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39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | The story Prendergast had
told in the general store, too, had not been forgotten, and the aid she
had given the fever-stricken man had acquired a new significance in face
of the knowledge that she had more than once been admitted to the jail
with Felder. No one in Smoky Mountain would have ventured to "pump" the
lawyer, and the town had been too mindful of its manners to catechize
her, but it had buzzed with theories. From the moment of the opening of
the trial she had divided interest with the prisoner. The first appearance of the latter, between two deputies, had caused a
murmur of surprise. In the weeks of wholesome toil and mountain air, the
sallow, haggard look that Harry had brought to the town had gradually
faded; his step had grown more elastic, his cheek ruddier, his eye a
clearer blue. The scar on his temple had become less noticeable. Day by
day, he had been growing back to the old look. The beard and mustache
now were gone; the face they saw was smooth-shaven, calm, alien and
absorbed. He had bowed slightly to the judge, shaken hands gravely with
Felder and sat down with a quick, flashing smile at the quivering face
behind the veil. He had seemed of all there the one who had least
personal concern in the deliberations that were forward. Yet beneath
that mask of calmness Harry's every nerve was stretched, every sense
restive. In the interviews he had had with his client, Felder had been puzzled
and nonplussed. To tell the truth, when he had first come to his defense
it had been not with a conviction of his innocence, but with a belief in
the present altered character that made the law's penalty seem excessive
and supererogatory; in fine, that whatever he might have deserved when
he did it--assuming that he did it--he did not deserve hanging now. But
the man's manner had made him lean more and more upon an assumption of
actual innocence. In the end, while discarding Jessica's reasoning, he
had accepted her conclusion. The man was certainly guiltless. Since this
time, he had felt his position keenly. | 2,045 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140401 | 362 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | It had been one thing to do the
very best possible for a presumptively guilty man--to get him off
against the evidence if he could; it was a vastly different thing to
defend one whom he believed actually guiltless against damning
circumstance. With the filling of the jury-box the court adjourned for an hour and
Doctor Brent saw the two women's figures disappear with Felder into a
side room, while the prisoner was taken in charge by the deputies. The
doctor lunched hastily at the Mountain Valley House, irritated out of
his usual urbanity by the chatter of the crowded dining-room, realizing
then how busy gossip had been with Jessica's name. He walked back to
the court-room moodily smoking. The afternoon session commenced with a concise opening by the district
attorney; Felder's reply was as brief, and the real business of the day
began with the witnesses for the state. Circumstantially speaking, the evidence was flawless. Doctor Moreau,
while little known and less liked, had figured in the town as a promoter
and an inventor of "slick" stock schemes. He had come there with Hugh
Stires, from Sacramento, where they had had a business partnership--of
short duration. There had been bad blood between them there, as the
latter had once admitted. The prisoner had preëmpted the claim on Smoky
Mountain in an abortive "boom" which Moreau had engineered, and over
whose proceeds the pair, it was believed, had fallen out. He had then,
to use the attorney's phrase, "swapped the devil for the witch," and had
taken up with Prendergast, who by the manner of his taking off had
finally justified a jail record in another state. Soon after this break
Hugh Stires had vanished. On the day following his last appearance in
the town, the body of Moreau had been found on the Little Paymaster
Claim, shot by a cowardly bullet through the back--a fact which
precluded the possibility that the deed had been done in self-defense. There was evidence that he had died a painful and lingering death. Suspicion had naturally pointed to the vanished man, and this suspicion
had grown until, after some months' absence, he had returned, alleging
that he had lost his memory of the past, to resume his life in the cabin
on the mountain and his partnership with the thief Prendergast. | 2,275 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140402 | 388 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | The two
had finally quarrelled and Prendergast had taken up his abode in the
town. Subsequent to this, the latter had been heard to make dark
insinuations, unnoted at the time but since grown significant, hinting
at criminal knowledge of the prisoner. The close of this chapter had
been Prendergast's dismal end in the gulch, when he had produced the
scrap of paper which was the crux of the case. He declared he had found
Moreau dying; that the latter had traced with his own hand the
accusation which fastened the crime upon Hugh Stires. Specimens of
Moreau's handwriting were not lacking and seemed to prove beyond
question its authenticity. Such were the links of the coil which wound, with each witness, closer
and closer--none knew better how closely than Harry Sanderson himself. As witness succeeded witness, his heart sank. Jessica's burden was not
to be lightened; Hugh must remain a Cain, a dweller in the dark places
of the earth. In the larger part, his own sacrifice was to fail! In his cross-examination Felder had fought gamely to lighten the weight
of the evidence: The prisoner's old associations with Moreau had been
amicable, else they would not have come to Smoky Mountain together; if
he had been disliked and avoided, the circumstance was referable rather
to his companionships than to his own actions; whatever the pervasive
contempt, there had been nothing criminal on the books against him. The
lawyer's questions touched the baleful whisper that had become
allegation and indictment, a prejudged conviction of guilt. They made it
clear that the current belief had been the fruit of antipathy and bias;
that it had been no question of evidence; so far as that went, he,
Felder, might have done the deed, or Prendergast, or any one there. But
Smoky Mountain would have said, as it did say, "It was Hugh Stires!" He
compelled the jury to recognize that but one bit of actual evidence had
been offered--there had been no eye-witness, no telltale incident. All
rested upon a single scrap of paper, a fragment of handwriting in no way
difficult of imitation, and this in turn upon the allegation of a thief,
struck down in an act of crime, whose word in an ordinary case of fact
would not be worth a farthing. | 2,231 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140403 | 384 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | No motive had been alleged for the
killing of Moreau by the prisoner, but Prendergast had had motive enough
in his accusation. It had been open knowledge that he hated Hugh Stires,
and his own character made it evident that he would not have scrupled to
fasten a murder upon him. But as Felder studied the twelve grave faces in the jury-box, who in the
last analysis were all that counted, he shared his client's
hopelessness. Judgment and experience told him how futile were all
theories in the face of that inarticulate but damning witness that
Prendergast had left behind him. So the afternoon dragged through, a day
for the State. Sunset came early at that season. Dark fell and the electric bulbs made
their mimic day, but no one left the room. The outcome seemed a foregone
conclusion. The jurymen no longer gazed at the prisoner, and when they
looked at one another, it was with grim understanding. As the last
witness for the State stepped down and the prosecutor rested, the judge
glanced at the clock. "There is a bare half-hour," he said tentatively. "Perhaps the defense
would prefer not to open testimony till to-morrow."
Felder had risen. He saw his opportunity--to bring out sharply a
contrasting point in the prisoner's favor, the one circumstance,
considered apart, pointing toward innocence rather than guilt--to leave
this for the jury to take with them, to off-set by its effect the weight
of the evidence that had been given. "I will proceed, if your Honor pleases," he said, and amid a rustle of
surprise and interest called Jessica to the stand. As she went forward to the witness chair, she put back the shielding
veil, and her face, pale as bramble-bloom under her red-bronze hair,
made an appealing picture. A cluster of white carnations was pinned to
her coat and as she passed Harry she bent and laid one in his hand. The
slight act, not lost upon the spectators, called forth a sibilant
flutter of sympathy. For it wore no touch of designed effect; its
impulse was as pure and unmistakable as its meaning. Harry had started uncontrollably as she rose, for he had had no inkling
of the lawyer's intention, and a flush darkened his cheek at the cool
touch of the flower. | 2,199 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140404 | 384 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | But this faded to a settled pallor, as under
Felder's grave questioning she told in a voice as clear as a child's,
yet with a woman's emotion struggling through it, the story of her
disregarded warning. While she spoke pain and shame travelled through
his every vein, for--though technically she had not brought herself into
the perplexing purview of the law--she was laying bare the secret of
her own heart, which now he would have covered at any cost. "That is all, your Honor," said Felder, when Jessica had finished her
story. "Do you wish to cross-examine?" asked the judge perfunctorily. The prosecutor looked at her an instant. He saw the faintness in her
eyes, the twitching of the gloved hand on the rail. "By no means," he
said courteously, and turned to his papers. At the same moment, as Jessica stepped into the open aisle, the ironic
chance which so often relieves the strain of the tragic by a breath of
the banal, treated the spellbound audience to a novel sensation. Every
electric light suddenly went out, and darkness swooped upon the town and
the court-room. A second's carelessness at the power-house a half-mile
away--the dropping of a bit of waste into a cog-wheel--and the larger
mechanism that governed the issues of life and death was thrown into
instant confusion. Hubbub arose--people stood up in their places. The judge's gavel pounded viciously and his stentorian voice bellowed
for order. "Keep your seats, everybody!" he commanded. "Mr. Clerk, get some
candles. This court is not yet adjourned!"
