DESERTED
John Owens, the surviving witness to Isom Chase's will, spent his dreary
days at the poorhouse whittling long chains of interlocking rings, and
fantastic creatures such as the human eye never beheld in nature, out of
soft pine-wood. He had taken up that diversion shortly after the last of
his afflictions, blindness, fell upon him and, as white pine was cheap,
the superintendent of the institution indulged him without stint.
Uncle John, as he was called long years before the hard-riding world
threw him, was a preacher back in the days of his youth, middling
manhood and prosperity. He had ridden the country in the Campbellite
faith, bringing hundreds into the fold, with a voice as big as a bull's,
and a long beard, which he wore buttoned under his vest in winter. And
now in his speechlessness, darkness, and silence, he still preached in
his way, carving out the beast with seven heads and ten horns, and
female figures of hideous mien, the signification of which nobody
rightly knew.
Uncle John had a little slate upon which he wrote his wants, but nobody
had discovered any way of communicating with him save by taking his hand
and guiding it to the object for which he had asked. For a long time he
had written the one word "Paint" on his slate. That was the beginning of
his use of it, when one word was all that he could get on a side of it
at a time. After his fingers had become sensitive through his new art of
whittling and feeling, he improved his writing, until he made it plain
that he wanted paint to adorn his carved figures, so they could be
sold.
It was the hope of the poor old soul that he could whittle himself out
of the poorhouse, and live free and independent upon the grotesque
productions of his knife, if they would give him paint to make them
attractive, and thus get a start. He did not know how fantastic and
ridiculous they were, having only his own touch to guide him to judgment
of their merits.
Perhaps he was no less reasonable in this belief than certain painters,
musicians, and writers, who place their own blind value upon the craft
of their hands and brains, and will not set them aside for any jury that
the world can impanel.
Uncle John never came to realize his hopes of freedom, any more than he
ever came to realize the uselessness of paint for his angels when he had
no eyes for applying it. He whittled on, in melancholy dejection, ring
upon ring in his endless chains of rings, forging in bitter irony the
emblems of bondage, when his old heart so longed to be free.
It was a bright day in the life of Uncle John Owens, then, when Ollie's
lawyer called at the poorhouse and placed under his hands some slender
slips of cardboard bearing raised letters, the A B C of his age.
His bearded old face shone like a window in which a light has been
struck as his fluttering fingers ran over the letters. He fumbled
excitedly for his slate which hung about his neck, and his hand trembled
as he wrote:
"More--book--more."
It had been an experiment, the lawyer having doubted whether Uncle
John's untrained fingers, dulled by age, could pick out the letters,
large as they were. He had nothing more to offer, therefore, and no way
of answering the appeal. But that night an order for the New Testament
in raised characters for the blind went out from Shelbyville.
Judge Little was making no progress in establishing the will. Nobody had
come forward in answer to his advertisements in the city papers,
claiming for himself the distinction of being Isom Chase's son. But the
judge gave Ollie to understand, in spite of his quiescence while he
searched for the heir, that the courts must settle the question. If
there were fees to be had out of that estate, Judge Little was the man
to get them.
Meantime, in his cell in the county jail, Joe Newbolt was bearing the
heaviest penance of his life. Alice had not come again. Two visiting
days had passed, and there would be no more before the date of the
trial, which was set for the following Monday. But since that dun
morning when she had given him the mignonette, and he had drawn her
unresisting body to the barrier of his prison door, she had visited him
no more.
Joe reproached himself for it. He accused himself of having offended
beyond forgiveness. In the humiliation which settled upon him, he wasted
like water in the sun. The mignonette which she had given him withered,
dried; its perfume vanished, its blossoms turned gray. She came no more.
What did it matter if they convicted him before the judge, said he, now
that Alice had condemned him in her heart. He lamented that he had
blundered into such deep offending. His untutored heart had seen only
the reflection of his own desire in her eyes that day. She did not care
for him. It was only pity that he had distorted into love.
