CHAPTER XII
THE SUNBEAM ON THE WALL
The sheriff was a mild-mannered man, whose head was shaped like the endof a watermelon. His hair was close-cut and very thin at the top, due tothe fact that all the nourishing substances both inside and outside hishead, or any way appertaining thereto, went into the maintenance of thesheriff's mustache, which was at least twice as large as Bill Frost's.
This, of course, was as it should have been, for even the poorest kindof a sheriff is more than twice as important as the very best sort ofconstable. In those days it was the custom for sheriffs in that part ofthe country to train up these prodigious mustaches, perhaps in thebelief that such adornments lent them the appearance of competence andvalor, of which endowments nature had given them no other testimonial.In any event it is known that many a two-inch sheriff took his standbehind an eight-inch mustache, and walked boldly in the honor of hisconstituents.
The sheriff of Shelbyville was a type of this class, both in mentaldepth and facial adornment. He was exceedingly jealous of his power, andit was his belief that too many liberties permitted a prisoner, and toomany favors shown, acted in contravention of the law's intent asinterpreted by the prosecuting attorney; namely, that a person under thecloud of accusation should be treated as guilty until able to provehimself innocent. Therefore the sheriff would not allow Joe Newbolt toleave his cell to meet visitors after his arraignment.
The meeting between the prisoner and his mother in the office of thejail was to be the last of that sort; all who came in future must seehim at the door of his cell. That was the rule laid down to Joe when heparted from his mother and Colonel Price that day.
As a cell in a prison-house, perhaps Joe's place of confinement wasfairly comfortable. It was situated in the basement of the oldcourt-house, where there was at least light enough to contemplate one'smisery by, and sufficient air to set one longing for the fields. Therewas but one other prisoner, a horse-thief, waiting for trial.
This loquacious fellow, who was lodged directly across the corridor,took great pains to let Joe see the admiration and esteem in which heheld him on account of the distinguished charge under which he wasconfined. He annoyed Joe to such extent that he asked the sheriff thatevening to shift them about if possible.
"Well, I'll move him if you say so, but I left him there because Ithought he'd be company for you," said the sheriff. "I don't mindtalkin' in this jail when there's no more than two in it."
"I don't want to talk," said Joe.
So the horse-thief was removed to the farther end of the corridor, wherehe kept up a knocking on the bars of his cell during the early hours ofthe night, and then turned off his diversion by imitating the sound of asaw on steel, which he could do with his tongue against his teeth withsuch realism as to bring the sheriff down in his nightshirt, with alantern in one hand and a shotgun in the other.
Joe's second night in jail passed very much like the first, when theyhad brought him there all bewildered and dazed. There was a gratedwindow in the wall above his reach, through which he could see thebranches of an elm-tree, blowing bare of leaves; beyond that a bit ofsky. Joe sat on the edge of his cot that second night a long time afterthe stars came out, gazing up at the bar-broken bit of sky, reviewingthe events leading up to his situation.
There was no resentment in him against the jury of his neighbors whosefinding had sent him to jail under the cloud of that terribleaccusation; he harbored no ill-feeling for the busy, prying littlecoroner, who had questioned him so impertinently. There was one personalone, in the whole world of men, to blame, and that was Curtis Morgan.He could not have been far away on the day of the inquest; news of thetragic outcome of Ollie's attempt to join him must have traveled to hisears.
Yet he had not come forward to take the load of suspicion from Joe'sshoulders by confessing the treacherous thing that he had plotted. Heneed not have revealed the complete story of his trespass upon the honorof Isom Chase, thought Joe; he could have saved Ollie's name before theneighbors; and yet relieved Joe of all suspicion. Now that Isom wasdead, he could have married her. But Morgan had not come. He was acoward as well as a rascal. It was more than likely that, in fear ofbeing found out, he had fled away.
