroused. She managed to raise some money on a
mortgage, and she ran away, leaving not a trace behind her. My mother has
reproached herself ever since. And we’ve tried to find her. It has preyed
upon my mother’s mind that she might be living somewhere, poor and lonely
and neglected. We are not rich people,” said the young man, lifting
his head proudly, “but we have enough. I come to offer Aunt Margaret
money, not to ask it. We’ve kept up the place, and bit by bit paid off
the mortgage, though it has come hard sometimes. And it was awkward the
title being in that kind of shape, and ma wouldn’t for a long time get it
quieted.”
“But how did you ever find out she was _here_?”
The young Southerner smiled. “I reckon I owe being in this scrape
at all to your gentlemen of the press. One of them wrote a kind of
character-sketch about her, describing her—”
“I know. He’s the youngest man on the list, and an awful liar, but he
does write a mighty readable story.”
“He did this time,” said Allerton, dryly; “so readable it was copied
in the papers all over, I expect; anyhow, it was copied in our local
sheet—inside, where they have the patent insides, you know. It was
entitled ‘A Usurer, but Merciful!’ I showed it to my mother, and she was
sure it was Aunt Margaret. Even the name was right, for her whole name is
Margaret Clark Cary. She hadn’t the heart to cast the name away, and she
thought, Clark being a common name, she wouldn’t be discovered.”
Amos, who had sat down, was nursing his ankle. “Do you suppose,” said he,
slowly—“do you suppose that taking it to be the case she wasn’t so much
hurt as the doctors supposed, that _then_ she could get out of the room?”
“I don’t see how she could. She was in the room, in the bed, when I went
out. I sat down before the door. She couldn’t pass me. I heard a screech
after a while, a mighty queer sound, and I ran in. Sir, I give you my
word of honor, the bed was empty! the room was empty!”
“How was the room lighted?”
“By a large lamp with a Rochester burner, and some fancy of hers had made
her keep it turned up at full blaze. Oh, you could see every inch of the
room at a glance! And then, too, I ran all round it before I ran to the
window, pushed it up, and looked out. I would be willing to take my oath
that the room was empty.”
“You looked under the bed?”
“Of course. And in the closet. I tell you, sir, there was no one in the
room.”
Amos sat for the space of five minutes, it seemed to the young man,
really perhaps for a full minute, thinking deeply. Then, “I can’t make it
out,” said he, “but I believe you are telling the truth.” He stood up;
the young man also rose. In the silence wherein the younger man tried to
formulate something of his gratitude and yet keep his lip from quivering
(for he had been sore beset by homesickness and divers ugly fears during
the last day), the roar of the crowd without beat through the bars,
swelling ominously. And now, all of an instant, the jail was penetrated
by a din of its own making. The prisoners lost their heads. They began
to scream inquiries, to shriek at each other. Two women whose drunken
disorder had gone beyond the station-house restraints, and who were
spending a week in jail, burst into deafening wails, partly from fright,
partly from pity, and largely from the general craving of their condition
to make a noise.
“Never mind,” said Amos, laying a kindly hand on young Allerton’s
shoulder, “the Company B boys are all in the yard. But I guess you will
feel easier if you go down-stairs. Parole of honor you won’t skip off?”
“Oh, God bless you, sir!” cried Allerton. “I couldn’t bear to die this
way; it would kill my mother! Yes, yes, of course I give my word. Only
let me have a chance to fight, and die fighting—”
“No dying in the case,” Amos interrupted; “but what in thunder are the
cusses cheering for? Come on; this needs looking into. _Cheering!_”
He hurried down the heavy stairs into the hall, where Raker, a little
paler, and Mrs. Raker, a little more flushed than usual, were examining
the bolts of the great door.
Amos flung a glare of scorn at it, and he snorted under his breath:
“Locks! No need of locking _You_! I could bust you with the hose!”
