WILL HE TELL?
Constable Bill Frost was not a man of such acute suspicion as Sol
Greening. He was a thin, slow man with a high, sharp nose and a
sprangling, yellow mustache which extended broadly, like the horns of a
steer. It did not enter his mind to connect Joe with the tragedy in a
criminal way as they rode together back to the farm.
When they arrived, they found Sol Greening and his married son Dan
sitting on the front steps. Mrs. Greening was upstairs, comforting the
young widow, who was "racked like a fiddle," according to Sol.
Sol took the constable around to the window and pointed out the body of
Isom stretched beside the table.
"You're a officer of the law," said Sol, "and these here primisis is now
in your hands and charge, but I don't think you orto go in that room. I
think you orto leave him lay, just the way he dropped, for the coroner.
That's the law."
Frost was of the same opinion. He had no stomach for prying around dead
men, anyhow.
"We'll leave him lay, Sol," said he.
"And it's my opinion that you orto put handcuffs on that feller," said
Sol.
"Which feller?" asked Bill.
"That boy Joe," said Sol.
"Well, I ain't got any, and I wouldn't put 'em on him if I had," said
Bill. "He told me all about how it happened when we was comin' over.
Why, you don't suspiciont he done it, do you, Sol?"
"Circumstantial evidence," said Sol, fresh from jury service and full of
the law, "is dead ag'in' him, Bill. If I was you I'd slap him under
arrest. They had words, you know."
"Yes; he told me they did," said Bill.
"But he didn't tell you what them words was about," said Sol deeply.
The constable turned to Sol, the shaft of suspicion working its way
through the small door of his mind.
"By ganny!" said he.
"I'd take him up and hand him over to the sheriff in the morning,"
advised Sol.
"I reckon I better do it," Frost agreed, almost knocked breathless by
the importance of the thing he had overlooked.
So they laid their heads together to come to a proper method of
procedure, and presently they marched around the corner of the house,
shoulder to shoulder, as if prepared to intercept and overwhelm Joe if
he tried to make a dash for liberty.
They had left Joe sitting on the steps with Dan, and now they hurried
around as if they expected to find his place empty and Dan stretched
out, mangled and bleeding. But Joe was still there, in friendly
conversation with Dan, showing no intention of running away. Frost
advanced and laid his hand on Joe's shoulder.
"Joe Newbolt," said he, "I put you under arrest on the suspiciont of
shootin' and murderin' Isom Chase in cold blood."
It was a formula contrived between the constable and Sol. Sol had
insisted on the "cold blood." That was important and necessary, he
declared. Omit that in making the arrest, and you had no case. It would
fall through.
Joe stood up, placing himself at the immediate disposal of the
constable, which was rather embarrassing to Bill.
"Well, Bill, if you think it's necessary, all right," said he.
"Form of law demands it," said Sol.
"But you might wait and see what the coroner thinks about it," suggested
Joe.
"Perliminaries," said Greening in his deep way.
Then the question of what to do with the prisoner until morning arose.
Joe pointed out that they could make no disposition of him, except to
hold him in custody, until the coroner had held an inquest into the case
and a conclusion had been reached by the jury. He suggested that they
allow him to go to bed and get some needed sleep.
That seemed to be a very sensible suggestion, according to Bill's view
of it. But Sol didn't know whether it would be a regular proceeding and
in strict accord with the forms of law. Indeed, he was of the opinion,
after deliberating a while, that it would weaken the case materially. He
was strongly in favor of handcuffs, or, in the absence of regulation
manacles, a half-inch rope.
After a great deal of discussion, during which Frost kept his hand
officiously on Joe's shoulder, it was agreed that the prisoner should be
allowed to go to bed. He was to be lodged in the spare room upstairs,
the one lately occupied by Morgan. Frost escorted him to it, and locked
the door.
"Is they erry winder in that room?" asked Sol, when Bill came back.
"Reckon so," said Frost, starting nervously. "I didn't look."
"Better see," said Sol, getting up to investigate.
They went round to the side of the house. Yes, there was a window, and
it was wide open.
But any doubt that the prisoner might have escaped through it was soon
quieted by the sound of his snore. Joe had thrown himself across the
bed, boots and all, and was already shoulder-deep in sleep. They decided
that, at daylight, Sol's son should ride to the county-seat, seven miles
distant, and notify the coroner.
During the time they spent between Joe's retirement and daybreak, Sol
improved the minutes by arraigning, convicting, and condemning Joe for
the murder of old Isom. He did it so impressively that he had Constable
Frost on edge over the tremendous responsibility that rested on his
back. Bill was in a sweat, although the night was cool. He tiptoed
around, listening, spying, prying; he stood looking up at Joe's window
until his neck ached; he explored the yard for hidden weapons and
treasure, and he peered and poked with a rake-handle into shrubbery and
vines.