And suppose that he never came back; suppose that Ollie should not electto stand forth and explain the hidden part of that night's tragedy? Shecould not be expected, within reason, to do this. Even the thought thatshe might weaken and do so was abhorrent to Joe. It was not a woman'spart to make a sacrifice like that; the world did not expect it of her.It rested with Morgan, the traitor to hospitality; Morgan, theingratiating scoundrel, to come forward and set him free. Morgan alonecould act honorably in that clouded case; but if he should elect toremain hidden and silent, who would be left to answer but Joe Newbolt?
And should he reveal the thing that would bring him liberty? Was freedommore precious than his honor, and the honor of a poor, shrinking,deluded woman?
No. He was bound by a gentleman's obligation; self-assumed, self-appointed.He could not tell.
But what a terrible situation, what an awful outlook for him in suchevent! They hung men for murder on the jail-yard gallows, with a knot ofrope behind the left ear and a black cap over the face. And such a deathleft a stain upon the name that nothing would purify. It was anattainder upon generations unborn.
Joe walked his cell in the agony of his sudden and acute understandingof the desperate length to which this thing might carry him. Hammer hadprotested, with much show of certainty, that he would get him offwithout much difficulty. But perhaps Hammer was counting on him toreveal what he had kept to himself at the inquest. What should he doabout that in his relations with Hammer? Should he tell him aboutMorgan, and have him set men on his track to drag him back and make himtell the truth? Granting that they found him, who was there to make himspeak?
Could not Morgan and Ollie, to cover their own shame and blame, form apact of silence or denial and turn back his good intentions in the formof condemnation upon his own head? How improbable and unworthy of beliefhis tale, with its reservations and evasions, would sound to a jury withMorgan and Ollie silent.
The fright of his situation made him feverish; he felt that he couldtear at the walls with his hands, and scream, and scream until his heartwould burst. He was unmanned there in the dark. He began to realize thisfinally after his frenzy had thrown him into a fever. He gave over hispacing of the little cell, and sat down again to reason and plan.
Hammer had made so much talk about the papers which he would get readythat Joe had been considerably impressed. He saw now that it wouldrequire something more than papers to make people understand that he hada gentleman's reason, and not a thief's, for concealing what they hadpressed him to reveal.
There was a woman first, and that was about all that Joe could make ofthe situation up to that time. She must be protected, even thoughunworthy. None knew of that taint upon her but himself and the fugitiveauthor of it, but Joe could not bring himself to contemplate libertybought at the price of her public degradation. This conclusion refreshedhim, and dispelled the phantoms from his hot brain.
After the sounds of the town had fallen quiet, and the knocking of feeton the pavement along his prison wall had ceased, Joe slept. He wokesteady, and himself again, long before he could see the sun, yellow onthe boughs of the elm-tree.
The sheriff furnished him a piece of comb, and he smoothed his hair byguess, a desperate character, such as he was accounted by the officer,not being allowed the luxury of a mirror. One might lick the quicksilverfrom the back of a mirror, or open an artery with a fragment of it, oreven pound the glass and swallow it. Almost anything was nicer thanhanging, so the sheriff said.
Scant as the food had been at Isom's until his revolt had forced arevision of the old man's lifelong standard, Joe felt that morning afterhis second jail breakfast that he would have welcomed even a hog-jowland beans. The sheriff was allowed but forty cents a day for themaintenance of each prisoner, and, counting out the
twenty-five centsprofit which he felt as a politician in good standing to be his due, theprisoners' picking was very lean indeed.
That morning Joe's breakfast had been corn-pone, cold, with no lubricantto ease it down the lane. There had been a certain squeamish liquid inaddition, which gave off the smell of a burning straw-stack, served in alarge tin cup. Joe had not tasted it, but his nose had told him that itwas "wheat coffee," a brew which his mother had made sometimes in theold days of their darkest adversity.
Joe knew from the experience of the previous day that there would benothing more offered to fortify the stomach until evening. Thehorse-thief called up from his end of the jail, asking Joe how he likedthe fare.
Reserved as Joe was disposed to be toward him, he expressed himselfsomewhat fully on the subject of the sheriff's cuisine. The horse-thiefsuggested a petition to the county court or a letter to the sheriff'spolitical opponent. He said that his experience in jails had been that acomplaint on the food along about election time always brought goodresults. Joe was not interested in the matter to that extent. He toldthe fellow that he did not expect to be a permanent occupant of thejail.
