Part 27 (1/2)
They wondered how high they built the gallows to hang a man, and discussed the probability of the event being public. They speculated on the manner in which Joe would go to his death, whether boldly, with his head up that way, or cringing and afraid, his proud heart and spirit broken, and whether he would confess at the end or carry his secret with him to the grave. Then they branched off into discussions of the pain of hanging, and wondered whether it was a ”more horribler” death than drowning or burning in a haystack, or from eating pounded gla.s.s.
It was a great, moving, awakening sensation in the countryside, that taking off of Isom Chase by a mysterious midnight shot. It pulled people up out of the drowse of a generation, and set them talking as they had not talked in twenty years. Their sluggish brains were heated by it, their sleeping hearts quickened.
People were of the undivided opinion that Isom had caught Joe robbing him, and that Joe had shot him in the fear of punishment for the theft.
Perhaps it is because chivalry is such a rare quality among the business activities of this life, that none of them believed he was s.h.i.+elding Isom's wife, and that he was innocent of any wrong himself. They did not approve the attempt of the coroner to drag her into it. The shrewd insight of the little man cost him a good many votes that day.
Joe Newbolt could very well be a robber, they said, for all his life had prepared him for a fall before the temptation of money. He could very well be a robber, indeed, and there was no room for him to turn out anything n.o.bler, for wasn't he the pore folks' boy?
Ollie was almost as short in her realization of what Joe had done for her as those who knew nothing at all of his motive of silence. In the relief of her escape from public disclosure of her intrigue with Morgan, she enjoyed a luxurious relaxation. It was like sleep after long watching.
She did not understand the peril in which Joe stood on her account, nor consider that the future still held for both of them a trial which would test Joe's strength as the corrosive tooth of acid challenges the purity of gold. It was enough for her that sunny afternoon, and sufficient to her shallow soul, to know that she was safe. She lay warm and restful in her bed while the neighbor women set the house to rights, and the men moved Isom's body into the parlor to wait for the coffin which Sol Greening had gone after to the county-seat.
Ollie watched the little warm white clouds against the blue of the October sky, and thought of the fleecy soft things which a mother loves to swaddle her baby in; she watched the shadow of falling leaves upon the floor, blowing past her window on the slant sunbeams.
She was safe!
Joe was accused, but she seemed to hold that a trivial incident in an exciting day. It would pa.s.s; he would clear himself, as he deserved to be cleared, and then, when Morgan came back for her and carried her away into his world, everything would be in tune.
Perhaps it was because she knew that Joe was innocent that his accusation appeared so untenable and trivial to her. At any rate, the lawyers over at Shelbyville--wasn't their cunning known around the world--could get him off. If it came to that, she would see that he had a good one, as good as money could employ. Joe had stood by her; she would stand by Joe. That was the extent of her concern that afternoon.
It was pleasant to stretch there in peace, with no task before her, no rude summons to arise and work. Isom would call her no more at dawn; his voice would be silent in that house forever more. There was no regret in the thought, no pang, no pain.
As one lives his life, so he must be pitied in death. Soft deeds father soft memories. There never was but one man who rose with the recollection of pleasant dreams from pillowing his head upon a stone, and that man was under the hand of G.o.d. Isom Chase had planted bitterness; his memory was gall.
She was safe, and she was free. She had come into her expectations; the pre-nuptial dreams of enjoying Isom Chase's wealth were suddenly at hand.
Together with the old rifle and Isom's blood-stained garments, the coroner had taken away the little bag of gold, to be used as evidence, he said. He had taken the money, just as it was in the little sack, a smear of blood on it, after counting it before witnesses and giving her a receipt for the amount. Two thousand dollars; one hundred pieces of twenty dollars each. That was the tale of the contents of the canvas bag which had lain grinning on Isom's pulseless heart. It was not a great amount of money, considering Isom's faculty for gaining and holding it.
It was the general belief that he had ten, twenty, times that amount, besides his loans, hidden away, and the secret of his hiding-place had gone out of the world with Isom.
Others said that he had put his money into lands, pointing to the many farms which he owned and rented in the county. But be that as it might, there was Ollie, young and handsome, well paid for her hard year as Isom's wife, free now, and doubtless already willing at heart to make some young man happy. n.o.body blamed her for that.
It was well known that Isom had abused her, that her life had been cheerless and lonely under his roof. Those who did not know it from first-hand facts believed it on the general notoriety of the man.
Contact with Isom Chase had been like sleeping on a corn-husk bed; there was no comfort in it, no matter which way one turned.
Ollie, her eyes closed languidly, now languidly opened to follow the track of the lamb-fleece clouds, her young body feeling warm and pleasant, as if lately released from a sorely cramped state; Ollie, with little fleeting dreams in her pretty, shallow head, was believed by the women of the neighborhood to be in the way of realizing on Isom's expectations of an heir. It was a little fiction that had taken its beginning from Sol Greening's early talk, and owing to that rumor the coroner had been gentle with her beyond the inclination of his heart.
The young widow smiled as she lay on her pillow and thought of the little intimate touches of tenderness which this baseless rumor had made her the beneficiary of at her neighbor's hands. She was selfish enough to take advantage of their mistaken kindnesses and to surrender to their vigorous elbows the work below stairs. That was her day of freedom; it was her dawn of peace.
It was pleasant to have come through stress and hards.h.i.+p to this restful eddy in the storm of life; to have faced peril and disgrace and come away still clean in the eyes of men. Ollie was content with things as they were, as the evening shadows closed the door upon the events of that trying day.
Quite different was the case of Sarah Newbolt, once more back in her poor shelter, nested in bramble and clambering vine. She was dazed, the song was gone out of her heart. She was bereaved, and her lips were moving in endless repet.i.tion of supplication to the Almighty for the safety and restoration of her son.
What was this grim thing of which they had accused her Joe? She could not yet get to the bottom of it, she could not understand how men could be so warped and blind. Why, Joe had told them how it happened, he had explained it as clear as well water, but they didn't believe him. She went out and sat on the porch to think it out, if possible, and come to some way of helping Joe. There was not a friend to turn to, not a counselor to lean upon.
She never had felt it lonely in the old place before, for there was companions.h.i.+p even in the memory of her dead, but this evening as she sat on the porch, the familiar objects in the yard growing dim through the oncoming night, the hollowness of desolation was there. Joe was in prison. The neighbors had refused to believe the word of her boy. There was n.o.body to help him but her. The hand of everybody else was against him. She had delivered him into bondage and brought this trouble to him, and now she must stir herself to set him free.
”It's all my own doin's,” said she in unsparing reproach. ”My chickens has come to roost.”
After nightfall she went into the kitchen where she sat a dreary while before her stove, leaning forward in her unlovely, ruminating pose.
Through the open draft of the stove the red coals within it glowed, casting three little bars of light upon the floor. Now and then a stick burned in two and settled down, showering sparks through the grate.