They could hear the women upstairs talking once in a while, and now and
again they caught the sound of a piteous moan.
"She ain't seen him," said Sol; "I wouldn't let her come down. She may
not be in no condition to look on a muss like that, her a young woman
and only married a little while."
Bill agreed on that, as he agreed on every hypothesis which Sol
propounded out of his wisdom, now that his official heat had been
raised.
"If I hadn't got here when I did he'd 'a' skinned out with all of that
money," said Sol. "He was standin' there with his hat in his hand, all
ready to scoop it up."
"How'd he come to go after me?" asked Bill.
"Well, folks don't always do things on their own accord," said Sol,
giving Bill an unmistakable look.
"Oh, that was the way of it," nodded Bill. "I thought it was funny if
he----"
"He knowed he didn't have a ghost of a chance to git away between me and
you," said Sol.
Morning came, and with it rode Sol's son to fetch the coroner.
Sol had established himself in the case so that he would lose very
little glory in the day's revelations, and there remained one pleasant
duty yet which he proposed to take upon himself. That was nothing less
than carrying the news of the tragedy and Joe's arrest to Mrs. Newbolt
in her lonely home at the foot of the hill.
Sol's son spread the news as he rode through the thin morning to the
county-seat, drawing up at barn-yard gates, hailing the neighbors on the
way to their fields, pouring the amazing story into the avid ears of all
who met him. Sol carried the story in the opposite direction, trotting
his horse along full of leisurely importance and the enjoyment of the
distinction which had fallen on him through his early connection with
the strange event. When they heard it, men turned back from their fields
and hastened to the Chase farm, to peer through the kitchen window and
shock their toil-blunted senses in the horror of the scene.
Curiosity is stronger than thrift in most men, and those of that
community were no better fortified against it than others of their kind.
Long before Sol Greening's great lubberly son reached the county-seat, a
crowd had gathered at the farmstead of Isom Chase. Bill Frost, now
bristling with the dignity of his official power, moved among them
soberly, the object of great respect as the living, moving embodiment of
the law.
Yesterday he was only Bill Frost, a tenant of rented land, filling an
office that was only a name; this morning he was Constable Bill Frost,
with the power and dignity of the State of Missouri behind him, guarding
a house of mystery and death. Law and authority had transformed him
overnight, settling upon him as the spirit used to come upon the
prophets in the good old days.
Bill had only to stretch out his arm, and strong men would fall back,
pale and awed, away from the wall of the house; he had but to caution
them in a low word to keep hands off everything, to be instantly obeyed.
They drew away into the yard and stood in low-voiced groups, the process
of thought momentarily stunned by this terrible thing.
"Ain't it awful?" a graybeard would whisper to a stripling youth.
"Ain't it terrible?" would come the reply.
"Well, well, well! Old Isom!"
That was as far as any of them could go. Then they would walk softly,
scarcely breathing, to the window and peep in again.
Joe, unhailed and undisturbed, was spinning out his sleep. Mrs. Greening
brought coffee and refreshments for the young widow from her own kitchen
across the road, and the sun rose and drove the mists out of the
hollows, as a shepherd drives his flocks out to graze upon the hill.
As Sol Greening hitched his horse to the Widow Newbolt's fence, he heard
her singing with long-drawn quavers and lingering semibreves:
_There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins...._
She appeared at the kitchen door, a pan in her hand, a flock of
expectant chickens craning their necks to see what she had to offer, at
the instant that Sol came around the corner of the house. She all but
let the pan fall in her amazement, and the song was cut off between her
lips in the middle of a word, for it was not more than six o'clock,
uncommonly early for visitors.
"Mercy me, Sol Greening, you give me an awful jump!" said she.
"Well, I didn't aim to," said Sol, turning over in his mind the speech
that he had drawn up in the last uninterrupted stage of his journey
over.
Mrs. Newbolt looked at him sharply, turning her head a little with a
quick, pert movement, not unlike one of her hens.
"Is anybody sick over your way?" she asked.
She could not account for the early visit in any other manner. People
commonly came for her at all hours of the day and night when there was
somebody sick and in need of a herb-wise nurse. She had helped a great
many of the young ones of that community into the world, and she had
eased the pains of many old ones who were quitting it. So she thought
that Greening's visit must have something to do with either life or
death.
"No, nobody just azackly sick," dodged Greening.
"Well, laws my soul, you make a mighty mystery over it! What's the
matter--can't you talk?"
"But I can't say, Missis Newbolt, that everybody's just azackly well,"
said he.
"Some of your folks?"
"No, not none of mine," said Sol.
"Then whose?" she inquired impatiently.
"Isom's," said he.
"You don't mean my Joe?" she asked slowly, a shadow of pain drawing her
face.