"You think you'll go down the river for a double-nine?" he asked.
"I don't know what you mean," said Joe.
"To the pen for life, kid; that's what I mean."
"I don't know," said Joe gloomily.
"Well, say, I tell you, if they give you the other," said the friendlythief, lifting his naturally high voice to make it carry along theechoing passage, "you'll git plenty to eat, and three times a day, too.When they put a feller in the death-cell they pass in the finest chuckin the land. You know, if a feller's got a smart lawyer he can keep upthat line of eatin' for maybe two or three years by appealin' his caseand dodges like that."
"I don't want to talk," said Joe.
"Oh, all right, kid," said the thief flippantly. Then he rattled hisgrated door to draw Joe's attention.
"But, 'y God, kid, the day's comin' to you when you will want to talk,and when you'd give the teeth out of your mouth, and nearly the eyes outof your head, for the sound of a friendly human voice aimed at you. Let'em take you off down the river to Jeff' City and put you behind themtall walls once, where the best you hear's a cuss from a guard, andwhere you march along with your hands on the shoulders of the man infront of you; and another one behind you does the same to you, and theireyes all down and their faces the color of corpses, and _then_ you'llknow!
"You'll hear them old fellers, them long-timers, whisperin' in thenight, talkin' to theirselves, and it'll sound to you like wind in thegrass. And you'll think of grass and trees and things like that on theoutside, and you'll feel like you want to ram your head ag'in' the walland yell. Maybe you'll do it--plenty of 'em does--and then they'll giveyou the water-cure, they'll force it down you with a hose till you thinkyou'll bust. I tell you, kid, I _know_, 'y God! I've been there--but notfor no double-nine like they'll give you."
The man's voice seemed to be hanging and sounding yet in the corridor,even after he was silent, his cruel picture standing in distorted fancybefore Joe's eyes. Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead, breathingthrough his open mouth.
"Well, maybe they won't, though," said the fellow, resuming as if afterconsidering it, "maybe they'll give you the quick and painless, I don'tknow."
Joe had been standing at his cell door, drawn to listen to the lectureof his fellow prisoner, terrible, hopeless, as it sounded in his ears.Now he sat on his bedside again, feeling that this was indeed a trueforecast of his own doom. The sun seemed already shut out from him inthe morning of his day, the prison silence settling, never to be brokenagain in those shadows where shuffling men filed by, with eyes downcastand faces gray, like the faces of the dead.
Life without liberty would be a barren field, he knew; but libertywithout honor would yield no sweeter fruit. And who was there in theworld of honorable men to respect a coward who had saved his own skinfrom the fire by stripping a frail woman's back to the brand? Agentleman couldn't do it, said Joe, at the end, coming back from hissweating race with fear to the starting-place, a good deal cooled, not alittle ashamed.
Let them use him as they might; he would stand by his first position inthe matter. He would have to keep on lying, as he had begun; but itwould be repeating an honorable lie, and no man ever went to hell forthat.
The sun was coming through the high cell window, broadening its obliquebeam upon the wall. Looking up at it, Joe thought that it must bemid-morning. Now that his panic was past, his stomach began to make agnawing and insistent demand for food. Many a heavy hour must march by,thought he, before the sheriff came with his beggarly portion. He feltthat in case he should be called upon to endure imprisonment long hemust fall away to a skeleton and die.
In his end of the corridor the horse-thief was still, and Joe was gladof it. No matter how earnestly he might come to desire the sound of ahuman voice in time, he did not want to hear the horse-thief's then, norany other that prophesied such disquieting things.
There was a barred gate across the corridor at the foot of the stairswhich led up to the sheriff's office. Joe's heart jumped with the hopethat it was his mother coming when he heard the key in the lock andvoices at the grating.
"Right down there, to the right," the sheriff was directing. "When youwant to leave just come here and rattle the lock. I can't take nochances bringin' such desperate fellers as him up to the office,colonel. You can see that as well as me."
What Colonel Price replied Joe could not hear, for his low-modulatedvoice of culture was like velvet beside a horse-blanket compared to thesheriff's.
"I'm over on this side, colonel, sir," said Joe before he could seehim.
And then the colonel stepped into the light which came through the cellwindow, bringing with him one who seemed as fair to Joe in that somberplace as the bright creatures who stood before Jacob in Bethel thatnight he slept with his head upon a stone.
"This is my daughter," said Colonel Price. "We called in to kind ofcheer you up."
She offered Joe her hand between the bars; his went forward to meet itgropingly, for it lacked the guidance of his eyes.
Joe was honey-bound, like an eager bee in the heart of some great goldenflower, tangled and leashed in a thousand strands of her hair. The lonesunbeam of his prison had slipped beyond the lintel of his low door, asif it had timed its coming to welcome her, and now it lay like a hand inbenediction above her brow.
Her hair was as brown as wild honey; a golden glint lay in it here andthere under the sun, like the honeycomb. A smile kindled in her browneyes as she looked at him, and ran out to the corners of them in littlecrinkles, then moved slowly upon her lips. Her face was quick with theeagerness of youth, and she was tall.
"I'm surely beholden to you, Miss Price, for this favor," said Joe,lapsing into the Kentucky mode of speech, "and I'm ashamed to be caughtin such a place as this."
"You have nothing to be ashamed of," said she; "we know you areinnocent."
"Thank you kindly, Miss Price," said he with quaint, old courtesy thatcame to him from some cavalier of Cromwell's day.
"I thought you'd better meet Alice," explained the colonel, "and getacquainted with her, for young people have tastes in common that oldcodgers like me have outgrown. She might see some way that I wouldoverlook to make you more comfortable here during the time you will beobliged to wait."
"Yes, sir," said Joe, hearing the colonel's voice, but not making muchout of what he was saying.
He was thinking that out of the gloom of his late cogitations she hadcome, like hope hastening to refute the argument of the horse-thief. Hiscase could not be so despairing with one like her believing in him. Itwas a matter beyond a person such as a horse-thief, of course. One of afiner nature could understand.
"Father spoke of some books," she ventured; "if you will----"
Her voice was checked suddenly by a sound which rose out of the fartherend of the corridor and made her start and clutch her father's arm.
Joepressed his face against the bars and looked along at his fellowprisoner, who was dragging his tin cup over the bars of his cell doorwith rapid strokes.
When the thief saw that he had drawn the attention of the visitors, hethrust his arm out and beckoned to the colonel. "Mister, I want to askyou to do me a little turn of a favor," he begged in a voice new to Joe,so full of anguish, so tremulous and weak. "I want you to carry out tothe world and put in the papers the last message of a dyin' man!"
"What's the matter with you, you poor wretch?" asked the colonel, movedto pity.
"Don't pay any attention to him," advised Joe; "he's only acting up.He's as strong as I am. I think he wants to beg from you."
The colonel turned away from him to resume his conference with Joe, andthe horse-thief once more rattled his cup across the bars.
"That noise is very annoying," said the colonel, turning to the mantartly. "Stop it now, before I call the sheriff!"
"Friend, it's a starvin' man that's appealin' to you," said theprisoner, "it's a man that ain't had a full meal in three weeks. Askthat gentleman what we git here, let him tell you what this here sheriffthat's up for election agin serves to us poor fellers. Corn dodger forbreakfast, so cold you could keep fish on it, and as hard as the rocksin this wall! That's what we git, and that's all we git. Ask yourfriend."
"Is he telling the truth?" asked the colonel, looking curiously at Joe.
"I'm afraid he is, colonel, sir."
"I'll talk to him," said the colonel.
In a moment he was listening to the horse-thief's earnest relation ofthe hardships which he had suffered in the Shelbyville jail, and Joe andAlice were standing face to face, with less than a yard's space betweenthem, but a barrier there as insuperable as an alp.
He wanted to say something to cause her to speak again, for her lowvoice was as wonderful to him as the sound of some strange instrumentmoved to unexpected music by a touch in the dark. He saw her lookingdown the corridor, and swiftly around her, as if afraid of what lay inthe shadows of the cells, afraid of the memories of old crimes whichthey held, and the lingering recollection of the men they hadcontained.
"He'll not do any harm, don't be afraid," said he.
"No, I'm not," she told him, drawing a little nearer, quite unconsciously,he knew, as she spoke. "I was thinking how dreadful it must be here foryou, especially in the night. But it will not be for long," she cheeredhim; "we know they'll soon set you free."
"I suppose a person would think a guilty man would suffer more here thanan innocent one," said he, "but I don't think that's so. That man downthere knows he's going to be sent to the penitentiary for stealing ahorse, but he sings."
She was looking at him, a little cloud of perplexity in her eyes, as ifthere was something about him which she had not looked for and did notquite understand. She blushed when Joe turned toward her, slowly, andcaught her eyes at their sounding.
He was thinking over a problem new to him, also--the difference inwomen. There was Ollie, who marked a period in his life when he began tounderstand these things, dimly. Ollie was not like this one in anyparticular that he could discover as common between them. She was farback in the past today, like a simple lesson, hard in its hour, butconquered and put by. Here was one as far above Ollie as a star.
Miss Price began to speak of books, reaching out with a delicatehesitancy, as if she feared that she might lead into waters too deep forhim to follow. He quickly relieved her of all danger of embarrassment onthat head by telling her of some books which he had not read, but wishedto read, holding to the bars as he talked, looking wistfully toward thespot of sunlight which was now growing as slender as a golden cordagainst the gray wall. His eyes came back to her face, to find that lookof growing wonder there, to see her quick blush mount and consume it inher eyes like a flame.
"You've made more of the books that you've read than many of us with ahundred times more," said she warmly. "I'll be ashamed to mention booksto you again."
"You oughtn't say that," said he, hanging his head in boyish confusion,feeling that same sense of shyness and desire to hide as came over himwhen his mother recounted his youthful campaign against the three bookson the Newbolt shelf.
"You remember what you get out of them," she nodded gravely, "I don't."
"My father used to say that was one advantage in having a few," saidhe.
The colonel joined them then, the loud-spoken benediction of thehorse-thief following him. There was a flush of indignation in his faceand fire in his eyes.
"I'll expose the scoundrel; I'll show him that he can't rob both thecounty and the helpless men that misfortune throws into his hands!" thecolonel declared.
He gave his hand to Joe in his ceremonious fashion.
"I've got some pressing business ahead of me with the sheriff," he said,"and we'll be going along. But I'll manage to come over every few daysand bring what cheer I can to you, Joe."
"Don't put yourself out," said Joe; "but I'll be mighty glad to see youany time."
"This is only a cloud in your life, boy; it will pass, and leave yoursky serene and bright," the colonel cheered.
"I'll see how many of the books that you've named we have," said Alice."I'm afraid we haven't them all."
"I'll appreciate anything at all," said Joe.
He looked after her as far as his eyes could follow, and then helistened until her footsteps died, turning his head, checking hisbreath, as if holding his very life poised to catch the fading music ofsome exquisite strain.
When she was quite out of hearing, he sighed, and marked an imaginaryline upon the wall. Her head had reached to there, just on a level witha certain bolt. He measured himself against it to see where it struck inhis own height. It was just a boy's trick. He blushed when he foundhimself at it.
He sat on his bedside and took up the Book. The humor for reading seemedto have passed away from him for then. But there was provender forthought, new thought, splendid and bright-colored. He felt that he hadbeen associating, for the first time in his life, with his own kind. Henever had seen Alice Price before that day, for their lives had beenseparated by all that divides the eminent from the lowly, the rich fromthe poor, and seeing her had been a moving revelation. She had come intohis troubled life and soothed it, marking a day never to be forgotten.He sat there thinking of her, the unopened book in his hand.
How different she was from Ollie, the wild rose clambering unkept besidethe hedge. She was so much more delicate in form and face thanOllie--Ollie, who--There was a sense of sacrilege in the thought. Hemust not name her with Ollie; he must not think of them in the measureof comparison. Even such juxtaposition was defiling for Alice. Ollie,the unclean!
