"All right; you stay here with him and keep an eye on him while I go
and find out who he is and where he belongs." And with that he put on
his coat and left the house.
He was gone for over an hour, and during that time I sat by the bed,
keeping watch over the patient and letting my thoughts wander as they
would. Here was a little exhibition of a spirit which had been
conspicuously absent in my later experiences of the world and its
peopling. Apparently the milk of human kindness had not become
entirely a figure of speech. One man, at least, was trying to live up
to the requirements of a nominally Christian civilization, and if this
bit of rescue work were a fair sample, he was making a success of it.
I took it for granted that he was the minister of the next-door church,
and that the house was its parsonage or rectory. It was a simple
story-and-a-half cottage, plainly furnished but exquisitely neat and
home-like. There were books everywhere, and an atmosphere about as
much of the place as I could see to make me decide that it was a man's
house--I mean that the young minister wasn't as yet sharing it with a
woman. You can tell pretty well. A woman's touch about a house
interior is as easily distinguishable as the stars on a clear night.
From my place at the bedside I could look through an open door into the
sitting-room. There were easy-chairs and a writing-table and a general
air of man-comfort. Among the pictures on the walls was one of a
stately group of college buildings; another was a class picture taken
with a church, or perhaps it was the college chapel, for a background.
When the hour was about up, the man on the bed began to stir and show
signs that he was coming out of the unconscious fit. Pretty soon he
opened his eyes and asked, in a liquor-thickened voice, where he was.
I told him he had had an accident and was in the hands of his friends;
and at that he dropped off to sleep, and was still sleeping when a farm
wagon stopped at the cottage gate and the Good Samaritan came in. His
search had been successful. Our broken-winged bird was a young farmer
living a few miles out of town. The young minister had found his team,
and a friend to drive it, and both friend and team were at the gate
ready to take the battered one home.
With the help of the volunteer driver we got the young farmer up and
out and into the wagon; and there the Samaritan outreaching ended--or I
supposed it was ended. But as a matter of fact, it was merely
transferring itself to me. As I was moving off to resume my
interrupted dash for the railroad station, Whitley--I read his name on
the notice board of the near-by church--stopped me.
"What's your hurry?" he asked; adding: "I haven't had time to get
acquainted with you yet."
I answered briefly that I was leaving town, and this brought the
questioner's watch out of his pocket.
"There is no train in either direction before nine o'clock this
evening," he demurred. And then: "It is nearly six now: if you haven't
anything better to do, why not stay and take dinner with me? I'm a
lone bachelor-man, and I'd be mighty glad of your company."
The wagon had driven off and the street was empty. I looked my
potential host squarely in the eyes and said the first thing that came
uppermost.
"I have just been discharged from Mr. Haddon's store--for what Mr.
Haddon considers to be good and sufficient cause. I don't believe you
want me at your dinner-table."
His smile was as refreshing as a cool breeze on a hot summer day.
"I don't care what Mr. Haddon has said or done to you. If you can't
give any better reason than that----"
"But I can," I interposed. "I am a paroled convict."
Without another word he opened the gate and drew me inside with an arm
linked in mine. And he didn't speak again until he had planted me in
the easiest of the big chairs before the grate fire in the cozy
sitting-room, and had found a couple of pipes, filling one for me and
the other for himself.
"Now, then, tell me all about it," he commanded, "You are having plenty
of trouble; your face says that much. Begin back a bit and let it lead
up to Mr. Zadoc Haddon as a climax, if you wish."
It had been so long since I had had a chance really to confide in
anybody that I unloaded it all; the whole bitter burden of it. Whitley
heard me through patiently, and when I was done, put his finger on the
single omission in the story.
"You haven't told me whether you did or did not use the bank's money
for your own account in the mining speculation," he said.
I shook my head. "I have learned by hard experience not to say much
about that part of it."
"Why?" he asked.
"If you knew convicts you wouldn't ask. They will all tell you that
they were innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced."
He smoked in silence for a minute or two and then said: "You are not a
criminal, Weyburn."
"I am not far from it at the present time--whatever I was in the
beginning."
Another silence, and then: "It seems incredible to me that you, or any
man in your situation, should find the world so hard-hearted. It isn't
hard-hearted as a whole, you know; on the contrary, it is kind and
helpful and charitable to a degree that you'd never suspect until you
appeal to it. I know, because I am appealing to it every day."
Again I shook my head.
"It draws a line in its charity; and the ex-convict is on the wrong
side of that line." I was going on to say more, but at that moment a
white-haired old negro in a spotless serving jacket came to the door to
say that dinner was ready, and we went together to the tiny dining-room
in the rear.
At dinner, which was the most appetizing meal I had sat down to in many
a long day, Whitley told me more about himself, sparing me, as I made
sure, the necessity of further talk about my own wretched experiences.
