Part 38 (1/2)

What had he done, drawn on by that which he had read in her eyes in that poignant moment! In jail, locked behind a grated door of steel, he had taken her hand and drawn her to him until the shock of the bars had called back his manhood. He had taken advantage of her friends.h.i.+p and sympathy.

Prison was no place for love; a man locked in jail charged with a crime had no right to think of it. It was base of him, and unworthy.

Still--mounting again in a swift, delicious flight--it was sweet to know what her eyes had told him, sweeter to rest a.s.sured that she had not left him in scorn. Down again, a falling clod. Unless he had misinterpreted them in the ignorance of his untutored heart. Yet, that is a language that needs no lexicon, he knew.

Who is so simple, indeed, as to be unaware of that? How different this pa.s.sion from that which Ollie's uncovered bosom had stirred; how he burned with shame at the memory of that day!

Up and down he strode the morning through, his long, thin legs now spare in his boot-tops, his wide, bony shoulders sharp through his coat. The strong light fell on his gaunt face as he turned toward the window; shadows magnified its hollows when he turned toward the door. Now that the panic of it had left him, the sweetness of it remained.

How soft her hand was, how her yielding body swayed in his arm! How delicious her breath was on his face; how near her eyes, speaking to him, and her lips; how near her parted, warm, red lips!

He took up the Book, and turned with trembling hands to a place that he remembered well. There was something that he had read, not feeling, not understanding, words of which came back to him now. The Songs of Songs, Which is Solomon's.

Ah, the Song of Songs! The music of it now was written in his heart. It was not the song in glorification and exaltation of the church that the translators had captioned it; not a song full of earthly symbols meant to represent spiritual pa.s.sions. Joe had read it, time and again, in that application, and it had fallen flavorless upon his understanding.

No; it was the song of a strong man to the woman whom he loved.

And the music of it, old but ever new in its human appeal, now was written in his heart.

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.... Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved....

Ah, until the day break!

In his rapt exaltation the boy's face beamed as he strode swiftly the length of his cell. It would not be long until daybreak now. The judge would understand him, and would not press a man to tell what he had delicate reasons for concealing, when the concealment could bring harm to n.o.body, but boundless good to one weak creature who must wither otherwise in the blaze of shame.

He remembered the strong face and the long iron-gray hair of Judge Maxwell; only a little while ago Joe had given him some apples which he had stopped to admire as he drove past Isom's orchard in his sagging, mud-splashed, old buggy. He was a good man; the uprightness of his life spoke from his face. Judge Maxwell was a man to understand.

Poor Ollie; poor weak, shrinking Ollie! Her frightened eyes glowed hot in his memory of the day of the inquest, carrying to him their appeal.

Poor, mistaken, unguided Ollie! He would protect her to the last, as he had done at the beginning, and trust and hope that the judge, and Alice, and the colonel, and the whole world, would understand in due and proper time.

CHAPTER XIV

DESERTED

John Owens, the surviving witness to Isom Chase's will, spent his dreary days at the poorhouse whittling long chains of interlocking rings, and fantastic creatures such as the human eye never beheld in nature, out of soft pine-wood. He had taken up that diversion shortly after the last of his afflictions, blindness, fell upon him and, as white pine was cheap, the superintendent of the inst.i.tution indulged him without stint.

Uncle John, as he was called long years before the hard-riding world threw him, was a preacher back in the days of his youth, middling manhood and prosperity. He had ridden the country in the Campbellite faith, bringing hundreds into the fold, with a voice as big as a bull's, and a long beard, which he wore b.u.t.toned under his vest in winter. And now in his speechlessness, darkness, and silence, he still preached in his way, carving out the beast with seven heads and ten horns, and female figures of hideous mien, the signification of which n.o.body rightly knew.

Uncle John had a little slate upon which he wrote his wants, but n.o.body had discovered any way of communicating with him save by taking his hand and guiding it to the object for which he had asked. For a long time he had written the one word ”Paint” on his slate. That was the beginning of his use of it, when one word was all that he could get on a side of it at a time. After his fingers had become sensitive through his new art of whittling and feeling, he improved his writing, until he made it plain that he wanted paint to adorn his carved figures, so they could be sold.

It was the hope of the poor old soul that he could whittle himself out of the poorhouse, and live free and independent upon the grotesque productions of his knife, if they would give him paint to make them attractive, and thus get a start. He did not know how fantastic and ridiculous they were, having only his own touch to guide him to judgment of their merits.

Perhaps he was no less reasonable in this belief than certain painters, musicians, and writers, who place their own blind value upon the craft of their hands and brains, and will not set them aside for any jury that the world can impanel.

Uncle John never came to realize his hopes of freedom, any more than he ever came to realize the uselessness of paint for his angels when he had no eyes for applying it. He whittled on, in melancholy dejection, ring upon ring in his endless chains of rings, forging in bitter irony the emblems of bondage, when his old heart so longed to be free.

It was a bright day in the life of Uncle John Owens, then, when Ollie's lawyer called at the poorhouse and placed under his hands some slender slips of cardboard bearing raised letters, the A B C of his age.

His bearded old face shone like a window in which a light has been struck as his fluttering fingers ran over the letters. He fumbled excitedly for his slate which hung about his neck, and his hand trembled as he wrote: