STONE’S STORY.
“That’s right,” cried Roger, with satisfaction, resuming his seat.
“Tell me the whole business. Fire away, old man.”
As Ben seemed hesitating over the beginning of the story, Roger
observed that, with an apparently unconscious movement, he once more
lifted his hand to his mutilated ear. At that moment Eliot was struck
with the conviction that the story he was about to hear was concerned
with the injury to that ear.
“At the very start,” said Ben, an uncomfortable look on his plain face,
“I have to confess that my father was always what is called a shiftless
man. He was more of a dreamer than a doer, and, instead of trying to
accomplish things, he spent far too much time in meditating on what he
might accomplish. He dreamed a great deal of inventing something that
would make his fortune, and this led him to declare frequently that
some day he would make a lot of money. He was not a bad man, but he was
careless and neglectful, a poor planner and a poor provider. The
neighbors called him lazy and held him in considerable contempt.
“Although we were very poor, my father was determined that I should
have an education, and I attended the public school in Hilton, where we
lived. I know I’m not handsome, Eliot, and could never be much of a
favorite; but the fact that we lived in such humble circumstances and
that my father seemed so worthless caused the boys who dared do so to
treat me with disdain. Naturally I have a violent temper, and when it
gets the best of me I am always half crazy with rage. I always was
pretty strong, and I made it hot for most of the boys who dared taunt
me about my father or call me names. It seems to me now that I was
almost always fighting in those times. I hated the other boys and
despised them in a way as much as they despised me.
“My only boy friend and confidant was my little blind brother, Jerry,
whose sight was almost totally destroyed by falling from a window when
he was only four years old. Although I always wished for a boy chum
near my own age, I never had one; and I think perhaps this made me all
the more devoted to Jerry, who, I am sure, loved me as much as I did
him.
“Jerry’s one great pleasure was in fiddling. Father had a violin, and
without any instructions at all Jerry learned to play on it. It was
wonderful how quickly he could pick up a tune. I used to tell him he
would surely become a great violinist some day.
“Of course my temper and frequent resentment over the behavior of other
boys toward me got me into lots of trouble at school. Once I was
suspended, and a dozen times I was threatened with expulsion. But I
kept right on, and after a while it got so that even the older and
bigger boys didn’t care much about stirring me up. If they didn’t
respect me, some of them were afraid of me.
“There was a certain old woman in the village who disliked me, and she
was always saying I would kill somebody some day and be hanged for it.
Don’t think I’m boasting of this, Eliot, for I’m not; I am heartily
ashamed of it. I tell it so you may understand what led me into the
affair with Bernard Hayden and made him and his father my bitter
enemies.
“I suppose it was because I was strong and such a fighter that the boys
gave me a chance on the school football team. Hayden opposed it, but I
got on just the same. He always was a proud fellow, and I think he
considered it a disgrace to play on the team with me. But I was
determined to show the boys I could play, and I succeeded fairly well.
This changed the bearing of some of them toward me, and I was beginning
to get along pretty well at school when something happened that drove
me, through no fault of my own, in shame and disgrace from the school
and cast a terrible shadow on my life.”
Here Stone paused, shading his eyes with his square, strong hand, and
seemed to shrink from the task of continuing. Roger opened his lips to
speak a word of encouragement, but suddenly decided that silence was
best and waited for the other lad to resume.
“For some time,” Ben finally went on, “my father had been working much
in secret in a garret room of our house. Whenever anything was said to
him about this he always declared he was working out an invention that
would enable him to make lots of money. I remember that, for all of our
great poverty, he was in the best of spirits those days and often
declared we’d soon be rich.
“There was in the village one man, Nathan Driggs, with whom father had
always been on intimate terms. Driggs kept a little shop where he did
watch and clock repairing, and he was noted for his skill as an
engraver. Driggs was also rather poor, and it was often remarked that a
man of his ability should be better situated and more successful.
“One dark night, near one o’clock in the morning, I was aroused by
hearing someone knocking at our door. My father went to the door, and,
with my wonder and curiosity aroused, I listened at an upper window
that was open. The man at the door talked with my father in low tones,
and I fancied he was both excited and alarmed.
“I could not hear much that passed between them, but I believed I
recognized the voice of Driggs, and I was sure I heard him say
something about ‘friendship’ and ’hiding it somewhere.’ When the man
had gone I heard father climb the stairs to the attic. I wondered over
it a long time before I fell asleep again.
“The following day my father was arrested and the house was searched.
Concealed in the attic they discovered a bundle, or package, and this
contained dies for the making of counterfeit money. In vain father
protested his innocence. Appearances were against him, and every one
seemed to believe him guilty. On learning what the bundle contained, he
immediately told how it came into his possession, stating it had been
brought to him in the night by Nathan Driggs.
“Driggs was likewise arrested, but he contradicted my father’s
statement and positively denied all knowledge of the bundle or its
contents. Several members of an organized body of counterfeiters had
been captured, but these men did not manufacture their dies, and the
Secret Service agents had traced the latter to Fairfield.
“Both father and Driggs were held for trial in heavy bonds. Neither of
them was able to find bondsmen, and so they went to jail. There were
those in Hilton who fancied Driggs might be innocent, but everybody
seemed to believe my father guilty. It was the talk of the town how he
had shut himself in his garret day after day in a most suspicious
manner and had often boasted that some day he would ’make a lot of
money.’