Joe got up and walked his cell. How uncouth he was, thought he, histrousers in his boot-tops, his coat spare upon his growing frame. Heregarded himself with a feeling of shame. Up to that time he never hadgiven his clothing any thought. As long as it covered him, it wassufficient. But it was different after seeing Alice. Alice! What asoothing name!
Joe never knew what Colonel Price said to the sheriff; but after thelittle gleam of sun had faded out of his cell, and the gnawings of hisstomach had become painfully acute, his keeper came down with a basketon his arm. He took from it a dinner of boiled cabbage and beef, such asa healthy man might lean upon with confidence, and the horse-thief camein for his share of it, also.
When the sheriff came to Joe's cell for the empty dishes, he seemed verysolicitous for his comfort and welfare.
"Need any more cover on your bed, or anything?"
No, Joe thought there was enough cover; and he did not recall in hispresent satisfied state of stomach, that his cell lacked any othercomfort that the sheriff could supply.
"Well, if you want anything, all you've got to do is holler," said thesheriff in a friendly way.
There is nothing equal to running for office to move the love of a manfor his fellows, or to mellow his heart to magnanimous deeds.
"Say," called the horse-thief in v
oice softened by the vapors of hissteaming dinner, "that friend of yours with the whiskers all over him isace-high over here in this end of the dump! And say, friend, they couldkeep me here for life if they'd send purty girls like that one down hereto see me once in a while. You're in right, friend; you certainly air inright!"
* * * * *
Colonel Price had kindled a fire in his library that night, for thefirst chill of frost was in the air. He sat in meditative pose, thenewspaper spread wide and crumpling upon the floor beside him in hislistlessly swinging hand. The light of the blazing logs was laughing inhis glasses, and the soft gleam of the shaded lamp was on his hair.
Books by the hundred were there in the shelves about him. Old books,brown in the dignity of age and service to generations of men; newbooks, tucked among them in bright colors, like transient blooms in thehomely stability of garden soil. There was a long oak table, made ofnative lumber and finished in its natural color, smoke-brown from age,like the books; and there was Alice, like a nimble bee skimming thesweets of flowers, flitting here and there in this scholar's sanctuary.
Colonel Price looked up out of his meditation and followed her with asmile.
"Have you found them all?" he asked.
"I've found Milton and _The Lays of Ancient Rome_ and _Don Quixote_, butI can't find the _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_," said she.
"Judge Maxwell has it," he nodded; "he carried it away more than a monthago. It was the first time he ever met an English translation, he said.I must get it from him; he has a remarkably short memory for borrowedbooks."
Alice joined him in the laugh over the judge's shortcoming.
"He's a regular old dear!" she said.
"Ah, yes; if he was only forty years younger, Alice--if he was onlyforty years younger!" the colonel sighed.
"I like him better the way he is," said she.
"Where did that boy ever hear tell of Marcus Aurelius?" he wondered.
"I don't know." She shook her head. "I don't understand him, he seems sostrange and deep. He's not like a boy. You'd think, from talking withhim, that he'd had university advantages."
"It's blood," said the colonel, with the proud swelling of a man who canboast that precious endowment himself, "you can't keep it down. There'sno use talking to me about this equality between men at the hour ofbirth; it's all a poetic fiction. It would take forty generations ofthis European scum such as is beginning to drift across to us and taintour national atmosphere to produce one Joe Newbolt! And he's got bloodon only one side, at that.
"But the best in all the Newbolt generations that have gone before seemto be concentrated in that boy. He'll come through this thing as brightas a new bullet, and he'll make his mark in the world, too. MarcusAurelius. Well, bless my soul!"
"Is it good?" she asked, stacking the books which she had selected onthe table, standing with her hand on them, looking down at her smilingfather with serious face.
"I wouldn't say that it would be good for a young lady with forty beausand unable to choose among them, or for a frivolous young thing withthree dances a week----"
"Oh, never more than two at the very height of social dissipation inShelbyville!" she laughed.