He had inquired about her, timidly, of the sheriff, who had looked at
him with a slow wink, then formed his mouth into an egg-shaped aperture
and held it so an exasperating while, as if he meant to whistle. The
sheriff's clownish behavior nettled Joe, for he was at a loss to
understand what he meant.
"I thought maybe she'd sent over some books," said Joe, blushing like a
hollyhock.
"Books!" said the sheriff, with a grunt.
"Yes, sir," Joe answered, respectfully.
"Huh, she never sent no books," said the sheriff, turning away.
After a little he came back and stood before Joe's door, with his long
legs far apart, studying the prisoner calculatively, as a farmer stands
when he estimates the weight of a hog.
"Cree-mo-nee!" said he.
He laughed then, much to Joe's confusion, and totally beyond his
comprehension. The sheriff left him with that. From the passage his
laugh came back.
The day was Friday; Joe plucked up a little hope when he heard the
sheriff conducting somebody to the corridor gate. It was Colonel Price,
who had exercised his political influence over the sheriff and induced
him to set aside his new regulations for the day. The colonel made
apologies to Joe for what might seem his lack of interest in his
welfare.
Joe inquired of him concerning Alice, with respectful dignity. She was
well, said the colonel, and asked to be remembered. What else the
colonel said on that occasion Joe did not recall. All that he could
think of was that Alice had desired to be remembered.
What an ironical message to send him, thought Joe. If she only had come
herself, and given him the assurance with her eyes that there was no
stored censure, no burning reproach; if she had come, and quieted the
doubt, the uncertainty, of his self-tortured soul. His case had become
secondary beside Alice. The colonel talked of it, but Joe wondered if
the mignonette in her garden was dead. The colonel shook his head
gravely when he went away from the jail that day. It was plain that the
boy was suffering with that load on his mind and the uncertainty of the
outcome pressing upon him. He mentioned it to Alice.
"I think we'd better try to get him another lawyer," said the colonel.
"Hammer never will be equal to that job. It will be more the size of
Judge Burns, or one of the old heads. That boy's in a pickle, Alice, and
a mighty tight one, at that."
"But he's innocent--you don't doubt that?" said she.
"Not for a minute," the colonel declared. "I guess I should have been
looking after him closer, but that picture intervened between us. He's
wearing away to a shadow, chafing and pining there in jail, poor chap."
"Do you think he'll consent to your employing another lawyer for him?"
she asked, searching his face wistfully.
"I don't know; he's so set in the notion of loyalty to Hammer--just as
if anybody could hurt Hammer's feelings! If the boy will consent to it,
I'll hire Judge Burns at my own expense."
"I don't suppose he will," sighed she.
"No, I reckon not, his notions are so high-flown," the colonel admitted,
with evident pride in the lofty bearing of the widow's son.
"He's longing for a run over the hills," said she. "He told me he was."
"A year of it in there would kill him," the colonel said. "We must get
him a lawyer who can disentangle him. I never saw anybody go down like
that boy has gone down in the last month. It's like taking a wild Indian
out of the woods and putting him in a cage."
The colonel put aside the corn picture for the day, and went out to
confer with Judge Burns, a local lawyer who had gained a wide reputation
in the defense of criminal cases. He was a doubly troubled man when he
returned home that evening, for Joe had been firm in his refusal either
to dismiss Hammer or admit another to his defense. In the library he had
found Alice, downcast and gloomy, on the margin of tears.
"Why, honey, you mustn't mope around this way," he remonstrated gently.
"What is it--what's gone wrong with my little manager?"
She raised up from huddling her head against her arms on the table,
pushed her fallen hair back from her eyes and gave him a wan smile.
"I just felt so lonely and depressed somehow," said she, placing her
hand on his where it lay on the table. "Never mind me, for I'll be all
right. What did he say?"
"Judge Burns?"
"Joe."
The colonel drew a chair near and sat down, flinging out his hand with
impatient gesture.