"I mean Isom," said Sol.
"Isom?" said she, relieved. "Why didn't Joe come after me?" Before Sol
could adjust his program to meet this unexpected exigency, she demanded:
"Well, what's the matter with Isom?"
"Dead," said Sol, dropping his voice impressively.
"You don't mean--well, shades of mercy, Isom dead! What was
it--cholera-morbus?"
"Killed," said Sol; "shot down with his own gun and killed as dead as a
dornix."
"His own gun! Well, sakes--who done it?"
"Only one man knows," said Sol, shaking his head solemnly. "I'll tell
you how it was."
Sol started away back at the summons to jury service, worked up to the
case in which he and Isom had sat together, followed Isom then along the
road home, and galloped to overtake him. He arrived at his gate--all in
his long and complete narrative--again, as he had done in reality the
night past; he heard the shot in Isom's house; he leaped to the ground;
he ran. He saw a light in the kitchen of Isom's house, but the door was
closed; he knocked, and somebody called to him to enter. He opened the
door and saw Isom lying there, still and bloody, money--gold money--all
over him, and a man standing there beside him. There was nobody else in
the room.
"Shades of mercy!" she gasped. "Who was that man?"
Sol looked at her pityingly. He put his hand to his forehead as if it
gave him pain to speak.
"It was your Joe," said he.
She sighed, greatly lightened and relieved.
"Oh, then Joe he told you how it happened?" said she.
"Ma'am," said Sol impressively, "he said they was alone in the kitchen
when it happened; he said him and Isom had some words, and Isom he
reached up to pull down the gun, and the hammer caught, and it went off
and shot him. That's what Joe told me, ma'am."
"Well, Sol Greening, you talk like you didn't believe him!" she scorned.
"If Joe said that, it's so."
"I hope to God it is!" said Sol, drawing a great breath.
If Sol had looked for tears, his eyes were cheated; if he had listened
for screams, wailings, and moanings, his ears were disappointed. Sarah
Newbolt stood straight and haughtily scornful in her kitchen door, her
dark eyes bright between their snapping lids.
"Where's Joe?" she asked sternly.
"He's over there," said Sol, feeling that he had made a noise like a
peanut-bag which one inflates and smashes in the palm in the expectation
of startling the world.
"Have they took him up?"
"Well, you see, Bill Frost's kind of keepin' his eye on him till the
inquest," explained Sol.
"Yes, and I could name the man that put him up to it," said she.
"Well, circumstantial evidence--" began Sol.
"Oh, circumstance your granny!" she stopped him pettishly.
Mrs. Newbolt emptied her pan among the scrambling fowls by turning it
suddenly upside down. That done, she reached behind her and put it on
the table. Her face had grown hard and severe, and her eyes were
fierce.
"Wouldn't believe my boy!" said she bitterly. "Are you going over that
way now?"
"Guess I'll be ridin' along over."
"Well, you tell Joe that I'll be there as quick as shank's horses can
carry me," she said, turning away from the door, leaving Sol to gather
what pleasure he was able out of the situation.
She lost no time in primping and preparing, but was on the road before
Sol had gone a quarter of a mile.
Mrs. Newbolt cut across fields, arriving at the Chase farm almost as
soon as Sol Greening did on his strawberry roan. The coroner had not
come when she got there; Bill Frost allowed Joe to come down to the
unused parlor of old Isom's house to talk with her. Frost showed a
disposition to linger within the room and hear what was said, but she
pushed him out.
"I'll not let him run off, Bill Frost," said she. "If he'd wanted to
run, if he'd had anything to run from, he could 'a' gone last night,
couldn't he, you dunce?"
She closed the door, and no word of what passed between mother and son
reached the outside of it, although Bill Frost strained his ear against
it, listening.
When the coroner arrived in the middle of the forenoon he found no
difficulty in obtaining a jury to inquire into Isom's death. The major
and minor male inhabitants of the entire neighborhood were assembled
there, every qualified man of them itching to sit on the jury. As the
coroner had need of but six, and these being soon chosen, the others had
no further pleasure to look forward to save the inquiry into the
tragedy.
After examining the wound which caused Isom's death, the coroner had
ordered the body removed from the kitchen floor. The lamp was still
burning on the table, and the coroner blew it out; the gold lay
scattered on the floor where it had fallen, and he gathered it up and
put it in the little sack.
When the coroner went to the parlor to convene the inquest, the crowd
packed after him. Those who were not able to get into the room clustered
in a bunch at the door, and protruded themselves in at the windows,
silent and expectant.
Joe sat with his mother on one hand, Constable Frost on the other, and
across the room was Ollie, wedged between fat Mrs. Sol Greening and her
bony daughter-in-law, who claimed the office of ministrants on the
ground of priority above all the gasping, sympathetic, and exclaiming
females who had arrived after them.