“At the regular trial I was a witness. I told how Driggs had come to
our house in the night, and I repeated the few words I had heard him
say. The prosecutor did his best to confuse me, and when he failed he
sarcastically complimented me on having learned my lesson well. You
can’t understand how I felt when I saw no one believed me.
“Again Driggs denied everything, and he had covered his tracks so well
that it was impossible to find him guilty; but my father was convicted
and sentenced to a long term in prison. It was a heavy blow to my poor
mother, and she never recovered from it.
“I now found myself an outcast in every sense of the word, despised and
shunned by all the boys who knew me. Under such conditions I could not
attend school, and I tried to do what I could to help my mother support
the family; but no one seemed willing to give me work, and we had a
pretty hard time of it.
“The worst was to come. Two months after being sent to prison my father
attempted to escape and was shot and killed. Mother was prostrated, and
I thought she would surely die then; but she finally rallied, although
she carried a constant pain in her heart, as if the bullet that slew my
father had lodged in her breast.”
Once more the narrator paused, swallowing down a lump that had risen
into his throat. He was a strong lad and one not given to betraying
emotion, but the remembrance of what his unfortunate mother had
suffered choked him temporarily. When he again took up his story he
spoke more hurriedly, as if anxious to finish and have it over.
“It isn’t necessary to tell all the unpleasant things that happened
after that, but we had a hard time of it, Eliot, and you can understand
why it was that I just almost hated nearly everybody. But most I came
to hate Bern Hayden, who was a leader among the village boys, and who
never lost a chance to taunt and deride me and call me the son of a
jail-bird. I don’t know how I kept my hands off him as long as I did. I
often thought I could kill him with a will.
“My little brother could get around amazingly well, even though he was
blind, and he had a way of carrying father’s old fiddle with him into a
grove not far from our house. One day I came home and found him crying
himself sick over the fiddle, which had been smashed and ruined. He
told me Bern Hayden had smashed the instrument.
“That night Hayden visited another boy, with whom he was very chummy.
This other boy lived some distance outside the village, and I lay in
wait for Hayden and stopped him as he was crossing lots on his way
home. It was just getting dark, and the spot was lonely. It was light
enough, just the same, for him to see my face, and I knew from his
actions that he was frightened. I told him I was going to give him such
a thumping that he’d remember it as long as he lived. He threatened me,
but that didn’t stop me a bit, and I went for him.
“Hayden wasn’t such a slouch of a fighter, but he couldn’t hold his own
with me, for I was bursting with rage. I got him down and was punishing
him pretty bad when somehow he managed to get out his pocket knife and
open it. He struck at me with the knife, and this is the result.”
Roger gave a cry as Ben again lifted a hand to his mutilated ear.
“He cut part of your ear off?” gasped Eliot.
Ben nodded. “Then I seemed to lose my reason entirely. I choked him
until he was pretty nearly finished. As he lay limp and half dead on
the ground, I stripped off his coat and vest and literally tore his
shirt from his body. I placed him in a sitting posture on the ground,
with his arms locked about the butt of a small tree, and tied his
wrists together. With his own knife with which he had marked me for
life, I cut a tough switch from a bush, and with that I gave it to him
on his bare back until his screams brought two men, who seized and
stopped me. I was so furious that I had not heard their approach. I was
all covered with blood from my ear, and I sort of gave out all at once
when the men grabbed me.
“I tell you, that affair kicked up some excitement in Hilton. My ear
was cared for, but even while he dressed the wound the doctor told me
that Lemuel Hayden would surely send me to the reform school. My mother
fainted when she heard what had happened.
“I believe they would have sent me to the reform school right away had
I not been taken violently ill the following day. Jerry told me that
Bern Hayden was also in bed. I was just getting up when mother fell ill
herself, and in three days she died. I think she died of a broken
heart. Poor mother! Her whole life was one of hardships and
disappointments.
“Uncle Asher, mother’s brother, arrived the day after mother died. He
took charge of the funeral, but almost as soon as he stepped off the
train in Hilton he heard what a bad boy I was, and he looked on me with
disfavor.
“After the funeral Jerry came to me in the greatest excitement and told
me he had heard Lemuel Hayden and Uncle Asher talking, and uncle had
agreed that I should be sent to the Reformatory, as Mr. Hayden wished.
Uncle said he would look out for Jerry, but I was to be carried off the
next morning.
“That night I ran away. I whispered good-by to Jerry and stole out of
the house, with only a little bundle of clothing and less than a dollar
in money. I managed to get away all right, for I don’t believe any one
tried very hard to catch me. I fancy the people of Hilton thought it a
good riddance.
“For a long time I was afraid of being taken. I found work in several
places, but kept changing and moving until Jacob Baldwin took me to
work for him. Both Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin have been awfully good to me,
and sometime, if I ever can, I’m going to pay them back for it. They
encouraged me to save money to come here to school. I came and found
the Haydens here, and now that’s all over.
“I’ve told you the whole yarn, Eliot; I haven’t tried to hide anything
or excuse myself. I know I was to blame, but you might have done
something yourself if you had been goaded and tormented and derided as
I was. Then to have Hayden do such a mean thing as to smash my
brother’s fiddle!
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told the whole story to, and I
suppose, now that you know just the sort of fellow I am, you’ll agree
with Hayden that I’m no fit associate for other boys at the academy.”
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