To Jessica the sudden blankness came with a nervous shock. Since that
first meeting in the jail she had pinned her faith on the reassurance
that had been given her. She had fought down doubt and questioning and
leaned hard upon her trust. But in her overwrought condition, as the end
drew near with no solution of the enigma, this faith sometimes faltered. The mystery was so impenetrable, the peril so imminent! To-day, in the
court-room, her subtle sense had told her that, belief and conviction
aside, a pronounced feeling of sympathy existed for the man she loved. She had not needed Mrs. Halloran's comforting assurances on this score,
for the atmosphere was surcharged with it. She had felt it when she laid
the carnation in his hand, and even more unmistakably while she had
given her testimony. | 2,332 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140405 | 395 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | She had realized the value of that one unvarnished
fact, introduced so effectively--that he had had time to get away, and
instead had chosen to surrender himself. Yet even as she thrilled to the responsive current, Jessica had not been
deceived. She felt the pitiful impotence of mere sympathy against the
apparent weight of evidence that had frightened her. Surely, surely, if
he was to save himself, the truth must come out speedily! But the end of
it all was in sight and he had not spoken. To-day as she watched his
face, the thought had come to her that perhaps his reassurance had been
given only to comfort her and spare her anguish. The thought had come
again and again to torture her; only by a great effort had she been able
to give her testimony. As the pall of darkness fell upon the court-room,
it brought a sense of premonition, as though the incident prefigured the
gloomy end. She turned sick, and stumbled down the aisle, feeling that
she must reach the outer air. A pushing handful opened the way to the corridor, and in a moment more
she was in the starlit out-of-doors, fighting down her faintness, with
the babble of talk behind her and the cool breeze on her cheek. CHAPTER XXXIX
THE UNSUMMONED WITNESS
In the room Jessica had left, the turmoil was simmering down; here and
there a match was struck and showed a circle of brightness. The glimmer
of one of them lit the countenance of a man who had brushed her sleeve
as he entered. It was Hallelujah Jones. The evangelist had prolonged his
stay at Smoky Mountain, for the town, thrilling to its drama of crime
and judgment, had seemed a fruitful vineyard. He had no local interest
in the trial of Hugh Stires, and had not attended its session; but he
had been passing the place when the lights went out and in curiosity had
crowded into the confusion, where now he looked about him with eager
interest. A candle-flame fluttered now, like a golden butterfly, on the judge's
desk, another on the table inside the bar. More grew along the walls
until the room was bathed in tremulous yellow light. It touched the
profile of the prisoner, turned now, for his look had followed Jessica
and was fixed questioningly on her empty seat. | 2,203 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140406 | 394 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | In the unseeing darkness
Harry had held the white carnation to his lips before he drew its stem
through his lapel. The street preacher's jaw dropped in blank astonishment, for what he saw
before him brought irresistibly back another scene that, months before,
had bit into his mind. The judge's high desk turned instantly to a
chapel altar, and the table back of the polished railing to a communion
table. The minister that had looked across it in the candle-light had
worn a white carnation in his buttonhole. His face--
Hallelujah Jones started forward with an exclamation. A thousand times
his zealot imagination had pictured the recreant clergyman he had
unmasked as an outcast, plunging toward the lake of brimstone. Here it
was at last in his hand, the end of the story! The worst of criminals,
skulking beneath an alias! He sprang up the aisle. "Wait! wait!" he cried. "I have evidence to give!" He pointed excitedly
toward Harry. "This man is not what you think! He is not--"
Forensic thunder loosed itself from the wrathful judge's desk, and
crashed across the stupefied room. His gavel thumped upon the wood. "How
dare you," he vociferated, "break in upon the deliberations of this
court! I fine you twenty dollars for contempt!"
Felder had leaped to his feet, every sense on the _qui vive_. Like a
drowning man he grasped at the straw. What could this man know? He took
a bill from his pocket and clapped it down on the clerk's desk. "I beg to purge him of contempt," he said, "and call him as a witness."
The district attorney broke in:
"Your Honor, I think I am within my rights in protesting against this
unheard-of proceeding. The man is a vagrant of unknown character. His
very action proclaims him mentally unbalanced. Beyond all question he
can know nothing of this case."
"I have not my learned opponent's gift of clairvoyance," retorted Felder
tartly. "I repeat that I call this man as a witness."
The judge pulled his whiskers and looked at the evangelist in severe
annoyance. "Take the stand," he said gruffly. Hallelujah Jones snatched the Bible from the clerk's hands and kissed
it. Knowledge was burning his tongue. The jury were leaning forward in
their seats. "Have you ever seen the prisoner before?" asked Felder. "Yes."
"When?"
"When he was a minister of the gospel."
Felder stared. | 2,323 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140407 | 399 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | The judge frowned. The jury looked at one another and a
laugh ran round the hushed room. The merriment kindled the evangelist's distempered passion. Sudden anger
flamed in him. He leaned forward and shook his hand vehemently at the
table where Harry sat, his face as colorless as the flower he wore. "That man's name," he blazed, "is not Hugh Stires! It is a cloak he has
chosen to cover his shame! He is the Reverend Henry Sanderson of
Aniston!"
CHAPTER XL
FATE'S WAY
Harry's pulses had leaped with excitement when the street preacher's
first exclamation startled the court-room; now they were beating as
though they must burst. He was not to finish the losing struggle. The
decision was to be taken from his hands. Fate had interfered. This bigot
who had once been the means of his undoing, was to be the _deus ex
machina_. Through the stir about him he heard the crisp voice of the
district attorney:
"I ask your Honor's permission, before this extraordinary witness is
examined further," he said caustically, "to read an item printed here
which has a bearing upon the testimony." He held in his hand a newspaper
which, earlier in the afternoon, with cynical disregard of Felder's
tactics, he had been casually perusing. "I object, of course," returned Felder grimly. "Objection overruled!" snapped the irritated judge. "Read it, sir."
Holding the newspaper to a candle, the lawyer read in an even voice,
prefacing his reading with the journal's name and date:
"This city, which was aroused in the night by the burning of St. James Chapel, will be greatly shocked to learn that its rector, the
Reverend Henry Sanderson, who has been for some months on a
prolonged vacation, was in the building at the time, and now lies
at the city hospital, suffering from injuries from which it is
rumored there is grave doubt of his recovery."
In the titter that rippled the court-room Harry felt his heart bound and
swell. Under the succinct statement he clearly discerned the fact. He
saw the pitfall into which Hugh had fallen--the trap into which he
himself had sent him on that fatal errand with the ruby ring on his
finger. "Grave doubt of his recovery!"--a surge of relief swept over him
to his finger-tips. Dead men can not be brought to bar--so Jessica would
escape shame. | 2,309 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140408 | 393 |
39689-8-7 | Gutenberg | 9,972 | With Hugh passed beyond human justice, he could declare
himself. The bishop had guarded his secret, and saved the parish from an
unwelcome scandal. He could explain--could tell him that illness and
unbalance lay beneath that chapel game! He could take up his career! He
would be free to go back--to be himself again--to be Jessica's--if Hugh
died! The reading voice drummed in his ears:
"The facts have not as yet been ascertained, but it seems clear
that the popular young minister returned to town unexpectedly last
night, and was asleep in his study when the fire started. His
presence in the building was unguessed until too late, and it was
by little short of a miracle that he was brought out alive. "As we go to press we learn that Mr. Sanderson's condition is much
more hopeful than was at first reported."
Harry's heart contracted as if a giant hand had clutched it. His elation
fell like a rotten tree girdled at the roots. If Hugh _did not_ die! He
chilled as though in a spray of liquid air. Hugh's escape--the chance
his conscience had given him, was cut off. He had not betrayed him when
the way was open; how could he do so now when flight was barred? If to
deliver him then to the hangman would have been cowardice, how much more
cowardly now, when it was to save himself, and when the other was
helpless? And the law demanded its victim! As a drowning man sees flit before him the panorama of his life, so in
this clarifying instant these lurid pictures of the tangle of his past
flashed across Harry's mental vision. The judge reached for the newspaper the lawyer held, ran his eye over
it, and brought his gavel down with an angry snort. "Take him away," he said. "His testimony is ordered stricken from the
records. The fine is remitted, Mr. Felder--we can't make you responsible
for lunatics. Bailiff, see that this man has no further chance to
disturb these proceedings. The court stands adjourned."
CHAPTER XLI
FELDER WALKS WITH DOCTOR BRENT
Felder had been among the last to leave the court-room. He was
discomfited and angry. He had meant to make a telling point for the
defense, and the unbalanced imagination of a strolling, bigot gospeller
had undone him. | 2,225 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140409 | 388 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | He glumly gathered his
scattered papers, put with them the leaf of the newspaper from which the
district attorney had read, and despatched the lot to his office by a
messenger. At the door of the court-house Doctor Brent slipped an arm through his. "Too bad, Tom," he said sympathizingly. "I don't think you quite
deserved it."
Felder paced a moment without speaking. "I need evidence," he said then,
"--anything that may help. I made a mistake. You heard all the
testimony?"
The other nodded. "What did you think of it?"
"What could any one think? I give all credit to your motive, Tom, but
it's a pity you're mixed up in it."
"Why?"
"Because, if there's anything in human evidence, he's a thoroughly
worthless reprobate. He lay for Moreau and murdered him in cold blood,
and he ought to swing."
"The casual view," said the lawyer gloomily. "Just what I should have
said myself--if this had happened a month ago."
His friend looked at him with an amused expression. "I begin to think he
must be a remarkable man!" he said. "Is it possible he has really
convinced you that he isn't guilty?"
Felder turned upon the doctor squarely. "Yes," he returned bluntly. "He
has. Whatever I may have believed when I took this case, I have come to
the conclusion--against all my professional instincts, mind you--that he
never killed Moreau. I believe he's as innocent as either you or I!"
The physician looked puzzled. "You believe Moreau's hand didn't write
that accusation?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think he lied?"
"I don't know what to think. But I am convinced Hugh Stires isn't
lying. There's a mystery in the thing that I can't get hold of." He
caught the physician's half-smile. "Oh, I know what you think," he said
resentfully. "You think it is Miss Holme. I assure you I am defending
Hugh Stires for his own sake!"
"She played you a close second to-day," observed the doctor shrewdly. "That carnation--I never saw a thing better done."
Felder drew his arm away. "Miss Holme," he said almost stiffly, "is as
far from acting--"
"My dear fellow!" exclaimed the other. "Don't snap me up. She's a
gentlewoman, and everything that is lovely. If she were the reason, I
should honor you for it. I'm very deeply sorry for her. | 2,230 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140410 | 390 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | For my part, I'm
sure I wish you might get him off. She loves him, and doesn't care who
sees it, and if he were as bad as the worst, a woman like that could
make a man of him. But I know juries. In towns like this they take
themselves pathetically in earnest. On the evidence so far, they'll
convict fast enough."
"I know it," said the lawyer despondently. "And yet he's innocent. I'd
stake my life on it. It's worthless as evidence and I shan't introduce
it, but he has as good as admitted to her that he knows who did it."
"Come, come! Putting his neck into the noose for mere Quixotic feeling? And who, pray, in this Godforsaken town, should he be sacrificing
himself for?" the doctor asked satirically. "That's the rub," said the lawyer. "Nobody. Yet I hang by my
proposition."
"Well, he'll hang by something less tenuous, I'm afraid. But it won't be
your fault. The crazy evangelist was only an incident. He merely served
to jolt us back to the normal. By the way, did you hear him splutter
after he got out?"
"No."
"You remember the story he told the other night of the minister who was
caught gambling on his own communion table? Well, Hugh Stires is not
only the Reverend Henry Something-or-other, but he is that man, too! The
crack-brained old idiot would have told the tale all over again, only
the crowd hustled him. "There he is now," he said suddenly, as a light sprang up and voices
broke out on the opposite corner. "The gang is standing by. I see your
friend Barney McGinn," he added, with a grim enjoyment. "I doubt if
there are many converts to-night."
Even as he spoke, there came a shout of laughter and warning. The
spectators scattered in all directions, and a stream of water from a
well-directed hose deluged the itinerant and his music-box. Ten minutes later the street preacher, drenched and furious, was
trundling his melodeon toward Funeral Hollow, on his way to the coast. CHAPTER XLII
THE RECKONING
As Harry stood again in the obscure half-darkness of his cell, it came
to him that the present had a far-reaching significance--that it was but
the handiwork and resultant of forces in his own past. He himself had
brewed the bitter wormwood he must drink. | 2,194 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140411 | 394 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | Jessica's quivering
arraignment on that lurid wedding-day in the white house in the
aspens--it had been engraven ever since on his buried memory!--rang in
his mind:
_You were strong and he was weak. You led and he followed. You were
"Satan Sanderson," Abbot of the Saints, the set in which he learned
gambling. You helped to make him what he has become!_
They had made variant choice, and that choice had left Harry Sanderson
in training for the gaiters of a bishop, and Hugh Stires treading the
paths of dalliance and the gambler. But he himself had set Hugh's feet
on the red path that had pointed him to the shameful terminus. He had
gambled for Hugh's future, forgetting that his past remained, a thing
that must be covered. He had won Hugh's counters, but his own right to
be himself he had staked and lost long before that game on the communion
table under the painted crucifixion. The words he had once said to Hugh recurred to him with a kind of awe:
"Put myself in your place? I wish to God I could!"
Fate--or was it God?--had taken him at his word. He had been hurled like
a stone from a catapult into Hugh's place, to bear his knavery, to
suffer his dishonor, and to redeem the baleful reputation he had made. He had been his brother's keeper and had failed in the trust; now the
circle of retribution, noiseless and inexorable as the wheeling of that
vast scorpion cluster in the sky, evened the score and brought him again
to the test! And, in the supreme strait, was he, a poor poltroon, to
step aside, to cry "enough," to yield ignobly? Even if to put aside the
temptation might bring him face to face with the final shameful penalty? This, then, was the meaning of the strange sequence of events through
which he had been passing since the hour when he had awakened in the
box-car! Living, he was not to betray Hugh; the Great Purpose behind all
meant that he should go forward on the path he had chosen to the end! A step outside the cell, the turning of the key. The door opened, and
Jessica, pale and trembling, stood on the threshold. "I can not help it," she said, as she came toward him, "though you told
me not to come. | 2,146 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140412 | 397 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | I have trusted all the while, and waited, and--and
prayed. But to-day I was afraid."
She paused, locking her hands before her, looking at him in an agony of
entreaty. When she had fled from the court-room to the open air, she had
walked straight away toward the mountain, struggling in the cool wind
and motion against the feeling of physical sickness and anguish. But she
had only partly regained her self-possession. Returning, the thinning
groups about the dim-lit door had made it clear that the session was
over. In her painful confusion of mind she had acted on a peremptory
impulse that drove her to the jail, where her face had quickly gained
her entrance. "Surely, surely," she went on, "the man you are protecting has had time
enough! Hasn't he? Won't you tell them the truth now?"
He knew not how to meet the piteous reproach and terror of that look. She had not heard the street preacher's declaration, he knew, but even
if she had, it would have been to her only an echo of the old mooted
likeness. He had given her comfort once--but this was no more to be. No
matter what it meant to him, or to her! "Jessica," he said steadily, "when you came to me here that first day,
and I told you not to fear for me, I did not mean to deceive you. I
thought then that it would all come right. But something has happened
since then--something that makes a difference. I can not tell who was
the murderer of Moreau. I can not tell you or any one else, either now
or at any time."
She gazed at him startled. She had a sudden conception of some element
hitherto unguessed in his make-up, something inveterate and adamant. Could it be that he did not intend to tell at all? The very idea was
monstrous! Yet that clearly was his meaning. She looked at him with
flashing eyes. "You mean you will not?" she exclaimed bitterly. "You are bent on
sacrificing yourself, then! You are going to take this risk because you
think it brave and noble, because somehow it fits your man's gospel! Can't you see how wicked and selfish it is? You are thinking only of
him, and of yourself, not of me!"
"Jessica, Jessica!" he protested with a groan. | 2,134 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140413 | 393 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | But in the self-torture
of her questionings she paid no heed. "Don't you think I suffer? Haven't I borne enough in the months since I
married you, for you to want to save me this? Do you owe me nothing, me
whom you so wronged, whose--"
She stopped suddenly at the look on his face of mortal pain, for she had
struck harder than she knew. It pierced through the fierce resentment to
her deepest heart, and all her love and pity gushed back upon her in a
torrent. She threw herself on her knees by the bare cot, crying
passionately:
"Oh, forgive me! Forget what I said! I did not mean it. I have forgiven
you a thousand times over. I never ceased to love you. I love you now,
more than all the world."
"It is true," he said, hoarse misery in his tone. "I have wronged you. If I could coin my blood drop by drop, to pay for the past, I could not
set that right. If giving my life over and over again would save you
pain, I would give it gladly. But what you ask now is the one thing I
can not do. It would make me a pitiful coward. I did not kill Moreau. That is all I can say to you or to those who try me."
"Your life!" she said with dry lips. "It will mean that. That counts so
fearfully much to me--more than my own life a hundred times. Yet there
is something that counts more than all that to you!"
His face was that of a man who holds his hand in the fire. "Jessica,"
he said, "it is like this with me. When you found me here--the day I saw
you on the balcony--I was a man whose soul had lost its compass and its
bearings. My conscience was asleep. You woke it, and it is fiercely
alive now. And now with my memory has come back a debt of my past that I
never paid. Whatever the outcome, for my soul's sake I must settle it
now and wipe it from the score for ever. Nothing counts--nothing can
count--more than you! But I must sail by the needle; I must be truthful
to the best that is in me."
She rose slowly to her feet with a despairing gesture. | 1,958 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140414 | 394 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | "'_He saved others_,'" she quoted in a hard voice, "'_himself he could
not save!_' I once heard a minister preach from that text at home; it
was your friend, the Reverend Henry Sanderson. I thought it a very
spiritual sermon then--that was before I knew what his companionship had
been to you!"
In the exclamation was the old bitterness that had had its spring in
that far-away evening at the white house in the aspens, when Harry
Sanderson had lifted the curtain from his college career. In spite of
David Stires' predilection, since that day she had distrusted and
disliked, at moments actively hated him. His mannerisms had seemed a
pose and his pretensions hypocrisy. On her wedding-day, when she lashed
him with the blame of Hugh's ruin, this had become an ingrained
prejudice, impregnable because rooted deeper than reason, in the
heritage of her sex, the eternal proclivity, which saw Harry Sanderson,
his motley covered with the sober domino of the Church, standing
self-righteously in surplice and stole, while Hugh slid downward to
disgrace. "If there were any justice in the universe," she added, "it should be he
immolating himself now, not you!"
His face was not toward her and she could not see it go deadly white. The sudden shift she had given the conversation had startled him. He
turned to the tiny barred window that looked out across the court-yard
square--where such a little time since he had found his lost self. "I think," he said, "that in my place, he would do the same."
"You always admired him," she went on, the hard ring of misery in her
tone. "You admire him yet. Oh, men like him have such strange and wicked
power! Satan Sanderson!--it was a fit name. What right has he to be
rector of St. James, while you--"
He put out a hand in flinching protest. "Jessica! Don't!" he begged. "Why should I not say it?" she retorted, with quivering lips. "But for
him you would never be here! He ruined your life and mine, and I hate
and despise him for a selfish hypocrite!"
That was what he himself had seemed to her in those old days! The edge
of a flush touched his forehead as he said slowly, almost appealingly:
"He was not a hypocrite, Jessica. Whatever he was it was not that. | 2,210 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140415 | 392 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | At
college he did what he did too openly. That was his failing--not caring
what others thought. He despised weakness in others; he thought it none
of his affair. So others were influenced. But after he came to see
things differently, from another standpoint--when he went into the
ministry--he would have given the world to undo it."
"That may have been the Harry Sanderson you knew," she said stonily. "The one I knew drove an imported motor-car and had a dozen fads that
people were always imitating. You are still loyal to the old college
worship. As men go, you count him still your friend!"
"As men go," he echoed grimly, "the very closest!"
"Men's likings are strange," she said. "Because he never had temptations
like yours, and has never done what the law calls wrong, you think he is
as noble as you--noble enough to shield a murderer to his own danger."
"Ah, no, Jessica," he interposed gently. "I only said that in my place,
he would do the same."
"But _you_ are shielding a murderer," she insisted fiercely. "You will
not admit it, but I know! There can be no justice or right in that! If
Harry Sanderson is all you think him--if he stood here now and knew the
whole--he would say it was wicked. Not brave and noble but wicked and
cruel!"
He shook his head, and the sad shadow of a bitter smile touched his
lips. "He would not say so," he said. A dry sob answered him. He turned and leaned his elbows on the narrow
window-sill, every nerve aching, but powerless to comfort. He heard her
step--the door closed sharply. Then he faced into the empty cell, sat down on the cot and threw out his
arms with a hopeless cry:
"Jessica, Jessica!"
CHAPTER XLIII
THE LITTLE GOLD CROSS
Jessica left the jail with despair in her heart. The hope on which she
had fed these past days had failed her. What was there left for her to
do? Like a swift wind she went up the street to Felder's office. A block beyond the court-house a crowd was enjoying the watery
discomfiture of Hallelujah Jones, and shrinking from recognition even in
the darkness--for the arc lights were still black--she crossed the
roadway and ran on to the unpretentious building where the lawyer had
his sanctum. | 2,192 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140416 | 393 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | She groped her way up the unlighted stair and tapped on the
door. There was no answer. She pushed it open and entered the empty
outer room, where a study lamp burned on the desk. A pile of legal looking papers had been set beside it and with them lay
a torn page of a newspaper whose familiar caption gave her a stab of
pain. Perhaps the news of the trial had found its way across the ranges,
to where the names of Stires and Moreau had been known. Perhaps every
one at Aniston already knew of it, was reading about it, pitying her! She picked it up and scanned it hastily. There was no hint of the trial,
but her eye caught the news which had played its rôle in the court-room,
and she read it to the end. Even in her own trouble she read it with a shiver. Yet, awful as the
fate which Harry Sanderson had so narrowly missed, it was not to be
compared with that which awaited Hugh, for, awful as it was, it held no
shame! In a gust of feeling she slipped to her knees by the one sofa the room
contained and prayed passionately. As she drew out her handkerchief to
stanch the tears that came, something fell with a musical tinkle at her
feet. It was the little cross she had found in front of the hillside
cabin, that had lain forgotten in her pocket during the past anxious
days. She picked it up now and held it tightly in her hand, as if the
tangible symbol brought her closer to the Infinite Sympathy to which she
turned in her misery. As she pressed it, the ring at the top turned and
the cross parted in halves. Words were engraved on the inside of the
arms--a date and the name _Henry Sanderson_. The recurrence of the name jarred and surprised her. Hugh had dropped
it--an old keepsake of the friend who had been his _beau idéal_, his
exemplar, and whose ancient influence was still dominant. He had clung
loyally to the memento, blind in his constant liking, to the wrong that
friend had done him. She looked at the date--it was May 28th. She
shuddered, for that was the month and day on which Doctor Moreau had
been killed--the point had been clearly established to-day by the
prosecution. | 2,100 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140417 | 398 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | To the original owner of that cross, perhaps, the date that
had come into Hugh's life with such a sinister meaning, was a glad
anniversary! Suddenly she caught her hand to her cheek. A weird idea had rushed
through her brain. The religious symbol had stood for Harry Sanderson
and the chance coincidence of date had irresistibly pointed to the
murder. To her excited senses the juxtaposition held a bizarre, uncanny
suggestion. This cross--the very emblem of vicarious sacrifice!--suppose
Harry Sanderson had never given it to Hugh! Suppose he had lost it on
the hillside himself! She snatched up the paper again: "Who has been for some months on a
prolonged vacation"--the phrase stared sardonically at her. That might
carry far back--she said it under her breath, fearfully--beyond the
murder of Doctor Moreau! Her face burned, and her breath came sharp and
fast. Why, when she brought her warning to the cabin, had Hugh been so
anxious to get her away, unless to prevent her sight of the man who was
there--to whom he had taken her horse? Who was there in Smoky Mountain
whom he would protect at hazard of his own life? Yet in this crisis,
even, her appeal to his love had been fruitless. He had called Harry
Sanderson his closest friend, had said that in his place Harry would do
the same. She remembered his cry: "What you ask is the one thing I can
not do. It would make me a pitiful coward!" She had asked only that he
tell the truth. To protect a vulgar murderer was not courageous. But
what if they were bound by ties of old friendship and college
_camaraderie_? Men had their standards. Jessica's veins were all afire. A rector-murderer? A double career? Was
it beyond possibility? At the sanatorium she had re-read _The Mystery of
Edwin Drood_; now she thought of John Jasper, the choir-master, stealing
away from the cathedral to the London opium den to plan the murder of
his nephew. The mad thought gripped her imagination. Harry Sanderson had
been wild and lawless in his university days, a gamester, a skeptic--the
Abbot of the Saints! To her his pretensions had never seemed more than a
graceful sham, the generalities of religion he spread for the
delectation of fashionable St. | 2,197 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140418 | 382 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | James only "as sounding brass and a
tinkling cymbal." He had been a hard drinker in those days. What if the
old desire had run on beneath the fair exterior, denied and repressed
till it had burst control--till he had fled from those who knew him, to
Hugh, in whose loyalty he trusted, to give it rein in a debauch? Say
that this had happened, and that in the midst of it Moreau, whom he had
known in Aniston, had come upon him. Anticipating recognition, to cover
his own shame and save his career, in drunken frenzy perhaps, he might
have fired the shot on the hillside--that Moreau, taken unawares, had
thought was Hugh's! It came to her like an impinging ray of light--the old curious likeness
that had sometimes been made a jest of at the white house in the aspens. Moreau and Prendergast had believed it to be Hugh! So had the town, for
the body had been found on his ground! But on the night when the real
murderer came again to the cabin--perhaps it was his coming that had
brought back the lost memory!--Hugh had known the truth. In the light of
this supposition his strained manner then, his present determination not
to speak, all stood plain. What had he meant by a debt of his past that he had never paid? He could
owe no debt to Harry Sanderson. If he owed any debt, it was to his dead
father, a thousand times more than the draft he had repaid. Could he be
thinking in his remorse that his father had cast him off--counting
himself nothing, remembering only that Harry Sanderson had been David
Stires' favorite, and St. James, which must be smirched by the odium of
its rector, the apple of his eye? Jessica had snatched at a straw, because it was the only buoyant thing
afloat in the dragging tide; now with a blind fatuousness she hugged it
tighter to her bosom. The joints of her reasoning seemed to dovetail
with fateful accuracy. She was swayed by instinct, and apparent
fallacies were glozed by old mistrust and terror of the outcome which
was driving her to any desperate expedient. Beside Hugh's salvation the
whole universe counted as nothing. She was in the grip of that fierce
passion of love's defense which feeds the romance of the world. | 2,165 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140419 | 394 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | One
purpose possessed her: to confront Harry Sanderson. What matter though
she missed the remainder of the trial? She could do nothing--her hands
were tied. If the truth lay at Aniston she would find it. She thought no
further than this. Once in Harry Sanderson's presence, what she should
say or do she scarcely imagined. The horrifying question filled her
thought to the exclusion of all that must follow its answer. It was
surety and self-conviction she craved--only to read in his eyes the
truth about the murder of Moreau. She suddenly began to tremble. Would the doctors let her see him? What
excuse could she give? If he was the man who had been in Hugh's cabin
that night, he had heard her speak, had known she was there. He must not
know beforehand of her coming, lest he have suspicion of her errand. Bishop Ludlow--he could gain her access to him. Injured, dying perhaps,
maybe he did not guess that Hugh was in jeopardy for his crime. Guilty
and dying, if he knew this, he would surely tell the truth. But if he
died before she could reach him? The paper was some days old; he might
be dead already. She took heart, however, from the statement of his
improved condition. She sprang to her feet and looked at her chatelaine watch. The
east-bound express was overdue. There was no time to lose--minutes might
count. She examined her purse--she had money enough with her. Five minutes later she was at the station, a scribbled note was on its
way to Mrs. Halloran, and before a swinging red lantern, the long
incoming train was shuddering to a stop. CHAPTER XLIV
THE IMPOSTOR
In the long hospital the air was cool and filtered, drab figures passed
with soft footfalls and voices were measured and hushed. But no sense of
coolness or repose had come to the man whose racked body had been
tenderly borne there in the snowy dawn which saw the blackened ruins of
Aniston's most perfect edifice. Because of him tongues clacked on the street corner and bulletins were
posted in newspaper windows; carriages of tasteful equipment halted at
the hospital porte-cochère, messages flew back and forth, and the
telephone in the outer office whirred busily at unseasonable hours; but
from the clean screened room where he lay, all this was shut out. | 2,249 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140420 | 395 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | Only
the surgeons came and went, deftly refreshing the bandages which swathed
one side of his face, where the disfiguring flame had smitten--the other
side was untouched, save for a line across the brow, seemingly a thin,
red mark of excoriation. Hugh had sunk into unconsciousness with the awestruck exclamation
ringing in his ears: "Good God! It's Harry Sanderson!" He had drifted
back to conscious knowledge with the same words racing in his brain. They implied that, so far as capture went, the old, curious resemblance
would stand his friend till he betrayed himself, or till the existence
of the real Harry Sanderson at Smoky Mountain did so for him. The
delusion must hold till he could have himself moved to some place where
his secret would be safer--till he could get away! This thought grew swiftly paramount; it overlapped the rigid agony of
his burns that made the bed on which he lay a fiery furnace; it gave
method to his every word and look. He took up the difficult part, and
after the superficial anguish dulled, complained no more and
successfully counterfeited cheerfulness and betterment. He said nothing
of the curiously recurrent and sickening stab of pain, searching and
deep-seated, that took his breath and left each time an increasing
giddiness. Whatever inner hurt this might betoken, he must hide it, the
sooner to leave the hospital, where each hour brought nearer the
inevitable disclosure. He thanked fortune now for the chapel game; few enough in Aniston would
care to see the unfrocked, disgraced rector of St. James! He did not
know that the secret was Bishop Ludlow's own, until the hour when he
opened his eyes, after a fitful sleep, upon the latter's face. The bishop was the first visitor and it was his first visit, for he had
been in a distant city at the time of the fire. Waiting the waking, he
had been mystified at the change a few months had wrought in the
countenance of the man whose disappearance had cost him so many
sleepless hours. The months of indulgence and rich living--on the money
he had won from Harry--had taken away Hugh's slightness, and his fuller
cheeks were now of the contour of Harry's own. | 2,158 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140421 | 373 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | But the bishop
distinguished new lines in the face on the pillow, an expression
unfamiliar and puzzling; the firmness and strength were gone, and in
their place was a haunting something that gave him a flitting suggestion
of the discarded that he could not shake off. Waking, the unexpected sight of the bishop startled Hugh; to the good
man's pain he had turned his face away. "My dear boy," the bishop had said, "they tell me you are stronger and
better. I thank God for it!"