He was Southern born and bred--which accounted for the old negro
serving man--and Springville was his first parish north of the Ohio
River. He was enthusiastic over his work, and he seemed to forget
completely who and what I was as he talked of it.
Later, when we had come again to the sitting-room with its cheerful
fire, we talked of books, finding common ground in the field of
autobiography and travel. Whitley's reading in this field had been
much wider than mine, and his knowledge of far countries and the men
who wrote about them was a revelation to such a dabbler as I had been.
Book after book was taken from the shelves and dipped into, and before
I realized it the evening--so different from any I had enjoyed for
months and years--had slipped away and the little clock on the mantel
was chiming the half-hour after eight. It was time for me to efface
myself, and I said so--a bit unsteadily, perhaps, for the pleasant
evening had been as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.
"No," said Whitley, quite definitely. "You are not going to-night. I
have a spare bed upstairs and I want you to stay--as my guest. Beyond
that, you are not going to leave Springville merely because Mr. Haddon
has seen fit to deny you your little meed of justice and a fair show."
"It's no use," I said. "The story is out, and it will follow me
wherever I go--doubtless with Mr. Haddon's help. You'd best let me go
while the going is easy."
"No," he Insisted. "You are a part of my work--one of my reasons for
existence. Christianity means something, Weyburn, and I am here to
define its meaning in specific cases. There is a little legacy of
common justice due you, and I shall take it upon myself to see that you
get it. As for Zadoc Haddon, you needn't worry about him. I am
ashamed to say that he is a member of my own church, but that doesn't
prevent him from being a wolf in sheep's clothing. I have told him so
to his face, and he has tried to get me ousted--without success, so
far."
I saw difficulties and more difficulties for this generous young fellow
who was so ready to champion my cause, and it seemed only decent to
spare him if I could. But at the end of my protest he summed the
situation up in a single sentence:
"What you say about me is all beside the mark; somebody has got to give
you the chance you are needing, and the fight may just as well be made
here in Springville as anywhere. Sit down again and let's dig a little
deeper into that Mexican book of Enock's. I do like his blunt English
way of describing things; don't you?"
Though the next three days were full of hopes and despairings for me I
shall pass over them lightly. Each day, though he did not tell me in
detail what he was doing, I knew that Whitley was trying his best to
find a place for me; and I knew, too, that he was meeting with no
success. He was such a fine, upstanding fellow, and so full of holy
zeal and enthusiasm, that it was hard for him to acknowledge defeat.
But on the third evening, after a dinner at which he had tried vainly
to bridge the gaps that were continually opening out in the talk, he
threw up his hands.
"Weyburn," he began, when the pipes were lighted and he had poked the
grate fire into a roaring blaze, "don't you know, these last three days
have come mighty near to making me lose faith in my kind. It's simply
wretched--miserable!"
"I would have saved you if you had been willing to let me," I reminded
him.
"The question is much bigger than Bert Weyburn or John Whitley, or both
of them put together," he asserted soberly. "It involves the entire
fabric of Christianity, and our so-called Christian civilization. The
Church is here to shadow forth the spirit and teachings of Christ, or
it isn't--one of the two. If it falls in its mission it is a hollow
mockery; a thing beneath contempt. I go to my fellow Christians with a
simple plea for justice for a man who needs it, and what do I get? I
am told, with all the sickening variations, that it won't do; that the
thing I am proposing is one of the things that 'isn't done'; that
society must be protected, and all that!"
"The mills of the gods," I suggested.
"Nothing of the sort! It's a radical defect in the existing scheme of
things. Heavens and earth, Weyburn, you are not a pariah! Assuming
that you really did the thing for which you were punished--and I don't
believe you did--is that any reason why we should stultify ourselves
absolutely and deny the very first principles of the religion we
profess? But I mustn't be unfair. Perhaps the fault is partly mine,
after all. Perhaps I haven't done my duty by these people."
"No; the fault is not yours," I hastened to say.
"I'm hoping it is; some of it, at least. Just the same, the wretched
fact remains. You might be the biggest villain unhung--if only you
hadn't passed through the courts and the penitentiary. As you thought
probably was the case, your story is known all over town; though how it
has got such a wide publication in so short a time is more than I can
fathom. Men whom I would bank on; men to whom I have felt that I could
go in any conceivable extremity, have turned me down as soon as I
mentioned your name. The prison story is like a big, brutal, inanimate
mountain standing squarely in the way; and I--I haven't the faith
needful for its removal!"
Being under the deepest obligation to this dear young fellow who was
bruising himself for me, I said what I could to lighten his burden.
But in the midst of it he got up and reached for his hat and overcoat.
"I have just thought of something," he explained hastily; "something
that may throw a good bit of light on this thing. You sit right here
and toast your shins. I'm going out for a little while."
