Part 21 (1/2)
He paused, and the man thoughtfully observed, ”No, I fancy not.”
”You go into that jail-house through a stone door, and there's a rough-lookin' feller settin'--I mean sitting--there in front of another door made of iron gratin's as thick as crowbars.... The place don't smell good.”
”Isn't it well kept?” inquired McCalloway in some surprise, and the boy hastily explained.
”I don't mean that it plum stinks. I reckon it's as clean as a jail can be, but the air is stale--even out on the street that lowland air is flat.... It don't taste right in a man's throat.... Asa was reared up here in these free hills. He's like a caged hawk down there.”
The soldier nodded sympathetically.
”Did he--seem well?”
”He hasn't sickened none ... but his face used to be right colourful....
Now it's pale ... and sort of gray-like.... Of course a turnkey went along with us, and we didn't talk with him by himself.... I reckon he didn't say none of the things he craved most to say.... He was right silent-like.”
The boy broke off, and for a while the two sat in silence. When Boone took up the thread of his narrative again, there was something like a catch in his throat.
”They were pretty polite to us there.... They showed us all over the place ... they even took us to the death row.... There was a n.i.g.g.e.r in there that was goin' ter be hung next morning at daybreak.... I reckon he's dead now.... A feller kept walkin' back and forth in front of that cell ... and an electric light was burnin' there full bright.... That n.i.g.g.e.r, neither night ner day ... could ever git away from that light.... They were afraid he might seek ter kill hisself.... He come ter the bars an' said, 'Howdy, white folks,' ... an' then he went back an' sat down on the ledge that he sleeps on.”
The recital, painfully punctuated with its frequent pauses, halted there. It was a matter of several minutes before it began again. Now the voice was laboured, as if the speaker were panting for breath, and the careful p.r.o.nunciation relapsed wildly into the older and ruder forms of solecism.
”They tuck us out an' ... showed us the cement yard ... whar the gallows stood.... It was painted a sort of brownish red.... It put me in mind of dried blood. The n.i.g.g.e.r could hear the hammers whilest they set the thing up.... Asa could hear 'em too.... Asa hed done seed ther scaffold hisself ... through the winder-bars when ... he exercised ... in the corrider.... But when I looked at the n.i.g.g.e.r thet's dead by now ...
seemed like it was Asa I saw ... with thet lamp glarin' in on him, daylight and night time alike....” The voice leaped into a soblike vehemence. ”Thet's what Judas money dogged him to! Seemed like ... I couldn't endure it!”
CHAPTER XVIII
So if the time ever came when Boone stood face to face with Saul Fulton, it would, for all the amendment of his new life, be a moment of desperate crisis. The pig iron of his half-savage beginning had been made malleable and held promise of tempered and flexible steel--but the metal was still feudist ore. McCalloway comforted himself with the reflection that Saul was not likely to return, but did not delude himself into forgetting that strange perversity which seems to draw the mountaineer inevitably back to his crags and woods, even in the face of innumerable perils. Some day Saul might attempt to slip back, and Boone would almost inevitably hear of his coming. Then for a day or an hour, the lad might relapse into his old self, even to the forgetting of his pledge. Such an inconsidered day or an hour would be enough to wreck his life.
Carefully and adroitly, therefore, McCalloway played upon the softer strings of life, and sometimes, to that end, he opened a hitherto closed door upon the events of his own life, and let his protege look in on glimpses that were sacredly guarded from other eyes.
One summer night, for example, Boone laid down a book and said suddenly, ”It tells here about a fellow winning the Star of India and the Victoria Cross. I'd love to see one of those medals.”
Silently McCalloway rose and went over to the folding desk, to come back with his battered dispatch box. He unlocked it and laid out before the boy not one decoration, but several. The ribbons were somewhat faded now, and the metal tarnished; but Boone bent forward, and his face glowed with the exaltation of one admitted to precincts that are sacrosanct. For a long while he studied the maltese cross with its lion-surmounted crown and its supporting bar chased with rose leaves; the cross that bears the Queen's name, for which men brave death. Beside it lay the oval, showing Victoria's profile, and the gilt inscription on a blue enamelled margin: ”Heaven's Light Our Guide.” A star caught it to its white-edged blue riband--and that was the coveted Star of India.
Here before his eyes--eyes that burned eagerly--were the priceless trifles that he had never hoped to see. The modest gentleman who had, for his sake, relinquished fresh honours in China, had won them, and until now had never spoken of them, but Boone knew that they are not lightly gained--and that in no way can they be bought.
A sudden and unaccountable mistiness blurred his sight.
”I'm obliged to you, sir,” he said seriously. ”I know you don't often show them.”
He had meant to say nothing more than that, but youth's questioning urge mastered his resolution, so that he put an interrogation very slowly, half fearing it might seem an impertinence.
”You told me once, sir, that I might ask whatever questions I liked--and that you would refuse to answer when _you_ felt like it. I'm going to ask one now--but I reckon I oughtn't to.” Again there was a diffident pause, but the sincere blue eyes were unwaveringly steady as they met the gray ones.
”Do you reckon, sir, the day will ever come--when I can know the real name--of the man I owe--pretty nigh everything to?”
McCalloway blinked his eyes, which this cub of a boy had a way of tricking into unsoldierly emotion, and resolutely set his features into immobility.