He spoke gently and with deep feeling. How could he tell to what extent
he himself, in mistaken severity, had been responsible for that
unaccustomed look? When Hugh did not answer, the bishop misconstrued the
silence. He leaned over the bed; the big cool hand touched the fevered
one on the white coverlid, where the ruby ring glowed, a coal in snow. "Harry," he said, "you have suffered--you are suffering now. But think
of me only as your friend. I ask no questions. We are going to begin
again where we left off."
The words and tone had shown Hugh the situation and given him his cue. He could put himself fairly in Harry's place, and with the instinct of
the actor he did so now, meeting the other's friendliness with a
hesitant eagerness. "I would like to do that," he said, "--to begin again. But the chapel is
gone."
"Never mind that," said the bishop cheerfully. "You are only to get
well. We are going to rebuild soon, and we want your judgment on the
plans. Aniston is hanging on your condition, Harry," he went on. "There's a small cartload of visiting-cards down-stairs for you. But I
imagine you haven't begun to receive yet, eh?"
"I--I've seen nobody." Hugh spoke hurriedly and hoarsely. "Tell the
doctor to let no one come--no one but you. I--I'm not up to it!"
"Why, of course not," said the bishop quickly. "You need quiet, and the
people can wait."
The bishop chatted a while of the parish, Hugh replying only when he
must, and went away heartened. Before he left Hugh saw his way to hasten
his own going. On the next visit the seed was dropped in the bishop's
mind so cleverly that he thought the idea his own. | 2,114 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140422 | 383 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | That day he said to
the surgeon in charge:
"He is gaining so rapidly, I have been wondering if he couldn't be taken
away where the climate will benefit him. Will he be able to travel
soon?"
"I think so," answered the surgeon. "We suspected internal injury at
first, but I imagine the worst he has to fear is the disfigurement. Mountain or sea air would do him good," he added reflectively; "what he
will need is tonic and building up."
The bishop had revolved this in his mind. He knew a place on the coast,
tucked away in the cypresses, which would be admirable for
convalescence. He could arrange a special car and he himself could make
the journey with him. He proposed this to the surgeon and with his
approval put his plan in motion. In two days more Hugh found his going
fully settled. The idea admirably fitted his necessity. The spot the bishop had
selected was quiet and retired, and more, was near the port at which he
could most readily take ship for South America. Only one reflection made
him shiver: the route lay through the town of Smoky Mountain. Yet who
would dream of looking for a fugitive from the law in the secluded car
that carried a sick man? The risk would be small enough, and it was the
one way open! On the last afternoon before the departure, Hugh asked for the clothes
he had worn when he was brought to the hospital, found the gold-pieces
he had snatched in the burning chapel and tied them in a handkerchief
about his neck. They would suffice to buy his sea-passage. The one red
counter he had kept--it was from henceforth to be a reminder of the good
resolutions he had made so long ago--he slipped into a pocket of the
clothes he was to wear away, a suit of loose, comfortable tweed. Waiting restlessly for the hour of his going, Hugh asked for the
newspapers. Since the first he had had them read to him each day,
listening fearfully for the hue and cry. But to-day the surgeon put his
request aside. "After you are there," he said, "if Bishop Ludlow will let you. Not now. | 2,013 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140423 | 373 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | You are almost out of my clutches, and I must tyrannize while I can."
A quick look passed from him to his assistant as he spoke, for the
newspapers that afternoon had worn startling head-lines. The sordid
affairs of a mining town across the ranges had little interest for
Aniston, but the names of Stires and Moreau on the clicking wire had
waked it, thus late, to the sensation. The professional caution of the
tinker of human bodies wished, however, that no excitement should be
added to the unavoidable fatigue of his patient's departure. This fatigue was near to spelling defeat, after all, for the exertion
brought again the dreadful, stabbing pain, and this time it carried Hugh
into a region where feeling ceased, consciousness passed, and from which
he struggled back finally to find the surgeon bending anxiously over
him. "I don't like that sinking spell," the latter confided to his assistant
an hour later as they stood looking through the window after the
receding carriage. "It was too pronounced. Yet he has complained of no
pain. He will be in good hands at any rate." He tapped the glass
musingly with his forefinger. "It's curious," he said after a pause; "I
always liked Sanderson--in the pulpit. Somehow he doesn't appeal to me
at close range."
The special car which the bishop had ready had been made a pleasant
interior; fern-boxes were in the corners, a caged canary swung from a
bracket, and a softly cushioned couch had been prepared for the sick
man. A moment before the start, as it was being coupled to the rear of
the resting train, while the bishop chatted with the conductor, a
flustered messenger boy handed him a telegram. It read:
I arrive Aniston to-morrow five. Confidential. Must see
you. Urgent. JESSICA. The bishop read it in some perplexity. It was the first word he had
received from her since her marriage, but, aware of Hugh's forgery and
disgrace, he had not wondered at this. Since the news of David Stires'
death, he had looked for her return, for she was the old man's heir and
mistress now of the white house in the aspens. | 2,086 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140424 | 363 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | But he realized that it
would need all her courage to come back to this town whence she had fled
with her trouble--to lay bare an unsuspected and shameful secret, to
meet old friends, and answer questions that must be asked. The
newspapers to-day pictured a still worse shame for her, in the position
of the man who, in name still, was her husband--who had trod so swiftly
the downward path from thievery to the worst of crimes. Could Jessica's
coming have to do with that? He must see her, yet his departure could
not now be delayed. He consulted with the conductor and the latter pored
over his tablets. As a result, his answering message flashed along the wires to Jessica's
far-away train:
Sanderson injured. Taking him to coast train forty-eight due Twin
Peaks two to-morrow afternoon. And thus the fateful moment approached when the great appeal should be
made. CHAPTER XLV
AN APPEAL TO CÆSAR
The evidence of the first day's trial of the case of the People against
Hugh Stires was the all-engrossing topic that night in Smoky Mountain. In the "Amen Corner" of the Mountain Valley House it held sway. Among
the sedate group there gathered, there seemed but one belief: that the
accused man was guilty--but one feeling: that of regret. Gravity lay so
heavily upon the atmosphere there that when Mrs. Halloran momentarily
entered the discussion to declare fiercely that "if Hugh Stires was a
murderer, then they were all thieves and she a cannibal" she aroused no
smile. Barney McGinn perhaps aptly expressed the consensus of opinion
when he said: "I allow we all know he's guilty, but nobody believes it."
Late as Smoky Mountain sat up that night, however, it was on hand next
morning, rank and file, when the court convened. All the previous evening, save for a short visit to the cell of his
client, Felder had remained shut in his office, thinking of the morrow. In his talk with Harry he had not concealed his deep anxiety, but to
his questions there was no new answer, and he had returned from the
interview more nonplussed than ever. He had wondered that Jessica, on
this last night, did not come to his office, but had been rather
relieved than otherwise that she did not. | 2,200 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140425 | 384 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | He had gone to bed heavy with
discouragement and had waked in the morning with foreboding. As he shook hands with the prisoner in the packed court-room, Felder
felt a keen admiration that his sense of painful impotence could not
overlay. He read in the composed face the same prescience that possessed
him, but it held no fear or shadow of turning. He was facing the
scaffold; facing it--if the woman he loved was right in her
conclusions--in obedience to a set idea of self-martyrdom and with
indomitable spirit. It was inconceivable that a sane man would do this
for a sneaking assassin. It was either aberration or a relentless
purpose so extraordinary that it lay far removed from the ordinary
courses of reasoning. Felder's own conviction had no bolstering of fact,
no logical premise; indeed, as he had admitted to Doctor Brent, it was
thoroughly unprofessional. Even to cite the circumstances on which
Jessica based her belief that Hugh knew the real murderer would weaken
his case. The suggestion would seem a mere bungling expedient to inject
the tantalizing fillip of mystery and unbelievable Quixotic motive,
and, lacking evidence to support it, would touch the whole fabric with
the taint of the meretricious. The sense of painful responsibility and
hopelessness oppressed him, for, so far as real evidence went, he had
entered on this second day of the struggle without a tangible theory of
defense. As he turned from greeting his client, Felder noted with surprise that
Jessica was not in her place. Not that he needed her further testimony,
for he had drawn from her the day before all he intended to utilize, but
her absence disturbed him, and instinctively he turned and looked across
the sea of faces toward the door. Harry's glance followed his, and a deeper pain beleaguered it as his
eyes returned to the empty chair. He saw Mrs. Halloran whisper eagerly
with the lawyer, who turned away with a puzzled look. In his bitterness
the thought came to him that the testimony had sapped her conviction of
his innocence--that his refusal to answer her entreaties had been the
last straw to the load under which it had gone down--that she believed
him indeed the murderer of Moreau. To seem the cringing criminal, the
pitiful liar and actor in her eyes! The thought stung him. | 2,290 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140426 | 391 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | Her faith had
meant so much! The ominous feeling weighed heavily on Felder when he rose to continue
the testimony for the prisoner, so rudely disturbed the evening before. In such a community pettifogging was of no avail. Throwing expert dust
in jurors' eyes would be worse than useless. In his opening words he
made no attempt to conceal the weakness of the defense, evidentially
considered. Stripped of all husk, his was to be an appeal to Cæsar. Through a cloud of witnesses, concisely, consistently--yet with a
winning tactfulness that disarmed the objections of the prosecution--he
began to lead them through the series of events that had followed the
arrival of the self-forgotten man. Out of the mouths of their own
neighbors--Devlin, Barney McGinn, Mrs. Halloran, who came down
weeping--they were made to see, as in a cyclorama, the struggle for
rehabilitation against hatred and suspicion, the courage that had dared
for a child's life, the honesty of purpose that showed in
self-surrender. The prisoner, he said, had recovered his memory before
the accusation and asserted his absolute innocence. Those who believed
him guilty of the murder of Doctor Moreau must believe him also a vulgar
liar and _poseur_. He left the inference clear: If the prisoner had
fired that cowardly shot, he knew it now; if he lied now he had lied all
along, and the later life he had lived at Smoky Mountain--eloquent of
fair-dealing, straightforwardness of purpose, kindliness and
courage--had been but hypocrisy, the bootless artifice of a shallow
buffoon. It was an appeal sustained and moving, addressed to folk who,
untrammelled by a complex and variform convention, felt simply and
deeply the simplest and deepest passions of human kind. Often, as the
morning grew, Felder's glance turned toward the empty chair near-by, and
more than once, though his active thought never wavered from the serious
business in hand, his subconscious mind wondered. Mrs. Halloran had told
him of the note from Jessica--it had said only that she would return at
the earliest possible moment. The wonder in Felder's mind was general
throughout the court-room, for none who had listened to Jessica's
testimony--and the whole town had heard it--could doubt the strength of
her love. The eyes that saw the empty chair were full of pity. Only the
knot of serious faces in the jury-box was seldom turned that way. | 2,384 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140427 | 393 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | The session was prolonged past the noon hour, and when Felder rested his
case it seemed that all that was possible had been said. He had done his
utmost. He had drawn from the people of Smoky Mountain a dramatic story,
and had filled in its outlines with color, force and feeling. And yet,
as he closed, the lawyer felt a sick sense of failure. Court adjourned for an hour, and in the interim Felder remained in a
little room in the building, whither Doctor Brent was to send him
sandwiches and coffee from the hotel. "You made a fine effort, Tom," the latter said, as they stood for a
moment in the emptying court-room. "You're doing wonders with no case,
and the town ought to send you to Congress on the strength of it! I
declare, some of your evidence made me feel as mean as a dog about the
rascal, though I knew all the time he was as guilty as the devil."
The lawyer shook his head. "I don't blame you, Brent," he said, "for you
don't know him as I do. I have seen much of him lately, been often with
him, watched him under stress--for he doesn't deceive himself, he has no
thought of acquittal! We none of us knew Hugh Stires. We put him down
for a shallow, vulgar blackleg, without redeeming qualities. But the man
we are trying is a gentleman, a refined and cultivated man of taste and
feeling. I have learned his true character during these days."
"Well," said the other, "if you believe in him, so much the better. You'll make the better speech for it. Tell me one thing--where was Miss
Holme?"
"I don't know."
The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Good-by," he said. "I'll send over the
coffee and sandwiches," he added as he turned away. "She thinks he is guilty!" he said to himself as he walked up the
street. "She thinks he is guilty, too!"
CHAPTER XLVI
FACE TO FACE
To stand face to face with Harry Sanderson--that had been Jessica's sole
thought. The news that the bishop, with the man she suspected, was
speeding toward her--to pass the very town wherein Hugh stood for his
life--seemed a prearrangement of eternal justice. When the telegram
reached her, she had already gone by Twin Peaks. To proceed would be to
pass the coming train. | 2,163 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140428 | 396 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | At a farther station, however, she was able to
take a night train back, arriving again at Twin Peaks in the gray dawn
of the next morning. At the dingy station hotel there she undressed and
lay down, but her nerves were quivering and she could not close her
eyes. Toward noon she dressed and forced herself to breakfast, realizing
the need of strength. She spent the rest of the time of waiting walking
up and down in the crisp air, which steadied her nerves and gave her a
measure of control. When the train for which she waited came in, the curtained car at its
end, she did not wait for the bishop to find her on the platform, but
stepped aboard and made her way slowly back. It started again as she
threaded the last Pullman, to find the bishop on its rear platform
peering out anxiously at the receding station. He took both her hands and drew her into the empty drawing-room. He was
startled at her pallor. "I know," he said pityingly. "I have heard."
She winced. "Does Aniston know?"
"Yes," he answered. "Yesterday's newspapers told it."
She put her hand on his arm. "Can you guess why I was coming home?" she
asked. "It was to tell Harry Sanderson! I know of the fire," she went on
quickly, "and of his injury. I can guess you want to spare him strain or
excitement, but I must tell him!"
"It is a matter of physical strength, Jessica," he said. "He has been a
sick man. Forgive my saying it, child, but--what good could it do?"
"Believe, oh, you must believe," she pleaded, "that I do not ask this
lightly, that I have a purpose that makes it necessary. It means so
much--more than my life to me! Why, I have waited here at Twin Peaks all
through the night, till now, when this very day and hour they are trying
him there at Smoky Mountain! You must let me tell him!"
He reflected a moment. He thought he guessed what was in her mind. If
there was any one who had ever had an influence over Hugh for good, it
was Harry Sanderson. He himself, he thought, had none. | 1,979 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140429 | 373 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | Perhaps,
remembering their old comradeship, she was longing now to have this
influence exerted, to bring Hugh to a better mind--thinking of his
eternal welfare, of his making his peace with his Maker. Beneath his
prosy churchmanship and somewhat elaborate piety, the bishop had a
spirituality almost medieval in its simplicity. Perhaps this was God's
way. His eyes lighted. "Very well," he said. "Come," and led the way into the car. Jessica followed, her hands clenched tightly. She saw the couch, the
profile on its cushions turned toward the window where forest and stream
slipped past--a face curiously like Hugh's! Yet it was different,
lacking the other's strength, even its refinement. And this man had
molded Hugh! These vague thoughts lost themselves instantly in the
momentous surmise that filled her imagination. The bishop put out his
hand and touched the relaxed arm. The trepidation that darted into the bandaged face as it turned upon the
girlish figure, the frosty fear that blanched the haggard countenance,
spoke Hugh's surprise and dread. It was she, and she knew the real
Harry Sanderson was in Smoky Mountain. Had she heard of the chapel fire,
guessed the imposture, and come to denounce him, the guilty husband she
had such reason to hate? The twitching limbs stiffened. "Jessica!" he
said in a hoarse whisper. For an instant a fierce sense of triumph flamed through her every nerve. But a cold doubt chilled it. Her suspicion might be the veriest chimera. It seemed suddenly too wild for belief. She sat down abruptly and for a
fleeting moment hid her face. The bishop touched the bowed, brown head. "Harry," he said, "Jessica is in great trouble. She has come with sad
news. Hugh, her husband, your old college mate, is in a terrible
position. He is accused of murder. I kept the newspapers from you to-day
because they told of it."