"I can't do anything with him," said he. "He says one lawyer will do as
well as another, and Hammer's doing all that can be done. 'They'll
believe me or they'll not believe me, colonel, and that's all there is
to it,' says he, 'and the best lawyer in the world can't change that.'
And I don't know but he's right, too," the colonel sighed. "He's got to
come out with that story, every word of it, or there'll never be a jury
picked in the whole State of Missouri that'll take any stock in his
testimony."
"It will be a terrible thing for his mother if they don't believe him,"
said she.
"We'll do all that he'll allow us to do for him, we can't do any more.
It's a gloomy outlook, a gloomy case all through. It was a bad piece of
business when that mountain woman bound him out to old Isom Chase, to
take his kicks and curses and live on starvation rations. He's the last
boy in the world that you'd conceive of being bound out; he don't fit
the case at all."
"No, he doesn't," said she, reflectively.
"But don't let the melancholy thing settle on you and disturb you,
child. He'll get out of it--or he'll not--one way or the other, I
reckon. It isn't a thing for you to take to heart and worry over. I
never should have taken you to that gloomy old jail to see him, at
all."
"I can't forget him there--I'll always see him there!" she shuddered.
"He's above them all--they'll never understand him, never in this
world!"
She got up, her hair hanging upon her shoulders, and left him abruptly,
as if she had discovered something that lay in her heart. Colonel Price
sat looking after her, his back very straight, his hand upon his knee.
"Well!" said he. Then, after a long ruminative spell: "Well!"
That same hour Hammer was laboring with his client in the jail, as he
had labored fruitlessly before, in an endeavor to induce him to impart
to him the thing that he had concealed at the coroner's inquest into
Isom Chase's death. Hammer assured him that it would not pass beyond him
in case that it had no value in establishing his innocence.
"Mr. Hammer, sir," said Joe, with unbending dignity and firmness, "if
the information you ask of me was mine to give, freely and honorably,
I'd give it. You can see that. Maybe something will turn up between now
and Monday that will make a change, but if not, you'll have to do the
best you can for me the way it stands. Maybe I oughtn't expect you to go
into the court and defend me, seeing that I can't help you any more than
I'm doing. If you feel that you'd better drop out of the case, you're
free to do it, without any hard feelings on my part, sir."
Hammer had no intention of dropping the case, hopeless as he felt the
defense to be. Even defeat would be glorious, and loss profitable, for
his connection with the defense would sound his name from one end of the
state to the other.
"I wouldn't desert you in the hour of your need, Joe, for anything they
could name," said Hammer, with significant suggestion.
His manner, more than his words, carried the impression that they had
named sums, recognizing in him an insuperable barrier to the state's
case, but that he had put his tempters aside with high-born scorn.
"Thank you," said Joe.
"But if Missis Chase was mixed up in it any way, I want you to tell me,
Joe," he pressed.
Joe said nothing. He looked as stiff and hard as one of the iron
hitching-posts in front of the court-house, thought Hammer, the side of
his face turned to the lawyer, who measured it with quick eyes.
"Was she, Joe?" whispered Hammer, leaning forward, his face close to the
bars.
"The coroner asked me that," replied Joe, harshly.
This unyielding quality of his client was baffling to Hammer, who was of
the opinion that a good fatherly kick might break the crust of his
reserve. Hammer had guessed the answer according to his own thick
reasoning, and not very pellucid morals.
"Well, if you take the stand, Joe, they'll make you tell it then,"
Hammer warned him. "You'd better tell me in advance, so I can advise you
how much to say."
"I'll have to get on somehow without your advice, thank you sir, Mr.
Hammer, when it comes to how much to say," said Joe.
"There's not many lawyers--and I'll tell you that right now in a
perfectly plain and friendly way--that'd go ahead with your case under
the conditions," said Hammer. "But as I told you, I'll stick to you and
see you through. I wash my hands of any blame for the case, Joe, if it
don't turn out exactly the way you expect."
Joe saw him leave without regret, for Hammer's insistence seemed to him
inexcusably vulgar. All men could not be like him, reflected Joe, his
hope leaping forward to Judge Maxwell, whom he must soon confront.