Ollie was pale and exhausted in appearance, her face drawn and
bloodless, like that of one who wakes out of an anesthetic after a
surgical operation upon some vital part. Her eyes were hollowed, her
nostrils pinched, but there was no trace of tears upon her cheeks. The
neighbors said it was dry grief, the deepest and most lasting that racks
the human heart. They pitied her, so young and fair, so crushed and
bowed under that sudden, dark sorrow.
Mrs. Greening had thrown something black over the young widow's
shoulders, of which she seemed unaware. It kept slipping and falling
down, revealing her white dress, and Mrs. Greening kept adjusting it
with motherly hand. Sitting bent, like an old woman, Ollie twisted and
wound her nervous hot fingers in her lap. Now and then she lifted her
eyes to Joe's, as if struggling to read what intention lay behind the
pale calm of his face.
No wonder she looked at him wild and fearful, people said. It was more
than anybody could understand, that sudden development of fierce passion
and treachery in a boy who always had been so shy and steady. No wonder
she gazed at him that way, poor thing!
Of course they did not dream how far they were from interpreting that
look in the young widow's eyes. There was one question in her life that
morning, and one only, it seemed. It stood in front of the future and
blocked all thought of it like a heavy door. Over and over it revolved
in her mind. It was written in fire in her aching brain.
When they put Joe Newbolt on the witness-stand and asked him how it
happened, would he stand true to his first intention and protect her, or
would he betray it all?
That was what troubled Ollie. She did not know, and in his face there
was no answer.
Sol Greening was the first witness. He told again to the jury of his
neighbors the story which he had gone over a score of times that
morning. Mrs. Newbolt nodded when he related what Joe had told him, as
if to say there was no doubt about that; Joe had told her the same
thing. It was true.
The coroner, a quick, sharp little man with a beard of unnatural
blackness, thick eyebrows and sleek hair, helped him along with a
question now and then.
"There was nobody in the room but Joe Newbolt when you arrived?"
"Nobody else--no livin' body," replied Sol.
"No other living body. And Joe Newbolt was standing beside the body of
Isom Chase, near the head, you say?"
"Yes, near Isom's head."
"With his hat in his hand, as if he had just entered the room, or was
about to leave it?"
Sol nodded.
"Do you know anything about a man who had been boarding here the past
week or two?"
The coroner seemed to ask this as an afterthought.
"Morgan," said Sol, crossing his legs the other way for relief. "Yes, I
knowed him."
"Did you see him here last night?"
"No, he wasn't here. The old lady said he stopped in at our house
yesterday morning to sell me a ready-reckoner."
Sol chuckled, perhaps over what he considered a narrow escape.
"I was over at Shelbyville, on the jury, and I wasn't there, so he
didn't sell it. Been tryin' to for a week. He told the old lady that was
his last day here, and he was leavin' then."
"And about what time of night was it when you heard the shot in Isom
Chase's house, and ran over?"
"Along about first rooster-crow," said Sol.
"And that might be about what hour?"
"Well, I've knowed 'em to crow at 'leven this time o' year, and ag'in
I've knowed 'em to put it off as late as two. But I should judge that it
was about twelve when I come over here the first time last night."
Sol was excused with that. He left the witness-chair with ponderous
solemnity. The coroner's stenographer had taken down his testimony, and
was now leaning back in his chair as serenely as if unconscious of his
own marvelous accomplishment of being able to write down a man's words
as fast as he could talk.
Not so to those who beheld the feat for the first time. They watched the
young man, who was a ripe-cheeked chap with pale hair, as if they
expected to catch him in the fraud and pretense of it in the end, and
lay bare the deceit which he practised upon the world.
The coroner was making notes of his own, stroking his black beard
thoughtfully, and in the pause between witnesses the assembled neighbors
had the pleasure of inspecting the parlor of dead Isom Chase which they
had invaded, into which, living, he never had invited them.
Isom's first wife had arranged that room, in the hope of her young
heart, years and years ago. Its walls were papered in bridal gaiety, its
colors still bright, for the full light of day seldom fell into it as
now. There hung a picture of that bride's father, a man with shaved lip
and a forest of beard from ears to Adam's apple, in a little oval frame;
and there, across the room, was another, of her mother, Quakerish in
look, with smooth hair and a white something on her neck and bosom, held
at her throat by a portrait brooch. On the table, just under that
fast-writing young man's eyes, was a glass thing shaped like a cake
cover, protecting some flowers made of human hair, and sprigs of
bachelor's button, faded now, and losing their petals.