He lifted a finger, imposing silence, and a laugh lurked in his eyes.
"No, I'd not say that such a light-headed creature would find muchfodder in the ruminations and speculations and wise conclusions of ourrespected friend, Marcus," said he. "But a lad like Joe Newbolt, with apair of eyes in his head like a prophet, will get a great deal of good,and even comfort, out of that book."
"We must get it from Judge Maxwell," said she conclusively.
"A strange lad, a strange lad," reflected the colonel.
"So tall and strong," said she. "Why, from the way his mother spoke ofhim, I expected to see a little fellow with trousers up to his knees."
She sat at the table and began cutting the leaves of a new magazine.
Colonel Price lifted his paper, smoothed the crumples out of it,adjusted the focus of his glasses, and resumed reading the county news.They seemed contented and happy there, alone, with their fire in thechimney. Fire itself is a companion. It is like youth in a room.
There was between them a feeling of comradeship and understanding whichseldom lives where youth stands on one hand, age on the other. Years agoAlice's mother had gone beyond the storms and vexations of this life.Those two remaining of the little family had drawn together, closing upthe space that her absence had made. There seemed no disparity of years,and their affection and fidelity had come to be a community pride.
Alice was far from being the frivolous young thing that her father'sbanter indicated. She had a train of admirers, never thinning from yearto year, to be certain, for it had been the regular fate of adolescentmale Shelbyville to get itself tangled up in love with Alice Price eversince her high-school days. Many of the youngsters soon outgrew theaffection; but it seemed to become a settled and permanent affliction inothers, threatening to incapacitate them from happiness, according totheir young view of it, and blast their ambitions in the face of theworld.
Every girl, to greater or less extent, has her courtiers of that kind.Nature has arranged this sort of tribute for the little queen-bees ofhumanity's hives. And so there were other girls in Shelbyville who hadtheir train of beaus, but there was none quite so popular or so muchdesired as Alice Price.
Alice was considered the first beauty of the place. Added to thisprimary desirability was the fact that, in the fine gradations ofpedigrees and the stringent exactions of blood which the patricianfamilies of Shelbyville drew, Colonel Price and his daughter were thetopmost plumes on the peacock of aristocracy. Other young ladies seemedto make all haste to assuage the pangs of at least one young man bymarrying him, and to blunt the hopes of the rest by that decisive act.Not so Alice Price. She was frank and friendly, as eager for thelaughter of life as any healthy young woman should be, but she gave theyoung men kindly counsel when they became insistent or boresome, andsent them away.
Shelbyville was founded by Kentuckians; some of the old State's bestfamilies were represented there. A person's pedigree was his credentialsin the society of the slumbering little town, nestled away among theblue hills of Missouri. It did not matter so much about one's past, forblood will have its vagaries and outflingings of youthful spirit; andeven less what the future promised, just so there was blood to vouch forhim at the present.
Blood had not done a great deal for Shelbyville, no matter what itsexcellencies in social and political life. The old town stood just aboutas it was finished, sixty years and more before that time. Upstartcities had sprung up not far away, throwing Shelbyville into hopelessshadow. The entire energies of its pioneers seemed to have been expendedin its foundation, leaving them too much exhausted to transmit any oftheir former fire and strength to their sons. It followed that the sonsof Shelbyville were not what their fathers had been.
Of course, there were exceptions where one of them rose once in a whileand made a streak across the state or national firmament. Some of themwere eminent in the grave professions; most of them were conductors ofstreet cars in Kansas City, the nearest metropolis. There was not roomin Shelbyville for all its sons to establish themselves at law, even ifthey had all been equipped, and if a man could not be a lawyer or acollege professor, what was open to him, indeed, but conducting astreet-car? That was a placid life.
It is remarkable how Kentuckians can maintain the breed of their horsesthrough many generations, but so frequently fall short in the standardof their sons. Kentuckians are only an instance. The same might be saidof kings.