Joe tossed the night through with his longing for Alice, which gnawed
him like hunger and would not yield to sleep, for in his dreams his
heart went out after her; he heard her voice caressing his name. He woke
with the feeling that he must put the thought of Alice away from him,
and frame in his mind what he should say when it came his turn to stand
before Judge Maxwell and tell his story. If by some hinted thing, some
shade of speech, some qualification which a gentleman would grasp and
understand, he might convey his reason to the judge, he felt that he
must come clear.
He pondered it a long time, and the face of the judge rose before him,
and the eyes were brown and the hair in soft wavelets above a white
forehead, and Alice stood in judgment over him. So it always ended; it
was before Alice that he must plead and justify himself. She was his
judge, his jury, and his world.
It was mid-afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt arrived for her last visit before
the trial. She came down to his door in her somber dress, tall, bony and
severe, thinner of face herself than she had been before, her eyes
bright with the affection for her boy which her tongue never put into
words. Her shoes were muddy, and the hem of her skirt draggled, for,
high as she had held it in her heavy tramp, it had become splashed by
the pools in the soft highway.
"Mother, you shouldn't have come today over the bad roads," said Joe
with affectionate reproof.
"Lands, what's a little mud!" said she, putting down a small bundle
which she bore. "Well, it'll be froze up by tomorrow, I reckon, it's
turnin' sharp and cold."
She looked at Joe anxiously, every shadow in his worn face carving its
counterpart in her heart. There was no smile of gladness on her lips,
for smiles had been so long apart from her life that the nerves which
commanded them had grown stiff and hard.
"Yes," said Joe, taking up her last words, "winter will be here in a
little while now. I'll be out then, Mother, to lay in wood for you. It
won't be long now."
"Lord bless you, son!" said she, the words catching in her throat, tears
rising to her eyes and standing so heavy that she must wipe them away.
"It will all be settled next week," Joe told her confidently.
"I hope they won't put it off no more," said she wearily.
"No; Hammer says they're sure to go ahead this time."
"Ollie drove over yesterday evening and brought your things from
Isom's," said she, lifting the bundle from the floor, forcing it to him
between the bars. "I brought you a couple of clean shirts, for I knew
you'd want one for tomorrow."
"Yes, Mother, I'm glad you brought them," said Joe.
"Ollie, she said she never would make you put in the rest of your time
there if she had anything to say about it. But she said if Judge Little
got them letters of administration he was after she expected he'd try to
hold us to it, from what he said."
"No matter, Mother."
"And Ollie said if she ever did come into Isom's property she'd make us
a deed to our place."
Mrs. Newbolt's face bore a little gleam of hope when she told him this.
Joe looked at her kindly.
"She could afford to, Mother," said he, "it was paid for in interest on
that loan to Isom."
"But Isom, he never would 'a' give in to that," said she. "Your pap he
paid twelve per cent interest on that loan for sixteen years."
"I figured it all up, Mother," said he.
There was nothing for her to sit on in the corridor; she stood holding
to the bars to take some of the weight from her tired feet.
"I don't want to hurry you off, Mother," said Joe, "but I hate to see
you standing there all tired out. If the sheriff was a gentleman he'd
fetch you a chair. I don't suppose there'd be any use in asking him."
"Never mind, Joe, it takes more than a little walk like that to play me
out."
"You'd better stop in at Colonel Price's and rest a while before you
start back," he suggested.
"Maybe I will," said she.
She plunged her hand into the black draw-string bag which she carried on
her arm, rummaging among its contents.
"That little rambo tree you planted a couple of years ago had two apples
on it," she told him, "but I never noticed 'em all summer, the leaves
was so thick and it was such a little feller, anyhow."
"It is a little one to begin bearing," said Joe, with a boy's interest
in a thing that he has done with his own hand turning out to be
something.
"Yes; and I aimed to leave them on the tree till you could see them, but
the hard wind yesterday shook 'em off. Here they are, I've fetched 'em
to you, son."