There hung the marriage certificate of Isom and his first wife, framed
in tarnished gilt which was flaking from the wood, a blue ribbon through
a slit in one corner of the document, like the pendant of a seal, and
there stood the horsehair-upholstered chairs, so spare of back and thin
of shank that the rustics would stand rather than trust their corn-fed
weight upon them. Underfoot was a store-bought carpet, as full of roses
as the Elysian Fields, and over by the door lay a round, braided rag
mat, into which Isom's old wife had stitched the hunger of her heart and
the brine of her lonely tears.
The coroner looked up from his little red-leather note-book.
"Joe Newbolt, step over here and be sworn," said he.
Joe crossed over to the witness-chair, picking his way through feet and
legs. As he turned, facing the coroner, his hand upraised, Ollie looked
at him steadily, her fingers fluttering and twining.
Twelve hours had made a woeful change in her. She was as gaunt as a
suckling she-hound, an old terror lay lurking in her young eyes. For one
hour of dread is worse than a year of weeping. One may grieve, honestly
and deeply, without wearing away the cheeks or burning out the heart,
for there is a soft sorrow which lies upon the soul like a deadening
mist upon the autumn fields. But there is no worry without waste. One
day of it will burn more of the fuel of human life than a decade of
placid sorrow.
How much would he tell? Would it be all--the story of the caress in the
kitchen door, the orchard's secret, the attempt to run away from
Isom--or would he shield her in some manner? If he should tell all,
there sat an audience ready to snatch the tale and carry it away, and
spread it abroad. Then disgrace would follow, pitiless and driving, and
Morgan was not there to bear her away from it, or to mitigate its
sting.
Bill Frost edged over and stood behind the witness chair. His act gave
the audience a thrill. "He's under arrest!" they whispered, sending it
from ear to ear. Most of them had known it before, but there was
something so full and satisfying in the words. Not once before in years
had there been occasion to use them; it might be years again before
another opportunity presented. They had an official sound, a sound of
adventure and desperation. And so they whispered them, neighbor nodding
to neighbor in deep understanding as it went round the room, like a
pass-word in secret conclave: "He's under arrest!"
There was nobody present to advise Joe of his rights. He had been
accused of the crime and taken into custody, yet they were calling on
him now to give evidence which might be used against him. If he had any
doubt about the legality of the proceeding, he was too certain of the
outcome of the inquiry to hesitate or demur. There was not a shadow of
doubt in his mind that his neighbors, men who had known him all his
life, and his father before him, would acquit him of all blame in the
matter and set him free. They would believe him, assuredly. Therefore,
he answered cheerfully when the coroner put the usual questions
concerning age and nativity. Then the coroner leaned back in his chair.
"Now, Joe, tell the jury just how it happened," said he.
The jury looked up with a little start of guilt at the coroner's
reference to itself, presenting a great deal of whiskers and shocks of
untrimmed hair, together with some reddening of the face. For the jury
had been following the movements of the coroner's stenographer, as if
it, also, expected to catch him in the trick of it that would
incriminate him and send him to the penitentiary for life.
"I'd been down to the barn and out by the gate, looking around," said
Joe. There he paused.
"Yes; looking around," encouraged the coroner, believing from the lad's
appearance and slow manner that he had a dull fellow in hand. "Now, what
were you looking around for, Joe?"
"I had a kind of uneasy feeling, and I wanted to see if everything was
safe," said Joe.
"Afraid of horse-thieves, or something like that?"
"Something like that," nodded Joe.
Mrs. Newbolt, sitting very straight-backed, held her lips tight, for she
was impressed with the seriousness of the occasion. Now and then she
nodded, as if confirming to herself some foregone conclusion.
"Isom had left me in charge of the place, and I didn't want him to come
back and find anything gone," Joe explained.
"I see," said the coroner in a friendly way. "Then what did you do?"
"I went back to the house and lit the lamp in the kitchen," said Joe.
"How long was that before Isom came in?"
"Only a little while; ten or fifteen minutes, or maybe less."
"And what did Isom say when he came in, Joe?"
"He said he'd kill me, he was in a temper," Joe replied.
"You had no quarrel before he said that, Isom just burst right into the
room and threatened to kill you, did he, Joe? Now, you're sure about
that?"
"Yes, I'm perfectly sure."
"What had you done to send Isom off into a temper that way?"
"I hadn't done a thing," said Joe, meeting the coroner's gaze honestly.
The coroner asked him concerning his position in the room, what he was
doing, and whether he had anything in his hands that excited Isom when
he saw it.
"My hands were as empty as they are this minute," said Joe, but not
without a little color in his cheeks when he remembered how hot and
small Ollie's hand had felt within his own.
"When did you first see this?" asked the coroner, holding up the sack
with the burst corner which had lain on Isom's breast.
The ruptured corner had been tied with a string, and the sack bulged
heavily in the coroner's hand.
"When Isom was lying on the floor after he was shot," said Joe.
