Part 23 (2/2)

Can you say that certain words call up magic? I do not know. But those words worked a miracle. In a second, like something bursting out of its sh.e.l.l, the Monty Cranch I had treasured in my heart tossed off the murderer, the drunkard, the worthless wretch who had been throttling him and holding him locked up somewhere in that worn and tired body, and came up to the surface like a drowning man struggling for life.

”Human?” he said in a clearing voice. ”Human? Am I human? My G.o.d! that is the curse of all of us--we're human. To be human is to be a man. To be human is to be born. To be human is to have the blood and bone and brain that you didn't make or choose. To be human is to be the son of another without choice. To be human is to be the yesterday of your blood and marked with a hundred yesterdays of others' evil.”

He jumped up. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot.

”Am I responsible for what I am?” he roared. ”Are any of us?”

The Judge looked frightened, I thought.

”Blood is blood,” cried Monty, with the veins standing out on his forehead. ”That's why I brought the baby here. I wanted to kill her.

Blood is blood. There's mine in that chair--and it is me, and I am my father and he was his father, and there's no escape, do you hear? I wanted to kill her because I loved her, loved her, loved her!”

He fell back in the chair and covered his face with his hand and wept like a child.

I looked at the Judge and I could have believed he was a bronze statue.

He never moved an eyelash. I could not see him breathe. He seemed a metal figure and he frightened me and the child frightened me, because it slept through it all so calm, so innocent--a little quiet thing.

”Well, Chalmers,” said the Judge at last, ”what do you mean to do?

You're going away. Are you going to leave your daughter here?”

Monty's head was bowed over so his face did not show, but I saw him s.h.i.+ver just as if the Judge's words had blown across him with a draft as cold as ice.

”I'm going to Idaho,” he said. ”I'm going away to-night. I've got to leave the baby. You know that. Put it in an inst.i.tution and don't let the people know who its father was. Some day my blood will speak to it, Judge, but half my trouble was knowing what I was.”

”By inheritance,” said the Judge.

”By inheritance,” said Monty.

”You love this little daughter?” the Judge whispered.

Monty just s.h.i.+vered again and bowed his head. It was hard to believe he was a murderer. Everything seemed like a dream, with Monty's chest heaving and falling like the pulse of a body's own heart.

”You never want her to know of you--anything about you?” asked the Judge.

”No,” choked Monty. ”Never!”

”Every man has good in him,” said the Judge slowly. ”You had better go--now!”

Without a word, then, Monty got up and went. He did not rush off like the reporter. He stopped and touched the baby's dirty little dress with the tips of his fingers. And then he went, and the front door closed slowly and creaked, and the screen door closed slowly and creaked, and his shoes came down slowly on the walk and creaked, and the iron gate-latch creaked. I went to the window and looked out one side of the flapping curtain, and I saw Monty Cranch move along the fence and raise his arms and stop and move again. In the moonlight, with its queer shadows, he still looked like half man and half ape, scuttling away to some place where everything is lost in nothing.

”We can't do anything more to-night,” said the Judge, touching my shoulder. ”Take the child upstairs.”

”Yes, sir,” said I.

”Stop!” he said huskily. ”Let me look at her. What is in that body? What is in that soul? What is it marked with? What a mystery!”

”It is, indeed,” I answered.

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