As if in answer, the cheering burst forth anew, and now it was coupled
with his name: “Wickliff! Amos! _Amos!_”
“Let me out!” commanded Wickliff, and he slipped back the bolts. He
stepped under the light of the door-lamp outside, tall and strong, and
cool as if he had a Gatling gun beside him.
A cheer rolled up from the crowd—yes, not only from the crowd, but from
the blue-coated ranks massed to one side, and the young faces behind the
bayonets.
Amos stared. He looked fiercely from the mob to the guardians of the law.
Then, amid a roar of laughter, for the crowd perfectly understood his
gesture of bewilderment and anger, Foley’s voice bellowed, “All right,
sheriff; we’ve got her safe!”
* * * * *
They tell to this day how the iron sheriff, whose composure had been
proof against every test brought against it, and whom no man had ever
before seen to quail, actually staggered against the door. Then he gave
them a broad grin of his own, and shouted with the rest, for there in the
heart of the rush jailward, lifted up on a chair—loaned, as afterwards
appeared (when it came to the time for returning), from Hans Obermann’s
“Place”—sat enthroned old Margaret Clark; and she was looking as if she
liked it!
They got her to the jail porch; Amos pacified the crowd with free beer at
Obermann’s, and carried her over the threshold in his arms.
He put her down in the big arm-chair in his office, opposite the
portraits of his parents, and Esquire Clark slid into the room and purred
at her feet, while Mrs. Raker fanned her. It was rather a chilly evening,
the heat having given place to cold in the sudden fashion of the climate;
but good Mrs. Raker knew what was due to a person in a faint or likely to
faint, and she did not permit the weather to disturb her rules. Calmly
she began to fan, saying meanwhile, in a soothing tone, “There, there,
don’t _you_ worry! it’s all right!”
Raker stood by, waiting for orders and smiling feebly. And young Allerton
simply gasped.
“You were at Foley’s, then?” Amos was the first to speak—apart from Mrs.
Raker’s crooning, which, indeed, was so far automatic that it can hardly
be called speech; it was merely a vocal exercise intended to quiet the
mind. “You _were_ at Foley’s, then?” says Amos.
“Yes, sir,” very calmly; but her hands were clinching the arms of the
chair.
“And you saw my advertisement in this evening paper?”
“Yes, sir; Foley read it out to me. You begged M. C. C. to come back and
help you because you were in great embarrassment and trouble—and you
promised me nobody should harm me.”
“No more nobody shall!” returned Amos.
“But maybe you can’t help it. Never mind. When I heard about how they
were talking about lynching him”—she indicated her nephew—“I felt
terrible; the sin of blood guiltiness seemed to be resting on my soul;
but I couldn’t help it. Mr. Sheriff, you don’t know I—I was once in—in an
insane asylum. I was!”
“That’s all right,” said Amos. “I know all about that.”
“There, there, there!” murmured Mrs. Raker, “don’t think of it!”
“It wasn’t that they were cruel to me—they weren’t that. They never
struck or starved me; they just gave me awful drugs to keep me quiet;
and they made me sit all day, every day, week in, week out, month in,
month out, on a bench with other poor creatures, who had enough company
in their horrible dreams. If I lifted my hands there was some one to put
them down to my side and say, in a soft voice, ‘Hush, be quiet!’ That was
their theory—absolute rest! They thought I was crazy because I could see
more than they, because I had visitors from the spirit-land—”
“I know,” interrupted Amos. “I was there one night. But I—”
“You couldn’t see them. It was only I. They came to _me_. It was more
than a year after they all died, and I was so lonely—oh, nobody knows
how desolate and lonely I was!—and then a medium came. She taught me how
to summon them. At first, though I made all the preparations, though
I put out the whist cards for uncle and Ralph and Sadie, and the toys
for little Ro, I couldn’t seem to think they were there; but I kept on
acting as if I knew they were there, and having faith; and at last they
did come. But they wouldn’t come in the asylum, because the conditions
weren’t right. So at last I felt I couldn’t bear it any longer. I felt
like I was false to the heavenly vision; but I couldn’t stand it, and so
I pretended I didn’t see them and I never had seen them; and whatever
they said I ought to feel I pretended to feel, and I said how wonderful
it was that I should be cured; and that made them right pleased; and
they felt that I was quite a credit to them, and they wrote my sister
that I was cured. I went home, but only to be suspected again, and so I
ran away. I had put aside money before, thousands of dollars, that they
thought that I spent. They thought I gave a heap of it to that medium
and her husband; I truly only gave them five hundred dollars. So I went
forth. I hid myself here. I was happy here, where _they_ could come,
until—until I saw Archibald Allerton on the street and overheard him
inquiring for me. I was dreadfully upset. But I decided in a minute to
flee again. So I drew some money out of the bank, and I bought a blue
calico and a sun-bonnet not to look like myself; and I went home and
wrote that letter I gave you, Mr. Sheriff, with my will and the money.”