A movement of feet was audible through the room. People looked at each
other, incredulity in their eyes. The coroner returned to the incidents
which led up to the shooting snapping back to that phase of the inquiry
suddenly, as if in the expectation of catching Joe off his guard.
"What did he threaten to kill you for?" he asked sharply.
"Well, Isom was an unreasonable and quick-tempered man," Joe replied.
The coroner rose to his feet in a quick start, as if he intended to leap
over the table. He pointed his finger at Joe, shaking his somber beard.
"What did Isom Chase catch you at when he came into that kitchen?" he
asked accusingly.
"He saw me standing there, just about to blow out the light and go to
bed," said Joe.
"What did you and Isom quarrel about last night?"
Joe did not reply at once. He seemed debating with himself over the
advisability of answering at all. Then he raised his slow eyes to the
coroner's face.
"That was between him and me," said he.
"Very well," said the coroner shortly, resuming his seat. "You may tell
the jury how Isom Chase was shot."
Joe described Isom's leap for the gun, the struggle he had with him to
restrain him, the catching of the lock in the fork as Isom tugged at the
barrel, the shot, and Isom's death.
When he finished, the coroner bent over his note-book again, as if
little interested and less impressed. Silence fell over the room. Then
the coroner spoke, his head still bent over the book, not even turning
his face toward the witness, his voice soft and low.
"You were alone with Isom in the kitchen when this happened?"
A flash of heat ran over Ollie's body. After it came a sweeping wave of
cold. The room whirled; the world stood on edge. Her hour had struck;
the last moment of her troubled security was speeding away. What would
Joe answer to that?
"Yes," said Joe calmly, "we were alone."
Ollie breathed again; her heart's constriction relaxed.
The coroner wheeled on Joe.
"Where was Mrs. Chase?" he asked.
A little murmur, as of people drawing together with whispers; a little
soft scuffing of cautiously shifted feet on the carpet, followed the
question. Ollie shrank back, as if wincing from pain.
"Mrs. Chase was upstairs in her room," answered Joe.
The weight of a thousand centuries lifted from Ollie's body. Her vision
cleared. Her breath came back in measured flow to her lips, moist and
refreshing.
He had not told. He was standing between her and the sharp tongues of
those waiting people, already licking hungrily in their awakened
suspicion, ready to sear her fair name like flames. But there was no
gratitude in her heart that moment, no quick lifting of thankfulness nor
understanding of the great peril which Joe had assumed for her. There
was only relief, blessed, easing, cool relief. He had not told.
But the coroner was a persistent man. He was making more than an
investigation out of it; he was fairly turning it into a trial, with Joe
as the defendant. The people were ready to see that, and appreciate his
attempts to uncover the dark motive that lay behind this deed, of which
they were convinced, almost to a man, that Joe was guilty.
"Was Isom jealous of you?" asked the coroner, beginning the assault on
Joe's reserve suddenly again when it seemed that he was through. For the
first time during the inquiry Joe's voice was unsteady when he replied.
"He had no cause to be, and you've got no right to ask me that, either,
sir!" he said.
"Shame on you, shame on you!" said Mrs. Newbolt, leaning toward the
coroner, shaking her head reprovingly.
"I've got the right to ask you anything that I see fit and proper, young
man," the coroner rebuked him sternly.
"Well, maybe you have," granted Joe, drawing himself straight in the
chair.
"Did Isom Chase ever find you alone with his wife?" the coroner asked.
"Now you look here, sir, if you'll ask me questions that a gentleman
ought to ask, I'll answer you like a gentleman, but I'll never answer
such questions as that!"
There was a certain polite deference in Joe's voice, which he felt that
he owed, perhaps, to the office that the man represented, but there was
a firmness above it all that was unmistakable.
"You refuse to answer any more questions, then?" said the coroner
slowly, and with a significance that was almost sinister.
"I'll answer any proper questions you care to ask me," answered Joe.
"Very well, then. You say that you and Isom quarreled last night?"
"Yes, sir; we had a little spat."
"A little spat," repeated the coroner, looking around the room as if to
ask the people on whose votes he depended for reelection what _they_
thought of a "little spat" which ended in a man's death. There was a
sort of broad humor about it which appealed to the blunt rural sense. A
grin ran over their faces like a spreading wavelet on a pool. "Well now,
what was the beginning of that 'little spat'?"
"Oh, what's that got to do with it?" asked Joe impatiently. "You asked
me that before."
"And I'm asking you again. What was that quarrel over?"
"None of your business!" said Joe hotly, caring nothing for consequences.
"Then you refuse to answer, and persist in your refusal?"
"Well, we don't seem to get on very well," said Joe.
"No, we don't," the coroner agreed snappishly. "Stand down; that will be
all."