Joe took the apples, the recollection of the high hopes which he had
centered around that little apple-tree when he planted it coming back to
him like a scented wind at dawn. He had planned to make that tree the
nucleus of an orchard, which was to grow and spread until it covered the
old home place, the fields adjoining, and lifted the curse of poverty
from the Newbolt name. It had been a boyish plan which his bondage to
Isom Chase had set back.
He had not given it up for a day while he labored in Chase's fields.
When he became his own man he always intended to take it up and put it
through. Now, there in his hand, was the first fruit of his big
intention, and in that moment Joe reviewed his old pleasant dream.
He saw again as he had pictured it before, to the relief of many a long,
hot day in Isom's fields, his thousand trees upon the hills, the laden
wagons rolling to the station with his barrels of fruit, some of it to
go to far lands across the sea. He saw again the stately house with its
white columns and deep porticoes, in the halls of which his fancy had
reveled many a happy hour, and he saw--the bars of his stone cell and
his mother's work-hardened hands clasping them, while she looked at him
with the pain of her sad heart speaking from her eyes. A heavy tear
rolled down his hollow cheek and fell upon the apples in his hand.
For the pain of prison he had not wept, nor for its shame. The vexing
circumstance of being misunderstood, the dread threat of the future had
not claimed a tear. But for a dream which had sprung like a sweet flower
in his young heart and had passed away like a mist, he wept.
His mother knew nothing about that blasted dream; the gloom of his cell
concealed his tears. He rubbed the fruit along his coat sleeve, as if to
make it shine, as a fruiterer polishes the apples in his stall.
"All right, Mother, I'm glad you brought them," he said, although there
was no gladness in his voice.
"I planned to fetch you in some fried chicken today, too," said she,
"but the pesky rooster I had under the tub got away when I went to take
him out. If you'd like some, Joe, I'll come back tomorrow."
"No, no; don't you tramp over here tomorrow, Mother," he admonished,
"and don't bother about the chicken. I don't seem to have any appetite
any more. But you wait till I'm out of here a day or two; then you'll
see me eat."
"Well, then I guess I'll be goin' on back, Joe; and bright and early
Monday morning I'll be on hand at the court. Maybe we'll be able to go
home together that evenin', son."
"Hammer says it will take two or three days," Joe told her, "but I don't
see what they can do to make it string out that long. I could tell them
all about it in ten minutes. So we mustn't put our hopes too high on
Monday, Mother."
"I'll beseech the Lord all day tomorrow, son, to open their ears that
they may hear," said she solemnly. "And when the time comes to speak
tell it all, Joe, tell it all!"
"Yes, Mother, when the time comes," said he gently.
"Tell 'em all Isom said to you, son," she charged.
"Don't you worry over that now, Mother."
She felt that her son drew away from her, in his haughty manner of
self-sufficiency, as he spoke. She sighed, shaking her head sadly.
"Well, I'll be rackin' off home," she said.
"If you stop at the colonel's to rest a while, Mother--and I wish you
would, for you're all tired out--you might hand this book back to Miss
Price. She loaned it to me. Tell her I read it long ago, and I'd have
sent it back before now, only I thought she might come after it herself
some time."
His mother turned to him, a curious expression in her face.
"Don't she come any more, Joe?"
"She's been busy with other things, I guess," said he.
"Maybe," she allowed, with a feeling of resentment against the book on
account of its cold, unfriendly owner.
She had almost reached the corridor gate when Joe called after her.
"No, don't tell her that," he requested. "Don't tell her anything. Just
hand it back, please, Mother."
"Whatever you say, Joe."
Joe heard the steel gate close after her and the sheriff's voice loud
above his mother's as they went toward the door.
Loyal as he was to his mother, the thought of her went out with her, and
in her place stood the slender figure of youth, her lips "like a thread
of scarlet." One day more to wait for the event of his justification and
vindication, or at least the beginning of it, thought Joe.
Ah, if Alice only would come to lighten the interval!