“The parcel is unopened still,” said Amos. “I gave you my word, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I knew you would keep your word. And it was just after
I wrote you I slipped down the cellar stairs. It came of being in a
hurry. I made sure I never _would_ get on my feet again, but very soon
I discovered that I was more scared than hurt. And I saw then there
might be a chance of keeping him off his guard if he thought I was like
to die, and that thus I might escape the readier. It was not hard to
fool the doctors. I did just the same with them I did with the asylum
folks. I said yes whenever I thought they expected it, and though I had
some contradictory symptoms, they made out a bad state of things with
the spine, and gave mighty little hope of my recovery. But what I hadn’t
counted on was that my _friends_ would take such good care of me. I
didn’t know I had friends. It pleased me so I was wanting to cry for joy;
yet it frightened me so I didn’t know which way to turn.”
“But, great heavens! Aunt Margaret,” the young Southerner burst out,
unable to restrain himself longer, “you had no need to be so afraid of
_me_!”
The old woman looked at him, more in suspicion than in hope, but she
went on, not answering: “The night I did escape, it was by accident. I
never would say one word to him hardly, though he tried again and again
to start a talk; but I would seem too ill; and he’s a Cary, anyhow, and
couldn’t be rude to a lady. That night he went into the other room. He
was so quiet I reckoned he was asleep, and, thinking that here might be a
chance for me, I slipped out of bed, soft as soft, and slipped over to
the crack of the door—it just wasn’t closed!—and I peeked in on him—”
“And you were behind the door when he heard the noise?” exclaimed Amos.
“But what made the noise?”
“Oh, I reckon just ’Squire jumping out of the window; he gave a kind of
screech.”
“But I don’t understand,” cried Allerton. “I went into the room, and it
was empty.”
“No, sir,” said Miss Cary, plucking up more spirit in the presence of
Wickliff—“no, sir; I was behind the door. You didn’t push it shut.”
“But I ran all round the room.”
“No, sir; not till you looked out of the window. While you were looking
out of the window I slipped out of the door; and I was so scared lest
you should see me that I wasn’t afraid of anything else; and I got
down-stairs while you were looking in the closet, and found my clothes
there, and so got out.”
“But I was _sure_ I went round the room first,” cried Allerton.
“Very likely; but you see you didn’t,” remarked Amos.
“It was because I remembered stubbing my toe”—Allerton was painfully
ploughing up his memories—“I am _certain_ I stubbed my toe, and it must
have been going round the—no; by—I beg your pardon—I stubbed it against
the bed, going to the window. I was all wrong.”
“Just so,” agreed Amos, cheerfully. “And then _you_ went to Foley, Miss
Cary. Trust an Irishman for hiding anybody in trouble! But how did the
house catch fire? Did you—”
But old Margaret protested vehemently that here at least she was
sackless; and Mrs. Raker unexpectedly came to the rescue.
“I guess I can tell that much,” said she. “’Squire came back, and he’s
got burns all over him, and he’s cut with glass bad! I guess he jumped
back into the house and upset a lamp once too often!”