The listening people shifted and relaxed, leaned and whispered, turning
quick eyes upon Joe, studying him with furtive wonder, as if they had
discovered in him some fearful and hideous thing, which he, moving among
them all his life, had kept concealed until that day.
Ollie followed him in the witness-chair. She related her story, framed
on the cue that she had taken from Greening's testimony and Joe's
substantiation of it, in low, trembling voice, and with eyes downcast.
She knew nothing about the tragedy until Sol called up to her, she said,
and then she was in ignorance of what had happened. Mrs. Greening had
told her when she came that Isom was killed.
Ollie was asked about the book-agent boarder, as Greening had been
asked. Morgan had left on the morning of the fateful day, she said,
having finished his work in that part of the country. She and Joe were
alone in the house that night.
The coroner spared her, no matter how far his sharp suspicions flashed
into the obscurity of the relations between herself and the young
bondman. The people, especially the women, approved his leniency with
nods. Her testimony concluded the inquiry, and the coroner addressed the
jury.
"Gentlemen," he said, "you will take into consideration the evidence you
have heard, and determine, if possible, the manner in which Isom Chase
came to his death, and fix the responsibility for the same. It is within
your power to recommend that any person believed by you to be directly
or indirectly responsible for his death, be held to the grand jury for
further investigation. Gentlemen, you will now view the body."
Alive, Isom Chase had walked in the secret derision and contempt of his
neighbors, despised for his parsimony, ridiculed for his manner of life.
Dead, he had become an object of awe which they approached softly and
with fear.
Isom lay upon his own cellar door, taken down from its hinges to make
him a couch. It stood over against the kitchen wall, a chair supporting
it at either end, and Isom stretched upon it covered over with a sheet.
The coroner drew back the covering, revealing the face of the dead, and
the jurymen, hats in hand, looked over each other's shoulders and then
backed away.
For Isom was no handsomer as a corpse than he had been as a living,
striving man. The hard, worn iron of his frame was there, like an old
plowshare, useless now, no matter what furrows it had turned in its day.
The harsh speech was gone out of his crabbed lips, but the scowl which
delinquent debtors feared stood frozen upon his brow. He had died with
gold above his heart, as he had lived with the thought of that bright
metal crowding every human sentiment out of it, and the mystery of those
glittering pieces under his dead hand was unexplained.
Somebody, it appeared, had sinned against old Isom Chase at the end, and
Joe Newbolt knew who that person was. Here he had stood before them all
and lifted up a wall of stubborn silence to shield the guilty head, and
there was no doubt that it was his own.
That also was the opinion of the coroner's jury, which walked out from
its deliberations in the kitchen in a little while and gave as its
verdict that Isom Chase had come to his death by a gunshot wound,
inflicted at the hands of Joseph Newbolt. The jury recommended that the
accused be held to the grand jury, for indictment or dismissal.
Mrs. Newbolt did not understand fully what was going forward, but she
gathered that the verdict of the neighbors was unfriendly to Joe. She
sat looking from the coroner to Joe, from Joe to the jurors, lined up
with backs against the wall, as solemn and nervous as if waiting for a
firing squad to appear and take aim at their patriotic breasts. She
stood up in her bewilderment, and looked with puzzled, dazed expression
around the room.
"Joe didn't do it, if that's what you mean," said she.
"Madam--" began the coroner severely.
"Yes, you little whiffet," she burst out sharply, "you're the one that
put 'em up to do it! Joe didn't do it, I tell you, and you men know that
as well as I do. Every one of you has knowed him all his life!"
"Madam, I must ask you not to interrupt the proceedings," said the
coroner.
"Order in the court!" commanded the constable in his deepest official
voice.
"Oh, shut your fool mouth, Bill Frost!" said Mrs. Newbolt scornfully.
"Never mind, Mother," counseled Joe. "I'll be all right. They have to do
what they're doing, I suppose."
"Yes, they're doin' what that little snip-snapper with them colored
whiskers tells 'em to do!" said she.
Solemn as the occasion was, a grin went round at the bald reference to a
plainer fact. Even the dullest there had seen the grayish-red at the
roots of the coroner's beard. The coroner grew very red of face, and
gave some orders to his stenographer, who wrote them down. He thanked
the jurors and dismissed them. Bill Frost began to prepare for the
journey to Shelbyville to turn Joe over to the sheriff.
The first, and most important, thing in the list of preliminaries for
the journey, was the proper adjustment of Bill's mustache. Bill roached
it up with a turn of the forefinger, using the back of it, which was
rough, like a corn-cob. When he had got the ends elevated at a valiant
angle, his hat firmly settled upon his head, and his suspenders
tightened two inches, he touched Joe's shoulder.
"Come on!" he ordered as gruffly and formally as he could draw his edged
voice.