He was gone for the better part of an hour, during which interval I
obeyed his injunction literally, sitting before the fire and basking in
its home-like warmth; making the most of the comfort of it all before I
should again go forth to face an inclement world. When Whitley came in
and flung himself into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth his
dark eyes were blazing.
"Weyburn," he began abruptly, "what I have to tell you will stir every
evil passion you've ever harbored; and yet, in decent justice to you,
it must be told. Have you ever suspected that your fight for
reinstatement has been deliberately handicapped, right from the
beginning?"
"I have suspected it at times; yes," I returned. "But there is no
proof."
"There _is_ proof," he shot back. "By the merest chance I stumbled
upon it a few minutes ago. I went out with the intention of going to
Zadoc Haddon and making him tell me where he got the information that
you are the desperate criminal he professes to believe you to be.
While we were sitting here it struck me all at once that this thing was
being helped along by some one who had an object in view. At Haddon's
house the doorman told me that Haddon had an appointment with an
out-of-town customer and had gone to the hotel to keep it; and rather
than wait, I went over to the Hamilton House to try to find my man. I
didn't find him; but in the lobby of the hotel somebody found me. As I
was turning away from the desk after asking for Haddon, a heavy-set
young man, neatly dressed, stepped up and asked if my name was Whitley.
I admitted it. Then he asked if I would give him a few minutes, and we
went aside to sit facing each other in a couple of the lobby chairs.
Weyburn, that young man is in the employ of a private detective agency,
and what he wished to do, and did do, was to warn me that I was
sheltering a dangerous criminal in my house!"
In a flash all the small mysteries that had been befogging me for
months made themselves transparently clear: the man I had called a
traveling salesman who had followed me from the prison gates to the
scene of my first humble effort; the memorandum Chief Callahan had
consulted; the "outfit" that was to be notified when my next
destination was known; the second appearance of the "salesman" on the
train at the capital, and his disappearance when he had learned from
the conductor the name of my next stopping-place; and after this the
long series of hitherto unaccountable blacklistings. My mouth was dry,
but I contrived to tell Whitley to go on.
"I will," he conceded; "but you must promise me to control yourself.
Naturally, my first impulse, when this scamp began on me, was to cut
him off short and tell him what I thought of the despicable business to
which he was lending himself. But the second thought was craftier, and
I hope I may be forgiven for yielding to it. By leading him on I got
the entire brutal story. It seems that the two old men upon whose
complaint you were indicted knew when you were to be paroled. They
profess to believe that you are a menace to society; that the prison
authorities were at fault in releasing you short of the limit of your
sentence. Hence, through his employers, they have set this man upon
your track to see to it--I use his own words--that you do not have an
opportunity to rob some one else."
I suppose I should have been driven mad with vindictive fury at this
plain revelation of the true cause of most of my misfortunes, but there
is a point beyond which the beaten man cannot rise to renew the fight,
and I had reached and passed it. Wherefore I found myself saying,
quite calmly:
"Neither Abel Geddis nor Abner Withers would spend one copper penny for
any such altruistic reason as this man has given you, Whitley. Their
motive is strictly selfish and personal. They are either afraid that I
may go back to Glendale and try to expose them; or that I may take the
shorter and surer way of balancing the account by killing them--as, at
one time, I meant to."
"Oh, but my dear fellow!" Whitley protested. "In that case they would
hardly take a course which was calculated to drive you to desperation!"
"You don't understand it all," I rejoined. "Everything has been done
secretly, and it is only by the merest chance that I have now learned
the truth. This man you have been talking to has been following me, or
keeping track of me, ever since I left the penitentiary. I have seen
him twice, and I took him to be a traveling salesman--as he doubtless
intended I should. You can see how it was designed to work out. With
a sufficient amount of discouragement it was reasonable to assume that
the prison bird would finally yield to the inevitable; become a
criminal in fact and get himself locked up again out of harm's way."
"You think that was the motive?"
"I am as certain of it as I should be if I could read the minds of
those two old plotters in my home town. You see, I've summered and
wintered them. The only thing I can't understand is why I have been so
blind; why I didn't assume all this long ago and act accordingly."
"But why, _why_ should they be so utterly lost to every sense of right
and justice; to all the promptings of common humanity? It's hideously
incredible!"
"I have given you two reasons, and you may take your choice. It is
either the fear of death--the fear of the vengeance of a man whose life
they have ruined, or else the transaction in which they involved me,
and in which they made me their scapegoat, was more far-reaching than
I, or anybody in Glendale, supposed it was."
Whitley sat for a full minute staring absently into the fire. Then he
said, very gently: "Now that you know the truth, what will you do?"
"I know well enough what I ought to do. We may pass over the fellow at
the Hamilton House; he is only a poor tool in the hands of the master
workmen. I bear him no malice of the blood-letting sort. But really,
Whitley, I ought to go back to Glendale and rid the earth of those two
old villains who have earned their blotting-out."