She had caught the meaning of the pity in his tone--for her, not for
Hugh! "Ah," she cried passionately, lifting her head, "but they did not
tell it all! Did they tell you that he is unjustly, wickedly accused by
an enemy? That, though they may convict him, he is innocent--innocent?"
The bishop looked at her in surprise. | 2,182 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140430 | 372 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | In spite of all the past--the
shameful, conscienceless past and her own wrong--she loved and believed
in her husband! Hugh's hand lifted, wavered an instant before his brow. Did she say he
was innocent? "I don't--understand," he said hoarsely. Jessica's wide eyes fastened on his as though to search his secret soul. "I will tell it all," she said, "then you will understand." The bishop
drew a chair close, but her gaze did not waver from the face on the
cushions--the face which she must read! As she told the broken tale the car was still, save for the labored,
irregular breathing of the prostrate man, and the muffled roar that
penetrated the walls, a multitudinous, elfin din. Once the swinging
canary broke forth into liquid warbling, as though in all the world were
no throe of body or dolor of mind. In that telling Jessica's mind
traversed wastes of alternate certainty and doubt, as she hung upon the
look of the man who listened--a look that merged slowly into a fearful
understanding. Hugh understood now! Jessica had believed him to be her husband, and she believed so still. And Harry did not intend to tell. He was safe ... safe! In the reaction
from his fear, Hugh felt sick and faint. The bishop had been listening in some anxiety, both for her and for his
charge. There was a strained intensity in her manner now that betokened
almost unbalance--so it seemed to him. The side-lights he had had of
Hugh's career led him to believe him incapable of such a self-sacrifice
as her tale recited. A strange power there was in woman's love! "You see," she ended, "that is why I know he is innocent. _You_ can
not"--her eyes held Hugh's--"_you_ can not doubt it, can you?"
Hugh's tongue wet his parched lips. A tremor ran through him. He did not
answer. Jessica started to her feet. Self-possession was falling from her; she
was fighting to seize the vital knowledge that evaded her. She held out
her hand--in the palm lay a small emblem of gold. "By this cross," she cried with desperate earnestness, "I ask you for
the truth. It is his life or death--Hugh's life or death! He did not
kill Doctor Moreau. _Who did?_"
Hugh had shrunk back on the couch, his face ghastly. "I know
nothing--nothing!" he stammered. | 2,224 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140431 | 393 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | "Do not ask me!"
The bishop had risen in alarm; he thought her hysterical. "Jessica! Jessica!" he exclaimed. He threw his arm about her and led her from the
couch. "You don't know what you are saying. You are beside yourself." He
forced her into the drawing-room and made her sit down. She was tense
and quivering. The cross fell from her hand and he stooped and picked it
up. "Try to calm yourself," he said, "to think of other things for a few
moments. This little cross--I wonder how you come to have it? I gave it
to Sanderson last May to commemorate his ordination." He twisted it
open. "See, here is the date, May twenty-eighth--that was the day I gave
it to him."
She gave a quick gasp and the last vestige of color faded from her
cheek. She looked at him in a stricken way. "_Last_ May!" she said
faintly. Harry Sanderson had been in Aniston, then, on the day Doctor
Moreau had been murdered. Her house of cards fell. She had been
mistaken! She leaned her head back against the cushion and closed her
eyes. Presently she felt a cold glass touch her lips. "Here is some water,"
the bishop's voice said. "You are better, are you not? Poor child! You
have been through a terrible strain. I would give the world to help you
if I could!"
He left her, and she sat dully trying to think. The regular jar of the
trucks had set itself to a rhythm--no hope, no hope, no hope! She knew
now that there was none. When the bishop reëntered she did not turn her
head. He sat beside her a while and she was aware again of his voice,
speaking soothingly. At moments thereafter he was there, at others she
knew that she was alone, but she was unconscious of the flight of time. She knew only that the day was fading. On the chilly whirling landscape
she saw only a crowded room, a jury-box, a judge's bench, and Hugh
before it, listening to the sentence that would take him from her for
ever. The bright sunlight was mercilessly, satanically cruel, and God a
sneering monster turning a crank. Into her conscious view grew distant snowy ranges, hills unrolling at
their feet, a straggling town, a staring white court-house and a grim
low building beside it. | 2,150 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140432 | 397 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | She rose stumblingly, the train quivering to the
brakes, as the bishop entered. "This is Smoky Mountain," she said with numb lips. "That is the building
where he is being tried. I am going there now."
The bishop opened the door. "We stop here twenty minutes," he said. "I
will walk a little way with you."
CHAPTER XLVII
BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES
Hugh's haggard face peered after them through a rift in a window
curtain. What could she have suspected? Not the truth! And only that
could betray him. Presently the bishop would return, the train would
start again, and this spot of terror would be behind him. What had he to
do with Harry Sanderson? He bethought himself suddenly of the door--if some one should come in
upon him! With a qualm of fear he stood up, staggered to it and turned
the key in the lock. There was not the wonted buzz about the station;
the place was silent, save for the throb of the halted engine, and the
shadow of the train on the frosty platform quivered like a criminal. A
block away he saw the court-house--knots of people were standing about
its door, waiting for what? A fit of trembling seized him. All his years Hugh had been a moral coward. Life to him had been sweet
for the grosser, material pleasures it held. He had cared for nobody,
had held nothing sacred. When his sins had found him out, he had not
repented; he had only cursed the accident of discovery. The sincerest
feeling of regret he had known had been in the chapel when he had
thought of his dead mother. Since one dismal night on Smoky Mountain,
dread, dogging and relentless, had been his hateful bedfellow. He had
now only to keep silence, let Harry Sanderson pay the penalty, and he
need dread no more. Hugh Stires, to the persuasion of the law, would be
dead. As soon as might be he could disappear--as the rector of St. James
had disappeared before. He might change his name and live at ease in
some other quarter of the world, his alarm laid for ever. But a worse thing would haunt him, to scare his sleep. | 2,018 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140433 | 370 |
39689-8-8 | Gutenberg | 9,996 | He would be
doubly blood-guilty! In the awful moment while he clung to the iron bars of the collapsing
rose-window, with the flames clutching at him, Hugh had looked into
hell, and shivered before the judgment: _The wages of sin is death_. In
that fiery ordeal the cheapness and swagger, the ostentation and
self-esteem had burned away, and his soul had stood naked as a winter
wood. Dying had not then been the Austere Terror. What came after--that
had appalled him. Yet Harry Sanderson was not afraid of the hereafter;
he chose death calmly, knowing that he, Hugh, was unfit to die! He thought of the little gold cross Jessica had held before him. The
last time he had seen it was during that memorable game when Harry had
set it on the table. In his pocket was a battered red disk--a reminder
of the days that Harry had won, which had never been rendered. He
thought of the stabbing agony that had come and come again, to strike
each time more deeply. The death that he had cheated in the chapel might
be near him now. But whenever death should come, what should he say when
he stood before his Judge, with such a fearful double burden on his
soul? He was horribly afraid! Suppose he waited. Harry might be convicted, sentenced, but he could
save him at the last moment. When he was safe on his way to South
America, he could write the bishop--beg him to go to Smoky Mountain and
convince himself. But how soon would that be? It would be long,
long--and justice was swift. And what if death should take him unawares
beforehand? It would be too late then, too late for ever and ever! Suppose he told the truth now and saved Harry. He had never done a brave
deed for the sake of truth or righteousness, or for the love of any
human being, but he could do one now. For the one red counter that had
been a symbol of a day of evil living, he could render a deed that would
make requital for those unpaid days! He would not have played the
coward's part. It would repair the wrong he had done Jessica. He would
have made expiation. Forgiveness and pity, not reproaches and shame,
would follow him. | 2,095 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140434 | 389 |
39689-8-9 | Gutenberg | 3,339 | The question it asked--the only question it
asked--was, did he kill Moreau? They might be loath to believe the same
man capable of such contradictory acts--the courageous saving of a child
from death, for example, and the shooting down of a fellow-mortal in
cold blood--but it had been truly said that such contrasts were not
impossible, nay, were even matters of common observation. Prejudice and
bias aside, and sympathy and liking aside, they constituted a tribunal
of justice. This the State had a right to demand, and this they, the
jury, had made solemn oath to give."
The words had no meaning for her ears. "What did he say?" she whispered
to herself piteously. In her abyss of torture she felt the tense expectancy stirring audibly
in the room like a still breeze in forest leaves--saw the averted faces
of the jury as they rose to file out. She caught but a glimpse of the
prisoner, as the sheriff touched his arm and led the way quickly to the
door through which he had been brought. It opened and closed upon them, and the tension of the packed room broke
all at once in a great respiration of relief and a buzz of conversation. A voice spoke beside her. It was Doctor Brent. "Come with me," he said. "Felder asked me to watch for you. We can wait in the judge's room."