Not understanding her exactions in the matter, nor her broaderrequirements, Shelbyville could not make out why Alice Price remainedunmated. She was almost twenty, they said, which was coming very closeto the age-limit in Shelbyville. It was nothing unusual for girls tomarry there at seventeen, and become grandmothers at thirty-seven.
If she wanted better blood than she
could find in Shelbyville, the oldgentlemen said, twisting their white old heads in argumentativefinality, she'd have to go to the nobility of Europe. Even then she'd berunning her chances, by Ned! They grew indignant when she refused tohave their sons. They took it up with the colonel, they remonstrated,they went into pedigrees and offered to produce documents.
There was Shelley Bryant's father, a fine, straight-backed old gentlemanwith beard as white as the plumage of a dove. His son was a small,red-faced, sandy-haired, pale-eyed chap with spaces between his bigfront teeth. He traded in horses, and sometimes made as much as fifteendollars on a Saturday. His magnitude of glory and manly dignity ascompared to his father's was about that of a tin pan to the sun.
When Alice refused Shelley, the old general--he had won the title inwar, unlike Colonel Price--went to the colonel and laid the matter offwith a good deal of emphasis and flourishing of his knotted black stick.If a woman demanded blood, said the general, where could she aspireabove Shelley? And beyond blood, what was there to be considered when itcame to marrying and breeding up a race of men?
Champion that he was of blood and lineage, Colonel Price was nettled bythe old gentleman's presumptuous urging of his unlikely son's cause.
"I am of the opinion, sir," Colonel Price replied, with a good bit ofhauteur and heat, "that my daughter always has given, and always willgive, the preference to brains!"
General Bryant had not spoken to the colonel for two months after that,and his son Shelley had proved his superiority by going off to KansasCity and taking a job reading gas-meters.
Colonel Price went to the mantel and filled his pipe from thetobacco-jar. He sat smoking for a little while, his paper on his knee.
"The lad's in deeper trouble, I'm afraid, than he understands," said heat last, as if continuing his reflections aloud, "and it may take abigger heave to pull him out than any of us think right now."
"Oh, I hope not," said Alice, looking across at him suddenly, her eyeswide open with concern. "I understood that this was just a preliminaryproceeding, a sort of formality to conform to the legal requirements,and that he would be released when they brought him up before JudgeMaxwell. At least, that was the impression that he gave me of the casehimself."
"Joe is an unsophisticated and honest lad," said the colonel. "There issomething in the case that he refused to disclose or discuss before thecoroner's jury, they say. I don't know what it is, but it's in relationto the quarrel between him and Isom Chase which preceded the tragedy. Heseems to raise a point of honor on it, or something. I heard them saythis afternoon that it was nothing but the fear that it would disclosehis motive for the crime. They say he was making off with old Chase'smoney, but I don't believe that."
"They're wrong if they think that," said she, shaking her headseriously, "he'd never do a thing like that."
"No, I don't believe he would. But they found a bag of money in theroom, old Chase had it clamped in the hook of his arm, they say."
"Well, I'm sure Joe Newbolt never had his hands on it, anyhow," saidshe.
"That's right," approved the colonel, nodding in slow thoughtfulness;"we must stand up for him, for his own sake as well as Peter's. He'sworthy."
"And he's innocent. Can't you see that, father?"
"As plain as daylight," the colonel said.
The colonel stretched out his legs toward the blaze, crossed his feetand smoked in comfort.
"But I wonder what it can be that the boy's holding back?"
"He has a reason for it, whatever it is," she declared.
"That's as certain as taxes," said the colonel. "He's a remarkable boy,considering the chances he's had--bound out like a nigger slave, andbeaten and starved, I'll warrant. A remark-able lad; very, very. Don'tyou think so, Alice?"
"I think he is, indeed," said she.
A long silence.
A stick in the chimney burned in two, the heavy ends outside the dogsdropped down, the red brands pointing upward. The colonel put his handto his beard and sat in meditation. The wind was rising. Now and then itsounded like a groan in the chimney-top. Gray ashes formed, frost-like,over the ardent coals. The silence between them held unbroken.
Both sat, thought-wandering, looking into the fire....