“I see it all,” said Amos. “And then you came back to rescue your nephew—”
“No, sir,” cried Margaret Cary; “I came back because they said you were
in trouble. It’s wicked, but I couldn’t bear the thought he’d take me
back to the crazies. I’m an old woman; and when you’re old you want to
live in a house of your own, in your own way, and not be crowded. And
it’s so awful to be crowded by crazies! I couldn’t bear it. I said he
must take his chance; and I wouldn’t read the papers for fear they would
shake my resolution. It was Foley read your advertisement to me. And
then I knew if you were in danger, whatever happened to me, I would have
to go.”
Amos wheeled round on young Allerton. “Now, young fellow,” said he,
“speak out. Tell your aunt you won’t touch a hair of her head; and she
may have her little invisible family gatherings all she likes.”
Allerton, smiling, came forward and took his aunt’s trembling hand. “You
shall stay here or go home to your sister, who loves you, whichever you
choose; and you shall be as safe and free there as here,” said he.
And looking into his dark eyes—the Cary eyes—she believed him.
The youngest reporter never heard the details of the Clark mystery, but
no doubt he made quite as good a story as if he had known the truth.
THE DEFEAT OF AMOS WICKLIFF
THE DEFEAT OF AMOS WICKLIFF
“What’s the matter with Amos?” Mrs. Smith asked Ruth Graves; “the boy
doesn’t seem like himself at all.” Amos, at this speaking, was nearer
forty than thirty; but ever since her own son’s death he had been “her
boy” to Edgar’s mother. She looked across at Ruth with a wistful kindling
of her dim eyes. “You—you haven’t said anything to Amos to hurt his
feelings, Ruth?”
Ruth, busy over her embroidery square, set her needle in with great
nicety, and replied, “I don’t think so, dear.” Her color did not turn nor
her features stir, and Mrs. Smith sighed.
After a moment she rose, a little stiffly—she had aged since Edgar’s
death—walked over to Ruth, and lightly stroked the sleek brown head.
“I’ve a very great—_respect_ for Amos,” she said. Then, her eyes filling,
she went out of the room; so she did not see Ruth’s head drop lower.
Respect? But Ruth herself respected him. No one, no one so much! But
that was all. He was the best, the bravest man in the world; but that was
all. While poor, weak, faulty Ned—how she had loved him! Why couldn’t
she love a right man? Why did not admiration and respect and gratitude
combined give her one throb of that lovely feeling that Ned’s eyes used
to give her before she knew that they were false? Yet it was not Ned’s
spectral hand that chilled her and held her back. Three years had passed
since he died, and before he died she had so completely ceased to love
him that she could pity him as well as his mother. The scorching anger
was gone with the love. But somehow, in the immeasurable humiliation and
anguish of that passage, it was as if her whole soul were burned over,
and the very power of loving shrivelled up and spoiled. How else could
she keep from loving Amos, who had done everything (she told herself
bitterly) that Ned had missed doing? And she gravely feared that Amos had
grown to care for her. A hundred trifles betrayed his secret to her who
had known the glamour that imparadises the earth, and never would know it
any more. Mrs. Smith had seen it also. Ruth remembered the day, nearly
a year ago, that she had looked up (she was singing at their cabinet
organ, singing hymns of a Sunday evening) and had caught the look, not
on Amos’s face, but on the kind old face that was like her mother’s. She
understood why, the next day, Mrs. Smith moved poor Ned’s picture from
the parlor to her own chamber, where there were four photographs of him
already.
“And now she is reconciled to what will never happen,” thought Ruth,
“and is afraid it won’t happen. Poor Mother Smith, it never will!” She
wished, half irritably, that Amos would let a comfortable situation
alone. Of late, during the month or six weeks past, he had appeared beset
by some hidden trouble. When he did not reckon that he was observed his
countenance would wear an expression of harsh melancholy; and more than
once had she caught his eyes tramping through space after her with a look
that made her recall the lines of Tennyson Ned used to quote to her in
jest—for she had never played with him:
“Right through’ his manful breast darted the pang
That makes a man, in the sweet face of her
That he loves most, lonely and miserable.”