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE VERDICT
Meanwhile in the narrow cell Harry was alone with his bitterness. His
judicial sense, keenly alive, from the very first had appreciated the
woeful weakness, evidentially speaking, of his position. He had no
illusions on this score. A little while--after such deliberation as was
decent and seemly--and he would be a condemned criminal, waiting in the
shadow of the hempen noose. In such localities justice was swift. There
would be scant time between verdict and penalty--not enough, doubtless,
for the problem to solve itself. For the only solution possible was
Hugh's dying in the hospital at Aniston. So long as the other lived, he
must play out the rôle. And if Hugh did die, but died too late? What a satire on truth and
justice! The same error which put the rope about his own neck would fold
the real Hugh in the odor of sanctity. | 2,154 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140435 | 382 |
39689-8-9 | Gutenberg | 3,339 | He would lie in the little jail
yard in a felon's grave, and Hugh in the cemetery on the hill, beneath a
marble monument erected by St. James Parish to the Reverend Henry
Sanderson. He was in an _impasse_. In the dock, or in the cell with the
death-watch sitting at its door, it was all one. He had elected the
path, and if it led to the bleak edge of life, to the barren abyss of
shame, he must tread it. His own life--he had come in his thinking to a point where that mattered
least of all. Harry Sanderson, the vanished rector of St. James,
mattered. And Jessica! On the cot lay a slender blue-bound
book--Tennyson's _Becket_. She had sent it to him, in a hamper of her
favorites, some days before. He picked it up and held it in his hand,
touching the limp leather gently. It was as soft as her cheek, and there
was about the leaves a hint of that intangible perfume that his mind
always associated with her--
... the smell of the jasmin-flower
That she used to wear in her breast! Far more than his life, more than the name and fame of the Reverend
Henry Sanderson, she mattered! Could he write it for her eye, the whole
truth, so that sometime--afterward--the bishop might know, and the blot
be erased from his career? Impossible! With Hugh buried in Aniston and
he in Smoky Mountain, who was there but would smile at such a tale? She
might shout it to the world, and it would answer with derision. And
what comfort would the truth be to her? Could he say to her: "Your husband lies dead under my tombstone, not
innocent, but unregenerate and vile. I, who you think am your husband,
am not and never was. You have come to my call--but I am nothing to you. You are the wife of the guilty murderer of Moreau!" Could he leave this
behind him, and, passing from her life for ever, turn the memory of
their love into an irremediable bitterness? No--no! Better never to tell
her! Better to let her live her life, holding her faith and dream,
treasuring her belief in his regeneration and innocence! He thought of the closing chapter in his life at Aniston, when in that
hour of his despair he had prayed by his study desk. | 2,135 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140436 | 399 |
39689-8-9 | Gutenberg | 3,339 | The words he had
then said aloud recurred to him: "If I am delivered, it must be by some
way of Thine Own that I can not conceive, for I can not help myself." He
was powerless to help himself still. He had given over his life into the
keeping of a Power in which his better manhood had trusted. If it
exacted the final tribute for those ribald years of Satan Sanderson, the
price would be paid! A step came in the corridor--a voice spoke his name. The summons had
come. As he laid the blue book back on the cot, its closing words--the
dying utterance of the martyred Becket--flashed through his mind, the
personal cry of his own soul:
"Into Thy hands, O Lord--into Thy hands!"
Before the opening door the hum of voices in the court-room sank to
stillness itself. The jury had taken their places; their looks were
sober and downcast. The judge was in his seat, his hand combing his
beard. Harry faced him calmly. The door of a side room was partly open
and a girl's white face looked in, but he did not see. "Gentlemen of the jury, have you arrived at a verdict?"
"We have."
There was a confusion in the hall--abrupt voices and the sound of feet. The crowd stirred and the judge frowningly lifted his gavel. "What say you, guilty or not guilty?"
The foreman did not answer. He was leaning forward, looking over the
heads of the crowd. The judge stood up. People turned, and the room was
suddenly a-rustle with surprised movement. The crowd at the back of the
room parted, and up the center aisle, toward the judge's desk, staggered
a figure--a man whose face, ghastly and convulsed, was partly swathed
in bandages. At the door of the judge's room a girl stood transfixed and
staring. The crowd gasped. They saw the familiar profile, a replica of the
prisoner's--the mark that slanted across the brow--the eyes
preternaturally bright and fevered. A pale-faced, breathless man in clerical dress pushed forward through
the press, as the figure stopped ... thrust out his hands blindly. "Not--guilty, your Honor!" he said. A cry came from the prisoner at the bar. He leaped toward him as he fell
and caught him in his arms. CHAPTER XLIX
THE CRIMSON DISK
The group in the judge's room was hushed in awestruck silence. | 2,221 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140437 | 398 |
39689-8-9 | Gutenberg | 3,339 | The door
was shut, but through the panels, from the court-room, came the murmur
of many wondering voices. By the sofa on which lay the man who had made
expiation stood the bishop and Harry Sanderson. Jessica knelt beside it,
and the judge and those who stood with him in the background knew that
the curtain was falling upon a strange and tangled drama of life and
death. After the one long, sobbing cry of realization, throughout the
excitement and confusion, Jessica had been strangely calm. She read the
swift certainty in Doctor Brent's face, and she felt a painful
thankfulness. The last appeal would not be to man's justice, but to
God's mercy! The memories of the old blind days and the knowledge that
this man--not the one to whom she had given her love at Smoky Mountain,
at whom she dared not look--had then been her lover, rolled about her in
a stinging mist. But as she knelt by the sofa the hand that chafed the
nerveless one was firm, and she wiped the cold lips deftly and tenderly. Hugh's eyes were filming. That harrowing struggle of soul, that
convulsive effort of the injured body, had demanded its price. The
direful agony and its weakness had seized him--his stiffening fingers
were slipping from the ledge of life, and he knew it. He heard the bishop's earnest voice speaking from the void: "_Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends!_" The words roused his fading senses, called them back to the
outpost of feeling. "Not because I--loved," he said. "It--was because--I--was afraid!"
False as his habit of life had been, in that moment only the bare truth
remained. With a last effort the dying man thrust his hand into his
pocket, drew out a small, battered, red disk, and laid it in the other's
hand. He smiled. "Satan--" he whispered, as Harry bent over him, and the flicker of light
fell in his eyes, "do you--think it will--count--when I cash in?"
But Harry's answer Hugh did not hear. He had passed out of the sound of
mortal speech for ever. | 2,013 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140438 | 360 |
39689-8-9 | Gutenberg | 3,339 | CHAPTER L
WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE
There came a day when the brown ravines of Smoky Mountain laughed in
genial sunshine, when the tangled thickets, and the foliaged reaches,
painted with the cardinal and bishop's-purple of late autumn, flushed
and stirred to the touch of their golden lover, and the silver water
gushing through the flumes sang to a quicker melody. There was no wind;
everywhere, save for the breathing life of the forest, was dreamy beauty
and waiting peace. In the soft stillness Harry stood on the doorstep of the hillside
cabin--for the last time. Below him in the gulch the light glanced and
sparkled from the running flume, and beyond glimmered the long street of
the town where the dead past of Satan Sanderson had been buried for ever
and the old remorseful pain of conscience had found its surcease. In
that last lack-luster year before the rector of the old St. James had
been snuffed out in the wild motor-ride, he had come to doubt the
ultimate Prescience and Purpose. How small and futile now seemed those
doubts in face of the new conception he had apprehended, in the tacit
acceptance of a watchful Will and Plan not his own. Here had been the theater of his pain and his temptation. Sitting on
that very spot, with the wise stars overhead, he had drawn from Old
Despair's violin the strain that had brought him Jessica, her hand in
his, her head upon his breast! In the far distance, a tender haze
softening their outline, stood the violet silhouette of the enduring
ranges, and far beyond them lay Aniston, where waited his newer life,
his newer, better work--and the hope that was the April of his dreams. Since that tragic day in the court-room he had seen Jessica once
only--in the hour when the bishop's solemn "dust to dust" had been
spoken above the man who had been her husband. One thought had comforted
him--the town of Smoky Mountain had never known, need never know, the
secret of her wifehood. And Aniston was far away. About the coming of
Hugh injured and dying to his rescue, would be thrown a glamour of
knight-errantry that would bespeak charity of judgment. When Jessica
went back to the white house in the aspens she would meet only
tenderness and sympathy. And that was well. | 2,229 | gutenberg_chunkingprocessed_en-00013-of-00052-a66a5e317603bb21_140439 | 393 |
39689-8-9 | Gutenberg | 3,339 | He shut the door of his cabin and, whistling to his dog, climbed the
steep path, where the wrinkled creeper flung its new splash of scarlet,
and along the trail to the Knob, under the needled song of the redwoods. There in the dappled shade stood Jessica's rock-statue, and now it
looked upon two mounds. The Prodigal had returned at last, father and
son rested side by side, and that, too, was well. He went slowly through the brown hollows to the winding mountain road,
crossed it, and entered the denser forest. He wanted to see once more
the dear spot where he and Jessica had met--that deep, sweet day before
the rude awakening. He walked on in a reverie; his thoughts were very
far away. He stopped suddenly--there before him was the little knoll where she had
stood waiting, on the threshold of his Palace of Enchantment, that one
roseate morning. And she was there to-day--not standing with parted lips
and eager eyes under the twittering trees, but lying face down on the
moss, her red bronze hair shaming the gold of the fallen leaves. There was a gesture in the outstretched arms that caught at his heart. He stepped forward, and at the sound she looked up startled. He saw the creeping color that mounted to her brow, the proud yet
passionate hunger of her eyes. He dropped on his knees and took her
hands and kissed them:
"My dear love that is!" he whispered. Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
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