Joe stood, and Bill put his hand on his arm to pilot him, in all
officiousness, out of the room. Mrs. Newbolt stepped in front of them as
they approached.
"Joe!" she cried appealingly.
"That's all right, Mother," he comforted her, "everything will be
cleared up and settled in a day or two. You go on home now, Mother, and
look after things till I come."
"Step out of the way, step out of the way!" said Bill with spreading
impatience.
Mrs. Newbolt looked at the blustering official pityingly.
"Bill Frost, you ain't got as much sense as you was born with!" said
she. She patted Joe's shoulder, which was as near an approach to
tenderness as he ever remembered her to make.
Constable Frost fell into consultation with his adjutant, Sol Greening,
as soon as he cleared the room with the prisoner. They discussed gravely
in the prisoner's hearing, for Bill kept his hand on Joe's arm all the
time, the advisability of tying him securely with a rope before starting
on the journey to jail.
Joe grew indignant over this base proposal. He declared that if Bill was
afraid of him he would go alone to the county-seat and give himself up
to the sheriff if they would set him free. Bill was a little assured by
his prisoner's evident sincerity.
Another consultation brought them to the agreement that the best they
could do, in the absence of handcuffs, was to hitch up to Isom's buggy
and make the prisoner drive. With hands employed on the lines, he could
be watched narrowly by Bill who was to take Sol's old navy six along in
his mighty hand.
Mrs. Newbolt viewed the officious constable's preparations for the
journey with many expressions of anger and disdain.
"Just look at that old fool, Bill Frost, with that revolver!" said she,
turning to the neighbors, who stood silently watching. "Just as if Joe
would hurt anybody, or try to run away!"
Sympathy seemed to be lacking in the crowd. Everybody was against Joe,
that was attested by the glum faces and silence which met her on every
hand. She was amazed at their stupidity. There they stood, people who
had seen Joe grow up, people who knew that a Newbolt would give his last
cent and go hungry to meet an obligation; that he would wear rags to pay
his debts, as Peter had done, as Joe was doing after him; that he would
work and strive night and day to keep fair his honorable name, and to
preserve the honest record of the family clear and clean.
They all knew that, and they knew that a Newbolt never lied, but they
hunched their backs and turned away their heads as if they thought a
body was going to hit them when she spoke. It disgusted her; she felt
like she could turn loose on some of them with their own records, which
she had from a generation back.
She approached the buggy as Joe took up the lines and prepared to drive
out of the gate.
"I don't see why they think you done it, son, it's so unreasonable and
unneighborly of them," said she.
"Neighborly!" said Joe, with sudden bitterness in his young voice. "What
am I to them but 'the pore folks' boy'? They didn't believe me, Mother,
but when I get a chance to stand up before Judge Maxwell over at
Shelbyville, I'll be talking to a gentleman. A gentleman will
understand."
That sounded like his father, she thought. It moved her with a feeling
of the pride which she had reflected feebly for so many years.
"I hope so, son," said she. "If you're not back in a day or two, I'll be
over to Shelbyville."
"Drive on, drive on!" ordered Bill, the old black revolver in his hand.
The crowd was impressed by that weapon, knowing its history, as
everybody did. Greening's more or less honorable father had carried it
with him when he rode in the train of Quantrell, the infamous
bushwhacker. It was the old man's boast to his dying day that he had
exterminated a family of father and five sons in the raid upon Lawrence
with that old weapon, without recharging it.
Joe drove through the open gate without a look behind him. His face was
pale, his heart was sick with the humiliation of that day. But he felt
that it was only a temporary cloud into which he had stepped, and that
clearing would come again in a little while. It was inconceivable to him
how anybody could be so foolish as to believe, or even suspect, that he
had murdered Isom Chase.
The assembled people having heard all there was to hear, and seen all
there was to see at the gate, began to straggle back to the farmhouse to
gossip, to gape, and exclaim. To Greening and his family had fallen the
office of comforting the widow and arranging for the burial, and now Sol
had many offers to sit up with the corpse that night.
Mrs. Newbolt stood at the roadside, looking after the conveyance which
was taking her son away to jail, until a bend behind a tall hedge hid it
from her eyes. She made no further attempt to find sympathy or support
among her neighbors, who looked at her curiously as she stood there, and
turned away selfishly when she faced them.
Back over the road that she had hurried along that morning she trudged,
slowly and without spirit, her feet like stones. As she went, she tried
to arrange the day's happenings in her mind. All was confusion there.
The one plain thing, the thing that persisted and obtruded, was that
they had arrested Joe on a charge that was at once hideous and unjust.
Evening was falling when she reached the turn of the road and looked
ahead to her home. She had no heart for supper, no heart to lift the
latch of the kitchen door and enter there. There was no desire in her
heart but for her son, and no comfort in the prospect of her oncoming
night.